February 27, 2006

Saddam's WMD - the Company Strikes Back

The information in our previous post, which came proximately from the Investor's Business Daily, appears to have begun with an article by Kenneth R. Timmerman on NewsMax last Sunday, February 19th (based upon a talk the previous day by John A. Shaw at the Intelligence Summit, a non-governmental convention).

Ordinarily, I wouldn't trust NewsMax; but I do trust Timmerman, who has done bravura work in this area and is a very reputable journalist. Timmerman is the author of several well-received books, most recently Countdown to Crisis : The Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran.

John A. Shaw is hardly a partisan, a radical, or a bomb-thrower:

Shaw has dealt with weapons-related issues and export controls as a U.S. government official for 30 years, and was serving as deputy undersecretary of defense for international technology security when the events he described [on February 18th, 2006] occurred [shortly after major combat operations ended in 2003].

Shaw was originally tasked with figuring out what happened to the weapons and WMD programs that Saddam undeniably had after the first Gulf War. But as he was tracking these weapons, he began to develop sources independent of the CIA- and State Department-controlled Iraqi Survey Group:

But as Shaw's office increasingly got involved in ongoing intelligence to identify Iraqi weapons programs before the war, he also got "a flow of information from British contacts on the ground at the Syrian border and from London" via non-U.S. government contacts.

"The intelligence included multiple sightings of truck convoys, convoys going north to the Syrian border and returning empty," he said. [All emphasis added, here and elsewhere.]

Shaw worked closely with Julian Walker, a former British ambassador who had decades of experience in Iraq, and an unnamed Ukranian-American who was directly plugged in to the head of Ukraine's intelligence service.

The Ukrainians were eager to provide the United States with documents from their own archives on Soviet arms transfers to Iraq and on ongoing Russian assistance to Saddam, to thank America for its help in securing Ukraine's independence from the Soviet Union, Shaw said.

Shaw passed along what he was learning to the CIA... and according to Shaw, the CIA not only brushed off the data, they smeared everyone responsible for passing it along, including Shaw himself. In fact, the CIA dismissed it as "Israeli disinformation."

They accused Shaw of having "eaten from the DIA 'rice bowl,'" meaning Shaw had stepped into the turf of the Defense Intelligence Agency. But the sly insinuation that Israelis were behind it all makes me think that elements of the CIA have eaten from the Arabist "rice bowl": Arab spokesmen, and American and British officials in Arab countries who have "gone native," invariably attribute anything they don't want to hear to Zionist propaganda.

I find this very disturbing, as well as efforts by Bush administration officials (such as Larry DiRita, DoD spokesman) to trash Shaw and his sources, according to Shaw:

"Larry DiRita made sure that this story would never grow legs," Shaw said. "He whispered sotto voce [quietly] to journalists that there was no substance to my information and that it was the product of an unbalanced mind."

We'll discuss a possible reason for the actions of the CIA and sub-cabinet level members of the administration later. First, let's get to the meat fo what Shaw reported.

The information Shaw passed along to the CIA and the administration included the following major points:

• A Soviet general with a close working relationship with Saddam Hussein, Yevgeni Primakov, traveled to Iraq in 2002, leaving shortly after the U.S. invasion began.
  
  Primakov orchestrated the execution of secret agreements Hussein had concluded with Russia, years earlier, to remove the Russian-supplied and otherwise obtained WMD from Iraq, along with all traces of its existence, in the event of a probable American attack. This would allow Russia to guarantee Iraq was "WMD-free," thus delaying or even stymying Operation Iraqi Freedom.
  
  American intelligence officers knew about these agreements, which were dubbed Sarandar, or "emergency exit."
• Primakov brought out two trusted, retired Soviet-era generals -- Colonel-General Vladislav Achatov and Colonel-General Igor Maltsev -- who, as "commercial consultants," supervised GRU (the independent Main Intelligence Directorate of both the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation) and Spetsnaz (SpecOps) troops, along with other Russian military and civilian personnel. The forces operated in civilian clothing, disguised as contractors.
  
  Maltsev and Achatov had visited Baghdad "no fewer than 20 times" since 1997, and U.S. intelligence was well aware of their connection to Hussein, the GRU, and Spetsnaz. They had all gathered earlier at a planning conference in Baku, capital of Azerbaijan; the conference was "chaired by Russian Minister of Emergency Situations Sergei Shoigu."
• Sarandar comprised truck convoys, possible Russian commercial air flights, and a pair of Russian ships, which sailed from Umm Qasr to dump "stockpiles of Iraqi WMD" into the Indian Ocean.

The purpose of Sarandar was quite explicit, according to Shaw:

The goal of the clean-up was "to erase all trace of Russian involvement" in Saddam's WMD programs, and "was a masterpiece of military camouflage and deception."

Now back to the burning question. This is explosive stuff that would, were it verified, completely vindicate President Bush's decision to invade Iraq... even for those who believed that Iraq's supposed possession of WMD was the sole legitimate reason to attack. So why would not only the CIA but even the spokesman of the Department of Defense, Larry DiRita, have gone to such pains to trash the intel, smear anyone involved, and try to fob off all the information and all the sources as Israeli stooges?

Shaw suggested that the answer of why the Bush administration had systematically "ignored Russia's involvement" in evacuating Saddam's WMD stockpiles "could be much bigger than anyone has thought," but declined to speculate what exactly was involved.

Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney was less reticent. He thought the reason was Iran.

"With Iran moving faster than anyone thought in its nuclear programs," he told NewsMax, "the administration needed the Russians, the Chinese and the French, and was not interested in information that would make them look bad."

McInerney agreed that there was "clear evidence" that Saddam had WMD. "Jack Shaw showed when it left Iraq, and how."

If Shaw's claims about the CIA reaction are accurate, then there is an eerie parallel to claims of CIA stifling of another urgent story that also involves Iran: the level of Iranian involvement in the 9/11 attacks themselves. Half of Big Lizards (Dafydd ab Hugh) first discussed this issue on Captain's Quarters back in July, in a post titled It Ain't Even the Quarter; this is a piece that should have been reposted here as a Scaley Classic, but evidently was not... an omission I will remedy in the next two posts, That Ain't the Half of It and It Ain't Even the Quarter.

Kenneth Timmerman, in the Iran book linked above, reports that the CIA went on a rampage of character assassination to quash the idea that there were any high-level meetings between the mullahs of Iran and senior officials of al-Qaeda, including Ayman Zawahiri and even Osama bin Laden's eldest son and heir, Saad bin Laden.

It should be clear by this point that our problem with the CIA's war against the Bush administration has drifted far beyond mere political chicanery and into an actual threat to the United States itself. It is unconscionable that CIA operatives and Bush administration officials should be engaged in actively suppressing intelligence because we're afraid of its effect upon a country that can only be viewed as an enemy of the United States -- an absurdity of bending over backward to accomodate a thuggish, boorish remnant of the Evil Empire.

It is long past time for Bush himself to take the reins, prevent any further attempts to circumscribe acceptable intelligence, and get to the bottom of this bloody affair... not only to exonerate the president's own reputation, but also to protect and secure our nation -- which George W. Bush swore an oath to do.

Hatched by Dafydd on this day, February 27, 2006, at the time of 5:11 AM

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