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| Bush manipulated NKorea intelligence like he did in Iraq: US expert
Oh man, I am really loving this! Quote:
BEIJING (AFP) - The United States manipulated intelligence on North Korea (news - web sites)'s nuclear program in a similar fashion to its use of weapons of mass destruction to justify the war on Iraq (news - web sites), a US foreign policy expert said in an article.
"Relying on sketchy data, the Bush administration presented a worst-case scenario as an incontrovertible truth and distorted its intelligence on North Korea (much as it did in Iraq), seriously exaggerating the danger that Pyongyang is secretly making uranium-based nuclear weapons," Selig Harrison said in Foreign Affairs magazine.
Harrison, from the Washington-based Center for International Policy, chairs the Task Force on Korean Policy, a grouping of former senior US military officials, diplomats and Korean specialists.
The Task Force, which includes a former joint chiefs of staff head and ex-US ambassadors, on Friday issued a report calling on the US immediately to back down on its insistence that North Korea come clean on its alleged uranium program.
Instead, they should first negotiate the dismantling of Pyongyang's plutonium facilities, it said.
Harrison said his claims were based on South Korean and Japanese intelligence sources who participated with the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) on the issue.
He blames the US insistence on a uranium program for the stalling of six-party talks while Pyongyang moves closer to producing an atomic bomb with its plutonium program.
The intelligence was manipulated for "political purposes," he said in the magazine's December 17 issue.
This was largely to waylay South Korean and Japanese efforts at reconciliation with the North and ostensibly to keep open the option of "regime change" as in the case of Iraq, Harrison claimed.
In late 2002 the Bush administration cited North Korea's alleged uranium program to pull out of the Agreed Framework. That deal had frozen Pyongyang's nuclear program since 1994 in exchange for energy aid and the construction of two billion dollar semi-proliferation-proof light water nuclear reactors.
No concrete evidence of a uranium program has been presented publicly.
In retaliation, Pyongyang kicked out international nuclear inspectors and resumed plutonium reprocessing at its Yongbyon facility.
It is now believed to have reprocessed enough plutonium for four to six nuclear bombs, experts say.
"The danger posed by North Korea's extant plutonium program has grown since the United States announced it was no longer bound by the Agreed Framework, and it is much greater than the hypothetical threat posed by a suspected uranium enrichment program about which little is known," said Harrison.
Harrison said the claim of a uranium capability was largely based on several failed attempts by Pyongyang to buy enrichment technology, including electrical-frequency converters and aluminum tubing to make centrifuges.
The US also cites a 2002 conversation in Pyongyang between US Assistant Secretary of State James Kelly and North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Paek Nam Sun, in which Washington maintains Paek admitted his country had a uranium enrichment program.
Pyongyang, however, insists Paek only said North Korea was "entitled" to have such a program, possibly referring to the processing of low-enriched uranium for nuclear energy.
This is allowed by the rules of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which Pyongyang also pulled out of in late 2002.
"Unless conclusive new evidence comes to light, the entire uranium issue should be deferred so that the parties can focus on the more immediate threat: North Korea's known plutonium reprocessing capiabilties," said Harrison.
"By scuttling the 1994 agreement on the basis of uncertain data that it presented with absolute certitude ... the Bush administration has blocked action on the one present threat that North Korea is known to pose: the threat represented by reprocessed plutonium."
| http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp...1512&ncid=1480
& also: Ex-CIA agent says sacked for not faking Iraq WMD reports Quote:
WASHINGTON (AFP) - A sacked CIA (news - web sites) official has sued, alleging he was fired for refusing to fake reports supporting the White House position that Iraq (news - web sites) had weapons of mass destruction, local media said.
Described as a senior CIA official who was sacked in August "for unspecified reasons," the lawsuit appeared to be the first public instance of a CIA agent charging he was pressured to concoct intelligence on Iraq.
The suit claims the unidentified ex agent was urged to produce reports in line with President George W Bush's contention that Iraq had illegal chemical or biological weapons, which threatened US and international security.
"Their official dogma was contradicted by his reporting and they did not want to hear it," attorney Roy Krieger told The Washington Post of his client.
CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher told the daily she could not comment on the lawsuit, adding: "The notion that CIA managers order officers to falsify reports is flat wrong. Our mission is to call it like we see it and report the facts."
Krieger wrote a letter requesting a meeting with CIA Director Porter Goss due to "the serious nature of the allegations in this case, including deliberately misleading the president on intelligence concerning weapons of mass destruction," said the daily quoting the letter.
The United States overthrew the Iraqi dictatorship of Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) in April 2003, but has found no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq since then. The US government has acknowledged some of its pre-war intelligence may have been faulty.
The plaintiff, whose identity is blacked out in the version of the lawsuit seen by the Post, along with any reference to Iraq, is of Middle Eastern descent, worked 23 years in the CIA, much of them in covert operations collecting intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, said the daily.
The lawsuit was filed in a US District Court in Washington on Friday and made public Wednesday after it was screened by a judge, said the Post which obtained a copy.
It alleges that the CIA investigated alleged sexual and financial improprieties by the agent "for the sole purpose of discrediting him and retaliating against him for questioning the integrity of the WMD reporting ... and for refusing to falsify his intelligence reporting to support the politically mandated conclusion" of matters that were blacked out, according to the Washington daily.
The document states that in 2002 the plaintiff was "thwarted by CIA superiors" from reporting routine intelligence from a contact of his and that later he was approached by a senior officer "who insisted that plaintiff falsify his reporting."
When the plaintiff refused, the lawsuit said, the CIA's Counterproliferation Division ordered that he "remove himself from any further 'handling'" of the contact, referred elsewhere in the document as "a highly respected human asset."
The former agent's lawyer said the allegations were not true, and that his client had not been formally charged for any of them before being fired three months ago.
Krieger, who represents CIA personnel, told CNN television that such accusations were common practice at the agency.
"In the past seven or eight years I've represented probably in excess of 100 employees of the Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) and in our experience when (someone) at the agency gets into disfavor or gets himself in a position of opposition to the agency, one of two things -- sometimes both of them -- happen.
"Either he's subjected to a counterintelligence investigation based upon trumped-up allegations or he's referred to the office of Inspector General for investigation of his travel expenses, his finances and, in this case, payments made to an asset," Kreiger said.
In 2003, the lawsuit goes on to say, the CIA officer learned of the investigations against him and that he was refused a promotion "because of pressure from the DDO (Deputy Director of Operations) James Pavitt," according to the Post.
In September 2003, the plaintiff was placed on administrative leave without explanation and in August 2004 he was sacked also "for unspecified reasons," the Post said.
The lawsuit requests that the plaintiff be restored to his former position in the CIA and receives compensatory damages and legal fees.
| from here: http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...iraqwmdciasuit
Hmm.. the whole truth will come out eventually. But I'm wondering, could this harm the current administration? __________________ + Eda + |
