Habbush’s Freedom Fries Forgeries
In his description of how Tahir Jalil Habbush Al-Tikriti negotiated protection from the United States, Ron Suskind writes,
Bush, Cheney, and top aides to the vice president wanted Habbush, in essence, to earn his passage. The United States was working furiously on "the case." It needed damning disclosures, not the Iraqi intelligence chief–who was given the code name "George"–saying there were no WMD.
Suskind doesn’t describe how, in spite of the fact that he insisted Iraq didn’t have WMD, Habbush still managed to convince the US to take him to Jordan and install him with $5 million in hush money. Suskind notes–but does not explain–that Habbush got out of Iraq early, close to the start of the war.
Habbush was ready. He slipped out of Baghdad with the help of U.S. intelligence and into Amman, Jordan, where he’d had his meetings with Shipster.
It is instructive, then, to look at the two other Habbush letters sent during the early war period. First, there’s the April 24, 2003 letter designed to frame British (then) Labour MP George Galloway as having been bought off with money from Saddam’s oil sales (h/t for all of these articles to a friend).
Saddam Hussein’s former head of protocol said yesterday that the document found by The Daily Telegraph saying that George Galloway received substantial payments from the Iraqi regime was "100 per cent genuine".
Haitham Rashid Wihaib, who fled to Britain with his family eight years ago after death threats, said he had no doubt that the handwritten confidential memorandum addressed to the dictator’s office apparently detailing how the Labour MP benefited from Iraq’s oil sales was authentic.
Sitting in a cafe in central London, a world away from Saddam’s palace where he spent 13 years arranging the dictator’s daily schedule, he carefully studied the letter discovered in the looted foreign ministry in Baghdad.
As Mr Galloway continued to denounce the letter as a forgery, Mr Wihaib said he recognised the "clear and distinctive" handwriting as that of Tahir Jalil Habbush Al-Tikriti, head of the Iraqi intelligence service, who is number 14 – the jack of diamonds – on America’s "most wanted" list.
The letter would have been intended to smear Galloway for his efforts to forestall the war–and his campaign to show how unfairly Iraq was treated under sanctions.
Then there’s the April 27, 2003 letter that alleged France undermined an Iraqi human rights meeting held in Paris.
France colluded with the Iraqi secret service to undermine a Paris conference held by the prominent human rights group Indict, according to documents found in the foreign ministry in Baghdad.l
Various documents state that the Iraqis believed the French were doing their utmost to prevent the meeting from going ahead.
Ann Clwyd, the Labour MP who chairs Indict, said last night that she would be demanding an apology from the French government for its behaviour, which she described as "atrocious".
The files, retrieved from the looted and burned foreign ministry by The Telegraph last week, detail the warmth and strength of Iraqi-French ties.
[snip]
Perhaps the most damning document is from the Iraqi intelligence service, Iris. The service, known as the Mukhabarat in Iraq, operated as the domestic secret police and as an external intelligence agency.
Its role abroad was to collect intelligence, murder opponents and maintain relations with friendly groups. The document, dated March 28, 2000, is from the head of Iris to Saddam’s office.
At the time the organisation was run by Tahir Jalil al-Habbush, number 14 on America’s wanted list. The letter appears to be written by a different hand from one revealed last week purporting to record that George Galloway benefited from contracts under the oil for food programme. But it carries the same signature.
It states that "one of our sources" met the "deputy spokesman" of the French foreign ministry, "with whom he has good relations".
It claims that the spokesman from the justice and interior ministries had sought to find a legal way of preventing the Indict meeting.
Both letters–like the later letter described by Suskind–"found" by a reporter from the Conrad Black-owned Telegraph, both letters smearing vocal opponents to the war. (There’s also this April 20, 2003 article, alleging cooperation between Russia and Iraq. Though not based on a letter directly attributed to Habbush, it appears to be based on that set of documents dealt to the Telegraph.) These nasty, petty war-mongers–the first thing they wanted to do, apparently, is smear all those who had tried to prevent their pointless war. We could just call these the "Freedom Fry Forgeries."
Suskind never explains how, after insisting that Iraq had no WMDs, Habbush was nevertheless spirited out of the country to safety early in the war. But from the looks of these articles, it appears he "earned his passage" by smearing everyone who had (like him) tried to prevent the war.
(Here’s eriposte on this as well.)
I take it from what you and eriposte have written that Suskind does not mention these two additional letters?
Correct.
Gee. After all he did for them, and Bush couldn’t arrange a commutation for Conrad.
Would the Freedom Fries Forgeries qualify as domestic propaganda? There are three we know of from Habbush, are there more from Habbush? From others? I wonder how much we spent buying forgeries to make our case for war appear justified.
Black was a good pick for a disinformation campaign. Think of all the other papers he owned and how quickly he could get a global campaign accomplished giving his US press “validity” for covering the story(s).
His convictions for fraud and financial abuse also suggest he was a made man on the Bush team. I wonder if he thought his service would have bought him a get out of jail card?
I was looking at that…I have been searching for his “other” contacts which might suggest a trail or insight to a disinformation “web”.
I know that disinformation campaigns are as old as human communication, but it seems that everything is disinformation in today’s world. How is an ordinary citizen in any country supposed to find out what is really true and what is just someone’s spun agenda?
Well it could throw one into an existential crisis, but I think the best is to remain a healthy skeptic, keep asking plenty of questions, and ask for the supporting data, please.
I remember this about the French helping smuggle out Baathists at the start of the war (or immediately before) by providing passports. It was in the Post, all false, and provoked a letter from the French ambassador, Levitte accusing the U.S. rightly of a disinformation campaign.
Levitte’s letter (summarized here) refers to other U.S. press operations, as well:
The story about the passports was not carried in the Washington Post, but in the Washington Times.
The Post’s front-page coverage of the French ambassador’s letter notes that it includes criticism of a November 2002 Post story retailing a lie about French possession of a prohibited strain of the smallpox virus by “an American intelligence official”. But that’s the only instance in which the Post appears to have taken part in the smearing of the French.
That I could find, anyway; maybe there are other cases.
I wonder: Did the French government push back at the Telegraph story, directly to the paper and/or to the Blair government?
The GOP, it seems, openly laughed at Wag the Dog while secretly taking notes about how to do it better, more convincingly, more secretively. Little wonder the NYT best OpEd commentator on the war and the Bush regime has been its one-time theater critic, Frank Rich.
Poli. Sci. majors will now have to minor in playwriting or theater to get their degrees. Who would have thought that a fellow’s unpaid stint in the White House basement would rival a year at Julliard or the New School.
Perhaps Conyers or Waxman could hold hearings on the making of forged documents. Feith of OSP, Rodriguez and others might be a witnessess again.
Let’s go straight to the source. We know that Habbush is in Amman. Our CIA and the Jordam military are providing protection for him. Have Congress tell the DNI that he has 72 hours to produce Habbush to Congress for testimony or he will be held until he suddenly appears. Habbush is the one you want. He didn’t want the occupation from the beginning and it took $5 million to convince him to assist Cheney and keep his mouth shut.
Habbush would be a dead man if that happened — most likely even if they waited until after Jan 20. Also, did I read somewhere that he has a family? We already know these people are capable of disappearing children to control the fathers.
Gallow really impressed me the way he stood up to the senate
pack of lies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5QNWmj8tBY
The cicumstances of the Niger forgery are different than the Habbush ones, right? Beyond the likely origin in the Bush admin, what are the similarities?
Those forgeries were acutally made in Italy. There are more likely forgeries, in addition to these, that I’ll come back to in another post.
All of which makes some of the “convenient” finds involving Oscar Wyatt a little questionable in my book too. Wyatt was one of the few TX oilmen not a part of the Bush cadre and they were pretty much enemies. Lo and behold, there sprang forth a “diary” of an Iraqi state oil co employee, detailing not any deals with the majors, but instead detailing that Wyatt was providing troop and invasion info to Hussein (and how would Wyatt have that?) and also having the very *interesting* assertion that the reason Ted Kennedy spoke out against the war is that Wyatt got to him on behalf of Hussein.
You can sell me on Wyatt violating the oil for food rules, as did LOTS of other companies whose CEOS didn’t get criminal suits brought against them individually – but you can’t really sell me on an Iraqi diary that just so happened to be found and just so happened to try to frame out not just Wyatt, but Kennedy, as being Hussein pawns.
Still – they’ve go the plea. But boy, I have to think that diary would make for some interesting reading and would have to have a pretty interesting provenance.
Interesting point, Mary–I’ve always intended to look further into the Wyatt case.
And of course, it probably goes without saying that after they took away Judy’s front page privileges to write about WMD, she was focused almost exclusively on the Oil for Food program.
And we have this piece to remind us about Judy:
http://www.thenation.com/doc/20050418/baker
Any chance Bush gives a last second pardon to Conrad Black?
As Suskind tells it, Habbush was a source developed over several years by the British, and the Americans were only cut in on the operation in late 2002. It was a joint undertaking, with Rob Richer of CIA and Shipster from MI6 meeting several times with Habbush in Amman prior to the invasion. One certainly can imagine that it would be with the knowledge of King Abdullah, with whom Richer had a very long relationship.
The essence of the intelligence Habbush offered prior to the invasion was that Iraq had eliminated its WMD’s in 1991, but that Saddam had wanted to keep Iran and Syria guessing, and thus had not made this at all clear. In fact, in the initial contact, Habbush didn’t believe it likely that the US would invade at all. His view was essentially Saddam’s, and Suskind describes Saddam as more concerned with his image and position with respect to his regional enemies.
Suskind also makes the point that the intent in collecting intelligence from Habbush was different for the Americans and British. The Brits were trying to get inside Saddam’s head — understand his thinking and intentions, whereas the Americans pushed from the White House were only interested in usable intelligence to back up their argument for war. When what Habbush provided didn’t suit the Argument Bush was making — Bush closed down the contact.
The question that very much interests me about this is whether at any point leading up to the UN Speech, Tenet, who had to be in the know about the British Contact with Habbush, furnished Powell with any of this intelligence. Was Powell at any point “in the loop” or did they play Powell as simply someone (a useful idiot) who would fall for the Curveball stuff? (the contacts between Habbush and MI6’s Shipster occured a month or so before the 16 words and the Powell Speech.) Was Rice in the loop regarding Habbush’s intelligence? Did she agree to closing down the Habbush connection? Perhaps more important, did anyone with real professional credentials as an intelligence anaylist evaluate what the Oval Office was getting via the British? Did Tenet ever attempt to get any sort of professional evaluation of the information?
There was another high level source from inside Iraq prior to the invasion, Naji Sabri. Sabri was Saddam’s last Foreign Minister, and had a long relationship with French Intelligence. In the summer of 2002 the French introduced the Paris CIA station chief, Murray to the possibility they could connect him up with Sabri — and eventually in the fall of 2002 it was possible when Sabri traveled to the UN. CIA did not meet with him directly, they used a Journalist from Lebanon to ask the CIA’s questions, and then Murray went to DC to see John McLaughlin and reported Sabri’s information, which was that Saddam had no WMD. The written report that Murray dictated before returning to Paris got altered between the New York CIA office and CIA, in fact it was a complete distortion, reporting that Saddam was actually developing chemical and nuclear weapons. Thus there were two Sabri reports within CIA saying quite the opposite positions. Bush apparently got the “real” one from McLaughlin, called it disinformation, and requested the contact be closed down. Said he would only find it believable if Sabri defected. In the summer of 2002, CIA had given Murray 200,000 for the Sabri account — whether he got paid or not, no word. Apparently inside CIA some followed up on the original report delivered to McLaughlin by Murray, and after monitoring Sabri’s phone calls and all, the analyists found him totally believable.
But the fake Sabri report was recycled to other intelligence services, it was, for instance, sent to Dearlove at MI6. The fake version was also made available to those writing the NIE in the fall of 2002. And again, the true version was never provided to Powell. He had no knowledge that CIA had developed a contact with Iraq’s Foreign Minister — and that there were two versions of the intelligence being handed around, one fake, one real. The Fake version was used to blindside MI6.
I am wondering if either Sabri or Habbush are the source Drumheller mentions he was reporting just prior to the invasion?
Murray went to DC to see John McLaughlin and reported Sabri’s information, which was that Saddam had no WMD. The written report that Murray dictated before returning to Paris got altered between the New York CIA office and CIA, in fact it was a complete distortion, reporting that Saddam was actually developing chemical and nuclear weapons. Thus there were two Sabri reports within CIA saying quite the opposite positions. Bush apparently got the “real” one from McLaughlin, called it disinformation, and requested the contact be closed down. Said he would only find it believable if Sabri defected. In the summer of 2002, CIA had given Murray 200,000 for the Sabri account — whether he got paid or not, no word. Apparently inside CIA some followed up on the original report delivered to McLaughlin by Murray, and after monitoring Sabri’s phone calls and all, the analyists found him totally believable.
But the fake Sabri report was recycled to other intelligence services, it was, for instance, sent to Dearlove at MI6. The fake version was also made available to those writing the NIE in the fall of 2002. And again, the true version was never provided to Powell. He had no knowledge that CIA had developed a contact with Iraq’s Foreign Minister — and that there were two versions of the intelligence being handed around, one fake, one real. The Fake version was used to blindside MI6.
Holy kamoley. This is from Suskind’s book?
A wilderness of mirrors, indeed.
Holy kamoley. This is from Suskind’s book?
A wilderness of mirrors, indeed.
Yep, it is just one short story dropped in among many. Pages 179-182. It is when you combine the two by comparing them in terms of how the White House used intelligence developed by CIA that you get the real picture. In both cases they got sources very close to Saddam, got them between summer of 2002 and early 2003, both were gifts from other services, Sabri from the French, Habbush from the Brits. In both cases they were essentially stovepiped into the White House, rather than pushed through the normal analytic process. Both cast grave doubt on Saddam having any WMD — CIA made serious efforts to validate the work, was able to confirm many essentials. But in both cases the White House — Bush and Cheney, ordered efforts stopped. From all I can tell, Powell was given no information on these sources other than the material from the fake version of Sabri in the NIE. (Wonder why no one has asked Powell what he thinks of Suskind’s book???)
BRING ‘EM TO JUSTICE, AND THE CHARGE IS TREASON !!!
It would be interesting to hear what Powell thinks of the Suskind book.
But I’m not buying any “they cut me out of the loop” excuses from Powell. They may have, but he disregarded the caveats of the INR analysts in his own department to make the disgraceful UN presentation. He saw which way the wind was blowing and decided to go with it.