Peter Eisner and Knut Royce
- : Peter Eisner is an editor at the Washington Post and has been a reporter, editor, and foreign correspondent at Newsday and the Associated Press. He is also the author of The Freedom Line, a winner of the 2004 Christopher Award. He lives in Bethesda, Maryland.
Knut Royce was a major contributor to three Pulitzer Prizewinning stories in three different decades and served at the Center for Public Integrity as a Senior Fellow. He has won numer-ous journalism awards and was named by the Washingtonian as one of the two best investigative print reporters in the nation's capital. He lives in Fairfax, Virginia.
Intelligence and Pressure Politics
Can any modern, professionally staffed, high tech intelligence service plying its trade for a Western democracy ever insulate itself from the biases of its sponsoring government? The answer is probably no. CIA analysts told Senate investigators that they didn't...more »
Posted on June 15, 2007 5:43 AM
Our Sources, On The Record
Today we'll let our sources do the talking. We brought four of them together at a forum last month at the University of the District of Columbia. The collective knowledge was deep—the participants were former CIA analysts Mel Goodman...more »
Posted on June 14, 2007 5:13 AM
Condi: Casting Assertions
Researching and writing our book, The Italian Letter, we made a little mistake. We assumed that President Bush’s top national security aides would know how to read intelligence. Especially those who’ve been around a while, like that very bright woman...more »
Posted on June 12, 2007 7:52 PM
The Bush administration should have known
To this hour, the Bush administration contends that the decision to invade Iraq was based on the "best available intelligence" at the time. The lesson learned is that without checks and balances—and subpoenas— policymakers can get away with almost anything....more »
Posted on June 12, 2007 7:34 AM
Forget the Truth
The Bush White House was never really preoccupied with the question of whether or not Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. It wasn’t until “late 2002,” virtually on the eve of the U.S. invasion, that the administration ordered the...more »
Posted on June 11, 2007 4:45 AM
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Mrs. Panstreppon:
Thank you for your kind words. Don't get them too often nowadays. And what a wonderful memory you have.
Cheers, Knut
Posted at June 15, 2007 7:24 AM in response to Intelligence and Pressure Politics
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We don't have a copy of the CIA's 'verbatim text.' We do
have a copy of the forged document SISMI used to produce the 'verbatim text,' a report titled Annex 1. As we mentioned, the alleged signatory is Niger's current ambassador to Washington. The forged Annex 1 was dated February 2002, when she was secretary general of Niger's foreign ministry.
She 'signed' other documents in the packet of forgeries, and told us that the signature in those documents were hers and the letterheads were legitimate, but that the content had been replaced. In one instance she recalled what she actually had written--an approval for one of her diplomats in Rome to take a vacation. The forged text of that letter was a notification that the uranium (allegedly bound for Iraq) had been delivered to a shipping company for overland delivery to the port of Cotonou."Posted at June 13, 2007 6:50 PM in response to The Bush administration should have known
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Burford
"Good point. We should have worded it better. He does take
shots at several administration officials, but is relatively uncritical of
the key players in the Iraq intelligence disaster--himself, his cohorts in
the intelligence community and, most important, Bush."Posted at June 13, 2007 7:06 AM in response to Condi: Casting Assertions
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Jeff L:
Our source who told us Houdek's memo was delivered in April 2003 is a career CIA analyst who at the time served in anadministrative capacity at the agency. Sorry I can't be more specific, but I have to follow the ground rules established at the time. The source had reviewed the Post story of April 9, 2006, knew Houdek personally andaccessed the paper trail on the matter. Here are the relevant parts of the April 14, 2006, interview: "That (Houdek) memo, it arrived in early April (2003). We were not prescient. It came after the IAEA already come out and said what it said (that the Niger claim was based on forgeries). It was from the NIO for Africa. But it wasn't completed till early April. The requesthad come in from DoD to look into (the Niger claim) in early March and the publication was in early April. Houdek's a great guy, a straight shooter, and in a very clear, blunt manner he said, 'This looks like crap.'"
The official described the Post's sources as"revisionists, who act like, 'oh, yea, we always thought there was something wrong with this (Niger intelligence).'" I don't know if our source knew who the Post's sources were or whether he was speculating on their motive.
-- Knut Royce
Posted at June 12, 2007 9:58 AM in response to Forget the Truth
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jconorflynn:
Our responsibility as journalists is not to advocate criminial
prosecution. It is to shed light where the flashlight has been dim. And since Foley has been all but invisible in virtually all accounts of what led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, we think it was important to focus on his role, a significant one, if only to make the history of the disaster a bit more complete. And compelling key players to testify under oath can provide voters, if not politicians, with valuable lessons learned. One can hope.Posted at June 11, 2007 5:41 PM in response to Forget the Truth
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jconorflynn:
Our responsibility as journalists is not to advocate criminial
prosecution. It is to shed light where the flashlight has been dim. And since Foley has been all but invisible in virtually all accounts of what led to the invasion and occupation of Iraq, we think it was important to focus on his role, a significant one, if only to make the history of the disaster a bit more complete. And compelling key players to testify under oath can provide voters, if not politicians, with valuable lessons learned. One can hope.Posted at June 11, 2007 5:38 PM in response to Forget the Truth
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Jeff L:
We were aware of the Washington Post account whem we wrote
the passage on p. 216 and double-checked with a senior intelligence official whether Houdek's memo was indeed post-invasion. He said the Post had been wrong and that the memo was drafted and circulated in April 2003.Posted at June 11, 2007 5:36 PM in response to Forget the Truth
