Ex-Rice Aide: Memory Lapse on Iran "Really Quite Curious"

[cal04]

I just got off the phone with Flynt Leverett, a former CIA Mideast analyst and National Security Council staffer during President Bush's first term. Leverett says he finds it "really quite curious" that Secretary Rice is pleading a memory lapse on an Iranian offer shortly after the Iraq war to, among other things, recognize Israel.

Leverett himself says he "saw the actual document" detailing the offer, which arrived at the State Department's Near Eastern Affairs bureau via fax around late April or early May of 2003, when he had left the White House to return to his regular post as an analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.

Leverett wasn't around to personally show Rice the document. But, he says, "What I was told from colleagues over at the NSC, people I knew on the NSC staff -- I dont know for a fact that it was put on (Rice's) desk, but it did go to the NSC. And I know for a fact that at State, it went all the way up to (Secretary of State Colin) Powell."

When the fax arrived at the State Department in 2003, the senior director for the Middle East at the NSC was Elliott Abrams. An NSC spokeswoman told Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post, who broke the Iran-overture story last year, that Abrams has no recollection of the fax either.

What's more, Leverett says that he tried to include information on the fax in a New York Times op-ed he wrote in December of 2006 that was heavily redacted at the White House's behest. Even though the information had been reported before -- in Kessler's original Post story, for instance -- the White House held it back, claiming it was "classified."

http://www.tpmmuckraker.com/archives/002512.php

[tblue]

1. Why do Repugs all have such bad memories?

[bananarepublican]

13. They have sh*t for brains! n/t

[williesgirl]

2. K&R

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

3. yeah, they "forget" things that will interefere

with their plans later on. How awkward to note that Iran offered to recognize Israel. This won't sit well with the End Timers who have decided Iran is the Anti-Christ and that all we need to do is bomb it to bring about the Second Coming.

[bahrbearian]

4. Its time for Colin Powell to come out ,,Come on you can do it.

[speedoo]

5. Absolutely nothing curious about it at all.

Just recognize that Condi's lying, as usual.

[brentspeak]

6. Weren't we told, over and over again, how "smart" Rice, Cheney, Rumsfeld supposedly were?

[bonito]

7. Could it be

Rice dog ate it... hmmm? in that case it never happened.:sarcasm:

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. THEY'RE LIARS!

It's a disease of affluence. The more successful you are in America, the better liar you are.

[tanyev]

9. Curiouser and curiouser.

[Blackhatjack]

10. It's the Libby "lost memory' defense !!!!

[Toucano]

11. We simply forgot.

That's what Rice told Timmy Russert regarding how the "...recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa..." made it back into the SOTU after it was removed.

Between October and January, we simply forgot that our justification for the war had been discredited by our own CIA director.

How many degrees did you get, Dr. Rice? That's some AMAZING memory.

[cui bono]

12. link to good interview with Leverett from 12/24/2006:

http://ianmasters.org/ian_masters_122406_80.mp3


link to interview with Wilkerson the previous week (12/17/2006) regarding this topic where they discussed the things that were redacted out of Leverett's oped.:
http://ianmasters.org/ian_masters_121706_80.mp3
(Lynne Woolsey is up first, then Larry Wilkerson comes on)


Those are direct links to mp3 for high bandwidth.

Go here if you need to get the low bandwidth link, just scroll down to the appropriate dates.
http://ianmasters.org/archives2006.html

[BuyingThyme]

14. I don't think anybody could have predicted that they would try to use

paper as a means of communication.

[slipslidingaway]

15. Gareth Porter articles on the Iranian overture.

Iran, Israel And Nuclear Weapons

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/2006/05/26/iran_israel_and_nuclear_weapons.php
Friday, May 26, 2006 3:29 PM

snip>>

"I was just about to start a quick blog advising our readers to examine several recent pieces by Gareth Porter, a historian and journalist for the Inter Press Service, on the history of our diplomatic relations with Iran in the past five years. His articles are critical to understanding the current debacle, revealing the way Bush has continually rebuffed efforts to solve differences diplomatically.

Then he went and wrote a superb article for American Prospect that ties it all together in one neat package.

The story Porter tells is surprising and absolutely essential reading. I'll excerpt now only the broad outlines of the plot, but you really need to read the entire thing."


Burnt Offering

By Gareth Porter
Issue Date: 06.06.06

http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=11539

"How a 2003 secret overture from Tehran might have led to a deal on Iran’s nuclear capacity -- if the Bush administration hadn’t rebuffed it."


Iran Proposal to US Offered Peace With Israel
May 25, 2006

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=9040


February 23, 2006
How Neocons Sabotaged Iran's Help on al-Qaeda

by Gareth Porter

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=8590


Prior DU thread here

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=132&topic_id=3062866&mesg_id=3062866


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gareth_Porter

[slipslidingaway]

16. Letter from Senator Dodd to Rice today. I sent some of the

articles in my prior post to Dodd's office but since I am not in Connecticut not sure if the info will be received.


http://dodd.senate.gov/index.php?q=node/3737


snip>>

http://www.antiwar.com/orig/porter.php?articleid=9040

"The two-page proposal for a broad Iran-U.S. agreement covering all the issues separating the two countries, a copy of which was obtained by IPS, was conveyed to the United States in late April or early May 2003. Trita Parsi, a specialist on Iranian foreign policy at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies who provided the document to IPS, says he got it from an Iranian official earlier this year but is not at liberty to reveal the source.

The two-page document contradicts the official line of the George W. Bush administration that Iran is committed to the destruction of Israel and the sponsorship of terrorism in the region.

Parsi says the document is a summary of an even more detailed Iranian negotiating proposal, which he learned about in 2003 from the U.S. intermediary who carried it to the State Department on behalf of the Swiss embassy in late April or early May 2003. The intermediary has not yet agreed to be identified, according to Parsi.