George Bush and George Tenet both deny the allegation leveled by Ron Suskind's new book, The Way of the World, that in late 2003 the White House ordered the CIA to forge and circulate a letter that would seem to justify the invasion of Iraq after the fact. Here is WH deputy press secretary Tony Fratto:
"Ron Suskind makes a living from gutter journalism. He is about selling books and making wild allegations that no one can verify..."
Bush has a long record of dishonesty, and Tenet's memoirs were not exactly a model of candor. There's no reason to give weight to either man's denials. Suskind has a record of credibility, and his account is partly backed up by Sir Richard Dearlove. But that doesn't mean Suskind's allegation about a forged letter, which depends on the word of two former CIA agents (Rob Richer and John Maguire), is necessarily credible. Do we have any independent means to assess its likelihood?
The best we can do is to examine known patterns to see if they tend to fit with the forgery allegation. Here are several.
Is there other evidence of the WH endorsing public deception to make a case for war? Check. In a Jan. 31, 2003 WH meeting Bush proposed to Tony Blair that, absent any actual justification for war, the US should paint one of our spy planes in UN colors and provoke Iraq to shoot it down. Enough said.
Suskind's sources allege that the author of the forged letter, the director of Iraqi intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, had earlier entered into secret talks with the British before the invasion. He sent word to Bush that Hussein had no active chemical, biological, or nuclear programs – but Bush rejected the information and said he didn't wish to learn any more of what Habbush had to reveal. Is there other evidence of Bush shutting down lines of communication with Iraqi officials who were conveying unwelcome information? Check. In Sept. 2002 the CIA convinced Iraq's foreign minister, Naji Sabri, to feed information secretly to the US about Iraq's WMD capabilities. The WH was ecstatic at first. But Sabri said Hussein had none. The WH stopped listening.
Does the CIA have a history of forging documents? Check.
Were there any grounds to think the letter, published in Dec. 2003 by Con Coughlin, is a forgery? Obviously, the letter had classic hallmarks of a forgery. Forged documents typically relate to important people or events, and generally tell us something highly remarkable that goes well beyond what we already knew. Often it intersects with controversies, typically purporting to settle them. Often it appears precisely when controversies are intense. It's provenance often is mysterious, though a figure with authority may vouch for it. It spells things out more than authentic documents tend to do. With forged documents, the identity, interests, or attitudes of their creators often can be perceived from the contents with striking clarity because the forgery rarely leaves room for (authentic) ambiguity. When a document pops up that meets any of those criteria, there's a good probability that it's a forgery.
In this case, the letter meets all the criteria. It posits incredibly enough that Hussein oversaw a visit to Iraq by Mohammed Atta just two months before Sept. 11, 2001. In fact, the letter outdoes itself. It presents not just one dramatic revelation, but two (the second describes the import to Iraq of uranium yellow-cake from Niger). It's provenance was shrouded in mystery.
Although Iraqi officials refused to disclose how and where they had obtained the document, Dr Ayad Allawi, a member of Iraq's ruling seven-man Presidential Committee, said the document was genuine.
Everything about the letter tends in the direction of exculpating the Bush administration over its baseless (and by the summer of 2003, badly discredited) allegations against Saddam Hussein. In other words, there's virtually no chance that the letter is not a forgery.
One further pattern: the conduit for publication. How could any reporter with a shred of sense, when leaked this obviously forged document, treat it as genuine?
The arch-conservative Telegraph's Con Coughlin has frequently and accurately been described by blogger and British ex-pat Cernig as a reliable neocon shill. Over the years Coughlin has dutifully passed on so much official and semi-official disinformation about the Middle East on behalf of the Bush and Blair governments, that he's become a parody of a journalist. Without any doubt, he is the first reporter I would have leaked this forgery to if I were doing this job for the CIA. The fact that Coughlin is involved strengthens the case that the letter was forged by somebody connected to the neocon war faction in either the US or UK governments.
So, there are plenty of patterns that support Suskind's allegation. I'd like to know what the evidence is against it – if any. Because the forging of a document by the CIA to influence public perception in the US of the decision to invade Iraq would constitute an act of domestic propaganda.
