Interview with Ron Suskind about the revelations in his latest book, “The Way of the World,” and the reactions to it.
Dave Davies is a journalist with the Philadelphia Daily News and a co-host of NPR’s “Fresh Air”
Dave Davies: Our guest’s new book, “The Way of the World: A Story of Hope in the Age of Extremism,” has sent shock waves through Washington with explosive allegations about the Bush administration’s conduct in planning and justifying the war in Iraq. One of the most controversial charges is that the White House ordered the CIA to fabricate a document linking Saddam Hussein with the 9/11 attacks. On Tuesday [8/5/08], the day the book came out, two of the intelligence officials Suskind cites as sources for the story disputed his account of their words and actions. We’ll ask Suskind about that a little later in our interview. Suskind is the former senior national affairs writer for the Wall Street Journal where he won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995. Among his earlier books are “The Price of Loyalty” and “The One Percent Doctrine.” …Ron Suskind, you’ve gotten a lot of attention for this remarkable story of the chief of Iraqi intelligence and what he revealed in the months before the US invaded Iraq. And you have several on-the-record sources from American and British intelligence confirming this. The story really begins in the fall of 2002 with what you call “a liberating admission we don’t know.” What didn’t we know?
Ron Suskind: At that point, Dave, there was a recognition in the operational part of intelligence services in Britain and America that there was a lot of assumption but not any hard evidence for war. And a couple of the intelligence chiefs get together, the guys who head the mideast missions for CIA and for MI-6, the British intelligence service. They kind of put their heads together. The British guy – Michael Shipster is his name, he’s quite a character – and he says, “Well, I know somebody. I have a relationship that might be helpful.” He had a kind of gentleman’s relationship with a guy named Tahir Jamil Habush, who’s the head of Iraqi intelligence. He’s their George Tenet. What they hatch is a plan. It’s supported by the US – it’s almost a joint effort. Our guy, Rob Richer of CIA, has a special relationship with the King of Jordan. He helped with the King of Jordan’s arrival in office and they’re buddies and so it’s set up in Amman, Jordan. That’s where they’ll meet. And a secret back channel is opened, in early January of 2003, between Michael Shipster representing the UK and America, essentially, and Habush.
Davies: Habush is then the sitting head of Iraqi intelligence.
Suskind: Sitting head of Iraqi intelligence.
Davies: So they begin these meetings in Amman. Does Saddam Hussein know they’re happening?
Suskind: That’s a debate that goes on and I show that in the book. Generally they’re not sure. Habush may have inferred he does know. But …it’s part of the debate that rages around Habush at top of the British government and certainly at the top of the US government. What’s clear early on is that Saddam Hussein would never authorize some of the things that Habush is saying to Shipster and essentially to the heads of both the US and British governments about Saddam. Not just that there’s no WMD – which he lays out and mind you he’s got a special position as the head of Iraqi intelligence. He actually oversees the biological program – which there isn’t one since the mid-‘90’s. Beyond that, though, after he lays out that part, he brings us into the mind of Saddam Hussein at this period. Everyone agrees that that is rich and, at that point, unmatchable intelligence.
Davies: So when this head of Iraqi intelligence sits down with a ranking British intelligence official prepared to relay this information to the US, he wants to make a deal. He wants to be taken care of in the event of an invasion and he gives them information about weapons of mass destruction. How does the subject come up? What does he tell them?
Suskind: Interestingly, he wonders if the US is serious about invading. He says Saddam Hussein really doesn’t buy it. He says, “Why would anyone want this country? It seems like you guys didn’t want it before. Islamic extremism, especially armed with destructive weapons, seems to be the big issue after 9/11. That’s not here! We don’t really have those kinds of extremists in Iraq. They’re up in Afghanistan and Pakistan and the tribal areas.” He can’t figure it out. Beyond that, he’s really fearful, Habush tells Shipster … who then tells the rest of us, that Saddam is really fearful of the Iranians and their nuclear program. He doesn’t want them to know that he’s a toothless tiger, that he doesn’t have WMD’s. That’s his real fear. All this is expressed at that point and is carried up the ranks on the British side and of course it’s carried up to the White House on the US side in January of 2003. That’s before the president’s State of the Union address with the famous 16 words and it’s a month before Colin Powell goes before the UN.
Davies: And let’s just be clear about this. You know that this is what Habush said and you know that it went to the White House. How [do you know]? From what sources?
Suskind: There are many sources on this. But there are two on-the-record sources of two people integrally involved… One of them is Rob Richer head of our [CIA] Mideast Division. He was Shipster’s partner, essentially, in setting the thing up. He’s a long-standing intelligence professional with a long history. And also John Maguire, who’s in the book. And he’s the head of all CIA operations in Iraq. He’s head of the Iraq Operations Group, so-called, and again a long-standing CIA professional. Those two men are on the record. They’re backed up by folks off the record. But on the record they’re quite clear about what we were learning and how we reacted to it – in the CIA and in the White House.
Davies: Did either of them personally President Bush, Vice-President Cheney, Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell?
Suskind: I don’t get into all of the who- briefed-whom. But the fact is, both men were regular briefers of the president, the vice-president, folks at the Department of Defense and NSC. They’re two real stars of the CIA.
Davies: When this information comes to the White House -- that the chief of Iraqi intelligence is telling them Saddam has no WMD’s but wants to make the Iranians think so – how do they react?
Suskind: Well, at the start, when it first starts coming through there’s great consternation. Some of these things are already assumed or areas of suspicion. The whole idea that everybody thought there were weapons and nobody knew – that’s shown in the book not to be true. There was a lot of suspicion that there was nothing there prior to this period and coming to 2002. What happens at that moment is that Bush essentially says, “Oh gosh! He says there are no WMD’s. Why doesn’t he give us something he can use for our case?” That’s his first reaction. The consternation inside the White House and inside the CIA is really quite fascinating to watch and to see unfold. On the one hand you’ve got this guy who is absolutely without peer in terms of providing a window, as John Maguire and other folks at CIA say, into Saddam Hussein. This is a rare opportunity. Because we can put disinformation through that window, we can manipulate Saddam. And even we might get Habush armed and with some people to take Saddam out! As Maguire says, the CIA chief, “We could walk to Baghdad instead of fight our way to Baghdad if we decide to go forward!” Meanwhile, on the other side, the fact that he’s saying there’s no WMD is creating great confusion and concern. Those two sides – really, the left hand and right hand of the US at this point – are in a way in conflict here, with competing agendas.
Davies: The two sides being the White House and – what? – the intelligence community?
Suskind: Being the intelligence operatives, who want to carry forward the intelligence mission – to use Habush, no matter what, to may help US troops if we go forward, to manipulate Saddam and maybe have him taken out; and the people who are quite sensitive in the White House especially about the fact that Habush is saying there are no WMD’s. There are two camps, if you will. That second camp – the “oh-my-god-he’s-trashed-our-case-for-war” camp – ultimately that half ends up triumphing. What occurs here, Dave, is that in February, after many meetings in January with phone calls between Shipster and Habush, Richard Dearlove, the head of British intelligence, flies to the US to hand the report directly to George Tenet. And he does his briefing. Dearlove is quote widely in the book as to the British reactions at this point. Tenet, head of the CIA, turns to Rob Richer, one of his deputies and head of the Mideast Division, and says, “Wow! They’re not going to like this downtown.” Of course “downtown” means the White House. And he’s right. He breaks it to the White House. Here it is, the definitive report. Condoleezza Rice says, “What the hell are we supposed to do with this, George?” She has no love for Tenet. And the president, vice-president, and everybody are briefed.
Davies: You mentioned this fellow, Richard Dearlove, who was a high-ranking British intelligence official …
Suskind: … He’s the head of British intelligence…
Davies: Now retired, right?
Suskind: Now retired. In 2004.
Davies: … whom you interviewed at his office in Cambridge, as I recall?
Suskind: That’s right. He’s the Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge.
Davies: So he personally goes to Washington. Is it his view, with that trip, that this guy Habush is serious and credible? We should believe what he’s telling us, that they don’t have WMD?
Suskind: It’s an intelligence mission. There’s never anything that’s absolutely ironclad and definitive in missions like this. What Dearlove believes, and what the British government believes, is that this is a very, very credible offering of unique intelligence that certainly should affect these issues of whether we go to war. He says in the book that this was kind of a last chance for us to exert the intelligence function, find out what’s known and knowable, and defuse the situation, as he put it. There were hopes on the British side. They aren’t anxious so much to go to war as we are. People talk about that.
Davies: And so, when it goes to the White House, what happens to the whole thing?
Suskind: Well, it’s briefed up. At that point, the channel to Habush is cut off. Folks in the CIA operations area, folks who are dealing with this run to war and how we’re going to own this country and maybe could we take Saddam out – they’re livid. Like, “No matter what the guy says about WMD, don’t cut the channel off! Just because he’s saying what you don’t want to hear!” Meaning “you, the White House.” But they do cut off the channel. Not that we lose touch with Habush. We’ve made a deal with Habush that when we invade – if and when – he will make it safely out of the country and into a safe house. And that’s where it stands in early February. We officially cut off the channel but Habush has his bargain to be carried out.
Davies: Now, we’re in the early stages of the release of your book and government officials are reacting harshly and strongly and denying this. And George Tenet has released a statement – I’m sure you’ve seen it! – and one of the things that he says is that this source you describe, this Iraqi guy Habush had really nothing to offer. And he also says that he failed to persuade his British interlocutors that there was anything new here. That seems to directly contradict what you heard on the record from Richard Dearlove, the chief of British intelligence.
Suskind: I would suggest that people simply read Dearlove’s comments and Nigel Inkster, Dearlove’s deputy. They’re on the record. They remembered vividly what was going on. Tenet has talked often to reporters – even folks in Congress -- that he doesn’t remember anything! He’s got a memory issue, obviously. And people just shrug. It’s convenient or something else. In any event, I think Tenet is with the White House because I think both of them are sitting in the same leaky rowboat on this one.
Davies: Okay. But the question did occur to me that if the British in fact found Habush, this chief of Iraqi intelligence, believable in telling that there really were no WMD’s, wouldn’t the British have urged caution? Might they have backed out of the coalition? Didn’t Tony Blair hear this?
Suskind: Well, he did hear it. And there was some talk of that, no doubt about it. And Rob Richer, our guy, head of our Mideast Division says, “You know what? It was a bit of a trap. We were asking Habush to prove that weapons he said don’t exist actually don’t exist!” Prove the negative kind of nightmare! “We kind of pushed him,” Rob says, “into that hole and we fell in behind him.” We weren’t very creative in figuring out ways they could prove things he was saying. And other people talk about that, too. Deep down there was a desire in the US to run away from this. This was the last thing we wanted to hear at this point. Now, having said that, part of the issue here is the nature of doubt. Clearly Habush arrives in 2003 and the whole case for WMD was at that point a very, very rickety structure about to fall. It was already teetering. Habush kind of kicks it over at that point. And the US government kind of says, “It’s not pertinent to us. We’re going forward.” Interesting that Richard Dearlove says something that’s quite incisive. He says that the information arrived about Habush to the US at a time “when it was too late for Cheney.” Cheney was so ferociously ardent about going to war no matter what. But Dearlove says quite firmly – and this is the view, I think, of the British – that it wasn’t too late for Bush! It’s really quite dramatic.
Davies: What does that tell you? That Bush didn’t get this in the same unvarnished way that Cheney did?
Suskind: Well, I think it says that maybe Dearlove’s opinion and the British opinion was that Bush didn’t stand up to Cheney in ways that the British feel would be befitting a president.
Davies: There’s one other little piece of this that I think we ought to explore a bit that relates to the case for war and whether there were weapons of mass destruction. This was an entirely different Iraqi official, the last foreign minister for Saddam Hussein, Naji Sabri. The contacts there were indirect, as I understand it. He met with US intelligence officials I guess through an intermediary. And what was the story that he told?
Suskind: He was the foreign minister and he sort danced around. He talked to an intermediary saying that he wants to tell us there’s no WMD. He’s more of a diplomat. He’s not an intelligence guy like Habush. But in any event, that filtered report did come through to the US in the fall of 2002. What we did is we reshaped it and kind of turned it on its head and it ends up being almost the opposite from what Sabri said, that there were no WMD’s. “We” meaning the US. By the time it gets to our best friends, the British, there’s essentially a 180-degree turn. Later, Michael Shipster himself, the British James Bond on this, meets with CIA officials in 2006 and he’s quite aggrieved. He’s about to leave the British service at that point and he said, “If you guys had not faked us out on Sabri and told it straight that Sabri was saying there were no WMD, by the time Habush arrived, it would have been absolutely definitive and impossible for us to go forward with those two guys together.” What’s interesting about that is that the US, of course, knew about both men and what they were really saying, as well as other parts that I lay out in the book …
Davies: … And just to be clear about this, discussing this Iraqi foreign minister. What you’re saying is that the US deliberately misrepresented the information we had, however credible. And instead of it being the message that Saddam Hussein doesn’t have WMD, it went over to the British as exactly the opposite, therefore limiting the context they had for viewing the later revelations.
Suskind: Precisely! And so when they see it all clearly by 2006, when the Sabri disclosure comes out – again, it’s only knee-high to the Habush story but still it’s a little thing that niggled and upset them – they said, “My goodness,” Shipster himself – “if we knew about Sabri at the time Habush arrived, it would have been essentially a no-question issue. We wouldn’t have been able to go to war!”
Davies: And just – maybe to belabor this point just a little bit – if you’re the Americans and you were in a situation where an Iraqi official was coming to you, offering something… Obviously we know now there were no weapons of mass destruction. But at the time there was doubt about it. Why wouldn’t they have suspected that this was simply disinformation from Saddam Hussein. Should they have known it was credible?
Suskind: It’s all laid out in the book, people debating that issue. Is it disinformation? Is it what they call D&D: "denial and deception”? Is he the real McCoy? It was a real hot potato going around the government. But I think what’s important here, in terms of context, is to know that this was intelligence. It’s a lot of guesswork and shades of gray and all the rest. And one of the things that’s fascinating, though, is had we continued to dig deep and maybe worked harder to prove that Habush was saying something that could be proven and verified … Imagine if the president in his State of the Union address in January 2003, instead of offering the 16 words about uranium from Niger and British intelligence and what-not said, “We have recently learned that there may not be any WMD in Iraq.” At that point we would have had a real discussion about whether or not to go to war, what are the good enough reasons, are they good enough reasons for both the US populace as well as some of the world community… That discussion was, in a way, the one that should have happened at this point and probably would have happened, I think, with most previous presidents. But it doesn’t happen here. And now, years later, we look at this situation as we return to Afghanistan, now boiling over, Pakistan’s tribal areas, bin Laden, Zawahiri still in force, a reconstituted Al Qaeda and people are saying, “Why weren’t we given the real choice of what the government officials actually knew about the case for war, about what was going through their heads so we, as the American public, could decide? Now there are 4000 dead, 19000 maimed, amputees, enormous blood and treasure spilled. And, crucially, America’s moral authority in the world profoundly compromised – now, five years later.”
Davies: So it’s after this Iraqi intelligence chief, Habush, has been resettled in Jordan – and after the invasion of Iraq has occurred and inspectors are not finding weapons of mass destruction that his name becomes associated with this very troubling story that emerges in your book of a fabricated document appearing to link Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Tell us about this document and where it came from
Suskind: This part of the story … there are a couple of folks who are on-the-record witnesses to this part. It’s interesting because during the summer they’re fearful that Habush will pop up on the screen. Then something John Maguire says as the CIA Iraq chief. Because of the case for war based on WMD has sort of unraveled in public and, of course, Habush is their worst nightmare in that way – he’d told us ahead of time – they pay him the $5 million. But then, as the summer progresses and we really don’t do anything to Habush, in the fall, in September, the White House figures out something that he might be useful for – some way to use him. That ends up being the “Habush letter” which people are very, very interested in these days! What it is, is basically a one-stop-shop or, as John Maguire calls it, a check-the-box for all the White House’s problems. The letter was ostensibly fabricated and it would be from Habush backdated to July 1, 2001 to Saddam Hussein. A handwritten letter which talks about the fact that Mohammed Atta – the 9/11 highjacker – trained in Iraq months before 9/11. So that establishes a Saddam/Al Qaeda link which the administration is so interested in. And also that Saddam is actively out buying yellow cake from Niger with the help of a small group from the Al Qaeda organization. This is an assignment. George Tenet, the director of the CIA, Rob Richer recalls, comes back at one point from a meeting at the White House. Again, it’s all in the record and much of this is taped. He’s coming back from the meeting with an assignment. He remembers the “creamy stationery” and whatnot. Tenet says something like, “Hey, Marine, you’re not going to like this!” (That’s sort of Richer’s rendition!) Richer is sort of quizzical about it. This is certainly not the kind of thing the CIA tends to do, but it’s an order from the White House to Tenet that he just passes down the chain. Richer then turns to John Maguire at some point during the few days here. He’s leaving at this point, but they discuss the letter. That’s in the book, too – the discussion and what Maguire thought about it. And then it simply goes down the chain, frankly. Maguire’s not involved in the execution. But again, these two guys recall this letter being passed from the White House…
Davies: … Just to summarize here, Ron, what we’re talking about is a written assignment from the White House, on White House stationery, to the CIA to have a document fabricated which would be allegedly signed by this Iraqi intelligence chief during the months leading up to 9/11 with all of this false information about Iraq and 9/11 and its attempts to acquire uranium.
Suskind: And then it will pop up somewhere in Baghdad and go into the bloodstream of the global news cycle.
Davies: Before we get to that, let’s go over exactly how we know this came from the White House. Your book has on-the-record statements from these two former CIA officials, Rob Richer and John Maguire, and of course since the book they’ve come out and released statements. I want to read this for our audience.
Suskind: It’s kind of a duck-and-back-away. But mind you, when you hear the statement, this is a statement written by Richer where he made a call actually offering some misinformation to Maguire who’s off far away now. Then Richer wrote up the statement. He clearly was under some sort of pressure. This is how it reads (and I guess you’ve got it there, Dave).
Davies: Yes. Listen to this. This is Rob Richer, the guy who you quote on the record in the book. He says, “I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document from Habush as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book.” And then the statement from John Maguire, the other CIA official, is rendered through Rob Richer and as Richer reports, Maguire says: “I never received any instruction from then-chief Rob Richer or any other officer in my chain of command instructing me to fabricate such a letter. Further, I have no knowledge as to the origins of the letter and as to how it circulated in Iraq.” I went back after these statements appeared and looked carefully at how the story unfolds in your book. It seems to me that the quotes attributed to these gentlemen in the book and their statements now are irreconcilable. Do you agree?
Suskind: Well, if you look at that second statement from Maguire – actually Maguire never in the book suggested he’s involved in the fabricating of the letter or the execution of it. It says Maguire hears about it. They talk about it. Maguire’s leaving. He’s leaving his current job to go back to Baghdad and as the book says all of the issues of logistics – which of course Maguire says in the letter he never did – well, of course not! It went to his successor. That’s what it does say in the book.
Davies: Let me just cut in on this point, Ron. On page 380, you say that “looking back, Maguire shakes his head, ‘Incredible arrogance in the face of facts and reality from start to finish – and even making us create fabrications like that Habush letter!’” We have him quoted as acknowledging that he and the agency were forced to create a fabricated letter. It sure sounds like he’s now denying that.
Suskind: Well, you know, what happened was that Richer relayed to Maguire in an email some things that were wild-eyed that Maguire never says in the book. That he was the fabricator of the letter and delivered it and all this sort of thing. Maguire, who’s out there in the hustings [in Iraq] – he’s in a tough spot because he sees this thing roiling the global news cycle with his name in it. But he doesn’t have the book. He’s far away. So Richer recounted that. John Maguire and I have exchanged some emails and he realizes that this sort of occurred and he’s getting the book. He’s going to get a chance probably to read it tomorrow. So he can see that in the book it’s exactly what he said to me. Which it is, in fact.
Davies: And have you communicated with Rob Richer about any of this?
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Note: Neither Suskind nor Davies mentions that Rob Richer left the CIA in 2005 and went to work for Blackwater. Here’s a quote from Ken Silverstein’s 9/2006 article in Harpers: “Revolving Door to Blackwater Alarms the CIA”:
“A CIA source with whom I spoke said that [Blackwater Founder, Eric Prince is very tight with top agency officials and has a “green badge,” the security pass for contractors who have access to CIA installations. “He's over there [at CIA headquarters] regularly, probably once a month or so,” this person told me. “He meets with senior people, especially in the D.O.” (The D.O., or Directorate of Operations, runs covert operations; last year, it was absorbed by the newly created National Clandestine Service.)
Prince's visits are probably one reason that the revolving door to Blackwater keeps turning. Last fall, Rob Richer resigned from the post of Associate Deputy Director of Operations; he immediately took a job as Blackwater's Vice President of Intelligence. Richer is a former head of the CIA's Near East Division and long served in Amman, where, for a period beginning in 1999, he held the post of station chief.”
According to Wikipedia, Richer has gone on to form his own intelligence/security firm in association with other CIA and Blackwater officials.
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Suskind: Well, Richer’s an interesting situation. The fact is, these two guys are saying things that could result, going forward, in the impeachment of the president. It’s a very rare situation that we have here. They don’t have immunity. It’s not under oath in front of some Senate or House committee. Enormous pressure has been brought to bear clearly on Richer. He was fine. He’d read the book. We talked about that. The morning after – he got it on Monday while it was Tuesday for the rest of the country – we talked about it after he’d read the key sections. You know, he was fine with it, frankly. We talked about the kinds of statements he might make. He was getting calls from reporters. All was well. And he said, “I’ll say ‘no comment’ but Ron Suskind is a fine journalist…” – that kind of thing. Because he didn’t want to elaborate on the things he says in the book. He knows that I’ve taped a lot of the conversations, and all the rest. But by the afternoon something had occurred. Other reporters who had been talking to Richer noticed this as well. He was jumpy and not himself, really. At that point, he sent out this statement and dove deep after that. That was the last time anyone, I think, has had contact with him. So I’m not sure who’s talking to Richer in the late afternoon of Tuesday when he sends the statement. Frankly, it’s the kind of thing some investigator in Congress might want to look into as this unfolds. It’s going to be contentious and tendentious politically especially in an election season. Finally you feel a kind of humbleness as a reporter saying that there are some things book can take you up to the gates of, the precipice of, but can’t go all the way. Just in terms of these people having to testify under oath, hopefully with immunity, and also under the threat of perjury. That’s kind of the way we go through these things. Some people in Congress, of course, are getting ready to do that at this point.
Davies: One person people will want to talk to is you! Are you prepared to play recordings which substantiate what you have in this book?
Suskind: If it comes to that, of course. I would hope it wouldn’t, frankly, and my estimation is that everything in this book is true and findable. Other reporters are out on the hunt right now. There are other sources who are, well, near to the surface let’s just say. I think lots of these things will be moot fairly quickly. I have not a shadow of a doubt, having spent hours with Maguire and Richer – and others like Buzzy Krongard, the #3 guy at CIA talks also about some of these issues of Habush. Other people in the know, know bits about it. I have no doubt that everything in the book is absolutely accurate.
Davies: Before we move on, I want to get to the rest of the Habush story. But as a journalist – and you’re not some hack who’s come up with a scoop here, you have a long record and you’ve won a Pulitzer Prize. But if, in one of the most controversial parts of the book, one which as you say could have grave legal implications, two of the most prominent on-the-record sources are saying it’s just not true, what do you say to those who say, “Why should we believe other parts of the book?”
Suskind: You know, this is actually (sadly!) the way the world works! These guys are under stress. This sometimes happens when that’s the case. And I think people are looking at it in terms of the context of the situation. I’ve been at this for a long time and I have sources who spent a lot of time with me. We taped their conversations; I put them in a book or magazine piece. Then the heat comes of public attention and it’s startling for them – especially at the beginning. It’s quite jarring. I’m used to it! But for private citizens, even tough guys like both of these are – and both of them, frankly, are big believers in the truth process. And I’ve talked to them both about, “Hey, you’re never going to feel heat quite like this,” and they said, both of them, Richer and Maguire, “I’m ready to go in front of Senate committees and House committees. I’m ready to have my moment.” They knew everything that was in the book. You know, once they get there and the moment arrives, sometimes their knees buckle. Then you say, “All right. Take a deep breath,” and you get them upright and they tend then to walk forward. So it’s dynamic. We’re in the process now. They’re reacting to that first blast. And Maguire is finally getting a chance to read the book in the next few days. He’s far away and he can see in it that it’s exactly – and it is! – exactly as he expected it to be.
Davies: Whatever the origins of the document which bore the name of this Iraqi intelligence chief, Habush, it’s clear that a document was manufactured by somebody. It did get “discovered” in Iraq. How did that happen?
Suskind: It’s interesting because it pops up inside of the interim government’s files. They’re going through documents at that point and it ends up in the office of Ayad Allawi, who at that point is a member of the interim government, soon to be its first head. One of his assistants talks to a journalist named Con Coughlin from London – a journalist at the Daily Telegraph – and tells him about this extraordinary handwritten letter. One of Allawi’s assistants gives it to Coughlin and Coughlin wins the rights to the story in the Telegraph which roils the global news cycles for the coming week. Everyone is brought into it. Tom Brokaw talks about it on “Meet the Press.” William Safire writes a column about it. Bill O’Reilly is out there flogging it for four or five days. CNN… it’s everywhere. Then after a while, people sort of look at it and scratch their heads and say, “This is an awful lot in one little letter, isn’t it! Solving several problems at once! It seems – even though it does solve all the White House’s problems instantly in terms of the Al Qaeda connection to Saddam Hussein, and the yellowcake from Niger – it seems a little too, um, perfect and convenient.” And that’s when people start to doubt it.
Davies: And was it publicly discredited eventually?
Suskind: Well, you know it’s sort of interesting. It just kind of died. People sort of scratched their heads and said, “Hmmm … This doesn’t pass the smell test.” And then it sort of listed along. It pops up a little bit, here and there. But it lost its power after that first week when it was front and center.
Davies: The other issue that you raise in the book is that if this document was indeed fabricated by the CIA as your sources say, and it was intended to influence public opinion, there’s legal problem here. Right?]
Suskind: There is. The statutes that form the CIA, that create it in 1947, and the key amendments in 1991, state emphatically that the CIA cannot be used to run disinformation campaigns on the American people. This would qualify as that. I even have Rob Richer and John Maguire discussing this in the book. They talk about the legal issues – where the line is drawn. Richer says, “Well, it was intended to affect the Iraqi public opinion on WMD.” Of course, Maguire counters him rather forcefully saying, “People in Iraq,” (Maguire’s been there for 13 years), “no one cared about WMD in Iraq.” It was clearly to solve political problems in the US. And beyond that, frankly, the CIA isn’t much in the business of solving the White House’s political problems. And Maguire – again, in the book – calls it “a check-the-box solution, checking each box that the White House was concerned about, all in one letter.”
Davies: One more question about the origin of the fabricated document. Your sources tell you that the assignment to fabricate this document was given to the CIA on “creamy White House stationery.”
Suskind: That’s Richer’s memory of it as he stood with Tenet.
Davies: Right. And the question I wanted to ask was, is it clear who at the White House conveyed this assignment to Tenet?
Suskind: Well, it’s interesting, because Richer sort of talks about the fact that the vice president’s office was throwing things at them, one after another at CIA. “Prove this! Find that! Do this!” And he says – again, in a quote: “But this was different. This was an exception.” I don’t go through the process of playing the name game inside the white building on this one. I say that it’s from the White House. That’s clear. And it’s for, ultimately – I would imagine – investigators again with subpoena power and testimony under threat of perjury to find out exactly how that would work inside the White House. Mind you, importantly, though, George Tenet is not going to be given an order for a mission – especially one like this that’s contentious and not generally in the character of the CIA – he’s not going to be taking an order about a mission like that from anyone other than a senior-most official. It simply won’t happen. A third- or fourth-rung person does not order the director of Central Intelligence to do anything. And that, of course, is how it is remembered in the book by the participants. An order from the White House that was passed to CIA for execution.
Davies: Apart from the statements of these folks that you quoted, the White House itself issued a statement that says, among other things, “The idea that the White House had anything to do with a forged letter purportedly from Habush to Saddam is absurd.” What do you make of that response?
Suskind: It’s the kind of thing actually – you know, when you’ve been in this business for a while you start to get a feel for the way statements really look and what they really mean. There’s a lot of things that are sort of subtly not quite right. And even some of Rob Richer’s stuff that he pulled together, as some reporters told me kind of in a panic … you know, it doesn’t actually deal with the issue directly. It deals with something that’s not being asked.
Davies: Do you mean by that that they don’t actually say it didn’t happen and instead say it’s absurd?
Suskind: Well, it’s not as clear as it seems. The chain of command is a complex issue. Rob is not the guy, head of a division, who would ever forge anything. You’ve got to look at the parsing of the language like lawyers do. People in public don’t. They say, “Oh, that’s a denial!” But a lawyer constructing something can make it seem like a denial but it’s not quite as hard and fast as one might think. All over town reporters have heard the “oh, that couldn’t be true, that’s ridiculous”! Especially in some cases when reporters have called up to say – or lawyers at news organizations saying, “Is my reporter being wire-tapped?” “Oh, we would never do such a thing. That’s utterly ridiculous.” That’s not exactly the same thing as “absolutely not – we’ve checked and we absolutely know that this never happened.” That’s different thing!
Davies: I want to talk just a little bit about this fascinating episode you describe in the summer of 2006 when President Bush is very anxious about some intelligence briefings that he is getting from the British. What are telling him?
Suskind: In late July of 2006, the British are moving forward on an investigation they’ve been at for a year at that point – where they’ve got a group of “plotters,” so-called, in the London area that they’ve been tracking. It’s starting to come to a bit of fruition, a little forward progress in that late summer of ’06. These guys are wired right down to their shorts, you know. They’ve got piles of wiretap information and they can’t do anything without being tracked. But it starts to become clear that their plan is for planes to come from the UK with bombs for the US. At least, that’s what they’re kind of talking about. Bush gets this briefing at the end of July 2006, and he’s very agitated. When Blair comes at the end of the month, they talk about it, and he says, “I want this trap snapped shut immediately.” Blair’s like, “Well, be patient here! What we do in Britain,” Blair describes it and this is something well-known to Bush, “we try to be more patient! These guys are not going to breathe without us knowing. We’ve got them all mapped out so we can get actual hard evidence and then prosecute them in public courts of law – get real prosecutions and long prison terms. That’s the British way.” And this is really their emblematic investigation. There are thousands of people involved on the British side. Well, Bush doesn’t get the answer he wants – which is snap the trap shut. And the reason he wants that is because he’s getting all sorts of pressure from Republicans in Congress that his ratings are down, these are the worst ratings for a sitting president at this point in his second term, and they’re just wild-eyed about the coming mid-term elections. Well, Bush expresses his dissatisfaction to Cheney about the Blair meeting, and Cheney moves forward.
Davies: So you’ve got the British saying, “Let’s carefully build our case, get more intelligence." Bush wants an arrest and a political win.
Suskind: What happens is that then, a few days later, the CIA operations chief – really a senior guy, up there in one of the 1-2-3 spots at CIA – Jose Rodriguez – ends up slipping quietly into Islamabad, Pakistan and he meets secretly with the ISI, which is the Pakistani intelligence service and suddenly a guy in Pakistan named Rashid Rauf, who’s kind of the contact of the British plotters in Pakistan, gets arrested. This, of course – as anyone could expect – triggers a reaction in London and a lot of scurrying and the Brits have to run through the night, wild-eyed, and round up 25 or 30 people. It’s quite a frenzy. The British are livid about this. They talk to the Americans. The Americans kind of shrug – “Who knows? The ISI picked up Rauf…” …
Davies: So the British didn’t even get a heads-up from the US that this…
Suskind: Did not get a heads-up. In fact, the whole point was to mislead the British! What Jose Rodriquez was worried about, flipping into Islamabad, is alerting the British! Because we wanted this done and we didn’t want any fingerprints. Of course, that’s exactly what happens. The British did not know about it, frankly, until I reported it in the book. I talked to some of them and they said, “Oh, after all these years, we got a shrug from the Americans, a kind of non-denial denial, if you will, and now we know the truth. What’s interesting is that the White House already had its media plan laid out before all of this occurred so that the president and vice-president – and in Cheney’s case before the arrest – started to capitalize on the war on terror rhetoric and the political harvest. Which, of course, they used for weeks to come, right into the fall. The worst plot since 9/11 has been foiled, and this is why you want us in power!
Davies: Did the British believe that the US acting precipitously damaged their efforts to combat terrorism in the UK?
Suskind: What’s interesting is that now, years later, the trial of these British plotters is exactly what the British predicted: the trigger was pulled too early and the evidence was not yet ripe. The plotters have claimed that they weren’t serious, they were doing a kind of demonstration, like a public kind of protest of sorts, that they weren’t actually going to go through with this plot – all the sorts of things that undercut exactly what the British were worried about. That they wouldn’t have the evidence to carry through meaningful prosecutions and put them away for a long time. That actually unfolded just this summer.
