APPENDIX

Peering into the Shadows

The shadow warriors have done a remarkable job of obscuring their efforts to undercut the official policy of the United States and sabotage the war on terror. But sometimes the truth peeks through. The documents and photographs included here—many of which have never been published, and some of which were previously classified—show the extent to which Washington Democrats and partisan bureaucrats have put American national security at risk by playing politics. They also reveal the severity of threats that Democrats have tried to downplay in their relentless efforts to subvert the Bush administration.

Readers interested in seeing more of the evidence can visit www.kentimmerman.com/shadow-warriors.htm.

Get Dick Cheney! From Day 1 of the Bush administration, Democrats in Congress have been gunning for the vice president. The grand jury that they hoped would indict Cheney for sanctions violations found no offense.

The untold Chalabi story: The smear campaign against Iraqi Ahmad Chalabi often highlights a trumped-up indictment handed down in absentia by a Jordanian kangaroo court in 1992. But rarely mentioned is the suit Chalabi himself filed against Jordan for return of hundreds of millions of dollars of bank assets illegally seized in 1989 at the behest of Saddam Hussein’s intelligence director. The allegations contained in Chalabi’s complaint against King Abdullah II and his father, King Hussein, are stunning and unprecedented.

Pleasing Saddam: This never-before-released document is a certified translation of the Jordanian government order that illegally dismissed the board of the Petra Bank and expropriated its assets, because Chalabi had become a serious threat to Saddam.

No plan?: The Pentagon was criticized for having “no plan” for the reconstruction of Iraq. But as these unclassified talking points reveal, from the beginning the Defense Department had a very specific timeline in place. This plan called for transitioning to full Iraqi sovereignty somewhere between thirty-three and forty-eight months after the liberation—that is, between January 2006 and April 2007. In fact, Iraq regained full sovereignty with the elections held on December 15, 2005.

The connection: Congressional Democrats insisted there was no proof of Iraqi ties to al Qaeda, but in fact there were extensive ties, as this highly classified June 2002 CIA report shows. Former CIA director George Tenet wrote in his 2007 memoir that “the intelligence did not show any Iraqi authority, direction, or control” over al Qaeda, but that was never the standard set by the president, whose January 2002 State of the Union speech defined the axis of evil as countries that aided, abetted, or harbored terrorists.

Contacts: Contrary to the assertions of congressional Democrats such as Senator Carl Levin, Pentagon officials did not claim that Saddam was “responsible” for the 9/11 attacks. As this previously classified briefing provided by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith reveals, the Pentagon concluded that the evidence showed the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda fell somewhere in between “senior-level contacts” and “cooperation.”

“The general pattern”: This January 29, 2003, report from the CIA’s Counter Terrorism Center (CTC), heralded by Democrats as “proof” that the Bush administration lied about Iraqi ties to al Qaeda, actually buttresses the case made by Doug Feith and others. While this CIA report makes every effort to downplay the significance of the intelligence, it states clearly, “The general pattern that emerges is of al-Qai’da’s enduring interest in acquiring CBW expertise from Iraq.”

The real Niger story: This is one of the documents from the Niger embassy in Rome that Italian intelligence broker Rocco Martino sold to his handlers in French intelligence. The telex shows that top Iraqi nuclear procurement officer Wissam Zahawie planned a trip to Niger. This document is, in fact, authentic, and it landed in the hands of French intelligence well before the famed Niger forgeries appeared—forgeries that were successfully planted with the CIA.

Beyond the forgeries: This April 2003 CIA report clearly shows that multiple reporting streams—not just the forged Niger documents—indicated that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger. Item 6 refers to Ambassador Joseph Wilson’s report to the CIA quoting a former Nigerian official who referred to the 1999 Zahawie trip to Niger as an indication that “Iraq was interested in discussing yellowcake purchases.”

Mission to Niger: These previously classified CIA documents, presented at the trial of Vice President Dick Cheney’s former chief of staff, Scooter Libby, show that Cheney did not dispatch former ambassador Joe Wilson to Niger, as the Left has claimed. They also show that Valerie Plame misrepresented her own role during sworn Congressional testimony in March 2007. The Senate intelligence committee found that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, “offered up” her husband’s name for the Niger mission in a memorandum to her CIA boss on February 12, 2002. But as these documents reveal, Cheney was not briefed on Iraq’s uranium purchases until the next day.

Wilson and the Wahhabi lobby: Joe Wilson was ready to stand at the altar for just about any anti-Bush cause, including this fund-raiser held by the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a key component of the powerful Wahhabi lobby in the United States. Preceding Wilson on the schedule was Tariq Ramadan, who had to appear by video because he was denied entry to the United States. A State Department spokesman said Ramadan had “provid[ed] material support to a terrorist organization.”

Plame game: This transcript of a taped interview by the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward shows that it was Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, not Scooter Libby, who first revealed to a reporter that Valerie Plame was responsible for sending her husband to Niger, and that she worked at the CIA. The redactions in the text are not classified information, but expletives. The full tape was played at the Libby trial.

The NIE: The much-disputed October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD programs, like virtually all intelligence estimates, provides heavily caveated conclusions. But the Bush administration and Congress based their assessment that allowing Saddam Hussein to remain in power constituted an unacceptable threat to the United States on key judgments in which the intelligence community had “high confidence.”

“Extraordinary renditions”: On May 21, 2002, the State Department’s Counterterrorism coordinator released the following list of individuals who were extradited or “rendered” to other countries prior to the September 11 attacks—proof positive that so-called extraordinary renditions were not invented by the Bush administration, but in fact began under Clinton. These renditions have been called “kidnappings” by Bush administration critics such as Human Rights Watch.

Lady left out to dry: In 2005, an Italian judge issued arrest warrants for nineteen CIA officers and military personnel in connection with the disappearance of suspected al Qaeda operative Abu Omar in Milan. Most of the names, revealed here for the first time, are pseudonyms—with the exception of the CIA’s chief of station for Milan, Robert Seldon Lady.

Going after the Americans: Italian prosecutors went to extraordinary lengths to track down and expose the CIA team that operated in Milan to capture al Qaeda suspect Abu Omar, pulling cellphone records and cross-referencing them to identify members of the CIA team. If only they would go to such lengths to identify and arrest suspect terrorists, the CIA wouldn’t be carrying out these operations in Italy!

The investigation: The Italian prosecutors constructed flow charts showing the relationship of each member of the CIA team, their location at the time of the arrest, and which cell-phone they used, after identifying the specific cellphone relay towers in the vicinity of the arrest.

Valerie Plame perjury?: In sworn testimony to Congress, Valerie Plame insisted she never recommended her husband to the CIA to investigate reports that Iraq was seeking to purchase uranium from Niger. This previously classified memo suggests otherwise.

Saddam’s chemical weapons: After the war, investigative reporters from Cybercast News Service gained access to several caches of documents from Saddam’s intelligence service and the presidential office, showing contracts to purchase chemical weapons protection gear. This is one of the reasons why CENTCOM commander General Tommy Franks was convinced his troops would face Iraqi chemical weapons on the battlefield.

The “secret flights”: Italian leftist Claudio Fava dumped a huge amount of data on the press in June 2006 exposing CIA aircraft and CIA proprietaries he claimed were associated with the rendition of suspected terrorists. In fact, as the U.S. government has acknowledged, fewer than 100 prisoners were rendered using CIA aircraft, far fewer than the 1,254 “secret flights” Fava revealed.

Democrats play politics: Senate intelligence committee chairman Pat Roberts slammed Democrats on his committee for skewing the facts on Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, and ripped apart their report. His blistering dissent is one of the most stunning documents to have emerged from a congressional debate in many years.

The Iranian connection: These photographs, taken by Iraqi police in late 2006, show an Iranian-manufactured range-finding computer and an Iranian-made mortar, seized from Iraqi Shiite insurgents. Both show markings clearly establishing that they were made in Iran. Despite this and other evidence, congressional Democrats continue to dispute Iran’s involvement in Iraq.