Sunday, December 24, 2006

Bush censored UNclassified Iran info in CIA op-ed

A couple of CIA agents wrote an op-ed for the New York Times about Iran, and the submitted it to the agency for review. The CIA had no problem with it, but the Bush administration did. They wanted information about Iran make friendly overtures to us or cooperating in the "War on Terror" removed even though ALL of it had been published in newspapers and discussed in public by Bush administration officials.

The Bushies likely don't have the political clout or public support to launch their Iran war now, but they obviously will keep trying and working the angles.

It is an odd time in American history when the only thing preventing a world war from starting is not a political opposition party but instead the military and CIA, once considered the arms and legs of the military-industrial Frankenstein.


INTRO:

by the authors:

HERE is the redacted version of a draft Op-Ed article we wrote for The Times, as blacked out by the Central Intelligence Agency’s Publication Review Board after the White House intervened in the normal prepublication review process and demanded substantial deletions. Agency officials told us that they had concluded on their own that the original draft included no classified material, but that they had to bow to the White House.

Indeed, the deleted portions of the original draft reveal no classified material. These passages go into aspects of American-Iranian relations during the Bush administration’s first term that have been publicly discussed by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice; former Secretary of State Colin Powell; former Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage; a former State Department policy planning director, Richard Haass; and a former special envoy to Afghanistan, James Dobbins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/22/opinion/22precede.html


FULL TEXT:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/22/opinion/22leverett.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

The New York Times

December 22, 2006
Op-Ed Contributors
Redacted Version of Original Op-Ed
By FLYNT LEVERETT and HILLARY MANN




iran

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