1 Boring Old Man

It’s ACLU FOIA document dump time again – this time from the C.I.A. I ran across this letter in one of the pdf’s dated May 24, 2007 written to President Bush by Congressmen Edward Markey [D-MA], William Delahunt [D-MA], and Jerrold Nadler [D-NY] inquiring about the President’s claims in the lead-up to the Iraq War. It stirred up those old wounds. The letter is clear and straightforward. The Congressmen document the now public history of the interrogation of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a Libyan, who was the first "high value detainee" captured after 9/11 in November 2001.

They go on to ask the President the obvious – seven specific questions about this story. Here’s the only document in the dump in response [3 weeks later]. I don’t know if they got any other responses:

The salient point is that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi is the only detainee to say that Iraq trained al Qaeda operatives, the only source of any kind to link Saddam Hussein to al Qaeda. The circumstances of that revelation were suspect from the start. After his capture, he was interrogated by the F.B.I. at Bagram AFB in Afghanistan. Then the CIA approached George W. Bush for permission to take al-Libi into their own custody and rendition him to a foreign country for more "tough guy" questioning, and were granted permission. He was moved to the USS Bataan then turned over to the Egyptians. It was in Egypt  under the threat of torture that he said that Iraq had trained several al Qaeda operatives to use chemical-biological weapons.

^{This is the first report from Ibn al-Shaykh in which he claims Iraq assisted al-Qaida’s CBRN efforts. However, he lacks specific details on the Iraqi’s [sic] involved, the CBRN materials associated with the assistance, and the location where training occurred. It is possible he does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for several weeks and may describing [sic] scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest.}

I know that anyone reading this already knows about this – maybe not the details – but the gist of it. We took the intelligence garnered by the Germans from "Curveball" that even they didn’t believe. We added somebody’s fantasy that the Aluminum Tubes were for uranium centrifuges [Italy never got around to telling us what they were for]. The Niger forgeries were presented to us by their author Rocco Martino and for unknown reasons, the Italian Secret Service went along with the ruse. Both the Germans and the French knew that the documents were forged. So it came down to what the Egyptians reported that Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi had said, something he recanted when he was interrogated by our C.I.A.

Second hand innuendo was presented to the American Congress and people as fact – without the reservations that, in every case, invalidated it. The Bush Administration knew what they were doing the whole time. Whether their motives were pure [some genuine belief that Regime Change in Iraq was necessary] or otherwise [oil] is immaterial. They knew they were sending us to war on next to no evidence, and spent the rest of their tenure in full cover-up mode when nothing was found. It is likely that al-Libi was hidden from view overseas to prevent him from telling his full story. I expect he was sent to Libya to keep him out of GITMO where he might have seen the light of day. And I think he was murdered because his whereabouts made the Press.