Pentagon leaks connected to battle over Iran policy (this is big!)

[Hornito]

<snip>
posted on Thu, Sep. 02, 2004

Alleged Pentagon leaks may be connected to battle over Iran policy

BY WARREN P. STROBEL

Knight Ridder Newspapers

WASHINGTON - (KRT) - Pentagon civilians in the office in which analyst Larry A. Franklin worked lobbied for a hawkish policy toward Iran and tried to have those views inserted into a highly classified presidential document that's a focus of an FBI espionage investigation, current and former U.S. officials said.
<snip>

Policy-makers in the office of Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith argued that the United States should explore ways to overthrow the Iranian regime and should contemplate military strikes on Tehran's nuclear program if it came close to producing a nuclear weapon, the officials said. They spoke on condition of anonymity because the matter is under investigation.<snip>

Officials at the State Department, the CIA and other U.S. government agencies long have suspected that the Pentagon has pursued its own Middle East policy, aimed at overthrowing hostile regimes.<snip>

Much More (A MUST READ!!) http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/politics/9566768.htm?1c

[Hornito]

1. This article alludes that the Pentagon has been acting

on its own, and in a reckless and arbitrary fashion. It's scary as hell to think our military are out of control. The Pentagon, allied with the neocons, have been acting in a renegade manner, lying the country to war, and making plans for more.

[democraticinsurgent]

3. are they REALLY acting on their own?

...or is Darth Cheney directing this one too?

[Hornito]

4. I think Cheney's in on it, for sure. But Junior? Nah. He does what

he's told.

[Just Me]

18. There's been plenty of info about this coup,...for some time.

Wish I had all the links of "facts" handy. Search "Office of Special Plans" and Sibel Edmonds,...that should get you started on the trip to knowledge.

[lovuian]

2. Not Only are they acting alone but trying to do a Regime Change

which means putting their own men in place

I think Chalabi has open a can of worms and exposed these guys and I think Israel now knows what they are up to and if you wanted America to attack Iran you would want to do everything possible to screw up the plan to take over the regime....

This is really interesting article thanks

[mmonk]

5. Can't find the article

has it been moved?

[Hornito]

7. No, the link works fine for me. It's still there.

n/t

[TacticalPeek]

10. Here's a link that does not require registration.

http://www.sunherald.com/mld/sunherald/news/politics/9566768.htm

:)

[wolfgirl]

6. I think this is scary...

in that Ashcroft has put a big hold up on the FBI seeking warrants, etc.

I think there is something much bigger & worse here than we know.

[Hornito]

9. I think so too. Like a link to 9/11 maybe?

The FBI said, "the whole ball of wax". Well, what is the "whole ball of wax"?. I wonder if we'll ever know. The neocons are going to fight this tooth and nail, not to mention Cheney.

[Dover]

17. They will have to either implicate Ashcroft or some other means that would

require him to recuse himself. Got to get Ashcroft out of the way.

[DulceDecorum]

8. The whole ball of wax

FBI agents have briefed top White House, Pentagon and State Department officials on the probe in recent days. Based on those briefings, officials said, the bureau appears to be looking into other controversies that have roiled the Bush administration, some of which also touch Feith's office.

They include how the Iraqi National Congress, a former exile group backed by the Pentagon, allegedly received highly classified U.S. intelligence on Iran; the leaking of the name of CIA officer Valerie Plame to reporters; and the production of bogus documents suggesting that Iraq tried to buy uranium for nuclear weapons from the African country of Niger. Bush repeated the Niger claim in making the case for war against Iraq.

"The whole ball of wax" was how one U.S. official privy to the briefings described the inquiry.
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/politics/9566768.htm

Luke 12:3
What you have said in the dark will be heard in the daylight,
and what you have whispered in the ear in the inner rooms
will be proclaimed from the roofs.

Next stop: Cheney's energy meetings.

[Hornito]

11. You and I are on the same track here.....

n/t

[Rose Siding]

21. Yes yes yes

That's all of it. It's validates the connections that have been batted around here for some time. I'm choked up with relief.

[Dover]

12. Here's another LINK that doesn't require registration

http://www.realcities.com/mld/krwashington/news/columnists/warren_p_strobel/9566773.htm

[finecraft]

13. Remember last year when Rumsfeld started purging the Generals?

http://www.military.com/NewContent/0,13190,Galloway_091003,00.html

"Of the nine Army four-star generals on duty at the end of last year, six are either gone or will be going soon - along with half the 30 three-star generals, these officials said. Some of the retirements are normal, they said, but others are "short-notice retirements" demanded by higher headquarters.

"This is unusual behavior, cashiering a four-star general when it is not based on his performance record," one retired general said. "When you start jacking the process around to produce more show horses, when you start doing character assassination on our own people, things are getting way too political."

I always thought something was fishy about that.

[david_vincent]

14. Speaking of fishy, does anyone here remember

several months ago, there was a thread here at DU about a body that was found on the ground at the Pentagon... the man apparently having either jumped, or been pushed, to his death. Can anyone recall that? It sure didn't get much publicity, but I'm really beginning to wonder whether that death was tied to all of this.

[Zan_of_Texas]

15. You mean the man found outside the State Department?

Entire article posted in accordance with the copyright, below.

MYSTERY SURROUNDS DEATH OF STATE DEPT. OFFICIAL

by Wayne Madsen

(special to From The Wilderness)
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/cgi-bin/MasterPFP.cgi?doc=http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/112003_kokal.html

© Copyright 2003, From The Wilderness Publications, www.copvcia.com. All Rights Reserved. May be reprinted, distributed or posted on an Internet web site for non-profit purposes only.

November 20, 2003 (FTW), WASHINGTON -- In a case eerily reminiscent of the death of British Ministry of Defense bio-weapons expert, Dr. David Kelly, an official of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research Near East and South Asian division (INR/NESA), John J. Kokal, 58, was found dead in the late afternoon of November 7. Police indicated he may have jumped from the roof of the State Department. Kokal's body was found at the bottom of a 20 foot window well, 8 floors below the roof of the State Department headquarters near the 23rd and D Street location. Kokal's death was briefly mentioned in a FOX News website story on November 8 but has been virtually overlooked by the major media.

Interestingly, the FOX report states that State Department officials confirmed Kokal's death to The Washington Post yet the Post - according to an archive search - has published nothing at all about Kokal's death. A subsequent search revealed that the Post had made a short three-paragraph entry the death in the Metro section on November 7, 2003. However, the Post entry stated that Kokal did not work in intelligence and the story does not show up in the archives.
Kokal's INR bureau was at the forefront of confronting claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction. Washington police have not ruled out homicide as the cause of his death. Kokal was not wearing either a jacket or shoes when his body was found. He lived in Arlington, Virginia.

However, a colleague of Kokal's told this writer that the Iraq analyst was despondent over "problems" with his security clearance. Kokal reportedly climbed out of a window and threw himself out in such a manner so that he would "land on his head." At the time Kokal fell from either the roof or a window, his wife Pamela, a public affairs specialist in the Bureau of Western Hemisphere Affairs, was waiting for him in the parking garage. Mrs. Kokal had previously worked in Consular Affairs where she was involved in the stricter vetting of visa applicants from mainly Muslim countries after the Sept. 11 attacks.

State Department officials dispute official State Department communiqués that said Kokal was not an analyst at INR. People who know Kokal told the French publication Geopolitique that Kokal was involved in the analysis of intelligence about Iraq prior to and during the war against Saddam Hussein.

Another INR official, weapons expert Greg Thielmann, said he and INR were largely ignored by Under Secretary for Arms Control and International Security John Bolton and his deputy, David Wurmser, a pro-Likud neo-conservative who recently became Vice President Dick Cheney's Middle East adviser. Kokal's former boss, the recently retired chief of INR, Carl W. Ford, recently said that Bolton often exaggerated information to steer people in the wrong directions.
A former INR employee revealed that some one-third to one-half of INR officials are either former intelligence agents with the CIA or are detailed from the agency. He also revealed it would have been impossible for Kokal to have gained entry to the roof on his own. INR occupies both a Sensitive Compartmented Information Facility (SCIF) on the sixth floor that has no windows and a windowless structure on the roof that has neither windows nor access to the roof, according to the former official. The other windows at the State Department have been engineered to be shatter proof from terrorist bomb attacks and cannot be opened.

INR and other State Department officials report that a "chill" has set in at the State Department following Kokal's defenestration. A number of employees are afraid to talk about the suspicious death. It also unusual that The Northern Virginia Journal, a local Arlington newspaper, has not published an obituary notice on Kokal.
(Wayne Madsen, a frequent FTW contributor, is a former US Naval officer and intelligence analyst who is currently an author, freelance writer and commentator in Washington, D.C.)

[sam sarrha]

16. was that the one they called a suicide, from a roof that locked, and he

landed on his head.. from roof that had a high security control ...to which the jumper had not access..??

[Eloriel]

19. That's almost as good as the stories about prisoners

(U.S. jails) who were reported to have died at their own hand (suicide) with their hands tied behind their backs.

I hadn't heard of this guy, I don't think. Goes in my personal "Bush Body Count" files.

[mmonk]

20. What bothers me

isn't there anyone else in government besides the CIA who also took an oath to defend the constitution of the US and wants to remove the neocon gov't? Do we have ANY checks and balances left or do the neocons control everything? Are our hopes pinned on CIA success alone?

[Hornito]

22. Good question. It seems, with congress complicit, they've

managed to "control" all the checks and balances. All we can really hope for, is that honest and patriotic members of the CIA and FBI will step forward to stop this conspiracy.