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| What Mike's statement on Iraq means for the CIA |
| 2004-11-22 |
| MICHAEL SCHEUER, head of the CIA's bin Laden unit and until recently a senior analyst, said something remarkable last week on Hardball with Chris Matthews. Scheuer told Matthews that he "happened to do the research on links between al Qaeda and Iraq," and Matthews asked him, "and what did you come up with?" "Nothing." It was a strange and troubling response. As Thomas Joscelyn points out, Scheuer argued in his 2002 book, Through Our Enemies Eyes, that Iraq and al Qaeda worked together regularly. His claims were unequivocal. A few examples: [Bin Laden] "made a connection with Iraq's intelligence service through its Khartoum station." (p. 119). In Sudan, Bin Laden decided to acquire and, when possible, use chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) weapons against Islam's enemies. Bin Laden's first moves in this direction were made in cooperation with NIF [Sudan's National Islamic Front], Iraq's intelligence service and Iraqi CBRN scientists and technicians. He made contact with Baghdad with its intelligence officers in Sudan and by a [Hassan] Turabi-brokered June-1994 visit by Iraq's then-intelligence chief Faruq al-Hijazi; according to Milan's Corriere della Sera, Saddam, in 1994, made Hijazi responsible for "nurturing Iraq's ties to [Islamic] fundamentalist warriors. Turabi had plans to formulate a "common strategy" with bin Laden and Iraq for subverting pro-U.S. Arab regimes, but the meeting was a get-acquainted session where Hijazi and bin Laden developed a good rapport that would "flourish" in the late 1990s. (p. 124) |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #4 This guy is so strange. Is CIA full of these types? What I remember from the interview while listening to car radio: "We've built up OBL into a mythical figure; everybody in Islam loves him. Our fault" Then, "we should have vaporized him while he was meeting with the Emirati sheiks. Kill 'em all. They're all guilty. Hell with collateral damage and whatever propoganda coup that would be for AQ." Truly bizarre. An old guy tolk me many years ago that 30% of the CIA was full of Mormons. Linguists, anit-commies, don't drink, don't smoke, totally reliable. I guess I know what the other 70% consisted of. |
| Posted by: chicago mike 2004-11-22 2:29:14 PM |
| #3 Can't be reformed, only replaced. Raze it now. Start over. |
| Posted by: lex 2004-11-22 2:13:49 PM |
| #2 I'd never heard of Mike Scheuer before this current bruhaha, and I worked counterterrorism in Washington in 1980 and in Germany in 1987-89. The photo intel was excellent, and we had good information on who was running what, where, especially in Libya, Lebanon, and Jordan. Syria was harder, but there was less direct terrorist information available. Egypt was in the mess, but tangentally. There was little in the way of physical training camps in Algeria, and what there was mostly consisted of the group trying to protest the Moroccan absorbtion of parts of the former Spanish Sahara. Terrorist training, including terrorist training camps, took off with a fluorish in Iran in the early 1980's, and in Iraq beginning about 1984 (Salman Pak). We considered any terrorist activity in Afghanistan to be the work of anti-Soviet forces, and ignored it. Pakistan was so muddled, it was hard to discern terrorist training from anything else in that mixed-up nation. The bottom line is, we had excellent intelligence of terrorist training facilities and activity through 1989. The folks I talk to who still work the area say we're still keeping track of the same areas, and that some things have changed, others haven't. The information is mostly going into a black hole, and never getting past the senior "leadership". Goss needs to move harder, faster, to undo the mess that has grown during the last ten or twelve years. Scheuer is just one of hundreds that need to be canned, slapped with that same "70 year non-disclosure" statement I had to sign, and punished for his arrogance and outright lies and distortion of American intelligence operations. This isn't the first time the CIA has been in the middle of an intelligence battle. There were several times during the US involvement in Vietnam where other intelligence agencies wouldn't share information with the local CIA chief, because there were too many leaks in his office. I was there during one of those incidents. |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2004-11-22 2:06:11 PM |
| #1 Try Scheuer for treason. Find out who else within the CIA is aligned with him. There is something very serious going on around that man. Scheuer failed to get Bin Laden, he now praises him, and he accuses Israel of being the root of all problems in the Middle East. |
| Posted by: Kalle (kafir forever) 2004-11-22 11:57:27 AM |