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Gary Schmitt. [Source: Think Progress (.org)]Prominent neoconservative Abram Shulsky, who worked under former Senator Henry "Scoop" Jackson (see Early 1970s), joins fellow neoconservative Gary Schmitt, the founder of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC - see January 26, 1998), in penning an essay called "Leo Strauss and the World of Intelligence." Both are Strauss proteges, having studied under him at the University of Chicago. Strauss is considered an intellectual guiding light for neoconservative philosophy. Strauss, as Shulsky and Schmitt write, believed that all intelligence work essentially boils down to deception and counterdeception, as much with the governments and citizenry an intelligence agency ostensibly serves as with an enemy government or organization. Strauss viewed intelligence as a means for policymakers to attain and justify policy goals, not to describe the realities of the world. Intelligence is "the art of deception," Strauss taught. Shulsky will go on to implement Strauss's views in his work with the Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]
Entity Tags: Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Gary Schmitt, University of Chicago, Abram Shulsky, Leo Strauss, Office of Special Plans, Project for the New American Century
Timeline Tags: Neoconservative Influence
The US intelligence community—most notably the intelligence gatherers working in the Pentagon offices under Douglas Feith (see September 2002)
—bases several of its intelligence assessments concerning Iraq on information offered by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and by Iraqi defectors provided by the INC, despite warnings from the State Department and some CIA analysts that the lobbying group cannot be trusted. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Salon, 7/16/2003; Guardian, 7/17/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Independent, 9/30/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004 Sources: Greg Thielmann, Unnamed administration official] The INC's primary intelligence organization is its Information Collection Program (ICP), which conducts about 20 percent of all US intelligence's verbal debriefings of Iraqi prisoners, insurgents, and defectors. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 336-337] Some of the INC's intelligence on Iraq is reportedly funneled directly to the office of Vice President Dick Cheney by Francis Brooke, the DC lobbyist for the group. [Newsweek, 12/15/2003 Sources: Memo, Francis Brooke] Brooke will later acknowedge that the information provided by the INC was driven by an agenda. "I told them [the INC], as their campaign manager, 'Go get me a terrorist and some WMD, because that's what the Bush administration is interested in.'" [Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pp. 230] Brooke had previously worked for the Rendon Group, "a shadowy CIA-connected public-relations firm." [Mother Jones, 1/2004]
Entity Tags: Douglas Feith, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Francis Brooke, Frank Gaffney, Office of Special Plans
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
Hardline neoconservative Elliott Abrams (see June 2, 1987) joins the National Security Council as senior director of Near East and North African affairs. A State Department official will later recall: "Elliott embodied the hubris of the neocon perspective. His attitude was, 'All the rest of you are pygmies. You don't have the scope and the vision we have. We are going to remake the world.' His appointment meant that good sense had been overcome by ideology." Rush of Neoconservatives into Administration - Abrams's entry into the White House heralds a rush of former Project for the New American Century members (PNAC—see January 26, 1998 and September 2000) into the Bush administration, almost all of whom are staunch advocates of regime change in Iraq. "I don't think that most people in State understood what was going on," the State Department official will say later. "I understood what this was about, that PNAC was moving from outside the government to inside. In my mind, it was an unfriendly takeover." [Unger, 2007, pp. 205] Neoconservatives Well-Organized, Contemptuous of Congress - In June 2004, former intelligence official Patrick Lang will write: "It should have been a dire warning to the US Congress when the man who had been convicted of lying to Congress during the Iran-contra affair [Abrams] was put in charge of the Middle East section of the NSC staff. One underestimated talent of the neocon group in the run-up to this war was its ability to manipulate Congress. They were masters of the game, having made the team in Washington in the 1970s on the staffs of two of the most powerful senators in recent decades, New York's Patrick Moynihan and Washington's Henry 'Scoop' Jackson (see Early 1970s). The old boy's club—Abe Shulsky at OSP [the Office of Special Plans—see September 2002], Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, Middle East Desk Officer at the NSC Abrams, Defense Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle—had not only worked together in their early government years in these two Senate offices, but they had stayed together as a network through the ensuing decades, floating around a small number of businesses and think tanks, including the American Enterprise Institute and the openly neoimperialist Project for a New American Century. The neocons were openly contemptuous of Congress, as they were of the UN Security Council." [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]
Entity Tags: Richard Perle, Project for the New American Century, United Nations Security Council, US Department of State, Paul Wolfowitz, Henry ("Scoop") Jackson, Office of Special Plans, Bush administration (43), American Enterprise Institute, Patrick Lang, Douglas Feith, Abram Shulsky, National Security Council, Elliott Abrams, Daniel Patrick Moynihan
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, US International Relations, Neoconservative Influence
Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Vice President Dick Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz create a secretive, ad hoc intelligence bureau within the Pentagon that they mockingly dub
"The Cabal." This small but influential group of neoconservatives is tasked with driving US foreign policy and intelligence reporting towards the goal of promoting the invasion of Iraq. To this end, the group—which later is folded into the slightly more official Office of Special Plans (OSP) (see 2002-2003)—gathers and interprets raw intelligence data for itself, refusing the participation of the experts in the CIA and DIA, and reporting, massaging, manipulating, and sometimes falsifying that information to suit their ends. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003] In October 2005, Larry Wilkerson, Secretary of State Colin Powell's chief of staff, will say of the Cabal and the OSP (see October 2005), "What I saw was a cabal between the vice president of the United States, Richard Cheney, and the secretary of defense, Donald Rumsfeld, on critical issues that made decisions that the bureaucracy did not know were being made. Now it is paying the consequences of making those decisions in secret, but far more telling to me is America is paying the consequences." [Financial Times, 10/20/2005]
Entity Tags: Thomas Franks, Paul Wolfowitz, Office of Special Plans, "The Cabal", Central Intelligence Agency, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Colin Powell, Douglas Feith, Lawrence Wilkerson, Defense Intelligence Agency, Donald Rumsfeld
Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda
Assistant Secretary of Defense Peter Rodham, who works in Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith's office, asks Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to "[o]btain approval of creation of a Team B" (see Early 1976) which "[t]hrough independent analysis and evaluation… would determine what is known about al-Qaeda's worldwide terror network, its suppliers, and relationship to states and other international terrorist organizations." The 1976 Team B exercise was a deeply flawed effort by conservatives and neoconservatives to second-guess the US intelligence community's findings about Soviet military and intelligence capabilities (see November 1976). Feith studied under Team B leader Richard Pipes at Harvard, and shares his fundamental distaste and mistrust of US intelligence capabilities. Feith and Wolfowitz believe that "Team B" showed just how limited and misguided the CIA's intelligence reporting could be, and think that the same "Team B" approach could provide heretofore-unrevealed information about Islamist terrorism. Feith sets about producing a report "proving" a sinister relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq (see July 25, 2002), while Wolfowitz begins work on what will become the Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 218-220]
Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, 'Team B', Al-Qaeda, Central Intelligence Agency, Douglas Feith, Office of Special Plans, US Department of Defense, Richard Pipes, Peter Rodham
The Bush administration develops plans for post-war Iraq. But the process is plagued with infighting between a small, highly secretive group of planners in the Pentagon and experts at the CIA and State Department who are involved with the "Future of Iraq Project" (see April 2002-March 2003). The two opposing groups disagree on a wide range of topics, but it is the Pentagon group which exerts the strongest influence on the White House's plans (see Fall 2002) for administering post-Saddam Iraq. One State Department official complains to The Washington Post in October 2002 "that the Pentagon is seeking to dominate every aspect of Iraq's postwar reconstruction." The group of Pentagon planners includes several noted neoconservatives who work in, or in association with, the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (see September 2002) and the Near East/South Asia bureau. The planners have close ties to the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), two think tanks with a shared vision of reshaping the geopolitical landscape of the Middle East in favor of US and Israeli interests. The Pentagon planning group "had a visionary strategy that it hoped would transform Iraq into an ally of Israel, remove a potential threat to the Persian Gulf oil trade and encircle Iran with US friends and allies," Knight Ridder Newspapers will later observe. The group's objectives put it at odds with planners at the CIA and State Department whose approach and objectives are much more prudent. The Pentagon unit works independently of the CIA and State Department and pays little attention to the work of those two agencies. Critics complain that the group is working in virtual secrecy and evading the scrutiny and oversight of others involved in the post-war planning process by confining their inter-agency communications to discussions with their neoconservative colleagues working in other parts of the government. The Pentagon planners even have a direct line to the office of Dick Cheney where their fellow neoconservative, Lewis Libby, is working. [Daily Telegraph, 11/12/2002; Washington Post, 4/2/2003; Knight Ridder, 7/12/2003] In the fall of 2002, the various groups involved in planning for post-war Iraq send their recommendations to the White House's Executive Steering Committee, which reviews their work and then passes on its own recommendations to the cabinet heads (see Fall 2002). According to a July 2003 report by Knight Ridder Newspapers, the ultimate responsibility for deciding the administration's post-war transition plans lay with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice. [Knight Ridder, 7/12/2003] The Office of Special Plans - The civilian planners at the Pentagon believe that the UN should exert no influence over the structure, make-up, or policy of the interim Iraqi post-Saddam government. They seek to limit the UN's role to humanitarian and reconstruction projects, and possibly security. The State Department, however, believes that the US will not be able to do it alone and that UN participation in post-Saddam Iraq will be essential. [Los Angeles Times, 4/2/2003; Observer, 4/6/2003] The Pentagon group wants to install Ahmad Chalabi, the controversial Iraqi exile leader of the Iraqi National Congress (INC), as leader of post-Saddam Iraq. [American Prospect, 5/1/2003; Knight Ridder, 7/12/2003 Sources: Richard Perle] The group thinks that the Iraqis will welcome Chalabi, who claims he has a secret network inside and outside the Ba'ath government which will quickly fill in the power vacuum to restore order to the country. Chalabi is a notorious figure who is considered untrustworthy by the State Department and CIA and who has a history of financial misdealings. [Knight Ridder, 7/12/2003] But the Pentagon is said to be enamored with Chalabi "because he [advocates] normal diplomatic relations with Israel" which they believe will "'[take] off the board' one of the only remaining major Arab threats to Israeli security." Another geopolitical benefit to installing Chalabi is that he can help the US contain "the influence of Iran's radical Islamic leaders in the region, because he would… [provide] bases in Iraq for US troops," which would "complete Iran's encirclement by American military forces around the Persian Gulf and US friends in Russia and Central Asia." [Knight Ridder, 7/12/2003 Sources: Unnamed Bush administration official] Danielle Pletka, vice president of the American Enterprise Institute, with close ties to the Pentagon's planning group, tells Robert Dreyfuss of American Prospect Magazine that the State Department's perception of Chalabi is wrong. "The [Defense Department] is running post-Saddam Iraq," said Pletka, almost shouting. "The people at the State Department don't know what they are talking about! Who the hell are they?… the simple fact is, the president is comfortable with people who are comfortable with the INC." [American Prospect, 5/1/2003] The Pentagon's planning unit believes that the Iraqis will welcome US troops as liberators and that any militant resistance will be short-lived. They do not develop a contingency plan for persistent civil unrest. [Knight Ridder, 7/12/2003] However the State Department's "Future of Iraq" planning project is more prudent, noting that Iraqis will likely be weary of US designs on their country. [New York Times, 10/19/2003] The Pentagon planners believe that Iraq's oil reserves—estimated to contain some 112 billion barrels of oil—should be used to help fund the reconstruction of Iraq. They also advocate a plan that would give the US more control over Iraq's oil. "[The Pentagon] hawks have long argued that US control of Iraq's oil would help deliver a second objective," reports the Observer. "That is the destruction of OPEC, the oil producers' cartel, which they argue is 'evil'—that is, incompatible with American interests." The State Department, however, believes such aggressive policies will surely infuriate Iraqis and give credence to suspicions that the invasion is motivated by oil interests. One critic of the plan says "that only a puppet Iraqi government would acquiesce to US supervision of the oil fields and that one so slavish to US interests risks becoming untenable with Iraqis." [Observer, 11/3/2002; Insight, 12/28/2002]
Entity Tags: Project for the New American Century, American Enterprise Institute, Donald Rumsfeld, Ahmed Chalabi, Danielle Pletka, Office of Special Plans, Condoleezza Rice
Douglas Feith (right) and Ariel Sharon (left), time unknown. [Source: Canal+]Karen Kwiatkowski escorts about half a dozen Israelis, including some generals, from the first floor reception area of the Pentagon to Douglas Feith's office. "We just followed them, because they knew exactly where they were going and moving fast," she later explains. The Israelis are not required to sign in as is required under special regulations put into effect after the 9/11 attacks. Kwiatkowski speculates that Feith's office may have waived this requirement for the Israelis so that there would be no record of the meeting. [Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003]
Entity Tags: Office of Special Plans, Douglas Feith, Karen Kwiatkowski
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, US International Relations
Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld invites a group of influential Washington lobbyists and consultants, including Haley Barbour and Vin Weber, to his office to discuss national security issues. At one point during the meeting he complains about the intelligence he is getting from the CIA and says, "I'm going to create my own intelligence agency." Rumsfeld's remark is likely a reference to the Office of Special Plans, which will be formally created in September (see September 2002) [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 107]
Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Office of Special Plans, Vin Weber, Haley Barbour
The Iraqi National Congress (INC—see 1992-1996) sends a letter to the Senate Appropriations Committee asking that the INC's "Intelligence Collection Program" be transferred from the State Department's oversight to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)'s HUMINT (Human Intelligence) Service. In what former DIA official Patrick Lang will later call "a clumsy act of indiscretion," the letter reveals that there is, in Lang's words, "already a direct flow of information from the INC into the hands of Bill Luti [a senior official at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans—see September 2002 ] and John Hannah, the latter being Scooter Libby's deputy in [Vice President] Cheney's office." [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]
Entity Tags: William Luti, US Department of State, Patrick Lang, John Hannah, Senate Appropriations Committee, Office of Special Plans, Defense Intelligence Agency, Iraqi National Congress
A memo written by an intelligence analyst working under Pentagon policy chief Douglas Feith asserts that while "some analysts have argued" that Osama bin Laden will not cooperate with secular Arab groups like Iraq, "reporting indicates otherwise." A subsequent investigation by the Pentagon's Office of Inspector General (see February 9, 2007) will criticize the memo, titled "Iraq and al-Qaeda: Making the Case," saying that it constituted an "alternative intelligence assessment" and therefore should have been developed in accordance with intelligence agency guidelines for publishing alternative views. [US Department of Defense, 2/9/2007 ; New York Times, 2/9/2007] Nevertheless, Bush administration officials such as Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, CIA Director George Tenet, DIA Director Thomas Wilson, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, and the chief of staff for Vice President Cheney, Lewis "Scooter" Libby, embrace the memo. Cheney's office is particularly enamoured of the report; journalists Franklin Foer and Spencer Ackerman later report a White House official as saying of Cheney and his staffers, "They so believed that the CIA were wrong, they were like, 'We want to show these f_ckers that they are wrong." The memo is based on an earlier briefing by Feith entitled "Assessing the Relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda," which accused the CIA of using overly rigorous standards to analyze information that might show links between Iraq and the terrorist organization. Feith's briefing uses almost no evidence to claim a "mature, symbiotic" relationship between the two, alleging "more than a decade of numerous contacts" between al-Qaeda and the Hussein government, and asserting "possible Iraqi coordination with al-Qaeda specifically related to 9/11." [Scoblic, 2008, pp. 220-222] An updated version of the "Making the Case" briefing will be presented to the White House in September 2002 (see September 16, 2002).
Entity Tags: Office of the Vice President, Thomas Wilson, Office of Special Plans, Stephen J. Hadley, Spencer Ackerman, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Franklin Foer, Donald Rumsfeld, Bush administration (43), George J. Tenet, Douglas Feith
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion
The Bush White House establishes a "high-level, interagency task force" charged with the task of "coordinating all Iraq war planning efforts and postwar initiatives." The task force is headed by the Deputies Committee, which is made up of the "No. 2 officials at the Pentagon, Joint Chiefs of Staff, State Department, CIA, National Security Council, and vice president's office." The committee's job is to review the work of other groups who have been involved in the planning of post-war Iraq, and provide recommendations to President Bush's top advisers. The committee draws on the work of the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (OSP) (see 2002-2003 and September 2002), Elliott Abrams's group (see November 2002-December 2002 and December 2002) and the State Department's "Future of Iraq" project (see April 2002-March 2003). Later accounts make clear that Abrams's and the OSP's recommendations have much more influence. The Deputies Committee usually meets in the White House situation room. National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice keeps Bush updated on the progress of the task force's work. In November, US News and World Report reports that a consensus is forming "at the highest levels of the Bush administration over how to run the country after Saddam and his regime are history." [Financial Times, 11/4/2002; US News and World Report, 11/25/2003; Reuters, 11/25/2003] Some Conclusions of the Deputies Committee - No US-Created Government - The US should not create a provisional government or a government in exile. "We are not going to be in the business of choosing" who should lead Iraq, a senior official tells US News and World Report. [US News and World Report, 11/25/2003] Lengthy Occupation - The invasion of Iraq will likely be followed by a lengthy occupation. This conclusion is passed on to Bush. "I have been with the president when he has been briefed about the need to have US forces there for an extended period of time," a senior administration official will later tell US News and World Report. [US News and World Report, 11/25/2003] Military Occupation Rule before Turning over Rule to Iraqis - During the first phase of the occupation, Iraq will be ruled by the military, probably a US general. The primary objective during this phase will be maintaining security and preventing the emergence of hostilities between the Shi'ites and Sunnis. Pentagon officials involved in planning this stage are reported to have reviewed the archived plans for the occupation of Germany and Japan. The second phase of the occupation will involve some sort of international civilian administration, with a diminished US military presence, and Iraqis will be given a larger role in the government. In the last phase, a constitution will be drafted, transferring power to a representative, multiethnic Iraqi government that commits to being free of weapons of mass destruction. [US News and World Report, 11/25/2003] War Paid for by Iraqi Oil - Revenue generated from the sale of Iraq's oil will be used for the cost of reconstruction and for conducting humanitarian operations. Hardliners however want the funds to pay for the military costs of the invasion as well. [US News and World Report, 11/25/2003] Dissension over Roles of Iraqi Exiles - No firm decisions are made about the what role, if any, Iraqi exiles affiliated with the Iraqi National Congress (INC) will play in post-Saddam Iraq. Pentagon hardliners and some top officials in the White House favor giving them a prominent role, while the CIA and State Department adamantly oppose their inclusion, arguing that the exiles cannot be trusted. [US News and World Report, 11/25/2003] US Will Not Be Seen as 'Liberators' - Iraqis will not necessarily treat the invading American soldiers as "liberators." Many Iraqis harbor a deep resentment against the US for the decades-long sanction policy. [US News and World Report, 11/25/2003]
Entity Tags: Office of Special Plans, National Security Council, Office of the Vice President, US Department of State, Joint Chiefs of Staff, US Department of Defense, George W. Bush, Iraqi National Congress, Bush administration (43), Central Intelligence Agency, Ahmed Chalabi, Condoleezza Rice, Elliott Abrams
After CIA Director George Tenet learns of the formation of the Office of Special Plans (OSP—see September 2002), he fails to challenge its existence and mission even though the OSP is working to actively undermine the other US intelligence agencies. In 2007, author Craig Unger will write, "The existence of the OSP effectively meant that [Vice President Dick] Cheney, [Secretary of Defense Donald] Rumsfeld, and the [Bush administration] neocons had declared war on the CIA by creating a bureaucratic operation whose sole purpose was to circumvent and subvert the nation's statutorily authorized intelligence apparatus." Tenet, who Unger describes as "ever anxious to ingratiate himself with the White House," does nothing to block the OSP's inroads and depredations. According to the then-director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), Greg Thielmann, "That's totally unacceptable for a CIA director." Unger will note that while Tenet is following his orders to "do everything in his power to make sure the CIA gets the goods on Saddam [Hussein]… in effect, by remaining silent about the OSP, Tenet was betraying his own men at the CIA—and the Agency's mission." [Unger, 2007, pp. 245]
Entity Tags: Office of Special Plans, Bush administration (43), Central Intelligence Agency, Greg Thielmann, George J. Tenet, Craig Unger
William Luti. [Source: Helene C. Stikkel / Defense Department]Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith and Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, both staunch neoconservatives, rename the Northern Gulf Affairs Office on the Pentagon's fourth floor (in the seventh corridor of D Ring) the "Office of Special Plans" (OSP) and increase its four-person staff to sixteen. [Knight Ridder, 8/16/2002; Los Angeles Times, 11/24/2002; New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Tom Paine (.com), 8/27/2003; American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] William Luti, a former navy officer and ex-aide to Vice President Cheney, is put in charge of the day-to-day operations [Guardian, 7/17/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] , apparently at the behest of Cheney. Luti was, according to former Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang, a member of Cheney's "shadow National Security Council." [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Transforming NESA - Luti worked for the Near East and South Asian Affairs desk (NESA) at the Pentagon since mid-2001. Lang later describes NESA as having been "a Pentagon backwater, responsible primarily for arranging bilateral meetings with military counterparts" from various nations. Before the Afghanistan war, NESA worked closely with the Defense Intelligence Agency's Defense Intelligence Officer (DIO) for the Near East, South Asia, and Counterterrorism. During Luti's first months at NESA, the DIO was Bruce Hardcastle. The Pentagon dismantled the entire DIO system, partly because of friction between Luti and Hardcastle (see Early 2002). Lang will write, "The roots of the friction between Hardcastle and Luti were straightforward: Hardcastle brought with him the combined wisdom of the professional military intelligence community. The community had serious doubts about the lethality of the threat from Saddam Hussein, the terrorism links and the status of the Iraqi WMD programs. Luti could not accept this. He knew what he wanted: to bring down Saddam Hussein. Hardcastle could not accept the very idea of allowing a desired outcome to shape the results of analysis." Luti transforms NESA into what Lang will call "a 'de facto' arm of the vice president's office," and in the process shuts Hardcastle out of NESA (and later OSP) intelligence briefings. Luti does not report to either Feith or Donald Rumsfeld, as his chain of command delineates, but to Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby. OSP staffer Karen Kwiatkowski later recalls being "shocked" to learn that Luti reports to Libby and not to his putative Pentagon superiors. She will say, "In one of the first staff meetings that I attended there, Bill Luti said, 'Well, did you get that thing over to Scooter? Scooter wants this, and somebody's got to get it over to him, and get that up to him right away.' After the meeting, I asked one of my co-workers, who'd been there longer, 'Who is this Scooter?' I was told, 'That's Scooter Libby over at the OVP (Office of the Vice President). He's the Vice President's chief of staff.' Later I came to understand that Cheney had put Luti there." Under Luti, NESA becomes a virtual adjunct to the OSP. [Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Strong Neoconservative Influence - The Office of Special Plans is staffed with a tight group of like-minded neoconservative ideologues, who are known advocates of regime change in Iraq. Notably, the staffers have little background in intelligence or Iraqi history and culture. [Salon, 7/16/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] Some of the people associated with this office were earlier involved with the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, also known as the "Wurmser-Maloof" project (see Shortly After September 11, 2001). They hire "scores of temporary 'consultants'… including like-minded lawyers, congressional staffers, and policy wonks from the numerous right-wing think-tanks in the US capital." Neoconservative ideologues, like Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, and Newt Gingrich, are afforded direct input into the Office of Special Plans. [Guardian, 7/17/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Vanity Fair, 7/2006, pp. 150] Kwiatkowski later says she saw Ledeen going "in and out of there (OSP) all the time." [Vanity Fair, 7/2006, pp. 150] Planning for Post-Saddam Iraq - The official business of Special Plans is to help plan for post-Saddam Iraq. The office's staff members presumably "develop defense policies aimed at building an international coalition, prepare the secretary of defense and his top deputies for interagency meetings, coordinate troop-deployment orders, craft policies for dealing with prisoners of war and illegal combatants, postwar assistance and reconstruction policy planning, postwar governance, Iraqi oil infrastructure policy, postwar Iraqi property disputes, war crimes and atrocities, war-plan review and, in their spare time, prepare congressional testimony for their principals." [Insight, 12/2/2003] Covert Source of 'Alternative' Intelligence - But according to numerous well-placed sources, the office becomes a source for many of the administration's prewar allegations against Iraq. It is accused of exaggerating, politicizing, and misrepresenting intelligence, which is "stovepiped" to top administration officials who use the intelligence in their policy decisions on Iraq. [Knight Ridder, 8/16/2002; Los Angeles Times, 11/24/2002; New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Tom Paine (.com), 8/27/2003; American Conservative, 12/1/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Daily Telegraph, 7/11/2004; CNN, 7/11/2004] 'Top Secret' - There are very few news reports in the American mainstream media that report on the office. In fact, the office is reportedly Top Secret. [Bamford, 2004, pp. 308] "We were instructed at a staff meeting that this office was not to be discussed or explained," Kwiatkowski will later say, "and if people in the Joint Staff, among others, asked, we were to offer no comment." [American Conservative, 12/1/2003] Part of a 'Separate Government,' Powell Feels - Colin Powell is said to have felt that Cheney and the neoconservatives in this "Gestapo" office had established what was essentially a separate government. [Washington Post, 4/17/2004] Powell's former chief of staff, Larry Wilkerson, is even more blunt. "When I say 'secret cabal,' I mean 'secret cabal,' he says of the White House officials behind the OSP. He compares Cheney, Rumsfeld, and the neoconservatives to the Jacobins, the radical zealots who plunged 18th-century France into the Reign of Terror. "I see them as messianic advocates of American power from one end of the globe, much as the Jacobins in France were messianic advocates of the French Revolution. I don't care whether utopians are Vladimir Lenin on a sealed train to Moscow or Paul Wolfowitz. You're never going to bring utopia, and you're going to hurt a lot of people in the process." [Unger, 2007, pp. 299-300] Among the claims critics find most troubling about the office are: Heavy Reliance on Intelligence from Exiles and Defectors - The office relies heavily on accounts from Iraqi exiles and defectors associated with Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress (INC), long considered suspect by other US intelligence agencies. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Salon, 7/16/2003; Guardian, 7/17/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Independent, 9/30/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] One defector in particular, code-named "Curveball," provides as much as 98 percent of the intelligence on Iraq's alleged arsenal of biological weapons. [CNN, 7/11/2004] Much of the information provided by the INC's sources consists of "misleading and often faked intelligence reports," which often flow to Special Plans and NESA directly, "sometimes through Defense Intelligence Agency debriefings of Iraqi defectors via the Defense Human Intelligence Service and sometimes through the INC's own US-funded Intelligence Collection Program, which was overseen by the Pentagon." [Mother Jones, 1/2004] According to Kwiatkowski, the movement of intelligence from the INC to the Office of Special Plans is facilitated by a Colonel Bruner, a former military aide to Gingrich. [Newsweek, 12/15/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004; Salon, 3/10/2004] Bruner "was Chalabi's handler," Kwiatkowski will tell Mother Jones. "He would arrange meetings with Chalabi and Chalabi's folks." [Mother Jones, 1/2004] Kwiatkowski also finds that OSP personnel, along with DIA and CIA officials, are taking part in the debriefing of INC informants. She will recall confronting one DIA officer, John Trigilio, about the practice: "I argued with [Tregilio] after the president's Cincinnati speech (see October 5, 2002 and October 6, 2002). I told him that the president had made a number of statements that were just not supported by the intelligence. He said that the president's statements are supported by intelligence, and he would finally say, 'We have sources that you don't have.' I took it to mean the sources that Chalabi was bringing in for debriefing… Trigilio told me he participated in a number of debriefs, conducted in hotels downtown, or wherever, of people that Chalabi brought in. These debriefs had Trigilio from OSP, but also CIA and DIA participated… If [the information] sounded good, it would go straight to the OVP or elsewhere. I don't put it out of possibility that the information would go straight to the media because of the (media's) close relationship with some of the neoconservatives. So this information would make it straight out into the knowledge base without waiting for intelligence [analysts] to come by with their qualifications and reservations." [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Cherry-Picked Intelligence - The Office of Special Plans purposefully ignores intelligence that undermines the case for war while exaggerating any leads that support it. "It wasn't intelligence—it was propaganda," Kwiatkowski will later explain. "They'd take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, often by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together." [New York Times, 10/24/2002; New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Salon, 7/16/2003; Guardian, 7/17/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003; Independent, 9/30/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] "At the OSP, what they were doing was looking at all the intelligence they could find on WMD. That was the focal point, picking bits and pieces that were the most inflammatory, removing any context that might have been provided in the original intelligence report, that would have caused you to have some pause in believing it or reflected doubts that the intelligence community had, so if the intelligence community had doubts, those would be left out… They would take items that had occurred many years ago, and put them in the present tense, make it seem like they occurred not many years ago… But they would not talk about the dates; they would say things like, 'He has continued since that time' and 'He could do it tomorrow,' which of course, wasn't true… The other thing they would do would be to take unrelated events that were reported in totally unrelated ways and make connections that the intelligence community had not made. This was primarily in discussing Iraq's activities and how they might be related to al-Qaeda or other terrorist groups that might be against us, or against Israel… These kinds of links would be made. They would be made casually, and they would be made in a calculated way to form an image that is definitely not the image that anyone reading the original reports would have. The summaries that we would see from Intelligence did not match the kinds of things that OSP was putting out. So that is what I call propaganda development. It goes beyond the manipulation of intelligence to propaganda development." [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] No Intelligence Oversight - The OSP bypasses established oversight procedures by sending its intelligence assessments directly to the White House and National Security Council without having them first vetted by a review process involving other US intelligence agencies. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003; Salon, 7/16/2003; Guardian, 7/17/2003; Mother Jones, 1/2004] The people at Special Plans are so successful at bypassing conventional procedures, in part, because their neoconservative colleagues hold key positions in several other agencies and offices. Their contacts in other agencies include: John Bolton, undersecretary of state for arms control and international security; Bolton's adviser, David Wurmser, a former research fellow on the Middle East at the American Enterprise Institute, who was just recently working in a secret Pentagon planning unit at Douglas Feith's office (see Shortly After September 11, 2001); Elizabeth Cheney, deputy assistant secretary of state for Near East Affairs; Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser; Elliott Abrams, the National Security Council's top Middle East aide; and Richard Perle, Newt Gingrich, James Woolsey and Kenneth Adelman of the Defense Policy Board. The office provides very little information about its work to other US intelligence offices. [Salon, 7/16/2003; Guardian, 7/17/2003; Inter Press Service, 8/7/2003] 'Stealth Organization' - Greg Thielmann, the former director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military Affairs Office at the State Department's Intelligence Bureau, later says of the OSP: "It was a stealth organization. They didn't play in the intelligence community proceedings that our office participated in. When the intelligence community met as a community, there was no OSP represented in these sessions. Because, if they had done that, they would have had to subject their views to peer review. Why do that when you can send stuff right in to the vice president?" [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004; Unger, 2007, pp. 299] Lang will say in January 2004 that what happened was fundamentally different from anything that had happened under previous presidents. Cheney's staff and allies "behaved as though they had seized control of the government in a 'silent coup,'" The result, according to Lang, is "a highly corrupted system of intelligence and policymaking, one twisted to serve specific group goals, ends, and beliefs held to the point of religious faith." [Unger, 2007, pp. 301] Pressuring Intelligence Analysts - Retired Marine Lieutenant Colonel Dale Davis, who headed the International Programs Department at the Virginia Military Institute until March 2004, and an expert on Middle East affairs, later says he believes intelligence analysts at the CIA and other agencies were pressured indirectly. Davis will say, "By creating the OSP [Office of Special Plans], Cheney was able to say, 'Hey, look at what we're getting out of OSP. How come you guys aren't doing as well? What is your response to what this alternative analysis that we're receiving from the Pentagon says?' That's how you do it. You pressure people indirectly." Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior counterterrorism official with the CIA, will agree: "Over a long period of time, there was a subtle process of pressure and intimidation until people started giving them what was wanted… When the Senate Intelligence Committee interviewed, under oath, over 100 analysts, not one of them said, 'I changed my assessment because of pressure.'… The environment was conditioned in such a way that the analyst subtly leaned toward the conceits of the policymakers… The intelligence community was vulnerable to the aggressiveness of neoconservative policymakers, particularly at the Pentagon and at the VP's office. As one analyst said to me, 'You can't fight something with nothing, and those people had something. Whether it was right or wrong, fraudulent or specious, it almost didn't make any difference, because the policymakers believed it already, and if you didn't have hard countervailing evidence to persuade them, then you were at a loss.'" [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Strong Pro-Israel, Anti-Arab Biases - Lastly, the people involved in Special Plans openly exhibit strong pro-Israel and anti-Arab bias. The problem, note critics, is that the analysis of intelligence is supposed to be apolitical and untainted by ideological viewpoints. [American Conservative, 12/1/2003] According to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate's Intelligence Committee, Special Plans is the group responsible for the claim Bush will make in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from an African country (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003). [Nation, 6/19/2003; Information Clearing House, 7/16/2003] Personal Grudges against Intelligence Community - The OSP reflects the personal grudges and ill will of many in the Office of the Vice President against the intelligence community, in part because of the CIA's refusal to give much weight to the claims of Chalabi and the INC. "This had been a fight for such a long period of time, where people were so dug in," a friend of one of Vice President Cheney's senior staffers will later reflect. A colleague of the senior staff later says, "They so believed that the CIA were wrong, they were like, 'We want to show these f_ckers that they are wrong.'" [New Republic, 11/20/2003] Propaganda - Kwiatkowski will later recall that the OSP generated a large amount of what she terms propaganda, in the form of "talking points" used in briefings and in press conferences. "With the talking points, many of the propagandistic bullets that were given to use in papers for our superiors to inform them—internal propaganda—many of those same phrases and assumptions and tones, I saw in Vice President Cheney's speeches and the president's speeches," she will say. "So I got the impression that those talking points were not just for us, but were the core of an overall agenda for a disciplined product, beyond the Pentagon. Over at the vice president's office and the [neoconservative news magazine] Weekly Standard, the media, and the neoconservative talking heads and that kind of thing, all on the same sheet of music." Kwiatkowski identifies Abram Shulsky, a neoconservative academic and recent Pentagon hire, as the source of many of these talking points. [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004] Denials, Counter-Accusations after Public Learns of OSP - After the existence of the Office of Special Plans is revealed to the public, the Pentagon will deny that it served as a direct conduit to the White House for misleading intelligence, instead claiming that its activities had been limited to postwar plans for Iraq. [New Yorker, 5/12/2003] And a December 2003 opinion piece published in Insight magazine will call the allegations surrounding the Office of Special Plans the work of conspiracy theorists. [Insight, 12/2/2003]
Entity Tags: Colonel Bruner, Colin Powell, Abram Shulsky, Craig Unger, Office of the Vice President, David Wurmser, Elizabeth ("Liz") Cheney, Dale Davis, Douglas Feith, Donald Rumsfeld, James Woolsey, John Trigilio, Office of Special Plans, Kenneth Adelman, Stephen J. Hadley, Vincent Cannistraro, Lawrence Wilkerson, Karen Kwiatkowski, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Newt Gingrich, Patrick Lang, Greg Thielmann, Elliott Abrams
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Neoconservative Influence, Domestic Propaganda
Vice President Cheney and his staff have become increasingly reliant on intelligence from Ahmed Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress (INC—see Early 2003). Cheney's senior aide John Hannah, the liaison between Cheney and the INC, has become increasingly invested in the exile group. "He relied on Ahmed Chalabi for insights and advice," a Bush administration official will later recall. Cheney has himself become an increasingly vocal Chalabi advocate. At a meeting of President Bush's National Security Council, the State Department and Pentagon officials argue over whether to increase funding to the INC. Cheney, a former NSC staffer will recall, "weighed in, in a really big way. He said, 'We're getting ready to go to war, and we're nickel-and-diming the INC at a time when they're providing us with unique intelligence on Iraqi WMD.'" The fact that no one else, particularly the CIA, could confirm anything the INC was providing was merely proof that the CIA was recklessly disregarding INC intelligence. The administration official will say that before long, "there was something of a willingness to give [INC- provided intelligence] greater weight" than that offered by the intelligence community. In return, Cheney's aides tried to inject their intelligence into the CIA's own conduits. One CIA analyst will recall that both Cheney and his chief of staff, Lewis Libby, "come out there loaded with crap from OSP [the Office of Special Plans—see September 2002], reams of information from Chalabi's people" on both terrorism and WMD. One of the main channels into the CIA for Cheney and his staff is Alan Foley, the director of the CIA's Nonproliferation Center. Cheney's office inundates Foley with questions about Iraq's nuclear weapons program, particularly about Iraq's supposed attempts to purchase uranium from Niger (see Between Late 2000 and September 11, 2001, October 15, 2001, October 18, 2001, November 20, 2001, February 5, 2002, March 1, 2002, Late April or Early May 2002-June 2002, and Late June 2002). At first, Foley attempts to push back by "stressing the implausibility of it," a colleague of Foley's will recall. But as Cheney and his aides keep pressing, Foley begins to give in. "He was bullied and intimidated," one of his friends will recall. The pressure on Foley and other analysts is both relentless and hostile. One retired CIA analyst close to current analysts will recall: "It was done along the lines of: 'What's wrong with you bunch of assh_les? You don't know what's going on, you're horribly biased, you're a bunch of pinkos.'" A current analyst later explains, "It gets to the point where you just don't want to fight it anymore." [New Republic, 11/20/2003]
Entity Tags: Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Alan Foley, Ahmed Chalabi, Bush administration (43), John Hannah, Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Special Plans, Iraqi National Congress, National Security Council, Richard ("Dick") Cheney
Vice President Cheney, widely acknowledged as a master bureaucrat, uses a variety of bureaucratic strategies to craft his own foreign policy strategies, including the promotion the Office of Special Plans (OSP—see September 2002), simultaneously undercutting and marginalizing the CIA. Many senior intelligence officials have no idea that the OSP even exists. "I didn't know about its existence," Greg Thielmann, the director of the State Department's in-house intelligence agency, the Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), will say. Strategic Placement of Personal, Ideological Allies - Another Cheney strategy is personal placement. He moves his special adviser, neoconservative William Luti, into the OSP. Another influential neoconservative, Abram Shulsky, soon joins Luti there. A longtime associate of both Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Stephen Cambone, becomes a special assistant to Rumsfeld (see Early 2001). Cheney now has his allies at the highest levels of the Pentagon. In Cheney's office, chief of staff Lewis "Scooter" Libby serves as his liaison with the Pentagon. His chief counsel, David Addington, oversees Cheney's aggressive and obsessively secretive legal staff. In the National Security Council (NSC), Stephen Hadley, Condoleezza Rice's deputy, keeps a close eye on Rice in case she shows signs of falling back in with her old mentor, Brent Scowcroft (see August 1998). John Bolton and David Wurmser keep tabs on Colin Powell at the State Department. Cheney has John Yoo (see (After 10:00 a.m.) September 11, 2001) at the Justice Department. Not only does Cheney have highly placed loyalists in the State, Defense, and Justice Department, and in the NSC, he has vital allies in the Republican leadership in Congress. Managing the Oval Office - Cheney handles the Oval Office himself. A Pentagon official who works closely with Cheney will later observe that President Bush handles the executive branch much as he handled the Texas Rangers baseball team: ignoring much of the daily functions, leaving most policy decisions to others and serving as a "corporate master of ceremonies, attending to the morale of the management team and focusing on narrow issues… that interested him." Cheney becomes, in author Craig Unger's words, "the sole framer of key issues for Bush," the single conduit through which information reaches the president. Cheney, the Pentagon official will later say, "rendered the policy planning, development and implementation functions of the interagency system essentially irrelevant. He has, in matters he has deemed important, governed. As a matter of protocol, good manners, and constitutional deference, he has obtained the requisite 'check-mark' of the president, often during one-on-one meetings after a Potemkin 'interagency process' had run its often inconclusive course." [Unger, 2007, pp. 249-250]
Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Stephen A. Cambone, Stephen J. Hadley, Texas Rangers, William Luti, Brent Scowcroft, Abram Shulsky, Central Intelligence Agency, Office of Special Plans, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, David Wurmser, David S. Addington, Craig Unger, National Security Council, John R. Bolton, Greg Thielmann, John C. Yoo, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld
Timeline Tags: US International Relations
Two days before the CIA is to issue an assessment (see August 2002) on Iraq's supposed links to militant Islamic groups, Defense Department officials working in the Office of Special Plans (OSP) deliver a briefing in the White House to several top officials, including I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff, and Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley. The briefing is entitled "Assessing the Relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda," and is an updated version of a briefing presented in July 2002 (see July 25, 2002). The OSP, working under Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, is aggressively promoting any evidence it can find to support a decision to invade Iraq (see September 2002). The briefing claims that the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda is "mature" and "symbiotic," and marked by shared interests. It lists cooperation in 10 categories, or "multiple areas of cooperation," including training, financing, and logistics. [Savage, 2007, pp. 292; New York Times, 4/6/2007; Washington Post, 4/6/2007] An alleged 2001 meeting in Prague between an Iraqi spy and 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta is listed as one of eight "Known Iraq-Al-Qaeda Contacts." It claims that there is a "known contact" between Atta and the Iraqi intelligence agency, a claim already rejected by the CIA. [Savage, 2007, pp. 293; Washington Post, 4/6/2007] The briefing claims that "Fragmentary reporting points to possible Iraqi involvement not only in 9/11 but also in previous al-Qaeda attacks." [Washington Post, 4/6/2007] It includes a slide criticizing the rest of the US intelligence community, which says there are "fundamental problems" with CIA intelligence gathering methods. It claims other intelligence agencies assume "that secularists and Islamists will not cooperate, even when they have common interests," and there is a "consistent underestimation of importance that would be attached by Iraq and al-Qaeda to hiding a relationship." [Daily Telegraph, 7/11/2004; Newsweek, 7/19/2004; Savage, 2007, pp. 293; Washington Post, 4/6/2007] Around the same time, the briefing is also presented with slight variations to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and CIA Director George Tenet. The slide criticizing other intelligence agencies is excluded when a version of the briefing is given to Tenet. A later report by the Defense Department's Office of Inspector General will conclude the briefing was entirely incorrect and deliberately ignored intelligence by the CIA, DIA, and other intelligence agencies that contradicted its conclusions (see February 9, 2007). [Washington Post, 4/6/2007] The CIA has already found the majority of the information in the presentation either completely false or largely unsupported by reliable evidence. [Savage, 2007, pp. 293] Unusual Briefing - This briefing, delivered at the same time the White House is pressing Congress to authorize the upcoming war with Iraq (see October 11, 2002), is, in the words of author and reporter Charlie Savage, "highly unusual." Usually, high-level administration officials making national security decisions rely on information vetted by top-flight analysts at the CIA, in order to ensure the information is as accurate and politically neutral as possible. No CIA analyst has ever found a meaningful link between Hussein and al-Qaeda; the few reports of such claims were seen as highly dubious. But Cheney and his supporters consider the CIA slow, pedantic, and incompetent, and believe Feith's OSP can provide better—or at least more amenable—intelligence. Savage will write: "In Feith's shop and elsewhere in the executive branch, neoconservative political appointees stitched together raw intelligence reports, often of dubious credibility, without any vetting or analysis by professional intelligence specialists. The officials cherry-picked the files for reports that supported the notion that Iraq had an active [WMD] program and that it was working hand-in-hand with al-Qaeda, 'stovepiping' such reports to top decision makers (and leaking them to the press) while discounting any skepticism mounted by the professionals." [Savage, 2007, pp. 292] Dismantling Intelligence Filtering System in Favor of Politically Controlled Intelligence Provisions - What the presentation accomplishes, according to former CIA intelligence analyst Kenneth Pollock, is to support a conclusion already drawn—the need to get rid of Saddam Hussein—by using slanted, altered, and sometimes entirely fabricated "intelligence." The White House proceeded to "dismantle the existing filtering process that for 50 years had been preventing the policymakers from getting bad information." Savage goes one step farther. He will write that the presentation is part of a larger White House strategy to alter the balance of power between the presidency and a key element of the bureaucracy. By setting up a politically controlled alternative intelligence filtering system, he will write, "the administration succeeded in diminishing the power of the CIA's information bureaucracy to check the White House's desired course of action." [Savage, 2007, pp. 294]
Entity Tags: Office of Special Plans, Stephen J. Hadley, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Kenneth Pollock, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Douglas Feith, Charlie Savage, George J. Tenet, Donald Rumsfeld
At a political fund-raising event, Vice President Dick Cheney alleges that there is a "well-established pattern of cooperation between Iraq and terrorists." This comes just four days after a briefing to Cheney's staff by the Defense Department's Office of Special Plans, which is aggressively pushing allegations of al-Qaeda-Iraq links (see September 16, 2002). [Washington Post, 4/6/2007]
Entity Tags: Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Office of Special Plans
Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline
The New York Times publishes an article by Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker exposing the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). The office had already been described in a Knight Ridder Newspapers article published on August 16, 2002. But Knight Ridder is not as well read, and the New York Times publishes its article on the front page. [Knight Ridder, 8/16/2002; New York Times, 10/24/2002] The article states that Defense Secretary Donald "Rumsfeld and his senior advisers have assigned a small intelligence unit to search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists that the nation's spy agencies may have overlooked." It notes that "the view among even some senior intelligence analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency is that Mr. Hussein is contained and is unlikely to unleash weapons of mass destruction unless he is attacked." [New York Times, 10/24/2002] But there is little follow-up reporting by major media outlets. In 2004, the New York Review of Books will discuss this article and comment: "As such reports show, [the Office of Special Plans] was widely known before the war. With many analysts prepared to discuss the competing claims over the intelligence on Iraq, the press was in a good position to educate the public on the administration's justifications for war. Yet for the most part, it never did so." [New York Review of Books, 2/26/2004]
Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld, Office of Special Plans
Concurrent with the New York Times's revelation of the existence of the Office of Special Plans (OSP—see October 24, 2002), Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announces the existence of a similar operation, the Counter-Terrorism Evaluation Group (CTEG—see Shortly After September 11, 2001). CTEG has been absorbed into the OSP by this point. The Washington Post will call CTEG "a small team of defense officials outside regular intelligence channels to focus on unearthing details about Iraqi ties with al-Qaeda and other terrorist networks." The unveiling of CTEG coincides with Rumsfeld's move to take over the financing and management of an outside project, the "Information Collection Project," sponsored by the Iraqi National Congress and one of CTEG's primary sources of information. Before now, the State Department had financed and overseen the INC project, and had grown increasingly reluctant to maintain what Defense Intelligence Agency official Patrick Lang later calls an "off the reservation" intelligence operation (see September 15, 2001). Rumsfeld tells reporters, "Any suggestion that [CTEG is] an intelligence-gathering activity or an intelligence unit of some sort, I think would be a misunderstanding of it." Rumsfeld's assertion is contradicted by former CIA case officer, enthusiastic neoconservative, and CTEG consultant Reuel Marc Gerecht, who describes the intelligence-gathering mission of CTEG: "The Pentagon is setting up the capability to assess information on Iraq in areas that in the past might have been the realm of the agency (CIA). They don't think the product they receive from the agency is always what it should be." [Middle East Policy Council, 6/2004]
Entity Tags: Iraqi National Congress, Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, Donald Rumsfeld, US Department of State, Reuel Marc Gerecht, Patrick Lang, Office of Special Plans, US Department of Defense
Two Pentagon offices—the Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict Office and the Office of Special Plans—prepare a white paper and slide presentation recommending the creation of a "Rapid Reaction Media Team" (RRMT) that would maintain control over major Iraqi media organizations while still projecting an Iraqi "face." The first phase of the one-to-two-year "strategic information campaign" would last six months and cost $51 million. The paper states that the "RRMT concept focuses on USG-UK ["USG" stands for US government] pre-and post hostilities efforts to develop programming, train talent, and rapidly deploy a team of US/UK media experts with a team of 'hand selected' Iraqi media experts to communicate immediately with the Iraqi public opinion upon liberation of Iraq." The "hand-picked" Iraqi experts would help "select and train the Iraqi broadcasters and publishers ('the face') for the USG/coalition sponsored information effort," the paper explains. Media stories produced by this campaign would be based on US-approved information and would focus on topics like "the De-Baathification program"; "recent history telling (e.g., 'Uncle Saddam,' History Channel's 'Saddam's Bomb-Maker,' 'Killing Fields,' etc.)"; US government-approved "Democracy Series"; "Environmental (Marshlands re-hydration)"; "Mine Awareness"; "Re-starting the Oil"; "Justice and rule of law topics"; "War Criminals/Truth Commission"; "prisoners and atrocity interviews"; "Saddam's palaces and opulence," and "WMD (weapons of mass destruction) disarmament." For its "Entertainment and News Magazine programming," the plan says the media should do stories on "Hollywood," "Arab country donations," and "Sports." According to the paper, "having professional US-trained Iraqi media teams immediately in place to portray a new Iraq (by Iraqis for Iraqis) with hopes for a prosperous, democratic future, will have a profound psychological and political impact on the Iraqi people." It is not clear whether or not this particular plan is implemented. However, after the invasion of Iraq, the Pentagon will contract a firm called the Lincoln Group to plant stories in the Iraqi media (see September 2004-September 2006) and will purchase an Iraqi newspaper and take control of an Iraqi radio station, using them to disseminate pro-American messages to the Iraqi public. [US Department of Defense, 1/2003 ; Inter Press Service, 5/9/2007]
Entity Tags: Office of Special Plans, Office of Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict
Timeline Tags: US Military, Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Domestic Propaganda
According to multiple sources, the Defense Department's head of intelligence, Stephen Cambone, dispatches a quasi-military team to Iraq in the weeks after the invasion. Cambone's "off-the-books" team, consisting of four or five men, operates under the auspices of Defense Department official Douglas Feith and the Office of Special Plans (OSP—see September 2002). The team is tasked to secure the following, in order of priority: downed Navy pilot Scott Speicher, Iraq's WMD stockpiles, and Saddam Hussein. The sources, who speak to reporter Larisa Alexandrovna in 2006 on the condition of anonymity, include three US intelligence sources and a person with close ties to the United Nations Security Council. Speicher, classified as "killed in action" (KIA) after being shot down in 1991 during Operation Desert Storm, was touted by Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi (see 1992-1996, November 6-8, 2001, December 20, 2001, and February 2002) as alive and held as a prisoner of war as part of Chalabi's push for the US invasion of Iraq. Chalabi also told Bush administration officials of enormous stockpiles of chemical and biological WMD throughout Iraq (see Summer 2002, Fall 2002, and Early 2003). Cambone's team operates outside the auspices of other officially sanctioned groups such as Task Force 20 and other units operating in Iraq before the invasion itself, though the team may be comprised of TF20 personnel. The team is not tasked with actually finding and destroying any WMD stockpiles so much as it is ordered to find such a stockpile and thereby solve what the UN Security Council source calls the administration's "political WMD" problem. "They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them," the UN source later says. "Then they start talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi intelligence officers] that 'Our president is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?'" [Raw Story, 1/5/2006]
Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Ahmed Chalabi, Bush administration (43), Douglas Feith, Office of Special Plans, Michael Scott Speicher, Larisa Alexandrovna, Stephen A. Cambone
Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation
Larry Franklin. [Source: Win McNamee / Getty Images]Larry Franklin, a member of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith's Office of Special Plans, and Harold Rhode, a protege of neoconservative Iran "specialist" Michael Ledeen, meets with Iranian arms merchant and Iran-Contra figure Manucher Ghorbanifar in Paris. This is the third of three meetings (see December 9, 2001 and June 2002) between these figures. While no details of the discussions that took place at this meeting are available, it is likely that, like the other two, the main focus of the meeting is the manipulation of "evidence" showing Iraq has weapons of mass destruction in order to provide "proof" that the US invasion of Iraq was justified. (Franklin will later be convicted of passing classified US intelligence to Israel, and will be sentenced to 12 years in prison—see April 13, 1999-2004 and October 5, 2005). [Vanity Fair, 3/2007] Journalists Joshua Micah Marshall, Laura Rozen, and Paul Glastris later speculate that the meetings have a hidden agenda alongside the Iraq concern: the destabilization of Iran. They write, "[T]he [Defense Department]-Ghorbanifar meetings suggest the possibility that a rogue faction at the Pentagon was trying to work outside normal US foreign policy channels to advance a 'regime change' agenda not approved by the president's foreign policy principals or even the president himself." [Washington Monthly, 9/2004]
Entity Tags: Paul Glastris, Michael Ledeen, Laura Rozen, Douglas Feith, Manucher Ghorbanifar, Harold Rhode, Larry Franklin, Joshua Micah Marshall, Office of Special Plans
Timeline Tags: US confrontation with Iran, Iran-Contra Affair, Neoconservative Influence
The Pentagon announces that the Office of Special Plans will revert to its previous name, the "Northern Gulf Affairs Office," explaining that this name more accurately reflects the activities and mission of that office. [Tom Paine (.com), 8/27/2003]
Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Office of Special Plans
Referring to President Bush's 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), CIA Director George Tenet says in a written statement: "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency.… These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president." Tenet denies that the White House is responsible for the mistake, putting the blame squarely on himself and his agency. His statement comes hours after Bush blamed the CIA for the words making it into the speech (see July 11, 2003). [CNN, 7/11/2003; Central Intelligence Agency, 7/11/2003; New York Times, 7/12/2003] CIA Chose to Send Wilson to Niger - Tenet also confirms that it was the CIA's choice to send former ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), apparently in an effort to rebut claims that Vice President Dick Cheney ordered the mission. Tenet states: "There was fragmentary intelligence gathered in late 2001 and early 2002 on the allegations of Saddam's efforts to obtain additional raw uranium from Africa, beyond the 550 metric tons already in Iraq. In an effort to inquire about certain reports involving Niger, CIA's counterproliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region [Wilson] to make a visit to see what he could learn." Tenet says that Wilson found no evidence to believe that Iraq had attempted to purchase Nigerien uranium, though this did not settle the issue for either the CIA or the White House. [Central Intelligence Agency, 7/11/2003] Coordinated with White House - Tenet's admission was coordinated by White House advisers for what reporter Murray Waas will call "maximum effect." Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley, White House political strategist Karl Rove, and Cheney's chief of staff Lewis Libby had reviewed drafts of Tenet's statement days in advance; Hadley and Rove had suggested changes in the draft. [National Journal, 3/30/2006] Cheney rejected an earlier draft, marking it "unacceptable" (see July 11, 2003). White House Joins in Blaming CIA - National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice also blames the CIA. Peppered with questions from reporters about the claim, she continues the White House attempt to pin the blame for the faulty intelligence on the CIA: "We have a higher standard for what we put in presidential speeches" than other governments or other agencies. "We don't make the president his own fact witness. That's why we send them out for clearance." Had the CIA expressed doubts about the Niger claim before the State of the Union? she is asked (see January 26 or 27, 2003, March 8, 2003, March 23, 2003, April 5, 2003, Early June 2003, June 9, 2003, and June 17, 2003). "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety," she replies. "If the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' (see January 27, 2003) it would have been gone without question. If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president or to me.… What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we know now, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the president's speech—but that's knowing what we know now." Another senior White House official, defending the president and his advisers, tells ABC News: "We were very careful with what the president said. We vetted the information at the highest levels." But another intelligence official, also interviewed by ABC, contradicts this statement. [CNN, 7/11/2003; White House, 7/11/2003; Washington Post, 7/12/2003; New York Times, 7/12/2003; Rich, 2006, pp. 99; McClellan, 2008, pp. 171-172] Tenet's mea culpa is apparently enough for Bush; press secretary Ari Fleischer says, "The president has moved on." [White House, 7/11/2003; Rich, 2006, pp. 99] White House press secretary Scott McClellan will later claim that at this point Rice is unaware that her National Security Council is far more responsible for the inclusion than the CIA. He will write that the news media reports "not unfairly" that Rice is blaming the CIA for the inclusion. [McClellan, 2008, pp. 171-172] News Reports Reveal Warnings Not to Use Claim - Following Tenet's statement, a barrage of news reports citing unnamed CIA officials reveal that the White House had in fact been explicitly warned not to include the Africa-uranium claim. These reports indicate that at the time Bush delivered his State of the Union address, it had been widely understood in US intelligence circles that the claim had little evidence supporting it. [Boston Globe, 3/16/2003; New York Times, 3/23/2003; Associated Press, 6/12/2003; Knight Ridder, 6/12/2003; Associated Press, 6/12/2003; Knight Ridder, 6/13/2003; ABC News, 6/16/2003; Newsday, 7/12/2003; Washington Post, 7/20/2003] For example, CBS News reports, "CIA officials warned members of the president's National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa." And a Washington Post article cites an unnamed intelligence source who says, "We consulted about the paper [September 2002 British dossier] and recommended against using that material." [CBS News, 7/10/2003; CNN, 7/10/2003; Washington Post, 7/11/2003] Claim 'Technically True' since British, Not US, Actually Made It - White House officials respond that the dossier issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion, "Iraq has… sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" and that the officials had argued that as long as the statement was attributed to the British intelligence, it would be technically true. Similarly, ABC News reports: "A CIA official has an idea about how the Niger information got into the president's speech. He said he is not sure the sentence was ever cleared by the agency, but said he heard speechwriters wanted it included, so they attributed it to the British." The same version of events is told to the New York Times by a senior administration official, who claims, "The decision to mention uranium came from White House speechwriters, not from senior White House officials." [ABC News, 6/12/2003; CBS News, 7/10/2003; New York Times, 7/14/2003; New York Times, 7/19/2003] Decision Influenced by Office of Special Plans - But according to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who are investigating the issue, the decision to include the Africa-uranium claim was influenced by the people associated with the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). [Information Clearing House, 7/16/2003] Reactions - Rice says that the White House will not declassify the October 2002 NIE on Iraq (see October 1, 2002) to allow the public to judge for itself whether the administration exaggerated the Iraq-Niger claim; McClellan will write that Rice is currently "unaware of the fact that President Bush had already agreed to 'selective declassification' of parts of the NIE so that Vice President Cheney, or his top aide Scooter Libby, could use them to make the administration's case with selected reporters" (see 8:30 a.m. July 8, 2003). [McClellan, 2008, pp. 171-172] Two days later, Rice will join Bush in placing the blame for using the Iraq-Niger claim solely on the CIA (see July 13, 2003). McClellan will later write, "The squabbling would leave the self-protective CIA lying in wait to exact revenge against the White House." [McClellan, 2008, pp. 172] Former Ambassador Considers Matter Settled - Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who recently wrote an op-ed for the New York Times revealing his failure to find any validity in the claims during his fact-finding trip to Niger (see July 6, 2003 and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), is pleased at Tenet's admission. According to his wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson, "Joe felt his work was done; he had made his point." [Wilson, 2007, pp. 140]
Entity Tags: George W. Bush, George J. Tenet, Central Intelligence Agency, Joseph C. Wilson, Condoleezza Rice, Ari Fleischer, Bush administration (43), Karl C. Rove, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Murray Waas, Valerie Plame Wilson, ABC News, Stephen J. Hadley, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Scott McClellan, CBS News, Office of Special Plans
Timeline Tags: Events Leading to Iraq Invasion, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing
The National Security Council rejects a request from the Defense Department's Office of Inspector General (OIG) to interview Stephen Hadley. The OIG is conducting an investigation into whether the Defense Department's Office of Special Plans had been engaged in inappropriate intelligence activities prior to the invasion of Iraq. [Think Progress, 2/9/2007; US Congress, 2/9/2007] During the time period in question, Hadley had been deputy national security adviser, and was reportedly one of the Pentagon office's main contacts in the National Security Council (see, e.g., Shortly After September 11, 2001 and September 2002).
Entity Tags: Office of Special Plans, Stephen J. Hadley, Office of the Inspector General (DoD), National Security Council
John Hannah. [Source: PBS]Dick Cheney's Office of the Vice President (OVP) is so cloaked in secrecy, journalist Robert Dreyfuss reports, that it routinely refuses to provide a directory of staff members or even the numbers of staff and employees. Dreyfus writes, "Like disciplined Bolsheviks slicing through a fractious opposition, Cheney's team operates with a single-minded, ideological focus on the exercise of American military power, a belief in the untrammeled power of the presidency, and a fierce penchant for secrecy." The list of current and former staffers includes, as of April 2006: former chief of staff Lewis Libby; his replacement, David Addington; top national security advisers Eric Edelman and Victoria Nuland; neoconservative and hardline Middle East specialists such as John Hannah, William Luti, and David Wurmser; anti-Chinese Asia specialists such as Stephen Yates and Samantha Ravich; a varying number of technocratic neoconservatives in other posts; and an array of communications specialists, including "Cheney's Angels": Mary Matalin, Juleanna Glover Weiss, Jennifer Millerwise, Jennifer Mayfield, Catherine Martin, and Lea Anne McBride. It is known that Cheney's national security staff was assembled by Libby from various far-right think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute, the Hudson Institute, and the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), as well as carefully screened Cheney supporters from a variety of Washington law firms. [American Prospect, 4/16/2006] Lawrence Wilkerson, the former chief of staff to former Secretary of State Colin Powell, will recall in early 2007: "A friend of mine counted noses [at the office] and came away with 88. That doesn't count others seconded from other agencies." [Washington Monthly, 1/7/2007] 'Cabal' of Zealots - Wilkerson calls Cheney's inner group a "cabal" of arrogant, intensely zealous, highly focused loyalists. Recalling Cheney's staff interacting in a variety of interagency meetings and committees, "The staff that the vice president sent out made sure that those [committees] didn't key anything up that wasn't what the vice president wanted," says Wilkerson. "Their style was simply to sit and listen, and take notes. And if things looked like they were going to go speedily to a decision that they knew that the vice president wasn't going to like, generally they would, at the end of the meeting, in great bureaucratic style, they'd say: 'We totally disagree. Meeting's over.'" The committee agendas were generally scuttled. And if something did get written up as a "decision memo" bound for the Oval Office, Cheney himself would ensure that it died before ever reaching fruition." Sidestepping the NSC - The National Security Council (NSC) is designated as the ultimate arbiter for foreign policy options and recommendations for the president. But, according to Wilkerson, Cheney's office and the NSC were often at loggerheads, and Cheney's "shadow NSC" had the upper bureaucratic hand. Cheney "set up a staff that knew what the statutory NSC was doing, but the NSC statutory staff didn't know what his staff was doing," says Wilkerson. China Threat - Cheney's Asia advisers, Yates and Ravich, were most often encountered by Wilkerson. They helped drive Cheney's agenda for China, which was obsessive to the point of paranoia. China was a grave, if long-term, threat to the US, they believed. The US must begin strongly cultivating Taiwan as a counterbalance to China, whom they asserted was preparing for military action against the US. Former US ambassador to China Charles Freeman compares Yates to the Defense Department's Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith; all three believed, Freeman says, that China was "the solution to 'enemy deprivation syndrome.'" Iraq Policy - Cheney's current and former staffers played an even larger role in shaping the administration's Iraq policy than is generally known, and Cheney "seeded" staffers in other departments to promote his war agenda. Luti left the OVP in 2001 to join the Department of Defense, where he organized the Office of Special Plans (OSP). Wurmser, an AEI neoconservative, joined the Pentagon and created the forerunner of the OSP, the Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, which helped manufacture the evidence of connections between Hussein and al-Qaeda. Wurmser worked closely with Hannah, Libby, Luti, and another Pentagon official, Harold Rhode. Ravich worked with neoconservative Middle East analyst Zalmay Khalilzad to build up Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, their designated supplanter of Hussein. US or Israel Interests? - Many of Cheney's most influential staffers are pro-Israeli to the point where many observers wonder where their ultimate loyalties lie. David Wurmser is a standout of this group. Wurmser worked at WINEP with Hannah, then joined the AEI, where he directed that group's Middle East affairs, then joined Feith's OSP before moving on to Bolton's inner circle at the State Department, all before joining Cheney in the OVP. Most outsiders consider Wurmser's ideas wildly unrealistic. A former ambassador says of Wurmser, "I've known him for years, and I consider him to be a naive simpleton." [American Prospect, 4/16/2006]
Entity Tags: Elizabeth ("Liz") Cheney, William Luti, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), Victoria Nuland, US Department of State, Douglas Feith, Zalmay M. Khalilzad, Samantha Ravich, Stephen Yates, David Wurmser, David S. Addington, David Phillips, Aaron Friedberg, American Enterprise Institute, Benjamin Netanyahu, Catherine ("Cathie") Martin, Central Intelligence Agency, Robert G. Joseph, Counterterrorism Evaluation Group, Chas Freeman, Robert Dreyfuss, American Prospect Magazine, US Department of Defense, Richard ("Dick") Cheney, Jennifer Mayfield, Jennifer Millerwise, John Hannah, James Woolsey, John R. Bolton, Iraqi National Congress, Harold Rhode, Entifadh Qanbar, Eric Edelman, George W. Bush, Hudson Institute, Richard Perle, Office of the Vice President, Lawrence Wilkerson, Lewis ("Scooter") Libby, Mary Matalin, Lea Anne McBride, National Security Council, Dean McGrath, Paul Wolfowitz, Office of Special Plans, Juleanna Glover Weiss
Timeline Tags: Civil Liberties
An investigation by the Defense Department's Office of Inspector General finds that the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans (OSP) (see Shortly After September 11, 2001) inappropriately produced "alternative" intelligence reports that falsely concluded that Saddam Hussein's regime had collaborated with al-Qaeda. The report says, "We believe the actions were inappropriate because a policy office was producing intelligence products and was not clearly conveying to senior decision-makers the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community." The report cites a July 2002 memo (see July 25, 2002) issued by the OSP that had taken issue with the intelligence community's view that Iraq would not work with Islamic extremists. The inspector general says that as an alternative view, the memo should have been developed in accordance with the appropriate intelligence agency guidelines. But the report also says that the unit did nothing illegal. The inspector general's investigation had been requested by Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) on September 22, 2005. [US Department of Defense, 2/9/2007 ; New York Times, 2/9/2007; McClatchy Newspapers, 2/9/2007; Associated Press, 2/10/2007] Responding to the report's conclusions, Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) says in a statement that the Pentagon intelligence unit's activities may have violated the 1947 National Security Act. The act "requires the heads of all departments and agencies of the US government involved in intelligence activities 'to keep the congressional oversight committees informed,'" Rockefeller says. "The IG has concluded that [Feith's] office was engaged in intelligence activities. The Senate Intelligence Committee was never informed of these activities. Whether these actions were authorized or not, it appears that they were not in compliance with the law." [McClatchy Newspapers, 2/9/2007]
Entity Tags: Office of the Inspector General (DoD), Douglas Feith, John D. Rockefeller, Office of Special Plans
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text:
This week we learned about dinosaurs (the kids LOVE it!). Here are some of the activities we did!
1. We dug for dinosaur letters. For my morning class since many of them are nonverbal I had them match the letters and attempt to say them.
2. We made dinosaur tracks. For some of the kiddos to make it a little less messy we used stamp pads to put the dinosaurs in.
3. We discriminated between the dinosaur and egg...the same color or different?!
4. On Tuesday, we didn't have school because of the primaries so we went to IKEA and enjoyed some fun time at the park! It was a beautiful 70 degrees (and last week on this day I was hoping for a snow day...only in MI!)
4. I have been crafting! I love to craft and it is a great stress reliever!
I found this cute idea on Childhood 101. I thought my kiddos would like this and it was easy to make!
I am longing for spring! My inspiration for this wreath came from Autumn Wren Designs.
5. This Sunday is #SpedDollarDeals! Make sure to check it out!
Have a great weekend! :)

subset: commoncrawl


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Istvan David – Divine comedy
This illustrations were made for the project by Petja Janžekovi (philosopher) and Nina Jeza (art curator) the author of the book and the curator for the illustrations. The goal of this courageous project was to take the interpretations of Dante's Inferno, written by Petja Janžekovi and illustrate it.
External Link: Istvan David – Divine comedy


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Tiny waterbird, the size of an elongated grapefruit. In nonbreeding plumage, they are black above and white below with a black stripe on the side of the neck and a white comma behind eye. Short, stout bill. Horizontal posture like a football floating on the water. Dives frequently when feeding. In winter, only likely to be seen from land following the passage of a storm, otherwise stays well offshore. Found singly or in flocks. Much smaller than guillemots or puffins, with fast wingbeats and low, twisting flight that recalls a flock of sandpipers. Breeds in large numbers in Greenland and Europe; rare at alcid breeding colonies in Alaska. Birds in breeding plumage have an all-black head and chest.
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I have found such a beautiful reason to live today. It's not money, or success, or closing a deal, or my car, or my home, or "my family", or any other "impermanent" thing I could list as a cause. In fact, the reason I found to live today is somewhat different than a thing, in fact it is nothing at all (yes, I seem to love that play on words). Let me explain.
Today I had conversations with two old and dear friends. I have not seen these friends in at least 15 years and although they weren't always on the tip of my tongue there were always within the soul that inspires it. What I discovered in those conversations was that despite the gap of time that had elapsed since I last saw them the feeling they created in me had not dissipated at all. The same smile crept up on my lips, the same laugh echoed from my throat, the same joy came crashing from my heart. Certainly we had changed as years passed. Certainly we had experienced life in many different ways, and those experiences had an influence on who we are and how we see the universe. Surely we had all become byproducts of a life formula that is as individual as it is universal. Despite all of that here I was, smiling, laughing, and taking great joy in the fact that these friends were in my present moment.
It came to me in an awesome wave of understanding that felt like the warmth of a fire on a frigid winter's morning. Here was my beautiful reason for living. It wasn't the conversation or the memories or the chance to connect with old friends. It was the joy. I felt as if the moment stood still, that any joy I was providing these people was being returned to me a hundred fold. See, they let me in, and in doing so provided me with an eternal gift, a continuous wave of love and joy that is eternal even if it gets overshadowed from time to time.
I have come to what is, to me, a rather astounding revelation. When I outstretch my hand to someone whether during a fire, or a rescue, or just on the street as another anonymous human Being my outstretched hand is not the gift. No, the gift here is found in the acceptance of my hand. What is the gift in this relationship is not the offer of love but the acceptance of it. The giver of this gift offers me the joy of accepting it, and in that joy I have found an eternity that is indescribable and immutable. The joy I felt in these old friends 15 years ago still existed today. It wasn't new joy, it wasn't new love, it was the same as what as existed since the beginning. The giver and the receiver are impermanent in the flesh but eternal in ripple or wave that we, in our limited ability to communicate, call "Love".
Today I feel inspired to not only accept the gifts of love and joy but to re-gift them to as many as possible in the time I am given. I don't think anyone will mind...
©2011 Thomas P. Grasso All Rights Reserved ☮ ℓﻉﻻ٥ ツ


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I recently came across a minor issue where I added owners to a private chat room, and then started granting users explicit write access. Since the system "bot" announced all the owner additions, people kept asking me why I didn't add user X, Y, and Z to the room, when in fact I had, but with "write" access instead of owner access.
The system user should announce any explicit permissions change. But perhaps one implementation question (if possible): Should it announce them only to the relevant site mods, 10ks+, and room owners? Or to everyone as I believe is currently the case?


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Homeland's Damian Lewis, currently our leading exemplar of cards-close-to-the-vest acting, has joined the cast of Romeo And Juliet, which is currently filming in Italy under the direction of Carlo Carlei (Flight Of The Innocent). Lewis will play Lord Capulet opposite Natascha McElhone's Lady Capulet in this new movie version of the familiar tale that, as previously reported, stars True Grit breakout Hailee Steinfeld and English actor Douglas Booth in the title roles. Rounding out the cast is Paul Giamatti as Friar Laurence, the well-meaning, meddling Dr. Phil of his day; Christian Cooke as Mercutio, the motormouth everyone thought was the coolest guy in Verona when they read the play in high school; and Stellan Skarsgard as Lord Montague. (And since Skarsgard always plays the asshole in every movie he's in, we finally know who was really the bad guy in that whole feud.)
The adaptation was written by Julian Fellowes, the Oscar-winning screenwriter and novelist who, thanks to Downton Abbey, is currently as hot as a PBS-via-BBC series can make a guy. And despite the current trend towards "reimagining," Fellowes has offered assurances that the movie is not some freaky-deaky carbonated new wave version: "We felt that it had been quite a long time since there had been a romantic, traditional rendition of the piece," Fellowes said, comparing it to the 1968 Franco Zeffirelli version. "People have made Romeo since then—and some very good ones—but they were set in modern Ohio or whatever. This isn't that." Executive producer Nadja Swarovski adds, "Romeo And Juliet has to be retold every 15 years." And since Baz Luhrmann's attack-the-block version came out in 1996, obviously they had to get cracking.


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Posted by Brock on January 07, 2000 at 09:45:14:
Hey all.. this doesn't even apply to bass (it could actually) but i thought
it was worth printing since i know you are all aspiring musicians..
you know.. i've been thinking. I'll probably be hated for saying this..
but seriously, what's with tribute bands?? Why don't they just call them rip-off bands? Because that's what they really are. I know there are some really talented musicians playing in tribute bands, and the music might even sound good, but hey, where's the challenge? You could buy/find the notation/tab for just about every piece of music out there. And it especially drives me nuts when these "bands" actually go out and make money off of someone elses entire catalogue of songs. Now don't get me wrong, covers are ok, but if you are only playing the songs of one band, then....c'mon. i don't know..hmmm. To anyone who actually writes their own music: Keep it up please!!!! We need some creativity so that we can get out of this shitty stage of boy-bands and rap groups. What happened to music that sounds good like Zepplin and countless bands through history that were actually in it for the music and not the money. I think Pearl Jam is one of the last bands around to be like that (some of you might not agree) same with Bela-flek and the flektones...
Please i'd love to hear what you all think about this
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Custom Wood Millwork & Trim – One-stop Trim Shop
|September 2, 2011
|Posted by admin under Uncategorized
One Stop Trim Shop is a locally based manufacturer of custom millwork. They can match any existing trim or molding, or create almost any profile to your specifications.
Traditional, Colonial, Victorian, Contemporary, Modern and Custom Profiles.
Call 613-328-1615
Email email@example.com


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Florida Midday Minute: Marlins' Stanton continues HR barrage; Faria tries to end Rays skid
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