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8:00-8:01 Billboard:
Congress Members Call For Independent Probe of White House
Leak That Blew CIA Operative’s Cover After CIA Refers
Investigation To Justice Dept
Halabja: How Bush Sr. Continued to Support Saddam After the
1988 Gassing of Thousands And Bush Jr. Used it As a Pretext
For War 15 Years Later
8:01-8:06 Headlines
8:06-8:07 One Minute Music Break
8:07-8:30 Congress Members Call For Independent Probe
of White House Leak That Blew CIA Operative’s Cover
After CIA Refers Investigation To Justice Dept.
INTRO: The CIA operative's identity was revealed by senior
administration officials in July, a week after her husband
former ambassador to Iraq, Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly challenged
President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy uranium
from Africa. It is a felony for someone with authorized access
to classified information to intentionally disclose a covert
operative's identity.
The Justice Department is looking into an allegation that
senior administration officials leaked the name of an undercover
CIA officer to a journalist.
The operative's identity was published in July, a week after
her husband, former U.S. ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, publicly
challenged President Bush's claim that Iraq had tried to buy
uranium from Africa for possible use in nuclear weapons. Bush
later backed away from the claim.
It is a felony for someone with authorized access to classified
information to intentionally disclose a covert operative's
identity. Officials said the Justice Department is determining
whether a formal investigation is warranted and that they
did not know how long that would take. Democracy Now! confirmed
this almost two weeks ago when we called the FBI and they
said they were looking into it. Yesterday, Bush's aides told
the Washington Post they promised to cooperate with the Department
but Democrats charged that the administration cannot credibly
investigate itself and called for an independent probe.
White House officials also say they would turn over phone
logs if the Justice Department asks them to. But the aides
said Bush has no plans to ask his staff members whether they
played a role in the outing of Wilson’s wife.
After months of being relegated to the sidelines, the story
made the front page of the Washington Post this weekend and
was subject of the Sunday talk shows. National security adviser
Condoleezza Rice said on "Fox News Sunday" that
she knew "nothing of any such White House effort to reveal
any of this, and it certainly would not be the way that the
president would expect his White House to operate."
The issue first came to light in July when conservative columnist
Robert Novak wrote a column in which he cited two senior administration
officials and said that Wilson's wife was a CIA operative.
This came a week after Wilson's account of the Iraq/Niger
claim touched off a political firestorm over Bush's use of
intelligence as he made the case for attacking Iraq.
A senior administration official told the Post this weekend
that two top White House officials called at least six Washington
journalists and disclosed the identity and occupation of Wilson's
wife. He said the leak " was meant purely and simply
for revenge."
Wilson told the Post yesterday that journalists for the three
major broadcast networks told him they had been contacted
by someone in the White House. He named only one, Andrea Mitchell,
NBC's chief foreign affairs correspondent.
- Ray McGovern, former CIA analyst.
- Tape: National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice in an
interview with Fox News Sunday on September 28, 2003.
- Tape: Ambassador Joseph Wilson speaking at a forum in
Seattle, Washington on August 22, 2003.
8:30-8:58 Halabja: How Bush Sr. Continued to Support
Saddam After the 1988 Gassing of Thousands And Bush Jr. Used
it As a Pretext For War 15 Years Later
INTRO: After the Halabja gassing President Bush I and Sen.
Bob Dole fought sanctions against Iraq even though the gassing
killed thousands and was reportedly carried out in part by
U.S.-made helicopters. From 1989 to 1990 the gassing was mentioned
about once a month in major press outlets, yet in the three
weeks leading up to the 2003 invasion, the press mentioned
it 150 times. In 15 years the gassing went from an untold
story to a pretext for invasion.
As the occupation of Iraq drags on, U.S. forces have yet
to find any weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Weapons of
mass destruction were cited to the public as well as Congress
as the primary reason for the invasion.
In the months leading up to the war and since the overthrow
of Saddam Hussein, the accusation that Iraq has used chemical
weapons against its citizens has been stated with greater
frequency by the administration. The piece of hard evidence
most frequently brought up concerns the gassing of Iraqi Kurds
at the town of Halabja in March 1988, near the end of the
eight-year Iran-Iraq war. President Bush himself has cited
Iraq's "gassing its own people," specifically at
Halabja, as a reason to topple Saddam Hussein.
In an interview yesterday on ABC's This Week With George
Stephanopolous, Secretary of State Colin Powell said “Halabja
is a city in northern Iraq, where, and on a Friday in March
of 1988, Saddam Hussein gassed the people with VX, with sarin,
nerve agents, and it killed 5,000 people in one day; that
was 15 years ago. Now, if you want to believe that he suddenly
gave up that weapon and had no further interest in those sorts
of weapons, whether it be chemical, biological or nuclear,
then I think you're -- it's a bit naive to believe that.”
Powell also didn't bother to mention that people connected
to the US government at the time of the Halabja massacre believe
Iran, not Iraq, committed the atrocity.
In January of this year former CIA senior political analyst
on Iraq during the Iran-Iraq war Stephen C. Pelletiere wrote
in the The New York Times "We cannot say with any certainty
that Iraqi chemical weapons killed the Kurds.”
Furthermore, both the Reagan and Bush administrations authorized
the sale to Iraq of various items that had both military and
civilian applications, i.e., chemical and biological weapons.
In a 1991 New York Times piece about U.S. ties to Iraq, Harvey
Weinstein writes, “In 1982, the Reagan administration
excused Iraq from the list of international terrorists that
had been a barrier to virtually all trade Baghdad…First
on Hussein’s shopping list was helicopters – he
bought 60 Hughes helicopters and trainers with little notice.
However, a second order of 10 twin-engine Bell “Huey”
helicopter, like those used to carry combat troops in Vietnam,
prompted congressional opposition in August, 1983.”
Weinstein continues: “In 1988, Kurdish civilians were
attacked with poisonous gas from Iraqi helicopters and planes.
U.S. intelligence sources say they believe that the American-built
helicopters were among those dropping the deadly bombs.”
- John Stauber, co-author of the new book Weapons of Mass
Deception. He is the founder and executive director of the
Center for Media & Democracy which publishes the news
magazine PR Watch.
Link: www.prwatch.org
- Stephen Pelletiere, former senior CIA political analyst
on Iraq. Pelletiere was privy to much of the classified
material having to do with the Persian Gulf and he headed
a investigation in 1991 into how the Iraqis would fight
a war against the United States. The classified version
of the report went into great detail on the Halabja affair.
8:58-8:59 Outro and Credits
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Jeremy Scahill, Mike Burke,
Sharif Abdul Kouddous, Lenina Nadal, Ana Nogueira, and Elizabeth
Press. Mike Di Filippo is our music maestro and engineer.
[Thanks also to Uri Galed, Angela Alston, Orlando Richards,
Simba Russeau, Rafael delaUz, Gabriel Weiss, Johnny Sender,
Rich Kim, Chris Zucker, Karen Ranucci, Denis Moynihan, Jenny
Filipazzo]
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