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"The memos add not a single fact to what was previously known about the administration's prewar deliberations," the Post's editors wrote, explaining why the leading newspaper of Washington had largely ignored the contents of the British documents. "Not only that: They add nothing to what was publicly known in July 2002."
I just now downloaded the Democracy Now transcript of my comments that morning, and was happy to see that I managed to suppress - sort of - the anger seething inside me (although my wife tells me some of it broke through).
I beg readers' indulgence: AMY GOODMAN: I'm Amy Goodman, as we talk about the Downing Street Memo, a hearing being held on this issue by Congress Member John Conyers in Congress tomorrow. Congress Member Conyers joins us in Washington, along with former C.I.A. analyst, Ray McGovern. Ray McGovern, can you talk about what is most explosive about both, what is being called the Downing Street Memo, that talks about fixing the facts and intelligence around the policy, and this latest expose' of the Sunday Times of London, showing British cabinet members were warned that Britain was committed to taking part in the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, and they had no choice but to find a way to make it legal?
RAY McGOVERN: Well, Amy, we Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity had been saying for three years that the intelligence and the facts were being fixed to support an unnecessary war. We never in our wildest dreams expected to have documentary proof of that under a SECRET label: "SECRET: U.K. EYES ONLY" in a most sensitive document reserved just for cabinet officials in the Blair government. And so, what we have now is documentary proof that, as that sentence reads, the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The Washington Post this morning is still at it. They quote that sentence, and they say, "Well, this is vague, but intriguing." Well, there's nothing vague about that at all, and it's not at all intriguing. It's highly depressing. Now, we veteran professionals, we professionals that toil long and hard in the intelligence arena are outraged at the corruption of our profession, but we are even more outraged by the constitutional implications here because as Congressman Conyers has just pointed out, we have here a very clear case that the Executive usurped the prerogatives of Congress of the American people and deceived it into permitting, authorizing an unauthorizeable war. And, you know, when you get back to how our Constitution was framed by those English folks that were used to kings marching them off to the war blithely, for their own good, of course, those framers of our Constitution were hell-bent and determined, and wrote into the very first Article of our Constitution, that the power to make or authorize war would be reserved to the representatives of people in the Congress, not in the Executive. And so, for that usurpation to happen, that is a constitutional issue, and we're even more outraged by that. ...
AMY GOODMAN: We're talking to Michigan Congress Member John Conyers who is holding a hearing on the Downing Street Memo tomorrow, and has won a small victory. It will actually be able to be held in Congress. Ray McGovern also with us, a long-time C.I.A. analyst for more than a quarter century, a top briefer for former Vice President George H.W. Bush. I wanted to ask you about Saddam Hussein's son-in-law, who had said that there were no weapons of mass destruction, cited by western officials, U.S. officials, for many other reasons, but they never brought up that issue. Can you talk about the significance of this?
RAY McGOVERN: Yes. This gentleman's name was Hussein Kamel. He was one of Saddam Hussein's sons-in-law. And he defected in 1995 and was thoroughly debriefed by U.N. and U.S. and U.K. debriefers. He had quite a story to tell, because he was head of the missile, chemical, biological and nuclear programs in Iraq. And he was able to finger some of the things that the U.N. inspectors did not know, and what he told them turned out to be quite right. He also told them that the chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs and weapons were destroyed at his order in July of 1991, right after the Gulf War. That's in black and white. It's in the debriefing report. An enterprising British researcher went to Vienna. I don't know how he got access to the debriefing report, but he did, and he found out that Kamel also said, as I said, that all those weapons were destroyed at his order.
Of course, he was in charge. Now, curiously enough, that seemed to escape our leaders. It was never cited, although Hussein Kamel himself was held up as the paragon of a reliable source. Dick Cheney, himself, in his major speech of 26 August 2002, held Hussein's son-in-law as one of our most lucrative, reliable sources, but he never told us that this source, this wonderful source, also told us that all those weapons had been destroyed in July of 1991 at his order.
Now, there's no excuse for them not knowing that. It may have slipped in a crack between the F.B.I. and the C.I.A., I suppose, but it also appeared in Newsweek four weeks before the war. Four weeks before the war, the report that Hussein Kamel, their paragon source, had said all those weapons had been destroyed.
Now, the C.I.A and the spokesmen there and all of the other spokesmen in government said this was ludicrous, this was false; besides, it's untrue and everything else. And they came down real hard on it. Guess what our domesticated press did with that. No more story on that, because they were all cheerleading for the war.
And I'll just make one more point about our domesticated press. The Washington Post today in this lead editorial says that these memos were not given much play in the press because, (quote), "They do not add a single fact to what was previously known about the administration's pre-war deliberations." Now, if The Washington Post knew that as of 23 July 2002, the president had, in the British words, inevitably decided on war, if they knew that the president intended to use as justification the conjunction between terrorism and so-called weapons of mass destruction, and if they knew that the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy, you know, they really ought to - they surely should have told us that, The Washington Post should have.
It's really ludicrous. It would be laughable if it weren't so serious a situation. Because what needs to happen here is you have a start-up newspaper in Washington called The Washington Spark, okay? Now, on the 11th of May, they carried the whole story, including the memo itself. Right here. Now, that hasn't appeared in The Washington Times or The Washington Post, but here in The Washington Spark, new start-up paper, just days after the memo, it's there. So it's possible there's some kind of a rule against publishing things that are so critically damaging of our president, and the editorial in the Post today is Exhibit A.
When the Conyers hearing was held on June 16, 2005, the witnesses included Gold Star mother and anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan, former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson, constitutional lawyer John Bonifaz, and me together as panelists. (My prepared remarks can be seen at "June 16 Testimony of Ray McGovern.") The room was more than somewhat cramped, but half the space was allotted for the TV cameras - including C-SPAN, which carried the proceedings live.
Fitting with its dismissive attitude toward the Downing Street disclosures, the Post sent satirical columnist Dana Milbank to cover the hearing and his article the next day dripped with sarcasm. "In the Capitol basement yesterday, long-suffering House Democrats took a trip to the land of make-believe," Milbank wrote. "They pretended a small conference room was the Judiciary Committee hearing room, draping white linens over folding tables to make them look like witness tables and bringing in cardboard name tags and extra flags to make the whole thing look official."
Milbank also took some cheap shots at Conyers, who Milbank wrote "banged a large wooden gavel and got the other lawmakers to call him 'Mr. Chairman.'" [For the article's full flavor, see the Washington Post's "Democrats Play House To Rally Against the War," June 17, 2005]
Now seven years after the Downing Street Minutes were written and more than four years after their disclosure they remain one of the most damning pieces of evidence against both the Bush administration for its criminal deceptions in leading the nation to war and the FCM for its complicity in hiding the truth from the American people.
As philosopher George Santayana wisely observed a century ago, "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
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