Colin Powell Is not far Right enough for the GOP?

IraqTortureGate: Powell Denies Knowing He Used Tortured Evidence for UN Case

The most damning credible allegation to emerge regarding the Bush Administration is arguably that Dick Cheney and other Bush Administration officials ordered the use of torture to produce false evidence of a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

Lawrence Wilkerson, who was chief of staff at the State Department under Colin Powell, recently wrote,

as the administration authorized harsh interrogation in April and May of 2002 - well before the Justice Department had rendered any legal opinion - its principal priority for intelligence was not aimed at pre-empting another terrorist attack on the U.S. but discovering a smoking gun linking Iraq and al-Qa'ida.

Wilkerson cited the case of detainee Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, whose tortured testimony was crucial for building the case for war, and was cited in Powell's speech to the UN.

when the interrogation team had reported to Cheney's office that their detainee "was compliant" (meaning the team recommended no more torture), the VP's office ordered them to continue the enhanced methods. The detainee had not revealed any al-Qa'ida-Baghdad contacts yet. This ceased only after Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, under waterboarding in Egypt, "revealed" such contacts.

About this case, Human Rights Watch has recently written,

Al-Libi was sent by the CIA to Egypt for interrogation in early 2002. A declassified CIA cable later described how al-Libi told the CIA that the Egyptian interrogators had said they wanted information about al-Qaeda's connections with Iraq, a subject "about which [al-Libi] said he knew nothing and had difficulty even coming up with a story."

The cable went on to say that al-Libi indicated that his interrogators did not like his responses and then "placed him in a small box" for approximately 17 hours. When he was let out of the box, the cable states that al-Libi was given a last opportunity to "tell the truth." When al-Libi's answers did not satisfy the interrogator, al-Libi says he "was knocked over with an arm thrust across his chest and he fell on his back" and was then "punched for 15 minutes." It was then that al-Libi told his interrogators that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda operatives in chemical and biological weapons, information that was later used in Colin Powell's speech to the UN Security Council to justify war with Iraq.

A bipartisan report by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found that that al-Libi "lied [about the link] to avoid torture."

The Senate Intelligence Committee knows that al-Libi's false, tortured testimony was part of Colin Powell's speech to the UN. Human Rights Watch knows it. Lawrence Wilkerson knows it. And you know it.

But supposedly Colin Powell doesn't know it. Is this credible?

Journalist Sam Husseini caught Colin Powell outside the Sunday chat shows in DC, and asked him about the al-Libi case and the use tortured evidence to make the case for war, leading to this breathtaking exchange:

Sam Husseini: General, can you talk about the al-Libi case and the link between torture and the production of tortured evidence for war?

Colin Powell: I don't have any details on the al-Libi case.

SH: Can you tell us when you learned that some of the evidence that you used in front of the UN was based on torture? When did you learn that?

CP: I don't know that. I don't know what information you're referring to. So I can't answer.

SH: Your chief of staff, Wilkerson, has written about this.

CP: So what? [inaudible]

SH: So you'd think you'd know about it.

CP: The information I presented to the UN was vetted by the CIA. Every word came from the CIA and they stood behind all that information. I don't know that any of them believe that torture was involved. I don't know that in fact. A lot of speculation, particularly by people who never attended any of these meetings, but I'm not aware of it.

"Speculation by people who never attended meetings"? Who is Powell trying to discredit? The Senate Intelligence Committee? Or his own former chief deputy?

Chris Wallace Stunning Display of Lies

Memo to Chris Wallace: Military officials say Gitmo has been a "recruiting tool" for terrorists

SUMMARY: Ignoring statements from military officials and reports, Chris Wallace suggested that the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay has not been used by terrorists as a "huge recruiting tool."



During the May 22 edition of Fox News Radio's Brian & The Judge, Fox News Sunday host Chris Wallace said, "I'd love to know the specific proof that the Obama administration or anyone has that Guantánamo is a recruiting tool" for terrorists and added: "I have never felt that Guantánamo was this huge recruiting tool and the main reason for -- that -- the reason they hate us." Wallace also claimed, "I think on the list of things that gets people, you know, so crazy that they want to blow up bombs and kill themselves and kill innocent people, I think Guantánamo is about 10th on the list." However, as Media Matters for America has documented, military officials and reports have stated that terrorists have successfully used the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay as a major recruiting device.

For instance, using the pseudonym Matthew Alexander, an Air Force senior interrogator who was in Iraq in 2006 wrote in The Washington Post: "I learned in Iraq that the No. 1 reason foreign fighters flocked there to fight were the abuses carried out at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo. Our policy of torture was directly and swiftly recruiting fighters for al-Qaeda in Iraq."

Moreover, as the blog Think Progress noted, in June 17, 2008, testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Alberto Mora, former Navy general counsel, said: "[T]here are serving U.S. flag-rank officers who maintain that the first and second identifiable causes of U.S. combat deaths in Iraq -- as judged by their effectiveness in recruiting insurgent fighters into combat -- are, respectively the symbols of Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo."

Indeed, the Center for Strategic & International Studies concluded in a September 2008 study that "the United States has been damaged by Guantánamo beyond any immediate security benefits. Our enemies have achieved a propaganda windfall that enables recruitment to violence, while our friends have found it more difficult to cooperate with us."

Further, a June 17, 2008, McClatchy Newspapers article reported, "A McClatchy investigation found that instead of confining terrorists, Guantanamo often produced more of them by rounding up common criminals, conscripts, low-level foot soldiers and men with no allegiance to radical Islam -- thus inspiring a deep hatred of the United States in them -- and then housing them in cells next to radical Islamists."

Media uncritically aired Cheney claim that "EITs" were used after other techniques failed

Media uncritically aired Cheney claim that "EITs" were used after other techniques failed

SUMMARY: Four evening news programs uncritically aired discredited claims Dick Cheney made suggesting that detainees provided information after -- and only after -- "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used.

In May 21 reports on former Vice President Dick Cheney's speech that day at the American Enterprise Institute, the CBS Evening News, Fox News' Special Report, CNN's The Situation Room, and ABC's World News all uncritically aired discredited claims Cheney made suggesting that detainees provided information after "enhanced interrogation techniques" were used, and had not provided it before being subjected to those methods. As Media Matters for America has noted, former FBI agent Ali Soufan -- who interrogated Abu Zubaydah -- testified before a Senate Judiciary subcommittee on May 13 about the success of standard interrogation methods, which he contrasted with "ineffective" harsh techniques.

The CBS Evening News and The Situation Room uncritically aired Cheney's claim of harsh interrogation techniques used during the Bush administration: "The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts had failed."

Similarly, World News and Special Report uncritically aired Cheney's claim later in the speech that, with regard to "Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and a few others": "[W]ith many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we did not think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all." After airing the clip from Cheney's speech, Fox News' chief Washington correspondent Jim Angle reported that Cheney "said enhanced interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed and that they were legal, essential, justified, and successful."

Soufan stated in his written testimony that "the Informed Interrogation Approach outlined in the Army Field Manual is the most effective, reliable, and speedy approach we have for interrogating terrorists. It is legal and has worked time and again." He continued: "It was a mistake to abandon it in favor of harsh interrogation methods that are harmful, shameful, slower, unreliable, ineffective, and play directly into the enemy's handbook."

Soufan pointed to "[t]he case of the terrorist Abu Zubaydah" as "a good example of where the success of the Informed Interrogation Approach can be contrasted with the failure of the harsh technique approach." Soufan then presented a "timeline" of the Zubaydah interrogation, which he said showed that "many of the claims made in the memos about the success of the enhanced techniques are inaccurate." He added: "For example, it is untrue to claim Abu Zubaydah wasn't cooperating before August 1, 2002. The truth is that we got actionable intelligence from him in the first hour of interrogating him."

Soufan also testified about other uses and successes of the informed interrogation approach. He stated that his interrogation of Osama bin Laden's former chief bodyguard, Nasser Ahmad Nasser al-Bahri, also known as Abu Jandal, was "done completely by the book (including advising him of his rights)" and that, from it, "we obtained a treasure trove of highly significant actionable intelligence."

From the May 21 broadcast of the CBS Evening News with Katie Couric:

BILL PLANTE (White House correspondent): Answering what he called the president's mischaracterization of his administration's war policy, former Vice President Cheney began by defending the use of harsh interrogation tactics.

CHENEY: The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts had failed. They prevented the violent death of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people.

PLANTE: Cheney argued that the proof of the strategy is in the result.

From the May 21 broadcast of ABC's World News with Charles Gibson:

JONATHAN KARL (senior congressional correspondent): Cheney said the interrogations accomplished their one and only goal: getting specific information on terrorist plans.

CHENEY: Those are the basic facts on enhanced interrogation. To call this a program of torture is to libel the dedicated professionals who have saved American lives and to cast terrorists and murders as innocent victims. What's more, to completely rule out enhanced interrogation in the future is unwise in the extreme. It is recklessness cloaked in righteousness and would make the American people less safe.

KARL: Cheney offered an unapologetic defense of the CIA's most controversial tactic.

CHENEY: You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists. One of them was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the mastermind of 9-11, who's also boasted about his beheading of Daniel Pearl. We had a lot of blind spots after the attacks on our country, things we didn't know about Al Qaeda. We didn't know about Al Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we did not think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.

KARL: He was especially critical of President Obama's decision to release top-secret memos detailing the CIA's interrogation program.

From the May 21 edition of CNN's The Situation Room:

DAN LOTHIAN (White House correspondent): Standing in front of a copy of the Constitution, President Obama delivered a defense for his national security policy, from banning so-called enhanced interrogations like waterboarding to closing the Guantánamo Bay prison camp.

OBAMA: Rather than keeping us safer, the prison at Guantánamo has weakened American national security. It is a rallying cry for our enemies.

LOTHIAN: While the president admitted some detainees could wind up in U.S. prisons, he tried to calm fears that it would put Americans at risk.

OBAMA: We are not going to release anyone if it would endanger our national security.

LOTHIAN: But both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill want proof. They rejected funding to close Gitmo until more details about what will be done with all detainees are provided. In his speech, the president did not fill in all the blanks. But he did blame the Bush administration for creating a, quote, "mess."

OBAMA: Our government made decisions based on fear rather than foresight. And all too often, our government trimmed facts and evidence to fit ideological predispositions.

LOTHIAN: In what felt like a Republican response, former Vice President Dick Cheney struck back in his own speech, defending harsh interrogation techniques.

CHENEY: The interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts had failed. They were legal, essential, justified, successful, and the right thing to do.

LOTHIAN: And criticizing the Obama administration for trying to close Gitmo without a plan.

From the May 21 edition of Fox News' Special Report with Bret Baier:

ANGLE: President Obama argued that enhanced techniques were not necessary, were illegal, and did not work.

OBAMA: I know some have argued that brutal methods like waterboarding were necessary to keep us safe. I could not disagree more.

CHENEY: You've heard endlessly about waterboarding. It happened to three terrorists.

ANGLE: Including Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, the planner of 9-11. Cheney didn't flinch on enhanced interrogation, saying he was a strong proponent.

CHENEY: We didn't know about Al Qaeda's plans, but Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and a few others did know. And with many thousands of innocent lives potentially in the balance, we did not think it made sense to let the terrorists answer questions in their own good time, if they answered them at all.

ANGLE: He said enhanced interrogations were used on hardened terrorists after other efforts failed and that they were legal, essential, justified, and successful. But President Obama sees another effect.

OBAMA: They serve as a recruitment tool for terrorists and increase the will of our enemies to fight us, while decreasing the will of others to work with America.

Did White House OK Earliest Detainee Torture

Did White House OK Earliest Detainee Abuse
It is clear that increasingly abusive interrogation techniques were used on Abu Zubaydah, the first high-value detainee, in the months between his capture and the first Justice Department memo authorizing harsh interrogations. But the legal guidance that authorized those early interrogations remains shrouded in secrecy.

Zubaydah was picked up on March 28, 2002. The Justice Department issued its first memo on torture four months later on Aug. 1.

Zubaydah's lawyer, Brent Mickum, believes documents and testimony in the public record establish "beyond question that Abu Zubaydah was subjected to torture before the issuance of the Aug. 1 memorandum."

'Harsher and Harsher Methods'

The public record includes testimony from Ali Soufan, a former FBI interrogator who was with Zubaydah during April and May of 2002. Soufan told Congress last week that "contractors had to keep requesting authorization to use harsher and harsher methods."

Soufan testified that in the first two months of Zubaydah's interrogation, a CIA contractor used nudity, sleep deprivation, loud noise and extreme temperatures during interrogations. That contractor has been identified as a psychologist named James Mitchell. Mitchell has not commented publicly in recent years, and he could not be reached for this story.

Soufan told senators of describing Zubaydah's treatment to FBI supervisors as "borderline torture."

The use of "borderline torture" against Zubaydah months before the first Justice Department memo authorizing harsh interrogations raises the question of whether Mitchell had legal permission to use abusive techniques.

The CIA suggests that he did.

"The Aug. 1, 2002, memo from the Department of Justice was not the first piece of legal guidance for the interrogation program," according to agency spokesman Paul Gimigliano.

But the CIA will not describe what the first legal guidance was.

Top-Secret Cables

One source with knowledge of Zubaydah's interrogations agreed to describe the legal guidance process, on the condition of anonymity.

The source says nearly every day, Mitchell would sit at his computer and write a top-secret cable to the CIA's counterterrorism center. Each day, Mitchell would request permission to use enhanced interrogation techniques on Zubaydah. The source says the CIA would then forward the request to the White House, where White House counsel Alberto Gonzales would sign off on the technique. That would provide the administration's legal blessing for Mitchell to increase the pressure on Zubaydah in the next interrogation.

A new document is consistent with the source's account.

The CIA sent the ACLU a spreadsheet late Tuesday as part of a lawsuit under the Freedom of Information Act. The log shows the number of top-secret cables that went from Zubaydah's black site prison to CIA headquarters each day. Through the spring and summer of 2002, the log shows, someone sent headquarters several cables a day.

"At the very least, it's clear that CIA headquarters was choreographing what was going on at the black site," says Jameel Jaffer, the ACLU lawyer who sued to get the document. "But there's still this question about the relationship between CIA headquarters and the White House and the Justice Department and the question of which senior officials were driving this process."

Gonzales did not respond to a request for comment through his lawyer.

'A Complete Charade'?

Attorneys who have worked in the White House counsel's office describe it as "highly unusual" for the White House to tell interrogators what they can and cannot do. Bradford Berenson worked in the counsel's office under President Bush, though he had no role in authorizing harsh interrogations.

"These were highly unusual and extraordinary times after 9/11," says Berenson, "but ordinarily the White House counsel's office is not in the business of providing advice to anyone outside the White House itself."

All through the summer of 2002, top officials across the government were trying to sort out the ground rules for legal interrogations.

"I can't believe the CIA would have settled for a piece of paper from the counsel to the president," says one former government official familiar with those discussions.

"If that were true," says the former official, "then the whole legal and policy review process from April through August would have been a complete charade."

Gingrich GOP's Biggest Liar and Media Loves Him

Media declare Gingrich GOP's "ideas man," ignore his frequent falsehoods
Falsehoods offered by Gingrich include:

* During the May 10 edition of Fox Broadcasting Co.'s Fox News Sunday, Gingrich claimed that Democrats have "had control since January of 2007. They haven't passed a law making waterboarding illegal. They haven't gone into any of these things and changed law." However, the Democratically controlled Congress did pass a bill in 2008 that would have banned the use of waterboarding, had President Bush not subsequently vetoed the measure. Gingrich further suggested that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), who according to a recently released CIA document was first briefed about harsh interrogation techniques in September 2002, could have threatened "to pass a law cutting off the money" for the techniques if she objected to them. But Democrats were not in power until January 2007; Pelosi was the ranking member of the House intelligence committee and a senior minority member of the House appropriations committee in 2002, and House minority leader from 2003 to 2006.

* During a March 25 appearance on Fox News' Hannity, Gingrich falsely claimed that Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner proposed to "take over non-bank, non-financial system assets" and that "Congress had passed the authorization in the stimulus bill" to pay bonuses to AIG executives. According to Gingrich, those policies "absolutely moves you towards a political dictatorship."

* In a March 3 Twitter post, Gingrich wrote that his wife, Callista, "pointed out flying into [S]anta [B]arbara you can see the oil rigs off shore," and asserted, "Ironically they have had no spill since 1969." In fact, in just the few months preceding Gingrich's post, there had been at least two oil spills reported in or near the Santa Barbara Channel, according to the U.S. Coast Guard, including one spill in mid-February and another in December 2008 that required a coordinated cleanup effort by the Coast Guard, the California Department of Fish and Game Office of Spill Prevention and Response (OSPR), and the company responsible for the spill.

* In a February 22 New York Times article, reporter Sheryl Gay Stolberg wrote that Gingrich "sees the stimulus bill as his party's ticket to a revival in 2010, as Republicans decry what they see as pork-barrel spending for projects like marsh-mouse preservation. 'You can imagine the fun people will have with that,' he said." In fact, the bill does not contain any language directing funds to the salt marsh harvest mouse, or its San Francisco wetlands habitat, a fact that the House Republican leadership aide who reportedly originated the claim has reportedly acknowledged.

* During the February 17 edition of Hannity, Gingrich falsely claimed that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contains "$30 million to save a mouse in San Francisco" and "$8 billion for a high-speed rail to Las Vegas for Harry Reid," adding, "[I]f those aren't set-asides, I don't know what you'd call them."

* During the January 22 edition of Fox News' On the Record, Gingrich referred to a Congressional Budget Office (CBO) initial "analysis" of the recovery package and purported that it analyzed the entire bill, stating: "Look, the Congressional Budget Office has reported that less than 10 percent of the bill will be spent the first year. Some of it would not be spent for 10 years. This is a bill -- this is not a stimulus package, this is a bigger government, more bureaucracy, more powerful politician package in the guise of a stimulus." In fact, as the initial Associated Press report on the CBO "analysis" noted, it did not take into account all aspects of the recovery plan. While the CBO write-up found that "only $26 billion out of $274 billion in infrastructure spending would be delivered into the economy by the Sept. 30 end of the budget year," it did not "cover tax cuts or efforts by Democrats to provide relief to cash-strapped state governments to help with their Medicaid bills," among other provisions.

* On the January 19 edition of Fox News' Happening Now, referring to President Obama's support for the Employee Free Choice Act, Gingrich claimed that Obama was "going to be for the labor unions taking away your right to a secret-ballot vote before being forced to join a union," echoing a common distortion employed by opponents of the legislation.

* Gingrich has repeatedly criticized Pelosi for using a military jet to travel to and from her congressional district, and has also falsely claimed that former Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) "did not get a private plane" following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. In fact, as Media Matters for America has noted, following 9-11, the House sergeant-at-arms, the Defense Department, and the White House agreed that military planes should be made available to the speaker of the House for national security reasons, and Hastert was the first speaker to use one.

* During the November 16, 2008, broadcast of CBS' Face the Nation, Gingrich said that Republicans "who are about to face this question of, how do you get the economy growing again" should ask Republican governors Mitch Daniels of Indiana and Jon Huntsman of Utah, "[H]ow did they get to the lowest unemployment rate in their respective regions?" However, the most recent Bureau of Labor Statistics records at the time showed that Gingrich's claim was false. In fact, neither Utah nor Indiana had the lowest unemployment rate in its region, and several states with lower unemployment rates were governed by Democrats.

* During the July 31, 2008, edition of Fox News' Hannity & Colmes, Gingrich repeatedly mischaracterized Obama's energy policy, falsely suggesting that Obama's only "energy strategy" was to encourage people to keep the tires on their vehicles properly inflated and asserting that Obama "suggested if we all inflated our tires, that we would solve the problem."

* On the October 10, 2006, edition of Hannity & Colmes, Gingrich falsely claimed that Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-NY) "promise[d] to raise taxes" if Democrats were to take over the House of Representatives in that year's midterm elections. In fact, as Media Matters noted, during a September 26, 2006, interview with host Neil Cavuto on Fox News' Your World, Rangel, who was in line to become chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee if Democrats gained a majority in the House, stated that a House controlled by Democrats "would not raise taxes" and "would not roll back" Bush's tax cuts enacted by Congress and set to expire in 2010.

Rep. John Boehner Claimed CIA was out to get Republicans

Rep. Boehner: Now and Then

John Boehner Now

John Boehner: "I've dealt with our intelligence professionals for the last three-and-a-half years on an almost daily basis, and it's hard for me to imagine that our intelligence area would ever mislead a member of Congress. [Boehner Press Availability via The Hill, 5/14/2009]
John Boehner Then:

December 9, 2007:

Wolf Blitzer: "Are you suggesting, as I think you are, that you don't necessarily have confidence in this new NIE?"

Rep. John Boehner: "Either I don't have confidence in what they told me several months ago or I don't have confidence in what they're telling me today." [CNN, Late Edition with Wolf Blitzer, 12/9/2007; emphasis added]

Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner

Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner
Dick Cheney Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images Former NBC News investigative producer Robert Windrem reports that the vice president’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner who was suspected of knowing about a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam.

Robert Windrem, who covered terrorism for NBC, reports exclusively in The Daily Beast that:

*Two U.S. intelligence officers confirm that Vice President Cheney’s office suggested waterboarding an Iraqi prisoner, a former intelligence official for Saddam Hussein, who was suspected to have knowledge of a Saddam-al Qaeda connection.

*The former chief of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, in charge of interrogations, tells The Daily Beast that he considered the request reprehensible.

*Much of the information in the report of the 9/11 Commission was provided through more than 30 sessions of torture of detainees.

At the end of April 2003, not long after the fall of Baghdad, U.S. forces captured an Iraqi who Bush White House officials suspected might provide information of a relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime. Muhammed Khudayr al-Dulaymi was the head of the M-14 section of Mukhabarat, one of Saddam’s secret police organizations. His responsibilities included chemical weapons and contacts with terrorist groups.

Two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard an Iraqi prisoner came from the Office of Vice President Cheney.

“To those who wanted or suspected a relationship, he would have been a guy who would know, so [White House officials] had particular interest,” Charles Duelfer, head of the Iraqi Survey Group and the man in charge of interrogations of Iraqi officials, told me. So much so that the officials, according to Duelfer, inquired how the interrogation was proceeding.

In his new book, Hide and Seek: The Search for Truth in Iraq, and in an interview with The Daily Beast, Duelfer says he heard from “some in Washington at very senior levels (not in the CIA),” who thought Khudayr’s interrogation had been “too gentle” and suggested another route, one that they believed has proven effective elsewhere. “They asked if enhanced measures, such as waterboarding, should be used,” Duelfer writes. “The executive authorities addressing those measures made clear that such techniques could legally be applied only to terrorism cases, and our debriefings were not as yet terrorism-related. The debriefings were just debriefings, even for this creature.”

Duelfer will not disclose who in Washington had proposed the use of waterboarding, saying only: “The language I can use is what has been cleared.” In fact, two senior U.S. intelligence officials at the time tell The Daily Beast that the suggestion to waterboard came from the Office of Vice President Cheney. Cheney, of course, has vehemently defended waterboarding and other harsh techniques, insisting they elicited valuable intelligence and saved lives. He has also asked that several memoranda be declassified to prove his case. (The Daily Beast placed a call to Cheney’s office and will post a response if we get one.)

Without admitting where the suggestion came from, Duelfer revealed that he considered it reprehensible and understood the rationale as political—and ultimately counterproductive to the overall mission of the Iraq Survey Group, which was assigned the mission of finding Saddam Hussein’s WMD after the invasion.

“Everyone knew there would be more smiles in Washington if WMD stocks were found,” Duelfer said in the interview. “My only obligation was to find the truth. It would be interesting if there was WMD in May 2003, but what was more interesting to me was looking at the entire regime through the slice of WMD.”

But, Duelfer says, Khudayr in fact repeatedly denied knowing the location of WMD or links between Saddam’s regime and al Qaeda and was not subjected to any enhanced interrogation. Duelfer says the idea that he would have known of such links was “ludicrous".