Why not hire a professional liar to tell the “truth”?
by digby
So, I’m watching Wolf Blitzer chat up former CIA honcho Bill Harlow for what seemed like a hour this morning, with Blitzer giving him virtually no pushback and allowing him to spout the litany of talking points we’ve seen from all these pro-torture guys since the report was released yesterday.
Needless to say Blitzer didn’t bring up a little bit of unpleasantness that Jonathan Schwarz flagged today:
Bill Harlow told the CIA’s most blatant lie about Iraq and weapons of mass destruction, just weeks before the U.S. invaded in March, 2003. Here’s what happened: By the end of February, 2003, the U.S. case for war with Iraq was disintegrating. That February 15th had seen demonstrations of millions across the world in the biggest antiwar rallies in human history; the British parliament was showing signs it might vote against participating in the invasion; and most crucially, the UN had found no trace of WMD in Iraq.
At that point Newsweek published what was, to the Bush administration and CIA, the most terrifying story possible – that Iraq likely had no WMD, and the United States knew it. What Newsweek revealed was that in 1995, when Hussein Kamel – Saddam’s son-in-law and head of Iraq’s WMD programs – had defected to Jordan, he told the UN, CIA and British intelligence that in fact Iraq had no WMD left.
According to Newsweek, “The CIA did not respond to a request for comment.” But the story quickly gained traction online, and when Reuters followed up on the Newsweek story, they went to Bill Harlow:
The CIA on Monday denied a Newsweek magazine report that Saddam Hussein’s son-in-law told the U.S. intelligence agency in 1995 that Iraq after the Gulf War destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them. “It is incorrect, bogus, wrong, untrue,” CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said of the Newsweek report’s allegations that Hussein Kamel told the CIA that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had destroyed all of his weapons of mass destruction.
Newsweek said Kamel, who headed Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological and missile programs for 10 years, told CIA and British intelligence officers and U.N. inspectors in the summer of 1995 that Iraq had destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons stockpiles after the 1991 Gulf War. “We’ve checked back and he didn’t say this,” a British government source told Reuters. “He said just the opposite, that the WMD program was alive and kicking.”
Harlow of the CIA said: “Newsweek failed to ask us this question.”
There’s absolutely no ambiguity here; Harlow was lying through his teeth. He wasn’t addressing what Iraq was doing in 2003, or even whether what Hussein Kamel had said in 1995 was true. Rather, he was simply addressing what Kamel said, something that the CIA knew with 100% certainty. Bill Harlow is a liar, and nothing he says should be believed.
No lie! The fact that he’s the big point man on this ciasavedlives.com web-site which is allegedly devoted to telling the truth about the torture program is sadly ironic. You cannot make this shit up. Blitzer seemed to like him though. Seems like a nice guy.
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