Anthrax

Newspapers and TV networks are running various stories about the suicide of a scientist who worked for decades at the Fort Detrick, MD, research center. He was apparently considered the FBI's prime suspect in the 2001 anthrax attacks and allegedly feared that he was about to be arrested.

Even more interesting, Salon blogger Glenn Greenwald has a lengthy piece discussing "Vital unresolved anthrax questions and ABC News." Greenwald takes the opportunity to explain the effect of some leaks to ABC that are highly troubling in retrospect. Someone lied to ABC, claiming that the anthrax included a chemical agent known to be used exclusively by Iraq.

as I've amply documented, those ABC News reports linking Saddam and anthrax penetrated very deeply -- by design -- into our public discourse and into the public consciousness. Those reports were absolutely vital in creating the impression during that very volatile time that Islamic terrorists generally, and Iraq and Saddam Hussein specifically, were grave, existential threats to this country.

...There can't be any question that this extremely flamboyant though totally false linkage between Iraq and the anthrax attacks -- accomplished primarily by the false bentonite reports from ABC News and Brian Ross -- played a very significant role in how Americans perceived of the Islamic threat generally and Iraq specifically.

Is this true?

I would argue that the anthrax attacks put Iraq front-and-center on the agenda in fall 2001, though as I've previously documented, the seed had already been planted. Indeed, the links between Iraq and 9/11 started to be asserted publicly on 9/11.

Greenwald notes that former AEI neocon Laurie Mylroie relied upon the ABC report.

As I documented on my blog in a series of posts back in September 2003, Myrloie was all over the news in fall 2001 linking the anthrax attacks to Iraq. Indeed, she and her allies were linking 9/11 and Iraq immediately. Here's a quick summary of my prior work:

Mylroie was on national television 40 times between 9/11 and December 31, 2001. Her thesis also got a lot of coverage in the nation's newspapers and opinion magazines, so there's a lot of stuff to sort out.

To begin, neocon ally James Woolsey was on ABC about 3 pm on 9/11 crediting Mylroie with linking Iraq to al Qaeda, the prior World Trade Center bombing, etc. He said Iraq could have been behind that day's attacks. The next evening, Mylroie was on CBS during its prime time coverage of the attacks rehearsing the range of her wild charges and calling al Qaeda a "front operation" for Iraq. Woolsey was on CBS later that night (west coast prime time) repeating the claims he'd made on 9/11. He was also on ABC again 9/12 making the same allegations and crediting Mylroie. Jim Hoagland mentioned Mylroie's "convincing case" in a Post op-ed on the 12th. It was widely syndicated around the country.

Mylroie herself had an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal on the 13th, calling the 9/11 attacks an "act of war" likely linked to Iraq. She was then on FOX on the 14th, on C-SPAN on the 15th, and CBS again on the 19th. S was even quoted favorably on NPR that day. Once the anthrax attacks hit, she was very busy the next month or so, adding Canadian TV, CNN (multiple appearances), and additional appearances on ABC, Fox, C-SPAN, NPR and CBS. In October she was on various Fox News programs again and again and again.

I didn't find any appearances for Mylroie on NBC stations until December, but she made up the difference quickly with multiple appearances on MSNBC and CNBC.

Did this continue into the Iraq war debate? Well, in October 2002, Myrloie told PBS: "The Pentagon believes Iraq is behind the terrorism that began on September 11 and wants to include Iraq as a central target in our war on terrorism."

I think one could reasonably argue that the anthrax attacks primed the country to worry about dubious mushroom clouds in fall 2002 -- and about Iraq as the specific source of concern.


Note: I think my last post about anthrax was in December 2006. Does everyone recall that former Mylroie coauthor and NYT reporter Judith Miller is one of the journalists who received anthrax by mail?

Small world, eh?


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TV controversy

Based on the way the marketplace views the world, it looks like the controversial ABC TV movie on 9/11 didn't do very well Sunday night. From CBS News:

The movie was flattened in the ratings by the debut of NBC's Sunday night football, matching Peyton Manning of the Indianapolis Colts against his younger brother Eli of the New York Giants. The football game had an estimated 20.7 million viewers, while "The Path to 9/11" had 13 million, according to Nielsen Media Research.

The ABC movie did, however, beat CBS' third airing of its "9/11" documentary, which was seen by an estimated 10.6 million people, Nielsen said.

I actually watched most of the ABC movie -- at least between about 9:10 and 10:25. That portion included many of the most controversial scenes contested by Clinton-era Democrats.

I'm not a football fan, had already viewed the CBS documentary...and couldn't find anything good on cable. Plus, I like Harvey Keitel and wanted to see for myself what the hullabaloo was all about.

Truthfully, I can't say that I learned much about Al Qaeda or US anti-terror policy during the 1990s. Then again, I think John Mueller is right about threats from terrorism. And like James Fallows, I'm willing to declare victory and move on to more pressing issues: such as the horizontal and vertical proliferation of nuclear weapons, global poverty and hunger, climate change, HIV/AIDS, etc.

By the way, when they make the 9/11 aftermath movie, I'm wondering who will play Laurie Mylroie? She's the all-but-forgotten political guru of the war in Iraq. See my blog posts about her busy fall 2001 in the right-hand "Greatest hits" column.


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Not so sleepy Saturday

The remnants of Hurricane Dennis have been lingering in the Ohio Valley for most of the past week. It has rained most days and is often cloudy and gray. Today was no exception, which would ordinarily make it a sleepy Saturday. You know, a day of rest and relaxation.

And I certainly didn't do much on Saturday -- watched the Yankee-Red Sox game, updated some of my University webpages, went to the grocery store, etc.

Regular readers know that I haven't blogged very much lately, and haven't added any new content in 48 hours.

So...I was more than a little surprised when I discovered that nearly 800 people have visited the site today! Most have arrived via whatREALLYhappened.com and are reading my "Forged Documents" post from February 10, 2004. That post discusses the possible origins of the Niger documents from Italy, but I assume people are reading because of the latest revelations about Karl Rove and Valerie Plame. Plame's spouse went to Africa and helped disprove the Niger-uranium story, despite the existence of forged documents suggesting Niger was selling nuclear material to Iraq.

I've long been interested in the two stories myself, so I'm not surprised people are still interested in the possible connections.

The page they are visiting is probably the most frequently viewed page on this blog, thanks to a previous link from whatREALLYhappened.com and a link from Atrios.

Over the past 18 months, literally thousands of readers have seen that post and probably think I'm running some sort of conspiracy-theory blog.

Am I?

I prefer to relate some of my more speculative blogging to the "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" game. For example, we'd know a lot more about the Valerie Plame affair if jailed New York Times journalist Judith Miller simply told us what she knew:

1. Judith Miller is linked to "Iraq is to blame for all terrorism" wacko Laurie Mylroie. They wrote a book together!
2. Mylroie is directly linked to Lewis Libby. Libby "blurbed" Mylroie's book.
3. Libby is directly linked to the Bush-Cheney White House. He is Dick Cheney's Chief of Staff
4. The White House is dominated by "Bush's Brain," Karl Rove.

Oh, that didn't take six steps. Should I have added that Michael Ledeen is also on Benador Associates roster? Like Miller and Mylroie, he has often expressed confidence in Iraqi National Congress leader Ahmed Chalabi.

When this story started, Plame's spouse, Ambassador Joseph Wilson, fingered Karl Rove as the leaker.


7/19/05 Correction: Libby didn't blurb Mylroie's book; "Prince of Darkness" Richard Perle did that. Libby was personally thanked for his "generous and timely assistance" by Mylroie. Paul Wolfowitz was also thanked.

Iran's Judith Miller -- or Laurie Mylroie?

Usually, when "The Daily Show" has a right-wing guest, Jon Stewart tips off his audience and tries to have some fun with the fact that the guest's views diverge from his. Last night, Stewart seemed to think that his show's visitor, Kenneth R. Timmerman, was a like-minded critic of the Bush administration -- annoyed that US foreign policymakers had attacked the wrong Middle Eastern country in 2003. Stewart, earlier this year said something that he nearly repeated last night:

"George W. Bush is not stupid. He invaded Iraq. They didn't have weapons of mass destruction or ties to Al Quaeda ... but Iran does. So he was only one letter off and that should be credited,"

Timmerman has just authored a new book Countdown to Crisis: the Coming Nuclear Showdown with Iran, which was based on his access to "Iranian defectors and officials, and high-level sources in the U.S. government."

By the end of Timmerman's appearance on "The Daily Show," he was informing host Stewart of the evidence he had gathered from Iranian dissidents about the clear threat from Iran -- primarily nuclear proliferation and terror sponsorship. OK.

But Stewart became really polite and said "Goodnight" to his audience just after Timmerman revealed that Osama bin Laden had secretly plotted to take down the Twin Towers on 9/11 with the Iranian government. Timmerman claimed this was largely what the 9/11 Commission had found.

What? Why didn't Stewart call him on that? While the Commission found that some of the so-called Saudi "muscle" hijackers may have gone through Iran, this was because Iran didn't as a rule stamp passports of Saudi nationals traveling through to or from Afghanistan (p. 241):

"We have found no evidence that Iran or Hezbollah was aware of the planning for what later became the 9/11 terror attack. At the time of their travel through Iran, the al Qaeda operatives themselves were probably not aware of the specific details of their future operation."

Did Stewart's staff drop the ball?

I've spent the past half day trying to figure out if Timmerman is the Judith Miller or Laurie Mylroie of Iran. Is he a journalist duped by defectors, or a wacko pushing his unsupported conspiracy theories on major media?

Timmerman's right-wing credentials are clear and I'm leaning to the parallel to Mylroie.

He writes frequently for The American Spectator, The National Review Online, the Washington Times, the New York Post, Human Events, Insight, etc.

Timmerman appears regularly on Fox News and MSNBC's Scarborough show.

His past writings have attacked the French betrayal of the US, John Kerry's plans to abandon the war on terror, Jesse Jackson, the media's biased coverage of the post-war search for WMD in Iraq, etc. He defends Ahmed Chalabi.

The book's publisher, Crown Forum, also puts out work by Ann Coulter and "the writers at NewsMax.com" (which is Fox News).

With neoconservatives Peter Rodman and Joshua Muravchik, Timmerman founded the Foundation for Democracy in Iran. Since its founding in 1995, the author has served as FDI's Executive Director.

Hmmmm. Maybe Timmerman is trying to be more like Michael Ledeen?

Incredible

Former CIA Director James Woolsey is on Lou Dobbs (CNN) as I type asserting a link between al Qaida and Iraq.

Woolsey says that the US needs to take a good hard look at the possible connection -- and he throws in a possible connection to Iran as well.

He's a true believer in the thesis and often references the wacky theories of Laurie Mylroie.

Just incredible.

International relations theorists often admit they don't have much to say about terrorism because they study state-to-state relations and terrorists are not state actors. Here's what the University of Chicago's John Mearsheimer had to say back in 2002:

what does a Realist theory of international politics have to say about terrorists? The answer is not a whole heck of a lot. Realism, as I said before, is really all about the relations among states, especially among great powers. In fact, al Qaeda is not a state, it's a non-state actor, which is sometimes called a transnational actor. My theory and virtually all Realist theories don't have much to say about transnational actors. However, there is no question that terrorism is a phenomenon that will play itself out in the context of the international system. So it will be played out in the state arena, and, therefore, all of the Realist logic about state behavior will have a significant effect on how the war on terrorism is fought. So Realism and terrorism are inextricably linked, although I do think that Realism does not have much to say about the causes of terrorism.

Now, the final issue that you raised is the question of what I think of about how the Bush administration is waging the war on terrorism. My basic view, which may sound somewhat odd coming from a Realist, is that the Bush administration's policy is wrong-headed because it places too much emphasis on using military force to deal with the problem, and not enough emphasis on diplomacy. I think that if we hope to win the war on terrorism, or to put it in more modest terms, to ameliorate the problem, what we have to do is win hearts and minds in the Arab and Islamic world.

There's no doubt that there are huge numbers of people in that world who hate the United States, and a significant percentage of those people are willing to either sacrifice themselves as suicide bombers or support suicide bombing attacks against the United States. What we have to do is we have to ameliorate that hatred, and we have to go to great lengths to win hearts and minds. I don't believe that you can do that with military force. I think some military force is justified. If you could convince me that Osama bin Laden and his fellow leaders are located in a particular set of caves in Afghanistan at this point in time, I would be perfectly willing to use massive military force to get at those targets and to kill all of the al Qaeda leadership. But I think, in general, what the United States wants to do is not rely too heavily on military force -- in part, because the target doesn't lend itself to military attack, but more importantly, because using military force in the Arab and Islamic world is just going to generate more resentment against us and cause the rise of more terrorists and give people cause to support these terrorists. So I'd privilege diplomacy much more than military force in this war, and I think the Bush administration would be wise if it moved more towards diplomacy and less towards force.

Of course, Mearsheimer became a major public critic of the move against Iraq.

Mearsheimer's colleague, Dan Drezner, blogged today that rational Bush supporters know that the Iraq war was about regional transformation so as dry terrorism up at its source.

As someone who recently had public engagements with neocons Tom Donnelly and Robert Kagan , I think this is genuine.

Ultimately, the Bush people were marketing a war based on the security arguments that would sell, but apparently had a far more radical counter-terror plan that they didn't think would sell.

This explains why Bush administration people keep pointing out that a bad man has been deposed and that the Iraq people are "free" (from Saddam's rule, presumably, because they now live under military occupation).

Democratization of Iraq is their "big picture" counter-terror policy and war critics need to take it very seriously.

This means, of course, that the significant distortions about traditional security threats emanating from Iraq prevented the real debate from occurring before the war. Opponents, whether John Mearsheimer or street marchers, were focused on the lack of evidence about nuclear threats and the weakness of Iraq after 12 years of sanctions.

The real debate remains, involving significant questions:

Can a nation like Iraq be democratized by toppling a despotic regime and "building" a new nation from the rubble?

Was military force the best way to do this?

-- Did the attack set a dangerous precedent and potentially legitimize similar uses of violence by other states that will make the world a much less safe place?

-- Will the use of military force without wide international support create so much backlash throughout the Islamic world that the forces of terror are substantially strengthened by this move?

How long will it take to democratize Iraq?

Can a democratic Iraq trigger a democratic domino effect throughout the region?

Why begin with Iraq? What if the US had put strong (non-violent) public pressure on other states -- like Saudi Arabia? Or Egypt?

I know other bloggers have addressed some of these concerns, but in the coming weeks I'll try to address them too.

Al-Qaida-Iraq Link Further Debunked

Friday, I found an excellent article by Warren P. Strobel, Jonathan S. Landay and John Walcott of Knight-Ridder that pretty thoroughly debunks the links between Iraq, 9/11 and al Qaida. It is devastating:

Nearly a year after U.S. and British troops invaded Iraq, no evidence has turned up to verify allegations of Saddam's links with al-Qaida, and several key parts of the administration's case have either proved false or seem increasingly doubtful.

Senior U.S. officials now say there never was any evidence that Saddam's secular police state and Osama bin Laden's Islamic terrorism network were in league. At most, there were occasional meetings.

Moreover, the U.S. intelligence community never concluded that those meetings produced an operational relationship, American officials said. That verdict was in a secret report by the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence that was updated in January 2003, on the eve of the war.

"We could find no provable connection between Saddam and al-Qaida," a senior U.S. official acknowledged. He and others spoke on condition of anonymity because the information involved is classified and could prove embarrassing to the White House.

Here's the bottom line, which should be no surprise to regular readers of this blog:

A Knight Ridder review of the Bush administration statements on Iraq's ties to terrorism and what's now known about the classified intelligence has found that administration advocates of a pre-emptive invasion frequently hyped sketchy and sometimes false information to help make their case. On two occasions, they neglected to report information that painted a less sinister picture.

The story goes on to discuss a variety of specific claims made by administration officials that apparently linked Iraq and al Qaida.

Tim Dunlop of The Road To Surfdom used the information in the story to focus on the alleged terror camp at Salman Pak (in Iraq), which has not received much attention lately. Dunlop references his own pre-war blogging that thoroughly discussed the camp and other evidence.

Surely everyone remembers this camp? It is the place in Iraq allegedly hosting the fuselage of a Boeing 707 where Saddam supposedly allowed terrorists to train for potential hijackings.

Of course, Laurie Mylroie and other Iraq war hawks made a big deal about this facility.

Yet, Strobel, Landay and Walcott talked to a lot of senior people in the intelligence community. They were told this: "The U.S. military has found no evidence of such a facility."

The facility didn't exist!

As Dunlop points out, this is a particularly egregious finding, first because DoD still lists the capture of the camp as one of its war accomplishments and second because the current head of the Iraq Survey Group (Charles Duelfer, who took over from David Kay) claimed that he saw the camps when he was a UN weapons inspector. Dunlop points out that no such claim is reported in the UN reports about Iraqi weapons.

The media could play a central role in assuring public accountability. Dunlop notes that someone should ask Duelfer about Salman Pak.

Good idea.

Iraq and al Qaeda, continued.

Lots of prominent bloggers (like Matthew Iglesias , Mark Kleiman and Josh Marshall) are still talking about the Weekly Standard article I discussed yesterday, and other recent press reports discussing Iraq and al Qaeda.

Newsweek, for example, has an on-line story that makes most of the points I made yesterday -- plus a little more work by the reporters, Mike Isikoff and Mark Hosenball.

Slate also has a piece by Edward Epstein that investigates whether 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta might, after all, have been able to visit an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, April 2001.

Meanwhile, Laurie Mylroie gave a talk just last week at the American Enterprise Institute with fellow neocon Richard Perle. As my loyal readers know, Mylroie may be responsible, more than any other individual, for Americans falsely thinking that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was behind 9/11.

I think skeptics are taking the wrong approach.

The Bush administration may well be right that there were a few odd meetings between Iraqis and al Qaeda members through the 1990s. Read the various articles, however, and you quickly learn that bin Laden apparently rejected an overt offer to move his operation to Iraq because he didn't want to be linked to the "infidel" Hussein. The two forces had quite different -- and incompatible -- goals.

Moreover, the real issue is whether Iraq was a prime target in the war on terrorism. Lots and lots of threats are higher order. I've blogged about Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, shoulder launched missiles, etc.

As Wesley Clark pointed out again this weekend, the real story is that Iraq has diverted substantial attention and resources away from the war on terror. Republican critics like Brent Scowcroft were saying this before the war.

The neocons and their supporters in the administration simply didn't listen.

Update: Read today's Whiskey Bar entry for a great summary of how the war in Iraq distracts from the war on terror.

Iraq and 9/11, continued

I know the blogosphere is focusing on the California recall (Daily Kos), the Plame affair (Josh Marshall) -- even Nobel prize rumors (Brad DeLong).

However, I'm still interested in Iraq.

Several weeks ago, I noted the Washington Post article that reported the odd fact that 70% of Americans believe Saddam Hussein was personally involved in 9/11.

There was something weird in this and other stories and I finally figured out what it is. Milbank and Deane go to great lengths to quote various public statements by the President when he talked about 9/11 and Iraq in the same breath. Thus, they argue, he was implicitly linking these stories.

What Milbank and Deane don't report, and I haven't seen this elsewhere either, is that the Washington Post's Bob Woodward played a significant role in making the now discredited connection. His articles for the Post, and his book Bush At War, quoted Bush extensively (so he obviously had high level access to someone).

Woodwad at the Post , in fact, quoted Bush (back on February 1, 2002) as saying this on September 17, 2001:

"I believe Iraq was involved, but I'm not going to strike them now."

Of course, the next clause is:

"I don't have the evidence at this point."

Obviously, I have no idea whether Bush said this on September 17, 2001, or not. Do I believe Woodward? Alternatively, was this someone's political spin months later, in order to influence US foreign policy after finishing in Afghanistan? Someone like Wolfowitz, for instance, could have been spinning to get the war he really wanted (and Woodward establishes those wishes in the 8 part newspaper series -- and the book, I guess, though I haven't read it).

By quoting the President, the Post made it possible for other news sources and "experts" to keep repeating the claim. For example, Laurie Mylroie ("there he goes again") quoted this exact same sentence in a piece she wrote that spouted her own conspiracy theories about Iraq and 9/11. You can read about those here and here.

I should note that Mylroie leaves out the President's caveat -- he had no evidence. She has her own perspective about evidence, after all.

I've learned, by the way, that Rupert Murdoch (who owns Fox and News Corporation and NewsMax.com) published the latest edition of Mylroie's book about the Iraq terror link. Given that information, this story is particularly delicious. And I remind you that Mylroie appeared on Fox again and again and again in fall 2001, spewing her claims about Iraq and 9/11.

Making some connections...

Recent news stories reveal that the pre-war intelligence information provided by Iraqi defectors was of very little value. An internal assessment by the Defense Intelligence Agency, in fact, found that less than 1/3 of the information had value -- and that the data on WMD was particularly bad.

This is connected to the Niger Story, of course, since it was the neocons who embraced the weak evidence suggesting Iraq was pursuing uranium from Africa. Hence, Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger to check it out.

It's easy to pick any moment and create a very odd circle. Actually, I guess it's more of a network of like-minded neo-cons.

Judith Miller of the NYT, for example, apparently relied upon this false information about Iraqi WMD from defectors like Ahmad Chalabi. Then, VP Cheney and others pointed to the NYT story to support their case publicly. This was noted by John MacArthur in the Columbia Journalism Review:

Vice President Dick Cheney appeared on NBC's Meet the Press to brandish Saddam's supposed nuclear threat. Prompted by a helpful Tim Russert, Cheney cited the aluminum tubes story in that morning's New York Times

Cheney's office, it seems, is still trying to push the widely discredited story that 9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague. A Washington Post story from this Monday's paper reported that Cheney staff members (guys like Lewis "Scooter" Libby and Stephen Hadley) were even trying to get Powell to use the Atta story in his big UN presentation. Powell, of course, didn't.

But Cheney, Libby and Hadley (one fall guy for the 16 words) have been persistent.

Libby, by the way, is one of the names mentioned by those speculating about the leak of Wilson's wife's job at CIA. Check out the Matthew Yglesias blog, for example.

And Libby is also thanked "for his timely and generous assistance" in the acknowledgements of Laurie Mylroie's book that blames Iraq for most of the anti-US international terrorism of the 1990s. As regular readers know, I've been blogging a lot about Mylroie's claims -- and the tremendous press coverage she received post 9/11.

The neocons should have known that the intelligence people know how to leak too. For example, they've almost completely discredited Mylroie's thesis. Paul Sperry of WDN:

Their findings were presented to the president Oct. 2 in a still-secret report on Iraq. The summary, or "key judgments" section, of the 90-page National Intelligence Estimate was declassified Friday. WorldNetDaily obtained a copy from the National Security Council. (The report is different from the unclassified 25-page white paper the CIA made public on its website last October.)

Page 4 of the report states: "... [W]e have no specific intelligence information that Saddam's regime has directed attacks against U.S. territory."

In a phone interview with Sperry, the author herself conceded: "Yeah, DIA was given a copy of my book, and they couldn't make the connection," Mylroie said. Her thesis, remember, was that Iraq bombed the WTC in 1993 -- and likely did it again in 2001.

A former UNSCOM inspector is also quoted as saying, "Her theory is wacky." And no, it's not Scott Ritter. That's from retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Stephen Franke, an Arabic translator.

This all makes for a complicated tale. But it sure looks like the intelligence agencies are striking back against the neocons, but Cheney's office hasn't given up yet and the White House is trying to spin everything as "stop the leaks."

Stay tuned.

Benador Associates

Yesterday, I credited Laurie Mylroie's publicist for earning whatever was paid. So today, I decided to find out more about her representation.

It turns out that Mylroie is represented by Benador Associates.

Eleana Benador, founder, President and CEO of that company, has attracted a who's who of neocon clients. She's typically mentioned as a "theatrical agent."

I'm winnowing the following list of Benador's clients to people who figured prominently in the Iraq and Afghan war debates:

Max Boot -- was Wall Street Journal, now Weekly Standard
Frank Gaffney Jr. -- now Washington Times was Reagan-era DoD guy
Khidhir Hamza -- Saddam's ex nuclear scientist/defector
Charles Krauthammer -- widely syndicated columnist
Michael A. Ledeen -- AEI and National Review online
Laurie Mylroie -- you know about her
Richard Perle -- AEI, chaired Bush's Defense Policy Board
Michael Rubin -- AEI, now Pentagon Iraq advisor
Ruth Wedgwood -- Yale Law Professor
James Woolsey -- former CIA director who helps promote Mylroie's ideas

Quite a few of Benador's other clients also write for the National Review (John O'Sullivan) or its online edition (Victor Davis Hanson) or the New York Post (Amir Taheri). Plus she represents some foreign journalists and scholars and Richard Pipes of Harvard. Benador even counts someone from the Iraqi National Congress (Kanan Makiya) as a client.

She's no longer listed by Benador, but Judith Miller of the New York Times apparently also used to be a client -- and she coauthored a book with Mylroie on the first Gulf War. FYI, it was a NYT #1 bestseller.

Hmmm, I should point everyone to the bad notices Miller has been getting for inflating threats about Iraqi WMD. Editor & Publisher has certainly staked out a strong postion. This past Tuesday (9/23/03), they posted this article "Miller's Latest Tale Questioned; Jackson: When Will 'NY Times' Get Her off WMD Trail?" The article does a good job of detailing Miller's horrible stories of the past 2 years reporting Iraq WMD tales that have subsequenly proven false. Apparently, Miller relied greatly on wild stories from Iraqi defectors...much like some of the neocons in the Pentagon.

Anyway, the Benador networking possibilities are quite interesting here. Indeed, The Guardian had an interesting article on many of Benador's clients back in August 2002. The author points out how difficult it is to get op-ed pieces accepted at newspapers (but failure is undoubtedly motivator for bloggers!); yet, Benador's clients succeed again and again and again.

Does anyone know of an agent on the left with a similar track record?

If so, can I send along some of my writing?

Laurie Mylroie, part III

Yesterday, I devoted several hours to researching Lexis-Nexis and NewsBank to find out just how frequently the print media relied upon Laurie Mylroie's speculations that linked Saddam Hussein and Iraq to 9/11.

I found that her publicist really earned whatever was paid because Mylroie was very frequently cited by columnists and reporters all over the country. And many of the op-ed pieces and articles were quite widely syndicated.

To begin, Jim Hoagland mentioned Mylroie's theories in The Washington Post on September 12, 2001. His column was syndicated in a number of papers, including The Seattle Post-Intelligencer, The Raleigh News & Observer, and the Lawrence (KS) Journal World.

Hoagland said Mylroie makes "a convincing case."

Mylroie herself had an op-ed in the very next day's Wall Street Journal. On September 13, 2001, she wrote a fairly lengthy piece calling the 9/11 attacks an "act of war" likely linked to Iraq. Many of the familiar claims I've already attributed to her are in this column.

Mylroie also wrote different op-ed pieces for the San Diego Union-Tribune on September 23 and the Boston Globe on September 25.

Former CIA Director James Woolsey made similar claims (and prominently credited Mylroie) in his own pieces in the Wall Street Journal October 18 and in The New Republic September 24, 2001.

By October, I should note, Mylroie and Woolsey were additionally linking the anthrax attacks to Iraq. This shows up in their articles and in the references to their theories.

So, how diffused were these ideas -- across the USA?

Well, Mylroie's theories were clearly spread in right-leaning sources. I mentioned Fox TV, but she was also mentioned in The National Review (a William Buckley column), November 19, 2001.

I simply have too many photocopies at this point to explain in detail how Mylroie's articles spread through the print media around the country. Let me provide a list of newspaper names, dates, and syndication notes:

Atlanta Journal Constitution, October 11 and 18, 2001. Latter story syndicated in Grand Forks Herald and Austin American-Statesman on the same day.

Boston Globe, September 19, 2001

Cleveland Plain Dealer, October 14 and 25, 2001. First story also in Columbia (SC) The State, and Arizona Republic.

Dallas Morning News, September 17 and October 13, 2001

KC Star, September 23, 2001

Miami Herald, October 11, 2001. Also in Charlotte Observer and San Jose Mercury News.

New York Times, September 22, 2001.

Philadelphia Inquirer, September 22, 2001. Also in St. Paul Pioneer Press.

Pittsburgh Post Gazette, September 12, 2001.

San Antonio Express News, September 15 and October 14, 2001.

St. Louis Post Dispatch, September 16, 2001.

Tampa Tribune, November 30, 2001.

USA Today, December 3, 2001

Washington Post, December 27, 2001

Some of the stories included skeptics who doubted Mylroie's theories, but many of the initial reports wery very one sided (even though they were quite speculative).

So, Mylroie and her views about the Iraq 9/11 link (and bin Laden-Iraq link) were all over national TV and in many, many national and local newspapers right from the very beginning. Plus, I've got to believe that many of these AP and Cox stories were syndicated into plenty of smaller papers too.

As I said last week, the neocons did a great job of manufacturing consent.

More on Mylroie and Manufacturing Consent

Note: this post was updated and edited on the same day.

I'm sorry that this post doesn't have many links, but you'll see why and will hopefully forgive me.

I'm returning to the question of the moment: why, according to an August 2003 poll by the Washington Post, do "seven in 10 Americans continue to believe that Iraq's Saddam Hussein had a role in the attacks" of September 11, 2001?

Yesterday, after I blogged, I looked on Lexis-Nexis to see just how often (and when) Laurie Mylroie has appeared or been referenced on national television since 9/11.

What I found was remarkable.

First, the raw numbers. I entered only "Iraq" and "Mylroie" as my search terms in the "News Transcripts" data base, searching "All Transcripts." In the past 5 years, that returned 136 entries. All but 11 of those entries are since September 11, 2001. So Mylroie and her thesis barely got any attention for years, but in the last 2 years, she's averaged an entry per week.

Much of that was right after 9/11, however, with over 40 appearances between September 11 and December 31, 2001.

To me, that seems like a lot of national TV time -- and a lot of attention to her ideas.

I clicked on many of the individual entries and invariably each referred to an appearance by Mylroie on a national television program -- and she delivered the message I quoted yesterday: Iraq was behind the first World Trade Center bombing, she thinks that bin Laden directs a "front organization" (her words) for "Iraqi and, perhaps, other intelligence agencies," and she concludes regularly that Iraq was behind both the attacks of 9/11 and the anthrax attacks.

Shortly after 3 pm on September 11, 2001, James Woolsey, the neocon former CIA Director I quoted yesterday, was live on ABC News with Peter Jennings. Remember, by this time all TV stations had eliminated commercials and were covering the attacks full-time.

Woolsey said this about the events that were then so alien:

"It's important that we realize there is a real possibility, when you have something this devastating and well-coordinated, that there could be state action of some sort behind it.

Now, I don't know that that's the case, and I won't say that it's the case. But there is at least a plausible case that there was Iraqi government involvement in the World Trade Center bombing back in 1993. This all has to do with the identity, the true identity of Ramsey Yousef, who was the mastermind, who's in prison out in Colorado now. At his sentencing the judge said, 'We still don't really know who you are.' And if there was a chance that there was Iraqi government involvement in that, since Yousef was the mastermind of the World Trade Center and of a bombing plot in the Pacific which he was working on when he was caught, to have a lot of American Airlines in the Pacific blown up, what happened today is a sort of amalgam of the earlier two Ramsey Yousef plots. It's at least, I think, interesting that that's the case. And--and if some of the observers, Laurie Mylroie and others, are correct that there's a reasonable chance that he was, in fact, involved with the Iraqi government, there could also be a chance the Iraqi government is involved here, even if bin Laden or other terrorist groups are as well."

The very next day, September 12, Mylroie herself appeared on a CBS News Special Report in prime time. hosted by Dan Rather. Since the show ran 7 though 11 pm, and her interview was just over half-way through the text, I'm guessing she was on national TV around 9:30 pm.

She said this: "I learned that Iraq was behind that bombing, which was an attempt to topple New York's tow--tallest tower onto its twin, and that, in fact, Iraq has been involved in a campaign of terrorism which is more like war. And, in my view, yesterday's events were the latest step in Saddam's war against the United States."

Later in the interview, she blamed Iraq for the attacks on the USS Cole and the embassies in Africa, and called bin Laden the leader of a "front organization." Still later that night (but near prime time in the West), Woolsey appeared on CBS and repeated his claims and made reference to Mylroie and her ideas.

Also, on September 12, Woolsey again mentioned Myrloie on ABC national TV. Peter Jennings asked Woolsey, "why do you keep bringing up Iraq?" Woolsey replies: "Because I think there has started to be rethinking of the World Trade Center operation of 1993, mainly under the influence of a fascinating new book by Laurie Mylroie called Saddam's Study of Revenge. It suggests that the government may have been involved in the World Trade Center bombing....it may turn out that Saddam made a second and this time successful try at what he failed to bring off in 1993."

On Friday night, September 14, Mylroie appeared on Fox New's "The O'Reilly Factor" in prime time TV. She repeated her claims about Iraq bombing the Trade Center in 1993 and her theory that a state (like Iraq) is behind the latest attacks. She added that Saddam Hussein "absolutely does" have WMD and that "we can reasonably assume that he is making those weapons better, more lethal, and that it's extremely dangerous."

She concluded by saying Iraq is "target number one because the real -- the direction and the expertise for these attacks are coming from Iraq. It would be good to get rid of Bin Laden, I agree completely, but it won't solve the problem. It wouldn't be as meaningful as getting rid of Saddam Hussein's regime."

On these occasions, neither Woolsey or Mylroie was ever followed, so far as I can tell, by experts pointing out possible flaws in the argument. For example, no one appeared to say that bin Laden and Hussein are natural foes. That notion was mentioned in passing once, attributed to the subject of a different interview -- but no point/counterpoint was broadcast. In short, they got to deliver their message and were generally unopposed.

I'd submit that this helped generate the idea, whether embraced by the American population or neocon elements within the Bush administration, that Saddam Hussein was behind 9/11.

On September 15th, Mylroie was on CSPAN and on the 19th, she was on CBS again and was even quoted on NPR's "All Things Considered" just after 8 pm. She was very busy the next month or so, adding Canadian TV, CNN (multiple appearances), additional appearances on ABC, Fox, C-SPAN, NPR and CBS. In October she was on Fox again and again and again.

I didn't find any appearances for her on NBC stations until December, but she made up the difference quickly with multiple appearances on MSNBC and CNBC.

The problem with my analysis is that it is difficult to ascertain the causality. Ultimately, members of the public were probably influenced by the President's repeatedly referencing 9/11 when justifying war against Iraq. But people like Mylroie and Woolsey made that assertion more credible with the American public -- thanks to a compliant media.

OK, I'll provide a link to a March 2003 Christian Science Monitor story about this, to help demonstrate what was apparently at work:

"In his prime-time press conference last week, which focused almost solely on Iraq, President Bush mentioned Sept. 11 eight times. He referred to Saddam Hussein many more times than that, often in the same breath with Sept. 11.

Bush never pinned blame for the attacks directly on the Iraqi president. Still, the overall effect was to reinforce an impression that persists among much of the American public: that the Iraqi dictator did play a direct role in the attacks. A New York Times/CBS poll this week shows that 45 percent of Americans believe Mr. Hussein was 'personally involved' in Sept. 11..."

The Washington Post story cited above mentions a September 13, 2001 Time/CNN poll that found 78% of the public suspected Iraq's involvement in 9/11. That result certainly suggests that the early work by Woolsey and Mylroie had a great influence. Everybody was watching TV, they received this message on a number of occasions, it went unchallenged, and they bought it.

By later that fall, news media were openly talking about whether Iraq should be either the first or next (after Afghanistan) target.

In any case, US foreign policy leaders manufactured consent for the Iraq war. And if the rationales altogether disappear (no WMD, no Iraq connection), the consent for the occupation could evaporate.

Interestingly, the Christian Science Monitor piece linked above speculated this back in March:

"In the end, will it matter if some Americans have meshed together Sept. 11 and Iraq? If the US and its allies go to war against Iraq, and it goes well, then the Bush administration is likely not to face questions about the way it sold the war. But if war and its aftermath go badly, then the administration could be under fire.

'Going to war with improper public understanding is risky,' says Richard Parker, a former US ambassador to several Mideast countries. 'If it's a failure, and we get bogged down, this is one of the accusations that [Bush] will have to face when it's all over.'"

This story isn't over.

Iraq and 9/11

I know a lot of people today are buzzing about the President acknowledging that the US has no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11. This clarification, if we want to call it that, could spell more trouble for the administration over Iraq.

Why?

Well, if it wasn't about 9/11 and there are no WMD in Iraq, but Americans are still dying and it costs $1 billion per week.... Hmmm. Was the invasion a good idea?

Setting aside that question for the minute, I'm interested in how the American people came to believe, as polls still show, that Hussein was directly linked to 9/11.

One person who does believe is Laurie Mylroie. Her book Study of Revenge -- Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America argues that Hussein was behind the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center, and she has often expressed the opinion that Hussein was behind 9/11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks. For example, Mylroie told FOX News in November 2001:

"Hussein has also been involved in all major terrorist attacks on the West since the Gulf War....The cumulative evidence that Iraq was a key player in the September 11 attack and subsequent anthrax attacks is overwhelming."

Mylroie has been making these arguments since September 2001. Indeed, she made essentially the same points to CNN, October 29, 2001. And don't think this is it, search around the internet and you'll learn that Mylroie is a frequent neoconservative guest on a wide variety of programs, from CNN's "Inside Politics" to "The Big Story With John Gibson" (apparently on FOX News).

Mylroie's claims are in direct contrast to evidence presented in the State Department's annual report on terrorism, which in April 2001 found that "The [Iraqi] regime has not attempted an anti-Western terrorist attack since its failed plot to assassinate former President Bush in 1993 in Kuwait."

So what's going on here? Well, according to Mylroie, a grand conspiracy is at work. The State Department and CIA have tried to block the release of information linking Iraq to terrorism like 9/11. She presented this theory to Fox News in fall 2002 and repeats it in her latest book, Bush vs The Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror.

Still, despite the bureaucratic opposion, according to Mylroie (in an interview she gave to PBS in October 2002), some people in Washington agree with her:

"The Pentagon believes Iraq is behind the terrorism that began on September 11 and wants to include Iraq as a central target in our war on terrorism. "

If you stick with Mylroie, however, you soon uncover other rather odd conclusions she's drawn over the years (she even tries to link Iraq to the Oklahoma City bombing!). For example, she thinks bin Laden and Hussein have long been in direct cahoots and that bin Laden is essentially, a cover for state terrorism:

"Bin Laden and Saddam are working together; they're both in it together. But between Iraqi intelligence and Al Qaeda, the far more important party is Iraqi intelligence. Bin Laden also worked with Sudanese intelligence. That came out in the trial for the 1998 embassy bombing. Bin Laden works with the Taliban. He's not as important as we think. He does not work independently of a state, of a government. But because we have not seen the links, or perhaps not wanted to see the links between Osama bin Laden and various governments, we ourselves have attributed to him capabilities that he alone does not possess."

By the way, this is not "old news." Mylroie is still making the same arguments in widely distributed conservative circles. For example, on the 2-year anniversary of 9/11, National Review ran an interview with her. She repeated the same basic claims and tried to bolster her case:

"After the 9/11 Commission panel, former Navy Secretary John Lehman, one of the commissioners, told the press that he thought Iraq was involved in the attacks, citing the terrorist training camp at Salman Pak."

Do (or did) the neocons and/or Bush take Mylroie seriously over the past 2 years?

James Woolsey, former director of the CIA and frequent neocon guest on various TV programs, wrote an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal, October 18, 2001. In that piece (the prior link is to the google archive), Woolsey speculates about state assistance to bin Laden: "But by far the more likely candidate for involvement with al Qaeda is Iraq, for several reasons." He goes on to make some of the claims Mylroie makes in her books and interviews. And he has repeated these claims on various occasions.

There has already been plenty written about the neocon influence on Bush's foreign policy, but much of that has focused on the role played by those embedded in the Pentagon or State Department like Wolfowitz, Libby and Bolton.

The outsiders like Mylroie and Woolsey perhaps played an even bigger role shaping public opinion in preparation for war -- on grounds that even the administration now openly denies.

And there are clearly connections among these neocons. As Tony Karon of Time reported in July Wolfowitz provided a complementary blurb on Mylroie's book. He wrote that she "argues powerfully that the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing was actually an agent of Iraqi intelligence."

That Time story also quotes Richard Perle's blurb, a neocon serving on Bush's Defense Policy Advisory Board: "Laurie Myroie has amassed convincing evidence of Saddam Hussein's involvement in the first attempt to blow up the World Trade Center. If she is right -- and there are simple ways to test her hypothesis -- we would be justified in concluding that Saddam was probably involved in the September 11, 2001, attacks as well."

The story does a very good job of showing why Mylroie is wrong -- and points out that her testimony before government authorities (congressional hearings and the 9/11 Commission) has been effectively questioned and refuted.

However, who countered Mylroie when she shaped public opinion on FOX or CNN?

No one, apparently.