Leaky White House

Eric Boehlert rips into Cheney this morning with an article showing more conflicts between the country’s intelligence community and the veep. I especially love the level of discourse

Cheney, in an interview with the Rocky Mountain News, spontaneously lauded the discredited Weekly Standard article and described it as “the best source of information.” …
“It’s disgusting,” said Vincent Cannistraro, the former CIA chief of counter-terrorism. “It’s bullshit,” said Ray McGovern, a former CIA analyst who served in the agency’s Near East division.

Weekly Standard executive editor Fred Barnes trumpeted the article on Fox News. “These are hard facts, and I’d like to see [skeptics] refute any one of them,” he said.
But the Department of Defense did just that. On Nov. 15, the next day, the Pentagon issued an extraordinary statement calling the story “inaccurate” and explaining it was based on raw intelligence (or a “classified annex”) that had not been evaluated. “The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.”

More problems derived from the Bushies destroying a decades-long design of vetting intelligence. Now Cheney and Fox News are getting intelligence from the same source.

Posted by etrigan at January 27, 2004 6:25 AM