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Revision as of 12:08, 26 September 2005 by 38.118.73.78 (talk)(diff) ← Previous revision | Latest revision (diff) | Newer revision → (diff)The Office of Special Plans, which existed from September, 2002, to June, 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by Donald Rumsfeld and led by William Luti, to handle Iraq and Iran policy.
The subject of many conspiracy theories and criticized heavily by some former members of the U.S. Intelligence community, the role of the Office of Special Plans was looked into by the Senate intelligence committee's Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq published in July 2004. The review, which was highly critical of the CIA's Iraq intelligence generally, exculpated the Office of Special Plans. It found allegations by anonymous sources to be without merit. Some of the most vocal critics of the Office of Special Plans, Karen Kwiatkowski for exmaple, had never visited the office and could not give any examples to back up her allegations.
Some members of the OSP did argue that there was a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. In an "Iraqi intelligence cell" briefing to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz in August 2002, some analysts condemned the CIA's intelligence assessment techniques and denounced the CIA's "consistent underestimation" of matters dealing with the alleged Iraq-al Qaeda co-operation. In September 2002, two days before the CIA's final assessment of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship, Feith briefed senior advisers to Dick Cheney and Condoleezza Rice, undercutting the CIA's credibility and alleging "fundamental problems" with CIA intelligence-gathering.
Larry Franklin, an analyst and Iran expert in the Feith office, has been charged with mishandling classified material, as part of a larger FBI investigation. (see AIPAC espionage scandal)
See also
References
- Coman, Julian (July 11, 2004). Fury over Pentagon cell that briefed White House on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-Qaeda links. news.telegraph.co.uk. (registration required for full article)
- Hersh, Seymour M. (May 5, 2003). Selective Intelligence. Newyorker.com.
- Mackay, Neil (June 8, 2003). Revealed: The secret cabal which spun for Blair. sundayherald online. (also about the British Operation Rockingham)
- Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq. (July 9, 2004). United States Select Senate Committee on Intelligence.
External links
- Office of Special Plans. Disinfopedia.
- The Lie Factory article by Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest in Mother Jones
- Agents of Influence, by Robert Dreyfuss in The Nation (September 2004)
- Detailed timeline of the Office of Special Plans - Center for Cooperative Research