Expect Resistance & Library Autonomous Zone

Senator Carl Levin Releases Report on Pre-War Intelligence

Levin’s report (in PDF) is a page turner. It “focuses on 1) the establishment of a non-Intelligence Community source of intelligence analysis in the office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and 2) the extent to which policy makers utilized that alternative source rather than the analyses produced by the Intelligence Community with regard to the issue of any relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda before the Iraq war.”

The report demonstrates how intelligence relating to the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship was exaggerated by high ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the Administration’s decision to invade Iraq when the intelligence assessments of the Intelligence Community did not make a sufficiently compelling case. The Intelligence Community’s analysis of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship as a relatively weak one was as definitive as reliable reporting would permit, and their conclusions were subsequently supported by the 9/11 Commission and the Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq.

Add to this report George Tenet’s speech last night before the Economic Club of Southwestern Michigan where he called the “war on Iraq “wrong”" as well as posts on LAZ over the past couple of days regarding the administration’s and republican Senators’ stonewalling on the release of key documents — CIA’s 2004 Iraq National Intelligence Estimate (”NIE) and Richard CLarke’s testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee — and we have a smoking gun, not in Iraq, but pointing directly at the president. It seems like the wheels on the administration’s little red wagon are falling off.

Archive Sues CIA for Speedy Review of Key Iraq Document

The National Security Archive today filed suit against the Central Intelligence Agency (”CIA”) seeking the expedited processing and release under the Freedom of Information Act (”FOIA”) of the 2004 Iraq National Intelligence Estimate (”NIE). As the New York Times reported on September 16, 2004, the NIE spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq. The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war.

Wired News: Downloading for Democracy

What a great idea. We can all be proactive about collecting government information.

Outragedmoderates.org, launched two weeks ago, has aggregated more than 600 government and court documents to make them available for download through the Kazaa, LimeWire and Soulseek P2P networks in the interest of making government more transparent and accountable.

[Originally posted by Kelda Vath on Govdoc-l]

Ashcroft Attempting to Silence Former FBI Translator

In a rare maneuver, Attorney General John Ashcroft has ordered that information about the Edmonds case be retroactively classified, even basic facts that have been posted on websites and discussed openly in meetings with members of Congress for two years. The Department of Justice also invoked the seldom-used “state secrets” privilege to silence Edmonds in court.

Memoryhole has the text of Leahy’s original 2002 letters.

Leahy’s 2004 letter to Ashcroft and Mueller:
Page 1
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Page 3

Here’s some more background in a March 31, 2004 article on worldnetdaily.

One thing’s for sure, there’s some serious cover-up going on. On an aside, with this post, a new category has been added called “fugitives”. We’ll attempt to keep track of those nasty fugitive government documents that don’t seem to flow into depository libraries as they should. Stay tuned!