In 2004, the Bush Administration
href="http://americablog.blogspot.com/2005/07/bush-admin-may-be-responsible-for.html">blew
a Pakistani intelligence operation by revealing sensitive
intelligence information. In 2005, there was the Libby-Plame
Leak. Earlier in 2006, the Bush Administration
href="http://corpus-callosum.blogspot.com/2006/04/leaker-in-chief-reduxoffered-without.html">blew
Operation Tiramisu, putting Israeli intelligence operatives
at risk.
By then, the phrase "
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/blog/2006/04/07/BL2006040700544.html"
rel="tag">Leaker-in-Chief" was gaining currency,
and was damaging to the President. Since then, there have
been more flub-ups, and the phrase has been abandoned in favor of
pithier epithets, such as "idiot."
Now, we learn of yet another.
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/04/world/middleeast/04nuke.html">
href="http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/04/world/middleeast/04nuke.html">U.S.
Analysts Had Flagged Atomic Data on Web Site
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Published: November 4, 2006
Two weeks before the government shut down a Web site holding an archive
of Iraqi documents captured during the war, scientists at an American
weapons laboratory complained that papers on the site contained
sensitive nuclear information, federal officials said yesterday. Two
documents were quickly removed.
The Bush administration set up the Web site last March at the urging of
Congressional Republicans, who said giving public access to materials
from the 48,000 boxes of documents found in Iraq could increase the
understanding of the danger posed by Saddam Hussein.
But among the documents posted were roughly a dozen that nuclear
weapons experts said constituted a basic guide to building an atom
bomb. They were accounts of Mr. Hussein's nuclear program, which United
Nations inspectors dismantled after the 1991 Persian Gulf war...
The Washington Post version of the story is
href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/11/03/AR2006110300019.html">here.
They add this important point:
Intelligence officials said the documents do not
indicate that Iraq had
weapons of mass destruction when President Bush ordered U.S. troops to
take over the country and depose Saddam Hussein.
This point is particularly salient in light of the following:
href="http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Counselor_to_President_uses_NYT_story_1103.html">Counselor
to President uses NY Times story to push 'Iraq had nuke program' meme
Ron Brynaert
Published: Friday November 3, 2006
In an interview on MSNBC earlier this morning, Dan Bartlett, counselor
to the President, dismissed concerns about a U.S. government Website
shut down because it may have revealed sensitive bomb building data.
However, he insisted that the unauthenticated Iraqi documents online
did show that "Saddam Hussein had the capability and was working
towards a nuclear weapon program," which would bolster Bush's
preemptive war arguments, RAW STORY has found...
...MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell asked Bartlett why the documents were put on
the Internet without anyone "properly vetting them" and why did
President Bush "overrule John Negroponte, his own intelligence
director, who clearly did not want this to take place but finally had
to give in."...
When will they ever learn?
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