How to Manage the News and Lie to the People

[a_unique_person]

Read it and weep

The inside story on the search for WMD in Iraq. All the behind the scenes manipulation and spin doctoring, from an Australian who was part of the intelligence community iinvolved in the search program.

Quote:

ROD BARTON: David Kay, of course, was one of those who really believed that Iraq had quite massive capabilities, including a nuclear program, and that's his background, nuclear, so he ...

LIZ JACKSON: So it was a major turnaround for him?

ROD BARTON: Yeah, he was quite shaken. He thought that they would be tripping over these weapons, and they would be everywhere, and if they couldn't find the weapons, there'd be plenty of indication about the weapons, and by the end of the year he'd discovered the truth, and so he left, not ever to return.

LIZ JACKSON: So when you, in a sense, took over his role for that period of time - we're talking the end of 2003, beginning of 2004 - when he's just on the verge of saying "We're almost all wrong", what pressure on you was there to maintain the belief that you were still out there looking for weapons?

ROD BARTON: Well, when I got out there, the attitude was "Well, we still haven't finished the work, how can we come to this conclusion? There is still a lot we have to do, Iraq is a big county."

LIZ JACKSON: They're still there, out there. They're out there somewhere?

ROD BARTON: Yep. The attitude was you've only got to go out there and you will find them. I was an experienced inspector, and I knew that there would be some indicators if they really had a program, and there were no indicators whatsoever; they couldn't have possibly hidden all of this. So I knew there were no weapons, and there were no programs at that stage, and therefore our job was just to write what we had found.

LIZ JACKSON: And when did you first get an intimation that this kind of report that you were planning on writing - that would in a sense dot the I's, cross the t's on why there weren't any weapons - was not the report that was wanted, not the report that was expected?

ROD BARTON: Well, it was not until the new head of the Iraq Survey Group came out in mid February 2004 that things really changed.

LIZ JACKSON: And what was the first sign of that change for you?

ROD BARTON: Well, he talked to me about a different style of report altogether, and he said he's discussed this with people in Washington, the head of the CIA and -

LIZ JACKSON: The President?

ROD BARTON: Well, he'd met the President and he discussed his job in Iraq with President Bush, and now he'd come out to Iraq - this is Charles Duelfer I'm talking about, the new head of the ISG - and wanting a different type of report to what I was producing, a much shorter report, a report that had no conclusions in. When we'd found out a lot, we knew a lot of the answers.

LIZ JACKSON: Throughout his time at Camp Slayer, Rod Barton kept a record of his concerns.

(Read) "15 February 2004 - we have done a lot of investigations. We have found no evidence. I believe we have a duty to report that. Anything less is dishonest. After all, if we had positive results, we would report that."

His new boss, Charles Duelfer, did not agree.

ROD BARTON: I said to him "I believe it's dishonest. If we know certain things, and we're asked to provide a report, we should say what we found and what we haven't found, and put that in the report", and most of it's already written.

LIZ JACKSON: And what were the things that weren't to be said.

ROD BARTON: Well, there were some things - this didn't come directly from Charles, but some of his staff, the senior CIA staff, some of the things we couldn't write about at all; for example, aluminium tubes that might have been involved in nuclear weapons programs.

We were allowed to refer to them, but not say what we thought they were all about, and our conclusions at that stage is that the aluminium tubes that Iraq had imported were part of a rocket program, and nothing to do with nuclear. They were not to do with nuclear enrichment. That was one issue.

LIZ JACKSON: And you weren't to say that?

ROD BARTON: We weren't to say that. We were not allowed to put that in. In our previous report we'd addressed about mobile biological program, and mobile production facilities of which we had, apparently, according to the CIA - we had two examples of these mobile production units actually in our camp at the ISG camp, which is called Camp Slayer. We actually had two of these. Well, we'd inspected these and these were nothing to do with biology in our view.

LIZ JACKSON: But it was still being put out into the public domain that these two trailers were mobile biological -

ROD BARTON: It was on the CIA web page at that stage.

LIZ JACKSON: It was on the CIA web page?

ROD BARTON: It was on the CIA web page that these were mobile biological trailers. This was not our conclusion. In fact, our conclusion was just absolutely the opposite. They were nothing to do with biology. We believed that they were hydrogen generators.

LIZ JACKSON: But not to mention that either?

ROD BARTON: In fact, if you did a word search of our report that eventually went ahead, Charles' report, you would not have found the word "trailer". We did not even mention these trailers.

LIZ JACKSON: Don't mention the trailers?

ROD BARTON: No, don't mention the trailers.

LIZ JACKSON: (Read) "Rod Barton's notes, 15 February 2004 - the trailers - Charles' attitude was he did not want to inspect them or know, then he could genuinely say in Washington that he doesn't know what they are for."

ROD BARTON: We don't want to know what they are. It's just too politically difficult, and I was told politically difficult to put this in, and I said "But we are not" - I said "We are not political. We are apolitical. We have to be objective." "No, you cannot write about this", so that did not go into the report either.

LIZ JACKSON: Why politically difficult in particular, because political statements were being made precisely at that time, or -

ROD BARTON: Because statements were still being made. In early January Cheney, for example, was saying -

LIZ JACKSON: Dick Cheney?

ROD BARTON: Dick Cheney, the Vice-President, was still using the trailers as an example of WMD program, that is yet to be uncovered, and yet this was not our view at all.

LIZ JACKSON: What about our own political leaders? Were, I mean, I remember they were statements made about the trailers here.

ROD BARTON: Yes, the trailers-statements.

LIZ JACKSON: I think Alexander Downer made some -

ROD BARTON: Alexander Downer had been making statements about the trailers, but that was much earlier on, that was in mid 2003.

ALEXANDER DOWNER, FOREIGN MINISTER, IN PARLIAMENT, (13 MAY 2003): Mr Speaker, already we have seen evidence of what appear to be mobile biological laboratories at two sites in Iraq, capable of producing biological materials for use in weapons of mass destruction. I know that it is disappointing to the opposition to hear this, but I am afraid this is true.

ROD BARTON: Those statements were not correct. Even then they were not correct, or not fairly based upon what had been discovered, and I don't believe he should have made such statements.

LIZ JACKSON: Did you pass any of that information or have a word back with Australia about "Look, it's really not that smart to talk about the biological trailers", with any of our political leaders?

ROD BARTON: Back in the middle of 2003 I called a friend in the Government who was responsible in this area, and suggested to him that perhaps Downer should keep his mouth shut, and I noticed that Downer made no further reference after the middle of 2003 to such trailers.

And so, for example, what did happen to that Anthrax. The answer is just typical for Iraq under Saddam, just another **** up.

Quote:

ROD BARTON: Well, we interpreted things in certain ways, but because Iraq had lied to us - and I can give you the example with the anthrax. Iraq said that they destroyed the anthrax at the facility where they produced it, a place called Al Hakam. Now, we knew that that could not be true, and we interpreted that as saying, "Well, they've perhaps have still kept it", you know, they kept it.

But what really happened to the anthrax is they moved it around the county on semitrailers, all the way during the Gulf War in 1991, and it was still in the trailers in July 1991, and the trailers had finished up in a place called Radinawiyah, which is south of Baghdad, and the order came at the time to destroy the agent, so they destroyed it. Unfortunately, it was right outside a palace, and they decontaminated the containers and they poured the anthrax onto the ground.

Now, when it came to confessing to the United Nations that they had done this, Dr Taha, who was head of the program, could not now confess this because she would be more in trouble with Saddam for pouring this out, and I've stood on the gates of the palace.

LIZ JACKSON: Pouring the anthrax out next to Saddam's palace?

ROD BARTON: Yeah, and I've stood on the gates of that, on the steps of that palace and looked out, and you can see the place where she did it - he would not be pleased. So to protect herself from the wrath of Saddam, she lied to the United Nations, and lied to us. So we knew that there was a lie, but we jumped to the wrong conclusions. So we, ourselves, had a lesson to learn there, that we should be more objective, we should be more critical of everything they say.

Feel free to believe that Syria has the anthrax, and invasion would be a good idea, if you want.

[a_unique_person]

Bump, the standard response to the WMD conspiracy has been that if there was, then it would have been impossible to keep the lid on it. Well, the lid is coming off, individual by individual.

At first there was Andrew Wilkie. One guy was laughed off. Then CBS news had US intelligence officers complainging about being misrepresented.

Now we have another Australian official telling the truth about the lies, distortions and manipulation. As Rod Barton says, his job was to present the facts, in an objective manner. The political masters didn't want that.

Quote:

ROD BARTON: Yeah, sex-up the report. Basically what he wanted to do was put in things from the previous report which had been done in September 2003, David Kay's report, pick out the eyes from that report, which implied that there was WMD up there, and put them into our report.

LIZ JACKSON: I think it's public now that it was John Scarlett.

ROD BARTON: It was John Scarlett, yes, who was the Chairman of the Joint Intelligence Committee in the UK.

LIZ JACKSON: (Read) "18 March 2004 at 1700 - Rod Barton noted John Scarlett's desire to include some nuggets. It was Scarlett who'd signed off Britain's claim that Iraq could launch weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes."

ROD BARTON: And here he is again, in February 2004, trying to sex-up our report, and I had an email from him, through Charles, about the things he wanted in, and I looked at these and I thought "We cannot accept any of these - just on principle for a start", and Charles, to his credit, decided the same, that we would not put any of them in, but the report was still awful.

LIZ JACKSON: The report was still awful.

ROD BARTON: Yeah, yes. We left the impression that yes, maybe there were - was WMD out there; maybe there were programs still to find, and all our future work - because it was forward looking - all our future work might discover this. We were going to do this and we were going to do that. So I thought it was dishonest.

LIZ JACKSON: On 30th March 2004, Charles Duelfer presented the Iraq Survey Group's interim report to the US Congress.

CHARLES DUELFER, SPECIAL ADVISOR IRAQ SURVEY GROUP: We have not found evidence of stocks of weapons as some had expected, but we are looking at other aspects of that. We continue to receive reports all the time that there are hidden weapons, so it's something which we have to pursue.

LIZ JACKSON: By then Rod Barton had resigned in protest, and left Baghdad.

ROD BARTON: I felt that I was part of the dishonesty by being there, by continuing on with this, and so although I quite enjoyed the work, I did leave, and immediately the report was finished. I was on the next plane out.

LIZ JACKSON: You weren't the only person to resign, as I understand it.

ROD BARTON: No. There was a British colleague of mine who already left for similar reasons, and again a former UNSCOM inspector, one of the most senior people, or experienced people around, and he left on similar grounds.

LIZ JACKSON: Political pressures and censorship?

ROD BARTON: It was censorship, and he said "I can't live with this", and he made it clear that he was going to leave and left for that same reasons.

LIZ JACKSON: Rod Barton's notes record his bleakest moment after a third team member resigned in protest.

(Read) "J leaves tomorrow after explaining to Charles why he can't stay."

"J" was another senior Australian. We've been asked not to use his name.

You set out your views, and your reasons for resigning in a letter.

ROD BARTON: Yes, I wrote -

LIZ JACKSON: ... at a very senior level here, to the Department of Defence.

ROD BARTON: Yes. I didn't want the people to think I'd left for family reasons, or personal reasons, or something like that. I wanted to make it clear to them I'd left because I thought the process was dishonest.

LIZ JACKSON: And what was their response?

ROD BARTON: Well, it was what you might expect, and I wasn't the most popular person when I got back and, you know, they were happy for me being there because the Americans had requested me, and now as far as they were concerned, I had disappointed the Americans because I'd left in this manner, quitting, and so now we were no longer supporting, you know, the Americans through this person.

So no, they weren't very happy with me, and I felt very uncomfortable when I got back, but I knew what the reaction would be. I knew they were not going to be welcoming me with open arms and saying "You did the right thing". I didn't get any of that. I just got - well ...

LIZ JACKSON: What did you get?

ROD BARTON: Well, I got the cold shoulder, basically

LIZ JACKSON: 24 March '04, Singapore - (read) "I will be sidelined and branded as a troublemaker".

You didn't just tell the Department of Defence about your concerns about political censorship and pressure, you also drew their attention to your concerns about prisoner abuse in the camp in which the scientists and Government officials that you were interviewing or interrogating were living.

ROD BARTON: Yes. There's a separate prison, not Abu Ghraib. There's a prison where what is known as the high value detainees are kept. It's called camp Cropper and it's near the airport. I won't go into details exactly where it is, but it's near the airport. And we had - when I say "we", the ISG and other agencies in Iraq, other coalition agencies - have prisoners kept there, about 100 prisoners in all, and these are all the senior people from Iraq.

When I came back I talked to a senior defence official and I mentioned - and I regret it was only a mention - of my concern about prisoner abuse, because you have to remember I'm talking about the end of March, beginning of April, none of us had seen the pictures of ...

LIZ JACKSON: This is before Abu Ghraib became public?

ROD BARTON: Yes, this was before Abu Ghraib, but I had certain indications and certain evidence that this had occurred, and I felt strongly enough about it to make a recommendation not only to mention this about the abuse, but to make a recommendation that we shouldn't - "we" meaning Australia - should not be involved in the interview or interrogation of any of these prisoners at Cropper, and I made that recommendation.

LIZ JACKSON: Because of your concerns about prison abuse at Camp Cropper.

So, you can dispute what happens, but you will pay a price. And now there is another place of prisoner abuse, Camp Cropper. This whole thing about Abu Grahib being a one off is just an absolute lie.

[demon]

AUP:
"As Rod Barton says, his job was to present the facts, in an objective manner. The political masters didn't want that."

Exactly right.
And yet still we have those who say things like "we may never know what happened to Iraq’s unconventional weapons" etc etc but that`s because they have not been paying attention to the facts.
Had they paid attention, they would know that the overwhelming vast majority of prohibited material was destroyed in the early 1990s. This process was largely documented as Frank Cleminson, former UNSCOM inspector and member of the College of Commissioners of UNMOVIC, explains:

"It is often said, sometimes with dubious authority, that Baghdad never cooperated in the UN quest to account for its nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons. In fact, that is not entirely correct. Immediately following the termination of hostilities in 1991, Iraq did cooperate in a significant fashion. Not only did Iraq turn over militarily significant holdings of weapons of mass destruction to the United Nations as instructed, but it also participated effectively in a follow-on destruction process. The destruction of proscribed weapons and of associated facilities was carried out mainly by Iraq but under constant supervision by UNSCOM and the IAEA. Data from the archives in New York bear out the contention that UN inspectors proved to be extremely successful in effectively accounting for the disposition and ultimate destruction of nuclear materials and associated facilities as well as of proscribed missiles and of chemical weapons".

Admittedly, Iraq did play cat and mouse for a short time -- particularly in respect to its biological programmes –- but by 1995 everything had been disclosed. Iraq destroyed some material unilaterally without U.N. supervision, but this destruction was confirmed later by the highest ranking official ever to defect from Iraq. General Hussein Kamel was head of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation and he revealed that, "I ordered destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed ... You [UNSCOM] have important role in Iraq with this. You should not underestimate yourself. You are very effective in Iraq ... not a single missile left but they had blueprints and molds for production. All missiles were destroyed."

And from Hans Blix: "If anyone had cared ... to study what UNSCOM was saying for quite a number of years, and what we [UNMOVIC] were saying, they should not have assumed that they would stumble on weapons."

Also bear mind that NBC weapons require scientists and engineers to work on them, and military personal to operate them, as do the projectiles used to deliver them, and the launchers used to fire them. The U.S. has had plenty of time to interview/torture these workers and countless other witnesses, yet the message coming back is the same: The weapons were destroyed in the early 1990s.

Everyone wanted to cover their backs over this starting with the author of the iraq survey group's final report.
As to evidence to back up assertions about extant WMD, the Duelfer report appears not to offer any, which perhaps accounts for the spin of the moment being of the "frogs, chinks and russkies lined pockets through oil-for-food" variety. Go figure.

"One would expect the ISG's conclusions to take the wind out of the sails of those who repeat the mantra that Iraq was a grave and growing threat. But Duelfer has provided a convenient escape from such criticism, by concluding that Saddam Hussein in fact fully intended to convert his "dual use" factories into WMD production facilities once UN weapons inspectors left. In one fell swoop, Duelfer has provided the ideal cover for the justification of the war."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/st...323424,00.html

"A new organisation was created, the CIA-led Iraq survey group (ISG), led by David Kay. His job was not to find WMD but to spin the data for the political benefit of the White House. He hinted at dramatic findings, only to suddenly reverse course once Saddam Hussein was captured. Kay told us that everyone had got it wrong on WMD, that it was no one's fault. He was replaced by Charles Duelfer, whose task was to extend the WMD cover-up for as long as possible. Duelfer was very adept at this, having done similar work while serving as the deputy executive chairman of the UN weapons inspection effort."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story...399257,00.html

"The most prominent defector from Iraq was Hussein Kamel, Saddam Hussein's son-in-law and director of Iraq's Military Industrialization Corporation, who had been in charge of Iraq's weapons programme throughout the 1980s and first half of the 1990s. After he defected to Jordan on 7 August 1995, Hussein Kamel told UN inspectors 'I ordered the destruction of all chemical weapons. All weapons - biological, chemical, missile, nuclear were destroyed'"

full text of kamel interview - http://middleeastreference.org.uk/kamel.html

I guess using UN reports and testimony from Hans Blix as evidence constitutes conspiracy theory, and relying on the word of Bush, Blair and their cronies constitutes overwhelming evidence, even when it is proved wrong.

Hillarious isn`t it? Keep `em coming.