1 Boring Old Man

Whispers of a Watergate for Bush
Published: August 11 2008 03:00 | Financial Times  –  London

The response in the US to startling new allegations that the White House directed the forgery of evidence to support its case for the war in Iraq has been surprisingly muted so far. The charges may be false, of course, but if they are seriously examined and turn out to be true, this is – or ought to be – a Watergate-sized scandal.

Ron Suskind is a heavyweight: a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, and the author of a well-regarded book on the administration’s security policies, The One Per Cent Doctrine . His new book, The Way of the World: A Story of Truth and Hope in an Age of Extremism , which was published last week, contains the extraordinary new charge. It says that late in 2003 the White House ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to forge a memo dated July 2001 from Tahir Jalil Habbush, Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chief, to Saddam himself, affirming that Mohammed Atta, the September 11 2001 bomber, had contacts with the regime and that Iraq had an ongoing weapons of mass destruction programme.

This document has long been known about. It was splashed in the British press in December 2003, when The Sunday Telegraph reported on it. That story briefly entertained the possibility that the memo was phoney but insisted it was well vouched for by Iraqi sources. Reports in the US subsequently cast further doubt on it and the memo came to be seen as a fake. But up to now there has been no supported allegation from a reputable author that the White House and the CIA were behind it. That is what Mr Suskind alleges.

He says he has two senior CIA agents on tape confirming the story. They are now denying it. George Tenet, then head of the CIA, has denied the story as well: "There was no such order from the White House to me nor, to the best of my knowledge, was anyone from the CIA ever involved in any such effort." The White House has denied it too, in effect: "The idea that the White House had anything to do with a forged letter purportedly from Habbush to Saddam is absurd." But parts of the White House statement seemed, to me at any rate, a little hesitant and evasive.

In an interview, Condoleezza Rice, secretary of state, twice seemed to correct herself, saying that the White House could not have been involved after first referring to "the government" or "the United States". And it was perhaps less than reassuring to hear her say this: "Look, the United States … the White House was not going to ask somebody to forge a letter on something of this importance." On matters of less importance, it seems, greater vigilance might be warranted.

If Mr Suskind is correct, laws have been broken and President George W. Bush and/or Dick Cheney, his deputy, are implicated. And yet, as I say, the outcry is not exactly deafening. Mr Suskind did his tour of the television studios, repeating and even sharpening his attacks on the administration – and, so far, that is about it.

Washington goes to sleep in August. Congress is out of town. Time is running down on this administration, and the focus of political attention is on Barack Obama and John McCain. Most Americans divide into two camps: those who believe that the Bush White House cannot speak without lying, and who thus regard this new charge as no surprise; and those who are contemptuous of the administration’s critics and stopped listening way back. Yes, but still: an order not merely to spin evidence, or suppress evidence, but to manufacture it tout court ?

To those who see this administration as misguided and incompetent, but who retain a residue of belief in its integrity and good faith, this charge is grave and shocking. Despite the distractions of the presidential campaigns and the pressures of being on vacation, Congress ought to look into it urgently, with witnesses on oath…