Full Release - IRmep

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UNCLAsSIFIED
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WASHINGTON JOURNAL C-SPAN
7:45 AM JANU~RY 1,2004
ALL INFOP.NATION C01JTAINED
HEREIN IS UNCLASSIFIED
DATE 07-2~-2010 BY 60324 uc baw/sab/lsg
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U.S. Intelligence in Iraq
CONNIE BROD: Robert Dreyfuss is a contributing editor for Mother Jones and the
January-February edition ofMother Jones has the
hit cover story by him called, liThe Lie Factory.1I What is the lie factory?
ROBERT DREYFUSS [Contributing Editor, Mother Jones]: Well, I called the lie factory.
It's kind ofbroader than "that. There was lies,
but also distortions and exaggerations. I'm referring to the unit inside the Pentagon that
prepared intelligence reports and talking papers
for senior U.S. officials in the period going up to the war with Iraq.
Now, that the war is over and we know that we found exactly zero evidence ofties
between Iraq anp. al Qaeda and zero evidence of
tie~ between Iraq and weapons ofmass destruction, it's way past time that we went back
and looked at how did they get this so wrong?
The administration is already trying to change the subject, as you know, they're saying,
well, it wasn't about weapons ofmass
destruction, Saddam was a bad guy and the world is safer now. I guess I'm amazed that
he's been able to get away with that so far, the
President.
BROD: You went all the way b~ck to the day after the President took office to begin this
story about this office. What happened that
day?
DREYFUSS: Well, one day after the President was sworn in they had a meeting oftheir
national security team. And one ofthe top items
on the agenda ofthat meeting -- this was nine months before 9/11 was regime change in
Iraq. And ofcourse there's a reason for that,
many ofthe senior officials who took up places in the Bush administration have long
been on record, some ofthem for as long as a
decade going back to the first GulfWar that the United States had a responsibility to go
in militarily and get rid ofSaddam Hussein.
So there had been a drumbeat from afairly small but well organized group offormer U.S.
officials, many ofthem intelligence people,
and, ofcourse, the Iraqi exile groups that they were associated with to bring about regime
change. And that meeting that you referred to
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