Army Counter-Intelligence guy finds old WMDs in Iraq from the Carlyle Group, then covered up by Rumsfeld??! Plus Curt Weldon's Wild WMD Goose Chase

Couple interesting things around the WMD backstory. There was a bit of talk about what is going on with a few new crumbs about Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq. Some Republicans including Rick Santorum and Rep. Pete Hoekstra (who?) are trying to peddle a story that WMD were found!! !!!! in Iraq recently. Indeed, at the time I thought it reasonable they might find some old shells from the 1980s somewhere - a suspiciously retarded reason for a war, but still possible. However, no less than Fox News promptly debunked the story.

Well, now it looks like some WMDs did turn up, but since they were from the good old Carlyle Group (more here and here), it would have been embarassing and so they 'evaporated'. At least, that's the line now coming from a retired counterintelligence officer.

But first, let Democratic Rep. Jane Harman (quasi-hawk) describe the Old WMD News and Declassification Hypocrisy on TPMCafe:

....Republicans including Rep. Pete Hoekstra and Senator Rick Santorum are trying to spin a report on degraded pre-1991 WMDs that were found in Iraq as news of the utmost importance – despite the fact that we’ve known about the existence of these rusty canisters for many years.

There is nothing new here. Nothing in this report, classified or otherwise, contradicts the Duelfer Report, which assessed that we would find degraded pre-1991 weaponry in Iraq.

....In fact, David Kay, who led the U.S. team that searched for WMDs in Iraq in 2003 and 2004, called these stockpiles “less toxic than most things that Americans have under their kitchen sink.” And Charles Duelfer, the CIA’s weapon inspector, called them “local hazards,” not WMDs.

The real news here is that this report was essentially declassified on demand. Selective declassification for partisan purposes undermines the integrity, and the safety, of the men and women in the intelligence community.

The intelligence community is supposed to speak truth to power. It’s not the IC’s job to provide political cover for the Republican Party. Those pushing this story are trying to manipulate the facts to get an outcome they want, and we know from recent experience what happens when the intelligence gathering process is politicized.

If the Republicans want hearings, then let’s have hearings. But they should cover the use – and misuse – of all pre-war intelligence, not just this flimsy and cherry-picked report that is much ado about nothing.

Meanwhile Rep. Curt Weldon wanted to go out on his own into the Iraqi desert near Nasiriyah and basically break out a shovel. Never quite happened, but I bet this guy could dig:

[Dave] Gaubatz, who lives in Dallas, is a former Air Force special investigator who served as a civilian employee in Iraq for a number of months in 2003.

While in Iraq, he acquired what he considered reliable information on the existence of WMD caches in four locations - not old stuff dating from the pre-Gulf War days, but recently produced gas and chemical weapons.

He never could get U.S. military officials to look into the matter. They apparently viewed it as too speculative and too much of a drain on personnel who were, after all, engaged in combat. But he has persisted - even as evidence mounted that there were no WMDs to be found in Iraq.

Gaubatz said he first contacted Weldon and Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R., Mich.), head of the House Intelligence Committee, to share his info and get them to prod the Defense Department and intelligence agencies to do the WMD searches in the locales.

Instead, Gaubatz said, Weldon latched onto the idea as a "personal political venture" and discussed a Hoekstra-Weldon trip to Iraq, under the guise of visiting the troops, that would detour to Nasiriyah. Once there, Gaubatz said, the congressmen planned to persuade the U.S. military commander to lend them the equipment and men to go digging by the Euphrates for the cache Gaubatz believed to be there.

He said that Weldon made it clear he didn't want word leaked to the Pentagon, to intelligence officials, or to Democratic congressmen. As Gaubatz told me: "They even worked out how it would go. If there was nothing there, nothing would be said. If the site had been [scavenged], nothing would be said. But, if it was still there, they would bring the press corps out."

Gaubatz's exciting website is here.

Good times: Rummy and the Boss

And now, the source of these nasty little beaners: Rummy and the Carlyle Group.... according to DeBatto...

An interesting tale from one Dave DeBatto, ostensibly a former Army Counter-Intelligence officer and currently a co-author of some books called "CI", an "Army Counterintelligence Novel" series. He is writing a non-fiction, "Our Generals Don't Even Know Who We Are: How Incompetence, Inattention, and Inefficiency Within U.S. Military Intelligence Has Left America More Vulnerable than Ever". In it, he relates the time in Iraq when he was led to a secret WMD cache in a base in eastern Iraq, and is led by the base's WMD officer to a secret bunker:

After relating his background and experience to us, [Chief Warrant Officer Amar Abdul] Rahman told us that there was indeed WMD in this area and that he would be willing to lead us to it. Not being overly trusting of Iraqi’s at that point and certainly not of a prior Iraqi military officer, I was very skeptical of anything he told us. I asked Rahman why he was telling us all of this and he said very matter-of-factly, “Because I love my country and I want things to change.”

I looked at Weichert and asked him with my eyes what he thought. Weichert’s response was to Ask Rahman if he would lead us to the weapons right now and Rahman said, “Yes, of course.” With that, the three of us got into our Humvee and drove to a bunker located at the southeast quadrant of the base, not even one mile from where were sitting.

The bunker sat in a deserted part of the base that had several similar bunkers spread throughout a large area and connected by a single serpentine road. All of the bunkers were constructed of concrete covered by tan stucco, which blended in perfectly with the surrounding desert. They were of various sizes, but all had two, large metal doors which either slid to the side or opened outward, leading into the one large storage area inside.
[...........]
Rahman next pointed to the hand lettered numbers on the side of the crates. They were numbered from 1-29. Rahman said that he placed hand-lettered numbers on each one personally and can assure us that were 29 chemical WMD bombs under his supervision. Not 28 or 30 – but 29. He seemed to be very proud of his accuracy and neatness in numbering each crate. He went on to say how he had spent the last eight years or so playing “cat and mouse” with UNSCOM (the UN inspectors). Every time they were due to come to his region for an inspection, he would be notified by his superiors. Then he would arrange for the bombs to be transported to a different area that was not going to be inspected. Sometimes, he told us, he would simply dig a deep hole near the storage facility and bury the bombs, crates and all, until the inspectors left and then dig them up again and put them back where they were. He was familiar with Scott Ritter and Hanz Blix in particular and said they never found any WMD in his region.

He even ran his hand along one of the crates and brushed off some dried clay, which was clinging to the outside. These were dug up after the last inspection before the war and placed back into the bunker with the large areas of clay still covering some of the crates. He was right – every one of the wooden boxes had varying amounts of dry, reddish clay – which is the common soil found at that location – caked to their wooden exteriors. These bombs had definitely been buried locally at some point just before being placed into that bunker – that was a fact.

Looking around the rest of the bunker interior, I could see dozens of metal chemicals containers – some apparently unopened, and some with their tops open and with dried, powdery substances on the floor all around them and inside the containers. Some containers were covered with what appeared to be dried liquids, almost like dry paint, streaming down the sides.

I can honestly say that I was having a hard time comprehending what I was seeing. Unless my senses were deceiving me, Weichert and I had actually found the mother load of Operation Iraqi Freedom – actual Iraqi WMD. I walked over to one of the crates and saw a plastic sheath containing what appeared to be a bill of lading. I cut it open with my Leatherman and pulled the documents out.

At this point I want to say that loud and clear that I very much regret not having either shoved that document in my pocket or made a copy of it and sent it home for safe keeping. At the time I actually thought that a report would be written and normal Army and intelligence protocol would be followed, so there would be no need for me to have to prove anything. But I digress…

I opened the folded off-white paper form and noticed several interesting things right away. The bombs had been purchased in the United States in 1988 from what appeared to be a government contractor called The Carlyle Group. I am almost embarrassed now to say that I had not heard of The Carlyle Group at that time so the name meant nothing to me. The only reason I remember it at all is that I was amazed that the bill was in English and I was stunned to see that a bomb that was used by Iraq in delivering chemical WMD – the only WMD found during the entire Iraq war – was in fact supplied to Saddam Hussein by the United States. Un-blanking believable.

The date on the bill was either 1987 or 1988, I don’t recall exactly. I do recall that the bomb was manufactured in Spain and shipped through France. So much for their claims of being holier-than-thou. I checked several more bills and they were all identical. These bombs had all been shipped together. Rahman told us that similar weapons had been used all throughout the Iran-Iraq war during the 1980s as well as against the Kurds. We were staring at what could have possibly been some of the same type of WMD used in one of the most heinous attacks in recorded history - the gassing of Halabja in March of 1988 which killed an estimated 5,000 Kurdish civilians.

I instructed Weichert to both videotape and take digital still photos of the bunker and its contents. The outside area which included many more chemical containers and HAZMET suits were documented as well. At least fifteen minutes of video and 50 still photos were taken at that location. These were then incorporated and attached to the detailed written report that I wrote and sent up the chain of command through CI channels.

I also personally reported the discovery to the battalion commander of the 223rd, Lt. Col. Timothy Ryan. Ryan seem excited by the news and asked to be taken to the bunker immediately. Weichert and I drove Ryan to the bunker within minutes after his request and showed him our discovery. He seemed genuinely impressed with the authenticity of our find. He commented, “You guys have found the real deal.” So we had. Too bad it was ours.

Interestingly, according to the ever-improbable internet journalist (and oft labelled 'conspiracy theorist') Wayne Madsen, already a GOP effort is underway to "swiftboat" Dave DeBatto:

June 23, 2006 -- The "swift boating" of Army counterintelligence personnel who blew the whistle on Rumsfeld's/Carlyle's Iraqi WMDs and prisoner torture in Iraq. In 2003, Frank Greg Ford, a 32-year veteran of military and counter-intelligence assignments, served in Samara with the 223rd Military Intelligence Battalion of the California National Guard during Operation Iraqi Freedom. Samara is the ancient capital of Mesopotamia. Ford and Dave DeBatto. a former US Army Counterintelligence Special Agent who was assigned in 2003 to Iraq, took part in thousands of interrogations in Iraq. Ford revealed details of U.S. torture of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib, a tactic that resulted in an aggravation of the Iraqi insurgency. DeBatto found evidence of an even greater crime, the provision of deadly nerve agents to Saddam Hussein by Ronald Reagan, his envoy Donald Rumsfeld, and George H. W. Bush.

DeBatto and Ford also stumbled across evidence that the only WMDs, nerve agents that had deteriorated over the years, had been supplied to Iraq by the Reagan and Bush I administrations for their war against Iran. Reagan's Special Envoy to Saddam Hussein, Donald Rumsfeld, worked out the deal to supply the WMDs to Iraq. It is these components, known to various UN weapons inspection teams and counter-intelligence teams like those of DeBatto and Ford, that are the subject of Sen. Rick Santorum's and House Intelligence Committee Chairman Peter Hoekstra's proclamation, ballyhooed by Sean Hannity, that the weapons of mass destruction have been discovered in Iraq. These weapons are made in America, supplied by Carlyle, and were known to Rumsfeld as well as senior members of the Bush I and II administrations, including Dick Cheney.

In December 2004, a right-wing organization based in McLean, Virginia, "Veriseal.org," which is tied to other "swift boating" type organizations went on the attack against Ford and DeBatto. They claim that Ford, a former Navy corpsman, never served with the Navy SEALS and had manufactured his record. The site also castigated DeBatto for writing a fictional book on Army counter-intelligence. The swift boating of veterans by a group of mysteriously-funded cranks operating from a P.O. Box near CIA headquarters in Langley is part of a general policy by the right-wing to debase any veteran who questions the illegal war in Iraq and the other outrages of the neo-cons.

The following is an excerpt of the hit piece on Ford found on the VeriSeal site: Frank "Greg" Ford claims to have witnessed members of his National Guard battalion torturing Iraqi prisoners while his unit was stationed in Samarra in 2003, according to David DeBatto, a former National Guard Tactical HUMINT Team (THT) member and author of a story titled "Whitewashing Torture" published on a far left web site in early December.

"DeBatto says that Ford reported the alleged [torture] abuse to his commanding officer and, hours later, was strapped to a gurney and flown out of Iraq for psychiatric evaluation. According to Army sources contacted by VeriSEAL, an informal investigation pursuant to Rules for Courts-Martial was conducted in response to Ford's allegations and the allegations were determined to be unfounded. Ford was medevaced from Iraq only after exhibiting what was described as delusional behavior."

I would not be surprised to find more stories along this axis coming up during the election. Oh, and of course, I'm sure we'll hear that the WMDs are in Iran, too....