The Longest War (72 page)

141
“so much of this crap”
: Author interview with Vincent Cannistraro, Washington, D.C., 2004.

141
tens of millions of dollars
: This was first reported by Jonathan Landay and Tish Wells of Knight Ridder Newspapers. According to Thomas E. Ricks,
Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in
Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), p. 57, total US Government payments to the INC from 2001 to 2003 were $36 million.

142
more than a hundred stories
: James Risen, “Data from Iraqi exiles under scrutiny,”
New York Times
, February 12, 2004.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?
res=9804E7D8133AF931A25751C0A9629C8B63
.

142
before flying to the United States
: 9/11 Commission Report op. cit., p. 228.

142
“still working to confirm or deny”
: United States. Central Intelligence Agency. George J. Tenet, Testimony Before the Joint Inquiry into Terrorist Attacks Against the United States, Washington, D.C., June 18, 2002.
https://www.cia.gov/news-information/speeches-testimony
/2002/dci_testimony_06182002.html
.

142
as many as four times
: Woodward 2004 op. cit., p. 292.

142
“every kitchen sink”
: Richard Armitage, PBS
Frontline
, “Bush’s War,” December 18, 2007.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/
frontline/bushswar/interviews/armitage.html

142
“we are increasingly skeptical”
: Senate Intelligence Committee September 8, 2006, op. cit., p. 110.

143
“all sorts of garbage”
: John McLaughlin, interview by author, Washington, D.C., December 7, 2009.

143
“unfortunately the substance didn’t hold up”
: Tenet op. cit., p. 375.

144
told investigators
: From the German indictment of Shadi Abdalla (alias Emad Abdelhadie), May 14, 2003. There are also excerpts from his interviews with German authorities that occurred between April 2002 (when he was arrested) and May 2003.

144
founded a training camp
: Hutaifa Azzam, interview by author, Amman, Jordan, September 13, 2005.

144
“Someone could legitimately say”
: Donald Rumsfeld, Defense Department Briefing, Arlington, VA, June 17, 2004.

144
blistering critique of Saddam
: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, June 23, 2004. SITE Institute, Washington, D.C.
www.siteintelgroup.org/terrorismlibrary/
communique/communique_1103219979.pdf
.

144
“the best evidence”
: Nic Robertson, “Bush stands by al-Qaeda, Saddam link,” CNN.com, June 15, 2004,
http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/meast/
06/15/bush.alqaeda/index.html
.

144
“the regime did not a have a relationship”
: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, September 8, 2006, op. cit., p. 92. I wrote a piece before the Iraq War explaining why such a relationship made no sense. I found it hard to get it published in an American newspaper, but it was published in
The Guardian
on January 30, 2003.

144
hardly meant that he had control
: In January 2004 Powell distanced himself from his U.N. presentation saying of al-Qaeda’s supposed ties to Iraq, “I have not seen smoking-gun, concrete evidence about the connection, but I think the possibility
of such connections did exist and it was prudent to consider them at the time that we did.”

145
“I will be more than happy”
: Charles Faddis, interview by author, Washington, D.C. January 20, 2010.

145
“wholly unimpressive place”
: C. J. Chivers, “Islamists in Iraq offer a tour of ‘poison factory’ cited by Powell,”
New York Times
, February 9, 2003.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?
res=9D04E3D6133BF93AA35751C0A9659C8B63
.

145
“derail the plans”
: Faddis interview.

145
Two days after
: “Preparations for possible attacks gear up,” CNN.com, February 8, 2003; Tom Ridge, Department of Homeland Security, Press Release, February 7, 2003,
http://www.dhs.gov/xnews/speeches/speech_0088.shtm
; David Johnston, “Ridge says warning levels might be lowered in days,”
New York Times
, February 17, 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/17/world/threats-
responses-intelligence-ridge-says-warning-
levels-might-be-lowered-days.html
.

146
detailed advice
: Philip Shenon, “Administration gives advice on how to prepare for a terrorist attack,”
New York Times
, February 10, 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/11/
U.S./threats-responses-precautions-administration-
gives-ad vice-prepare-for-terrorist.html
.

146
surge in sales of plastic
: Jeanne Meserve, “Duct tape sales rise amid terror fears,” CNN.com, February 11, 2003.
http://www.cnn.com/2003/U.S./02/11/
emergency. supplies/
.

146
“provided training in poisons and gases”
: United States. Senate. Senate Armed Services Committee, 108th Congress. Washington, D.C., February 12, 2003.

146
“advise al-Libi of his rights”
: Jack Cloonan, interview by author, New York, December 17, 2009.

147
about Richard Reid
: Cloonan interview op. cit.

147
Albert burst into
: This episode was first described in Jane Mayer’s important book,
The Dark Side
, pp. 104–106, and also in Cloonan interview.

147
the CIA then rendered Libi
: Tenet op. cit., pp. 353–354, p. 269.

147
“canisters containing nuclear materials into New York”
: Tenet op. cit., p. 269.

147
“Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members”
: George W. Bush, October 7, 2002, Cincinnati, OH.
http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/
2005/adminstmts.CBW.110605.pdf

147
Libi recanted
: Michael Isikoff and David Corn,
Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War
(New York: Three Rivers Press, 2007), pp. 120–121 and 9/11 Commission Report op. cit., p. 470 fn. 76.

147
“fabricated” his tale
: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, September 8, 2006, op. cit., p. 72.

147
“lacks specific details”
: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, September 8, 2006, op. cit., p. 66.

148
“geographic base”
: Vice President Dick Cheney,
Meet the Press with Tim Russert
, MSNBC, September 14, 2003.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3080244/
.

148
multiple times
: 9/11 Commission Report op. cit., pp. 228–229.

148
“We have never”
: Dick Cheney, interview with Gloria Borger, CNBC News, June 17, 2004.

149
“Hijackers Timeline”
: United States. Federal Bureau of Investigation. “Hijackers Timeline.” February 1, 2007, pp. 132–133.

149
denied ever meeting him
: James Risen, “Iraqi agent denies he met 9/11 hijacker in Prague before attacks on the U.S.,”
New York Times
, December 13, 2003.
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/12/13/international
/europe/13INQU.html
.

149
“there was a relationship”
: “Bush insists Iraq, al-Qaeda had ‘relationship’,” CNN.com, June 17, 2004.
http://www.cnn.com/2004/
ALLPOLITICS/06/17/Bush.alqaeda/
.

150
home-baked cookies
: Alina Cho, CNN American Morning, January 28, 2008.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/
0801/28/ltm.01.html
; George Piro, CBS News,
60 Minutes
, January 27, 2008.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/01/24/60minutes
/main3749494.shtml
.

150
elicited the real story
: Piro op. cit. and author discussions with George Piro in 2008. “Saddam Hussein talks to the FBI,” National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 279, July 1, 2009. George Washington University.
http://www.gwu.edu/~
nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB279/index.htm
.

150
“No weapons over there”
: “Bush’s WMD joke draws criticism,” AP, March 26, 2004.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4608166/
.

150
“We were all wrong”
: United States. Senate. Armed Services Committee. “Hearing on the subject of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs,” Washington, D.C., January 28, 2004.

150
“We haven’t really had”
: Dick Cheney interview with M.E. Sprengelmeyer,
Rocky Mountain News
, January 9, 2004.

151
34 million pages of documents
: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, September 8, 2006, op. cit.

151
no “smoking gun”
: Institute for Defense Analyses, “Iraqi Perspectives Project: Saddam and Terrorism: Emerging Insights from Captured Iraqi Documents,” September 2007. http://abcnews.go.com/images/Politics/Saddam%20and
%Terrorism%20Redaction%20EXSUM%20Extract.pdf.

151
Gulbuddin Hekmatyar
: Hekmatyar had a longtime talent for extracting money from a variety of patrons. By a conservative estimate he received 600 million dollars of U.S. aid via the Pakistani intelligence service, ISI, during the 1980s war against the Soviets.

151
discover a memo
: This was a detailed note by the
Mukhabarat
. Document dated August 18, 2002, Operation Iraqi Freedom, documents collected at U.S. Army Foreign Military Studies Office, document number iISGZ02004-019920.

151
no “cooperative relationship”
: United States. Senate. Select Committee on Intelligence. Report on whether public statements regarding Iraq by U.S. government officials were substantiated by intelligence information together with additional and minority views. Report 110–345. 110th Congress, 2nd session. June 2008.
http://intelligence.
senate.gov/pdfs/110345.pdf
, p. 72.

152
broadcast the speeches
: Senate Select Committee on Intelligence September 8, 2006 op. cit., p. 72.
http://intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf
.

153
“There is always an easy”
: Henry Louis Mencken: quoted in Bartleby’s,
Respectfully Quoted: A Dictionary of Quotations
(Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1989).

153
“I will not wait”
: George W. Bush, Washington, D.C., January 29, 2002.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/
releases/2002/01/20020129-11.html
.

154
“If we wait for threats”
: George W. Bush, Address at West Point, NY, June 1, 2002.
http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives
.gov/news/releases/2002/06/20020601-3. html
.

154
A few weeks later
: Tenet op. cit., p. 309; Bumiller op. cit., p. 185; and Richard Haass,
War of Necessity, War of Choice
(New York: Simon & Schuster, 2009), p. 213.

154
“He doesn’t get it”
: Rand Beers interview with author, December 24, 2009, Washington, D.C.

155
“What we did after 9/11”
: Douglas Feith on
60 Minutes
, CBS News, April 6, 2008.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/03/60
minutes/main3992653.shtml
.

155
tendered his resignation
: Two months after the invasion of Iraq, Beers would start working for Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry as his foreign policy advisor, his first foray into politics after more than three decades of government service.

155
Bush issued the order
: George W. Bush, quoted in Patrick E. Tyler, “U.S. and British troops push into Iraq as missiles strike Baghdad compound,”
New York Times
, March 21, 2003.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?
res=9D06E6DC1E31F932A15750C0A9659C8B63
.

155
privatizing state industries
: Steven R. Weisman, “Kurdish region in Iraq will get to keep special status,”
New York Times
, January 5, 2004; James Dobbins, Seth Jones, Benjamin Runkle, Siddarth Mohandas,
Occupying Iraq: A History of the Coalition Provisional Authority
(RAND: Santa Monica, 2009), p. 217; introducing a flat tax: Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, “Flat tax system imposed on Iraq,”
Washington Post
, November 1, 2003. On this point generally see Rajiv Chandrasekaran,
Imperial Life in the Emerald City: Life Inside Iraq’s Green Zone
(New York: Knopf, 2006).

156
mandated the removal
: CPA orders 1 and 2 from Ali Allawi,
The Occupation of Iraq: Winning the War, Losing the Peace
(New York: Yale University Press, 2007), pp. 150–157; Ricks op. cit., pp. 159–162. Ricks gives a higher number than Allawi’s 400,000, positing 385,000 members of the armed forces and 285,000 in the Interior Ministry and 50,000 in the presidential security units (p. 162).

156
“flipped the social”
: Donald P. Wright and COL Timothy R. Reese,
On Point II: Transition to the New Campaign: The United States Army in Operation IRAQI FREEDOM, May 2003–January 2005
(CSI Press: Washington, D.C., 2008), p. 92.

156
did not secure the massive weapons caches
: Raymond Bonner, “Iraqi arms caches cited in attacks,”
New York Times
, October 14, 2003; and Ricardo S. Sanchez and Donald T. Phillips,
Wiser in Battle: A Soldier’s Story
(New York: Harper Collins, 2008), p. 173.

156
“open-air bazaars”
: Sanchez and Phillips op. cit., pp. 173–174.

156
“imbalance was staggering”
: James Dobbins, et al,
Occupying Iraq
(RAND: Santa Monica, CA, 2009), p. 99.

157
“the searching of homes”
: Allawi op. cit., p. 186.

157
“more philosophical than practical”
: Sanchez op. cit., p. 238.

157
the CPA’s hostility
: Tenet op. cit., pp. 441–442.