122nd in continuing blog series on the administration push to war. In summer of 2004, the news keeps coming out—about administration uses of the intelligence community leading up to the Iraq war—and a consensus begins to emerge, that intelligence was indeed misused. Regrettably, that soft consensus does not provide enough impetus for hard action. Meanwhile, the White House continues to take its own measures to maintain position.
July, 2004:

 

 

July 6, 2004 – A hearing is held in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., on Matthew Cooper’s motion to quash the subpoena issued by the grand jury in the CIA leak case. The motion is denied.

 

July 7, 2004 – The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence releases its classified Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Pre-War Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, detailing and criticizing intelligence mistakes leading up to the Iraq war.

 

July 8, 2004 -- The trial of six U.S.S. Cole suspects begins, but with one suspect, al Nashiri, absent because he is being held by the U.S. authorities at an undisclosed location. Al Nashiri, a relative of one of the bombers in the U.S. embassy bombings in Africa in 1998, is characterized as the mastermind of the attack.

 

July 9, 2004 – Typical article: “Senate panel finds CIA’s prewar spying was deficient,” USA Today (A7).

 

July 11, 2004 -- “CIA Skewed Reporting, Senate Says.” Washington Post (A19); “Spy Panel Condemns Prewar Intelligence; ’02 Estimate Faulted, CIA ‘Group-Think’ Criticized,” Washington Post (front page).

 

Same day – George Tenet’s resignation as CIA director is effective, one year to the day after his statement publicly shouldering the blame for the “sixteen words.”

 

July 15, 2004 – Jeff Gannon/James Guckert weighs in on the Niger item again at a Scott McClellan press briefing at the White House:

“Go ahead, Jeff.

 

Q Thank you.

Q A Calhoun. (Laughter.)

Q Forgive me if my colleagues -- forgive me if my colleagues have already touched on this subject, but last Friday the Senate Intelligence --

MR. MCCLELLAN: Three if we don't shout all over each other and we have a civil discourse.

Q I have a question.

MR. MCCLELLAN: I'm coming to you, Helen.
 

Q Last Friday the Senate Intelligence Committee released a report that shows that Ambassador Joe Wilson lied when he said his wife didn't put him up for the mission to Niger. The British inquiry into their own prewar intelligence yesterday concluded that the president's 16 words were, quote, "well founded," unquote. Doesn't Joe Wilson owe the president and America an apology for his deception and his own intelligence failure?
 

MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, one, let me point out that I think those reports speak for themselves on that issue. And I think if you have questions about that, you can direct that to Mr. Wilson.

Q Well, we spent so many weeks here dissecting the 16 words that are now absolutely true. Don't you think --

Q How do you know that?

 
Q Excuse me, Helen. Don't you think that America deserves the opportunity to have this information brought forward as well?

 
MR. MCCLELLAN: Well, I noticed some media reports on this very issue over the weekend --

         Q There are very few of them.”
 

Gannon/Guckert gets to elbow the well respected Helen Thomas aside, in a pattern consistently indicated by White House transcripts: serious questions about White House foreign policy, Middle East policy in particular, are derailed when possible by some questioner more sympathetic to the administration.

 

July 19, 2004, about – Newsweek Magazine publishes cover story, “The Dots Never Existed.”

 

July 20, 2004 – Motions to quash subpoenas in the CIA leak investigation by NBC’s Tim Russert and Matthew Cooper of Time Magazine are denied in an order by Chief Judge Thomas F. Hogan of the U.S. District Court for D.C.

 

July 21, 2004 – The Government Accountability Office (GAO) publishes a report saying that costs of the war will exceed amounts appropriated by Congress, including supplemental legislation:
 

“To support the Global War on Terrorism in fiscal year 2004, the Congress appropriated $65 billion to the Department of Defense (DOD) in an emergency supplemental appropriations act.”

 
“GAO’s analysis of reported obligations for the first seven months of fiscal year 2004 through April 2004 and the military services’ forecasts as of June 2004 of their likely costs for the Global War on Terrorism for operation and maintenance and military personnel through the end of fiscal year 2004 suggests that anticipated costs will exceed the supplemental funding provided for the war by about $12.3 billion for the current fiscal year.”
http://www.gao.gov/htext/d04915.html