Funny how that works out, huh, readers?
Linked blogger's emphasis:
"How Wolfowitz, Wurmser, Maloof and Feith helped start the Iraq War"
"Shortly After September 11, 2001: Wolfowitz and Feith Set Up the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz and Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith set up a secret intelligence unit, named the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, to sift through raw intelligence reports and look for evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. [RISEN, 2006, PP. 183-184]
The four to five -person unit, a “B Team” commissioned by Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, uses powerful computers and software to scan and sort already-analyzed documents and reports from the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, and other agencies in an effort to consider possible interpretations and angles of analysis that these agencies may have missed due to deeply ingrained biases.
Middle East specialist Harold Rhode recruits David Wurmser to head the project. Wurmser, the director of Middle East studies for the American Enterprise Institute, is a known advocate of regime change in Iraq, having expressed his views in a 1997 op-ed piece published in the Wall Street Journal (see November 12, 1997) and having participated in the drafting of the 1996 policy paper for Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (see July 8, 1996).
F. Michael Maloof, a former aide to Richard Perle, is also invited to take part in the effort, which becomes known internally as the “Wurmser-Maloof” project. Neither Wurmser nor Maloof are intelligence professionals. [WASHINGTON TIMES, 1/14/2002; NEW YORK TIMES, 10/24/2002; MOTHER JONES, 1/2004; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 2/8/2004; REUTERS, 2/19/2004]
The Pentagon unit’s activities cause tension within the intelligence community. Critics claim that its members manipulate and distort intelligence, “cherry-picking” bits of information that support their preconceived conclusions. “There is a complete breakdown in the relationship between the Defense Department and the intelligence community, to include its own Defense Intelligence Agency,” a defense official will tell the New York Times. “Wolfowitz and company disbelieve any analysis that doesn’t support their own preconceived conclusions. The CIA is enemy territory, as far are they’re concerned.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/24/2002 SOURCES: UNNAMED DEFENSE OFFICIAL]
At the request of Wolfowitz, the office will intentionally ignore the intelligence community’s view that al-Qaeda and Iraq were unlikely allies. [AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE, 2/9/2007]
Defending the project, Paul Wolfowitz will tell the New York Times that the team’s purpose is to circumvent the problem “in intelligence work, that people who are pursuing a certain hypothesis will see certain facts that others won’t, and not see other facts that others will.” He insists that the special Pentagon unit is “not making independent intelligence assessments.” [NEW YORK TIMES, 10/24/2002]
One of the cell’s projects includes sorting through existing intelligence to create a map of relationships demonstrating links between militant Islamic groups and state powers. This chart of links, which they call the “matrix,” leads the intelligence unit to conclude that Hamas, Hezbollah, Islamic Jihad, and other groups with conflicting ideologies and objectives are allowing these differences to fall to the wayside as they discover their shared hatred of the US. The group’s research also leads them to believe that al-Qaeda has a presence in such places as Latin American.
For weeks, the unit will attempt to uncover evidence tying Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks, a theory advocated by both Feith and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. [WASHINGTON TIMES, 1/14/2002; MOTHER JONES, 1/2004; LOS ANGELES TIMES, 2/8/2004]
The group is later accused of stovepiping intelligence directly to the White House. Former DIA chief of Mideast operations, Pat Lang, later tells the Washington Times: “That unit had meetings with senior White House officials without the CIA or the Senate being aware of them. That is not legal. There has to be oversight.” According to Lang and another US intelligence official, the two men go to the White House several times to brief officials, bypassing CIA analysts whose analyses they disagreed with.
They allegedly brief White House staffers Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and Lewis “Scooter” Libby, chief of staff for Vice President Richard Cheney, according to congressional staffers. [WASHINGTON TIMES, 7/29/2004]
According to unnamed Pentagon and US intelligence officials, the group is also accused of providing sensitive CIA and Pentagon intercepts to the US-funded Iraqi National Congress, which then pass them on to the government of Iran. [WASHINGTON TIMES, 7/29/2004] David Wurmser will later be relocated to the State Department where he will be the senior adviser to Undersecretary Of State for Arms Control John Bolton.(see September 2002). [AMERICAN CONSERVATIVE, 12/1/2003; MOTHER JONES, 1/2004]
Source: Cooperative Research.org
Chas Freeman, former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia, will say in May 2003, just after the invasion, “The neoconservatives’ intention in Iraq was never to truly build democracy there. Their intention was to flatten it, to remove Iraq as a regional threat to Israel.” [DREYFUSS, 2005, PP. 330-337]"
