Justice Department

Today's Must Read

Andrew Tilghman | July 2, 2008, 10:26AM

For all the allegations of fraud, waste and abuse in Iraq and Afghanistan, few U.S. individuals or companies have been hauled into court, placed under oath and forced to answer a lot of questions.

A story in today's Washington Post offers some insight as to why not.

There's a massive backlog of whistle-blower cases over at the Department of Justice. These are unique cases where regular citizen-whistleblowers are the plaintiffs (and share in the recovery when the cases are successful, which is supposed to encourage them come forward). The reason we don't hear much about them is because they are automatically placed under seal. Filed under the Civil War-era False Claims Act, not even the people filing them can talk about them.

In theory, this allows the government to conduct an investigation without tipping off the target of that investigation. The government has the option of joining the plaintiff in the case. But that veil of secrecy can also allow the government to drag its feet on an investigation, which the Post points out.

Critics argue that the delays are at least partly the result of foot-dragging by Justice and the federal agencies whose position it represents, especially in the touchy area of suppliers that may have overbilled the government for equipment, food and other items used by troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Justice lawyers have rejected about 19 cases involving contractor fraud in Iraq and Afghanistan, registering five settlements that resulted in $16 million, officials said. Government officials said this week that they are considering whether to dive into 32 more whistle-blower cases involving Iraq or the Middle East.

"It's just flatly absurd for us to be five years into this war" with so few public cases, said Alan Grayson, a whistle-blower lawyer in Florida who has criticized the Justice effort and who is running for Congress as a Democrat.

There was an oddly written report from the BBC a few weeks ago that appeared to be reffering to these cases, known as "Qui Tam" cases.

One case that did become public a few years ago was the case of Custer Battles, when we heard about soldiers unloading trunks full of $100 bills from C-130 cargo planes with no sign of any accounting system.

Typically these whistleblower cases take two to four years to become public. But there are a lot of challenges to investigating a legal claim in a war zone.

Whistle-blower lawyers say other factors can contribute to long delays, including the difficulty in investigating claims in war-torn areas and complications that arise when military officials contend that technology or other products at issue in the lawsuits are classified. In addition, Justice lawyers who handle civil cases often cannot proceed until authorities decide whether a case merits criminal prosecution, the lawyers said.

In an interview with TPMmuckraker few weeks ago, Robert Bauman, a former Department of Defense criminal investigator who now works as a consultant to people who file whistleblower cases, said there's a lot of cases still unresolved.

"They're still in the mill," Bauman said. "They will come out. I don't know how long it will be, but eventually, they'll come out."

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Topics: Iran, Justice Department

Iran

Centcom Gig Was "Career Detonating"

Paul Kiel | March 11, 2008, 4:19PM

In his statement announcing his resignation today, Adm. William Fallon "cited the disrespect of the President in a recent magazine article, the resulting embarrassment, perceptions of differences between his views and Administration Policies and the resulting distraction from CENTCOM missions."

That article, of course, was Thomas P.M. Barnett's 7,500-word hagiographical profile of Fallon in this issue of Esquire. Below are the key excerpts to give you an idea of why Fallon might have been so uncomfortable with it:

[W]hile Admiral Fallon's boss, President George W. Bush, regularly trash-talks his way to World War III and his administration casually casts Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as this century's Hitler (a crown it has awarded once before, to deadly effect), it's left to Fallon-and apparently Fallon alone-to argue that, as he told Al Jazeera last fall: "This constant drumbeat of conflict . . . is not helpful and not useful. I expect that there will be no war, and that is what we ought to be working for. We ought to try to do our utmost to create different conditions."

What America needs, Fallon says, is a "combination of strength and willingness to engage."

Those are fighting words to your average neocon-not to mention your average supporter of Israel, a good many of whom in Washington seem never to have served a minute in uniform. But utter those words for print and you can easily find yourself defending your indifference to "nuclear holocaust."

How does Fallon get away with so brazenly challenging his commander in chief?

The answer is that he might not get away with it for much longer. President Bush is not accustomed to a subordinate who speaks his mind as freely as Fallon does, and the president may have had enough….

…well-placed observers now say that it will come as no surprise if Fallon is relieved of his command before his time is up next spring, maybe as early as this summer, in favor of a commander the White House considers to be more pliable. If that were to happen, it may well mean that the president and vice-president intend to take military action against Iran before the end of this year and don't want a commander standing in their way.

And later in the piece:

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Topics: Iran, Iraq

Iraq

Reid on Fallon Resignation: "Independence" is "Not Welcomed in This Administration"

Paul Kiel | March 11, 2008, 4:02PM

Just out from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) on the resignation of Admiral William Fallon as commander of CENTOM:

“I am concerned that the resignation of Admiral William J. Fallon, commander of all U.S. forces in the Middle East and a military leader with more than three decades of command experience, is yet another example that independence and the frank, open airing of experts’ views are not welcomed in this Administration.

“It is also a sign that the Administration is blind to the growing costs and consequences of the Iraq war, which has so damaged America’s security interests in the Middle East and beyond. Democrats will continue to examine these matters very closely in the coming weeks and months.”

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Topics: Iran, Iraq

Iraq

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | February 4, 2008, 9:40AM

At the very least, if the Bush Administration expires and we are still at war only in Iraq and Afghanistan, we can count ourselves lucky.

The New York Times reports on the latest treasure unearthed by Wikileaks, a 2005 27-page document showing the U.S. military's Rules of Engagement in Iraq. Most worrying of all, the rules allowed for cross-border raids into Iran or Syria:

In a section on crossing international borders, the document said the permission of the American defense secretary was required before American forces could cross into or fly over Iranian or Syrian territory. Such actions, the document suggested, would probably also require the approval of President Bush.

But the document said that there were cases in which such approval was not required: when American forces were in hot pursuit of former members of Mr. Hussein’s government or terrorists....

It stated that the American commander engaged in the pursuit, however, should consult with top commanders in Baghdad, “time permitting.”

The Times notes that it's unknown whether this ever happened or whether the rules are any different now. Hold your breath.

But there are other interesting aspects to the document. Certainly the preoccupation with former members of Saddam Hussein's government, rather than foreign terrorists, was not reflected in the administration's rhetoric at the time.

And then there's this:

Apparently in a carryover from the intelligence failures of the Iraq invasion in early 2003, the document says the United States Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, gave American commanders in Iraq the authority to attack mobile “W.M.D. labs”; such labs for making germ weapons were later determined not to exist.

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Topics: Iran, Iraq, Must Read, Wikileaks

Iran

Bolton: NIE Result of "Illegitimate Politicization"

Paul Kiel | January 21, 2008, 3:09PM

We know what President Bush thinks of the National Intelligence Estimate which inconveniently concluded "with high confidence" that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. As he put it, the intelligence community sometimes comes to conclusions "separate from what I may or may not want."

But John Bolton has a way of striking to the heart of the issue. From The Jerusalem Post:

The 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate, as well as the skewed reporting around it, is a sign of the "illegitimate politicization" of the American intelligence establishment, according to former US ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton....

"I know the people who wrote this intelligence estimate," Bolton continued. "They are not from our intelligence community. They're from our State Department. It was a highly politicized document written by people who had a very clear policy objective."

Hypocritical as it might seem for a former Bush administration official to decry "politicization" of the government, Bolton is actually quite canny in his phrasing here. His problem is with "illegitimate" politicization, not politicization in general. That's because, as he explains, "in our system, constitutional legitimacy flows from the president, who was elected, through his officials."

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Topics: Iran

Iran

Sometimes White Boxes Are Just White Boxes

Paul Kiel | January 14, 2008, 12:03PM

For the record:

The small, boxlike objects dropped in the water by Iranian boats as they approached U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf on Sunday posed no threat to the American vessels, U.S. officials said yesterday, even as the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff charged that the incident reflects Iran's new tactics of asymmetric warfare.

After passing the white objects, commanders on the USS Port Royal and its accompanying destroyer and frigate decided there was so little danger from the objects that they did not bother to radio other ships to warn them, the officials said.

At least now a more complete picture of what happened one week ago in the Strait of Hormuz has developed. The Iranian speedboats maneuvered aggressively, dropped white boxes in the water, and a menacing threat was heard over the radio, so the initial alarmed reaction of Naval commanders was certainly reasonable. But commanders apparently quickly determined that the boxes weren't mines or any other kind of threat, and the radio transmission likely came from a prankster. And it took a week for that to become clear.

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Topics: Iran

Iran

Navy Times: Prankster May Have Been Behind Radio Threats

Paul Kiel | January 11, 2008, 6:11PM

It just gets more and more bizarre. From The Navy Times:

The threatening radio transmission heard at the end of a video showing harassing maneuvers by Iranian patrol boats in the Strait of Hormuz may have come from a locally famous heckler known among ship drivers as the “Filipino Monkey.”...

In recent years, American ships operating in the Middle East have had to contend with a mysterious but profane voice known by the ethnically insulting handle of “Filipino Monkey,” likely more than one person, who listens in on ship-to-ship radio traffic and then jumps on the net shouting insults and jabbering vile epithets....

Rick Hoffman, a retired captain who commanded the cruiser Hue City and spent many of his 17 years at sea in the Gulf was subject to the renegade radio talker repeatedly, often without pause during the so-called “Tanker Wars” of the late 1980s.

“For 25 years there’s been this mythical guy out there who, hour after hour, shouts obscenities and threats,” he said. “He could be tied up pierside somewhere or he could be on the bridge of a merchant ship.”

And the Monkey has stamina.

“He used to go all night long. The guy is crazy,” he said. “But who knows how many Filipino Monkeys there are? Could it have been a spurious transmission? Absolutely.”

Here again is the audio (mp3) of that radio transmission.

On a more serious note, the BBC reports that "Iranian speedboats approached US warships in two previously undisclosed incidents in the Strait of Hormuz in December."

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Topics: Iran

Iran

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | January 11, 2008, 10:07AM

As far as international incidents go, this one's a little baffling.

On Tuesday, we gave you the rundown of Sunday's incident in the Strait of Hormuz, when three hulking American naval ships were greeted by five Iranian speedboats. U.S. officials said that the boats maneuvered aggressively, dropped two white boxes in the water, and issued threats over the radio. Just when the boats were getting too close for comfort, they said, and the Americans were preparing for a warning shot, the boats sped away.

On Tuesday, the Pentagon released an edited video of the incident, which you can see here:

On the audio (mp3) of the radio communication, a voice slowly pronounces the words "I am coming to you," and then as the American tries to communicate, says, "You will explode after a few minutes."

But since then, the American version of the incident has undergone a revision. The radio threat, the Navy now admits, may not have come from the Iranian boats after all. The voice, a number of observers have pointed out, seems to come out of nowhere and doesn't have the expected engine noise in the background, and in fact, The Washington Post reports, the accent doesn't even sound Iranian.

The Iranians, meanwhile, have steadfastly insisted that nothing of this sort ever happened. To that effect, they released a video yesterday of a completely ordinary greeting between Iranian and naval vessels. But it's impossible to tell whether it's even the same incident. U.S. officials say that it's not.

So.... It remains unclear what happened really happened there and why. William Arkin of the Post's Early Warning blog suggests that Iran "wanted to send a not-so-subtle message to their Persian Gulf neighbors that they could disrupt the flow of oil and that any U.S.-Iranian confrontation would hurt the pocketbooks of the ruling sheiks."

The Bush administration took the ball and ran with it, playing up the "confrontation," though President Bush seemed to indicate an initial dearth of talking points. He regained his footing later, warning of "serious consequences" if it happened again. And if it does happen again, maybe it will all seem less strange.

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Topics: Iran, Must Read

Iran

Bush: Iran Boat Incident A "Provocative Act"

Paul Kiel | January 8, 2008, 4:46PM

Here's President Bush today when he was asked about Sunday's incident in the Strait of Hormuz, where, according to U.S. officials, a small group of Iranian speedboats issued threats to American ships and then fled just as the Americans were about to open fire:

I'm not sure what happened to the talking points on this one, because all Bush could bring himself to say was that it was "a provocative act," and (after several more seconds of silence) "they should not have done it." Hardly what you'd expect given the show they put on last year.

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Topics: Iran

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | January 8, 2008, 9:50AM

It's been nearly a year since the Bush Administration mounted a public relations campaign accusing Iran of arming insurgents in Iraq. If that was a campaign to generate enough public support to go on the offensive against Iran, it failed. But relations between the two haven't exactly warmed since -- nor, it's safe to say, has the administration's trigger finger gotten any less itchy.

Which makes this worrying:

We're coming at you, the Iranian radio transmission warned. Your ships will explode in a couple of minutes.

The United States and Iran reached the verge of a military confrontation early Sunday after five Iranian patrol boats sped toward the USS Port Royal and two accompanying ships as they crossed the Strait of Hormuz into the Persian Gulf. The Iranian vessels, manned by the Revolutionary Guard Corps, broke into two groups and "maneuvered aggressively" on both sides of the U.S. ships, coming as close as 500 yards, recounted Vice Adm. Kevin J. Cosgriff, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command.

After the radio transmission, two of the Iranian boats dropped "white box-like objects" into the water, Cosgriff said. The U.S. ships responded with evasive maneuvers, radioed warnings to the Iranians and sounded ships' whistles, while ordering increased readiness of their own vessels. After their messages were not heeded, the U.S. ships prepared to fire in self-defense, but the Iranians abruptly turned and sped north toward their territorial waters.

As the U.S. officials tell it, this was either an aborted attack (the little white boxes were mines) or a sort of mock attack (the boxes were just little boxes) meant to test how U.S. vessels react.

Meanwhile, the Iranians say that there were no aggressive maneuvers, no boxes, no threatening radio transmissions.

Perhaps most intriguing about the episode is that Pentagon officials say that the five speedboats belong to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. Last year, the administration focused on the Revolutionary Guards' Quds Force as the ones responsible for arming Iraqi insurgents -- and made quite an effort to argue that the Quds Force was necessarily acting with the authorization of the Iranian government. In October, the Bush administration imposed sanctions on the Revolutionary Guard and the Quds Force. So maybe this is just another chapter in that back and forth. Or maybe it's something more.

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Topics: Iran, Must Read

Iran

McConnell Defends Iran NIE Against the Right

Spencer Ackerman | December 7, 2007, 12:29PM

Faced with the inconvenient assessment that Iran doesn't have a nuclear weapons program, GOP Senators are running an old game plan: create a commission that will treat the truth and a lie as equal possibilities. However, Michael McConnell, the director of national intelligence, is unequivocally standing by the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran.

The Washington Post reports that GOP Senators John Ensign (R-NV) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) want to create a commission on the NIE that will, inevitably, trash it. For some historical perspective on how frequently the right has gone after intelligence assessments that conflict with desired conservative policy preferences, read Ilan Goldenberg. His bottom line: "In all of these cases conservatives played with and disregarded intelligence to help make their cases for a particular policy. And in all of these cases the conservatives were wrong." But he might have added something else: in all of these cases the conservatives were successful, despite being, you know, wrong.

Meanwhile, others on the right see something more nefarious at work. Danielle Pletka of AEI smears the entire intelligence community to the Post without any evidence: "This NIE was presented with a clear intention to deceive..." Similarly, in The New Republic, Yossi Klein Halevi doesn't bother addressing the new intelligence that prompted the Iran volte-face, and simply says the U.S. has lost "the will to stop Tehran" from doing something that Tehran isn't doing.

The intelligence community isn't backing down in the face of the right-wing pressure. "We certainly stand by the product," says DNI spokeswoman Vanee Vines. "It represents the consensus of intelligence community. That was clear when we released it. … We stand by it as comprehensive and accurate." But don't expect the braying from the right about appeasement and betrayal to cease.

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Topics: Iran

Iran

Congress (Probably) Didn't Compel Release of Iran Intel Report

Spencer Ackerman | December 3, 2007, 5:34PM

Kevin Drum speculated earlier today that pressure from the Democratic-controlled Congress might have pushed Mike McConnell, the director of national intelligence, into releasing today's National Intelligence Estimate, which judges that Iran doesn't have an active nuclear weapons program. It's an assessment that's certainly in line with past practice: after all, the administration isn't in the habit of releasing much information at all, let alone data points that suggest Iran can't, you know, start World War Three. But in this case, it looks like McConnell took the initiative without help.

An aide to Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), the chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, says that Rockefeller -- the obvious culprit in any Senatorial intelligence push -- didn't press McConnell to release the NIE's key judgments. Rockefeller's House counterpart, Rep. Silvestre Reyes (D-TX), released a statement today saying that he wants to be "fully informed about the classified sources upon which this estimate is based" and that he will "review areas where certain agencies dissent." That sounds like a man in the dark about the NIE. At the risk of wild speculation, I'm going to go out on a limb and say it's unlikely that their GOP colleagues didn't want the world to know about Iran's nuclear non-threat.

Perhaps other Senators or Congresscritters pushed McConnell. But so far it looks like this is a case of the intelligence community actually being out to set the record straight.

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Topics: Iran

Iran

Intel Chief Breaks New Non-Disclosure Policy With Dovish Iran Report

Spencer Ackerman | December 3, 2007, 2:00PM

Hmm. Could it be that Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell is trying to signal his opposition to a war with Iran?

This morning, the intelligence community released the key judgments of a National Intelligence Estimate concluding "with high confidence" that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program in the fall of 2003. Yet, just weeks ago, McConnell announced that the NIEs -- assessments of a given national-security or foreign-policy priority across all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies -- would no longer be available to the general public. The Iran NIE, McConnell said, would be no exception. Here's how AP intelligence reporter Pamela Hess reported McConnell's decision on November 13:

McConnell also said a new national intelligence estimate on Iran should be complete in about a month, but its key findings will not be released publicly. He says doing so could alert Iran to its intelligence vulnerabilities.

How quickly times change! Credit McConnell and the intelligence community for the public disclosure: after all, its previous estimate on Iran, completed in 2005, judged that Iran had an active nuclear-weapons program, so keeping the new NIE secret would have amounted to letting an inaccuracy stand. Indeed, that's how McConnell's deputy, Donald Kerr, described the motivation behind disclosure in a statement to reporters:

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Topics: Iran

Iran

Film: Iranians Vow Massive Response to Any U.S. Attack

Spencer Ackerman | October 23, 2007, 12:30PM

Frontline does it again. Fresh after the documentary show's penetrating look at Dick Cheney's pet legal theories, it travels to Tehran to explore the slowly building crisis between the U.S. and Iran. In doing so, Frontline pulls off a real coup, presenting the first-ever televised interview with Mohammed Jafari, a Qods Force commander and deputy leader of Iran's national security council.

Jafari isn't a household name, but in U.S.-Iranian relations, he's a big deal. Earlier this year, the U.S. raided the Iranian consulate in Erbil in an attempt to capture him, but Jafari wasn't at the consulate during the raid. Frontline describes him as one of the architects of Iran's Iraq policy -- which, the U.S. alleges, includes providing weapons to anti-American insurgent and militia groups -- and had the raid succeeded, U.S.-Iranian relations could very well have reached a crisis point.

In the documentary, Jafari promises retaliation against any U.S. military strike on Iran:

You will not find a single instance in which a country has inflicted harm on us and we have not responded. So if the United States makes such a mistake, they should know that we will definitely respond. And we don't make idle threats.

He's joined in that sentiment by Hossein Shariatmadari, a mouthpiece for "supreme leader" Ayatollah Ali Khamene'i:

As the Supreme Leader has said, if we're attacked we will threaten all American interests around the globe. The first step would be that all areas in Israel are in reach of our missiles, I mean there is not a single place in Israel outside the range of our missiles.

Showdown With Iran airs tonight on PBS.

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Topics: Iran

Iran

AEI's Gerecht: Cheney Doesn't Tell Me What to Write

Spencer Ackerman | September 6, 2007, 9:40AM

Last week, Barnett Rubin of New York University sparked a controversy by accusing hardliners in Dick Cheney's office of giving right-leaning think tanks in Washington "instructions" to start a drumbeat for war with Iran. Among the think-tankers Rubin called out was Reuel Marc Gerecht, a former CIA officer and Iran specialist, who wrote in this week's Newsweek that diplomacy with Iran and other "moderate tactics" are doomed to failure. I asked Gerecht for a response to Rubin's allegations, and he e-mails:

I like Rubin, but I have no idea of what he's talking about. (And I see that George Packer at The New Yorker seems to be similarly "informed" and similarly convinced of his sanity.) Newsweek contacted me. Fareed Zakaria was on vacation/book leave. They wanted to know whether I wanted to write about Iran. I said sure. Actually, I almost said "no" since I was in the midst of an international move and had no time. FYI: I don't know of a single instance of the VP's
office trying to encourage commentary from AEI staff. Not once. I suspect the VP's office knows that such forays would be highly unwise. The idea is offensive, and I think they know that, and would likely lead to considerable unpleasantness.

Imagine if Barack Obama won the presidency and his VP, Joe Biden, called you and George
Packer and suggested that you two write for them since all concerned were more or less on the same page. Even if you were in total agreement with Mr. Biden and wanted to advance "the cause," I suspect you would find such a suggestion presumptuous, to say the least. And on a side note, I wouldn't be so sure that the VP and his principals want to bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. I've known a few folks from that office over the years, and I wouldn't say that confidently. The press commentary pitting the "wise" and "professional" State Department against the "reckless" and "bellicose" VP office is, to put it politely, hyperventilated. One of the good things that might come from a Democratic victory in 2008 is that center-left/left-wing journalists, i.e., the vast majority of journalists, might actually know somebody well enough in the government to make this conspiratorial reflex less acute.

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Topics: Iran

Iran

Selling War with Iran: Next Week at AEI

Spencer Ackerman | September 4, 2007, 2:45PM

Barnett Rubin is the last person to set off wild speculation about war with Iran: the longtime Afghanistan expert is wonky, moderate and thoroughly analytical. But that's exactly what happened on Wednesday, when Rubin blogged that an anonymous, plugged-in friend told him that Dick Cheney's office had issued "instructions" to conservative think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute to start a drumbeat for attacking Iran. In order to determine precisely what he's alleging, and get a sense of its credibility, I spoke with Rubin, a senior fellow at NYU's Center on International Cooperation this morning.

Cheney's likely motivation for issuing such instructions to his think-tank allies would be to win an inter-administration battle over the future of Iran policy. Cheney, an advocate of confronting the Iranians militarily, faces opposition from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, where the primary concern is preventing an open-ended Iraq commitment from decimating military preparedness for additional crises. A new war is the last thing the chiefs want, and on this, they're backed by Defense Secretary Bob Gates. "It may be that the president hasn't decided yet," says Rubin.

On this reading, the real target of any coordinated campaign between the VP and right-wing D.C. think tanks on Iran isn't the Iranians themselves, or even general public opinion, but the Pentagon. Cheney needs to soften up his opposition inside the administration if Bush is to ultimately double down on a future conflict, something that a drumbeat of warnings about the Iranian threat can help accomplish. When asked if a third war seems surreal, given the depth of investment the U.S. has given Iraq and Afghanistan, Rubin replies, "I'm out of adjectives."

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Topics: Iran

Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | August 10, 2007, 9:43AM

The drumbeat against Iran from the administration has been constant this year -- reaching its highest pitch in February, when anonymous military briefers laid out the case to reporters. The Quds force, an elite military brigade, the administration line went, was channeling EFPs (explosively formed penetrators, a particularly dangerous type of IED) into Iraq to be used against U.S. soldiers.

The complications of the case were brushed aside, but despite an organized media offensive by the administration, it was not a wholly successful campaign. But lately the case has been revived. And now McClatchy reports that Dick Cheney has been pushing for strikes against Iranian forces in Iraq. But don't worry -- Cheney says that the administration ought to wait for "hard new evidence":

Behind the scenes, however, the president's top aides have been engaged in an intensive internal debate over how to respond to Iran's support for Shiite Muslim groups in Iraq and its nuclear program. Vice President Dick Cheney several weeks ago proposed launching airstrikes at suspected training camps in Iraq run by the Quds force, a special unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, according to two U.S. officials who are involved in Iran policy....

Cheney, who's long been skeptical of diplomacy with Iran, argued for military action if hard new evidence emerges of Iran's complicity in supporting anti-American forces in Iraq; for example, catching a truckload of fighters or weapons crossing into Iraq from Iran, one official said.

There is the expected divide within the administration on the question -- with Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates on the other side. But a Cheney spokeswoman tells McClatchy "'the vice president is right where the president is' on Iran policy."

Note: The Los Angeles Times has an interesting companion to McClatchy's piece this morning, reporting on Bush's continued attempts to convince Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki that Iran is "not a force for good." From Maliki's perspective -- and Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's -- things are obviously a lot more complicated.

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Topics: Dick Cheney, Iran, Must Read

Iran

The NIE and Iran: If We Attack, Hezbollah Hits Us

Spencer Ackerman | July 17, 2007, 11:32AM

This must have been the most controversial sentence in the entire NIE:

We assess Lebanese Hizbullah, which has conducted anti-US attacks outside the United States in the past, may be more likely to consider attacking the Homeland over the next three years if it perceives the United States as posing a direct threat to the group or to Iran.

Hezbollah blew up the Marine barracks in Beirut in 1983, murdering 241 Americans, but hasn't pulled off an attack on the U.S. since. It's significant that the NIE says it won't attack the U.S. absent a sense of provocation, particularly over Iran. You can imagine the row that must have caused within the intelligence community.

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Topics: Iran

Iran

New Iran Regime-Change Think Tank Opens in DC

Spencer Ackerman | July 6, 2007, 1:18PM

Meet Mahtaub "Mattie" Hojjati. A well-connected government and business consultant Hojjati is about to embark on a new career: revolutionary provocateur. She has two missions: to hasten the overthrow of the Iranian regime, and to convince the American public to support her.

Under the byline of Mattie Fein -- her husband is Bruce Fein, the prominent Reagan-era Justice Department lawyer last seen calling for the impeachment of Dick Cheney -- Hojjati penned an op-ed in the Washington Times last week heralding the creation of a new think tank, known as the the Institute for Persian Studies, devoted to pushing the regime over the abyss. From her perspective, the nearly 30-year old Iranian Revolution is in a terminal phase. "The cue that most of the population is looking for is international support," she tells TPMmuckraker, "but right now, they're getting mixed signals."

Exile politics played a crucial role in getting the U.S. into the Iraq war. From the late 90s until the invasion of Iraq, Ahmed Chalabi persuaded many in Washington that deposing Saddam Hussein and imposing a democratic regime in its place would be relatively cost-free. (The cooked WMD and terrorism propaganda didn't hurt, either.) While Hojatti balks at a U.S.-Iranian war -- something Chalabi embraced -- her project bears some similarity to prewar Iraq exile politics in D.C. She's not pushing any dubious intelligence. But she does want to "reeducate" the American public as to why "Iran is so critically important in a geopolitical sense, why they should care." Caring, in this sense, means supporting the overthrow of the Iranian theocracy -- with air strikes, if necessary, Hojjati says.

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Topics: Iran

Iran

Gates: Iran Kinda Maybe Arming Taliban

Spencer Ackerman | June 13, 2007, 1:37PM

Well, that didn't take long. Hours after Nick Burns told CNN that the administration has "irrefutable evidence" that Iran is arming the Taliban, Defense Secretary Bob Gates revised his June 4 remarks that the provenance of the Iranian weaponry is unclear. Here's Gates then:

There have been indications over the past few months of weapons coming in from Iran. We do not have any information about whether the government of Iran is supporting this, is behind it, or whether it's smuggling or exactly what's behind this, but there clearly is evidence that some weapons are coming into Afghanistan destined for the Taliban, but perhaps also for criminal elements involved in the drug trafficking coming from Iran.

And here's Gates now:

“It’s pretty clear there is a fairly substantial flow of weapons (into Afghanistan),” he said. “I haven’t seen intelligence specifically to this effect, but I would say given the qualities we’re seeing, it’s difficult to believe it is associated with smuggling or the drug business or that it is taking place without the knowledge of the Iranian government.”

So it's now "difficult to believe" that Tehran might not be involved in the weapons shipments, despite the absence of any particular intelligence on the question. Gates has been the most prominent dissonant voice on Iran -- and the Middle East more broadly -- in the Bush administration, yet here he is, inching closer toward the line that Burns unveiled to CNN. How long before he cites his own "irrefutable evidence?"

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Iran

State Dep't Official: Iran Definitely Arming Taliban

Spencer Ackerman | June 13, 2007, 12:14PM

In a statement echoing February's claims that the Iranian government was arming Iraqi terrorist groups, Nicholas Burns, the State Department's influential undersecretary for political affairs, told CNN today that the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps is arming the Taliban as well:

"There's irrefutable evidence the Iranians are now doing this and it's a pattern of activity," U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns told CNN.

"If you see the Iranians arming Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Gaza and the West Bank and, of course, arming Shia militants inside Iraq itself [sic]. It's very violent and very unproductive activity by the Iranian government."

And one that puts Tehran contrary to the U.N. Security Council, Burns said.

Burns's comments come a little more than a week after Defense Secretary Bob Gates said that it wasn't yet certain whether the presence of Iranian weaponry in Afghanistan indicated a concerted strategy on the part of the Iranian government. Now, apparently, the evidence has become "irrefutable."

If Iran is in fact aiding the Taliban, it's aiding an old enemy. In 2001, according to a presidential rival to Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Revolutionary Guard helped U.S.-backed Afghan fighters overthrow the Taliban. (U.S. intelligence officials have called the claim somewhat overblown.) The theory goes that now, Iran feels so threatened by U.S. forces on its borders in Iraq and Afghanistan that it will cast its lot in with whomever fights the Americans, despite old antipathies. It's known as "managed chaos." Muhammed Tahir, writing for the Jamestown Foundation, contends, "Iran has been increasing its operations in Afghanistan in an effort to gain influence with the contending insurgent factions and to hasten the departure of U.S. troops from the country."

It's a plausible enough theory, given that Iran remains surrounded by U.S. forces led by a bellicose administration, but it remains unclear what Burns's "irrefutable evidence" of Iranian strategy is, and how it represents an improvement over the evidence Gates possesses. Determining the ultimate provenance of Iranian weaponry is tricky. Last year, the Guardian reported that Iranian operatives were offering military support to Taliban-held areas in Afghanistan -- but most likely, those Iranians were Baluch seperatists fighting Tehran, rather than Iranian government agents. That's not to say that the Iranians aren't supplying the Taliban -- only that "irrefutable" evidence of who's arming who in Afghanistan is often more refutable than it might initially appear.

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Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | March 27, 2007, 9:23AM

Finally, some clarity.

The New York Times provides the history of U.S. concern over Iran's role in Iraq, reporting that in July, 2005, the U.S. sent a diplomatic protest to Iran over the use of allegedly Iranian-made explosives (EFPs) being used against coalition troops in Iraq by Shiite groups.

Somehow these concerns culminated in the U.S. military's infamous, anonymous EFP press briefing in mid-February.

It was a long road. But let's focus in on one thing. It's always been a credible allegation that Iran would in some fashion be supplying its Shiite proxies in the civil war, but let's set that aside. That's not the allegation that the U.S. made in that briefing and immediately thereafter. Rather, the administration clearly made a choice to focus on the evidence that Iranian manufactured weapons were being used in Iraq and stay silent on the crucial detail of who they were being used by. The briefing referred to Iranian support of generic "extremists," without specifying Sunni or Shiite.

The reason for this choice was clear: the vast majority of U.S. casualties come at the hands of Sunni insurgents, not Shiite. But suddenly Iran was elevated to being the major enemy there. Soon senior State Department officials were claiming that Iran is "the most disruptive, negative force in the Middle East." Move over, Al Qaeda.

But it's clear from the Times' piece that there was never any ambiguity -- on the part of the U.S. military, at least -- as to whom Iran might be supplying with weapons.

And that briefing? It wasn't for the purpose of galvanizing public support for a war against Iran, no. It was merely a tactical decision:

...in Baghdad, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., then the top American commander, approved plans to brief the news media on the E.F.P. issue — a reversal for military officials, who had been reluctant to highlight the effectiveness of the weapons for fear of encouraging their use.

“Our intelligence analysts advised our leaders that the historical Quds Force pattern is to pull back when their operations are exposed, so MNF-I leadership decided to expose their operations to save American lives,” said Maj. Gen. William B. Caldwell IV, the chief spokesman for Multinational Forces-Iraq, as the American-led command is known.

I guess we all just overreacted then?

Update: And while we're at it, it's worth mentioning again that the claim that Iran is the only possible supplier for EFPs in Iraq has been debunked.

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Iran

Webb Introduces Bill Restricting War with Iran

Paul Kiel | March 5, 2007, 6:13PM

Ever since Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) asked Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice in a Senate committee hearing whether it was the view of the administration that it had the authority to invade Iran without provocation or congressional authorization, we've been watching to see if he got an answer.

Well, he did, or he didn't -- it's not clear. In any case, Webb has gone ahead today and introduced legislation that would forbid the administration from using funds to invade Iran without congressional authorization.

Both Rice and one of Rice's deputies wrote Webb "lengthy letters" about whether the administration claimed the authority to invade Iran without Congress' say-so. But "neither could give me a clear response," Webb said today on the floor. Sen. Webb also had a private meeting with Rice two weeks ago, Webb's spokeswoman Jessica Smith told me, during which Iran was discussed. She wouldn't tell me its outcome, saying it was a "confidential meeting," but apparently Webb got all the answer he thought he was ever going to get.

"The situation that we now face," Webb said today, "is that the Administration repeatedly states that it seeks no war with Iran, at the same time it claims the authority to begin one, and at the same time it continues a military buildup in the region."

More from Webb's speech below....

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Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | February 27, 2007, 9:17AM

Two weeks ago, the Bush administration organized an intelligence briefing for journalists in Iraq to demonstrate that Iran was providing weapons to Iraqi insurgents. According to the anonymous briefers, the weapons -- particularly explosively formed penetrators or E.F.P.s -- were manufactured in Iran and provided to insurgents by the Quds Force -- a fact that meant direction for the operation was “coming from the highest levels of the Iranian government.”

Well. A raid in southern Iraq on Saturday seems to have complicated the case. There, The Wall Street Journal reports (sub. req.), troops "uncovered a makeshift factory used to construct advanced roadside bombs that the U.S. had thought were made only in Iran." The main feature of the find were several copper liners that are the main component of EFPs. But, The New York Times reports, "while the find gave experts much more information on the makings of the E.F.P.’s, which the American military has repeatedly argued must originate in Iran, the cache also included items that appeared to cloud the issue."

Among those cloudy items were "cardboard boxes of the gray plastic PVC tubes used to make the canisters. The boxes appeared to contain shipments of tubes directly from factories in the Middle East, none of them in Iran."

Possibly, the Times muses, "the parts were purchased on the open market" and then "the liners were then manufactured to the right size to cap the fittings."

But where were the liners made? The Army captain who led the raid doesn't know. From the Journal:

Capt. [Clayton] Combs said the copper caps were smooth and perfectly symmetrical, suggesting they had been made with a high degree of technical precision. He said he didn't know where the caps came from or whether they had been made in Iran. "That's the hard thing about this war," he said.

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Iran

Worldwide Threat: Is Iran The Biggest?

Spencer Ackerman | February 26, 2007, 1:03PM

Tomorrow morning, the Senate Armed Services Committee becomes the epicenter of a prospective war with Iran. That's because senior intelligence officials will deliver an annual assessment to Congress known as the Worldwide Threat briefing. Over the past several years, the Worldwide Threat has made for a few days' worth of news at most. Tomorrow's, however, will be more significant than usual: it will be a public forum for the intelligence community to either support or dissent from the Bush administration's increasing insistence that Iran is a greater threat to U.S. interests than al-Qaeda.

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Must Read

Today's Must Read

Paul Kiel | February 22, 2007, 8:58AM

"A senior Iranian government official" sat down with CNN's Christiane Amanpour yesterday, and calling the U.S. and Iran "natural allies," he laid out the case:

"We are not after conflict. We are not after crisis. We are not after war," said this official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "But we don't know whether the same is true in the U.S. or not. If the same is true on the U.S. side, the first step must be to end this vicious cycle that can lead to dangerous action -- war."

He confided that what he was telling me was not shared by all in the Iranian government, but it was endorsed so high up in the religious leadership that he felt confident spelling out the rationale....

I asked whether he meant Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself.

"Yes," he said....

He said the time is right for the United States and Iran to sit down and talk directly -- to say "we recognize each other." He said neither side has done this so far "because of the mentality on each side."

"Each of us is afraid of looking weak if we take the first step," he said. "We have this fear in common with America. Before contemplating recognition, each side feels it necessary to convince the other side that 'I am not weak.'"

Sure, there's that whole Hezbollah business, and Iran's nuclear program (which the official claimed was for peaceful purposes, and mainly as a kind of confidence booster for the country), but for both countries, the "major threat" is al Qaeda. The question is whether the administration, which has a talent for making enemies proliferate, will follow the simple arithmetic of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."

Of course, it's by no means the first time that Iran has made a diplomatic overture to the Bush administration. But since going through diplomatic channels didn't work so well then, this time Iran chose a more reliable route: CNN.

Note: Also don't miss the follow up to yesterday's Must Read. Maliki is still on the war path, doing everything he can to infuriate every Sunni in the country.

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Topics: Iran, Must Read

Iran

Two More Iranians Detained in Iraq?

Spencer Ackerman | February 16, 2007, 12:44PM

Zeyad at IraqSlogger reads the Iraqi press and finds word that U.S. forces took two more Iranians into custody.

The Iranians were apparently visiting SCIRI official and hardline Shiite cleric Jalaleddin al-Sagheer, who's also a prominent Iraqi member of parliament. No word as of yet from the U.S. as to the veracity of the report, but Iranians have been detained at SCIRI compounds in the past.

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Iran

Snow: My Kingdom For A Transcript!

Spencer Ackerman | February 16, 2007, 12:30PM

Sometimes bamboozlement can boomerang.

The slow burn from the administration’s big briefing in Baghdad on Iranian weaponry in Iraq just won’t stop. Briefers refused to allow journalists to record the presentation, a measure explained as necessary in order to protect intelligence sources and methods. Unfortunately for the White House, for the entire week, senior officials have been all over the place in describing what exactly the administration is alleging about Iran, and now intelligence officials have claimed that Sunday's briefers mischaracterized the underlying intelligence.

Caught in the crossfire is poor Tony Snow, who, without a transcript of the briefing, has been unable to get the White House -- and the press corps -- back onto a single page of sheet music:

Q Have you been able to reconstruct the transcript of the briefing in Baghdad on Sunday?

MR. SNOW: No, but I think the general purpose of the briefing in Baghdad was to outline Iranian activities in terms of supplying weaponry, or weaponry that had made its way from Iran into Iraq that had been used to kill coalition forces, among others.

One of the most prominent parts of the briefing were the EFPs, the explosively formed projectiles, which are a new form of IED. And so that's basically what was laid out at the briefing. I have not been able -- we're still working on trying to come up with some sort of rendering so that we can find out precisely what the briefer said.

Q Why wouldn't you offer a transcript?

MR. SNOW: Because it wasn't transcribed at the time. People are looking for a tape to see if they can rebuild it just for you guys.

Most likely, Snow is just blowing smoke. But if a transcript of the briefing mysteriously surfaces, it'll probably be yet another embarassment for the administration -- why weren't reporters allowed to tape or video the presentation in the first place? And why all the administration disharmony if there was a recording all along of what was in fact said in Baghdad?

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Iran

Reyes: We're Going To "Dive Deeper" Into Iran Intel

Spencer Ackerman | February 16, 2007, 9:32AM

After holding a closed-door hearing on Iran yesterday, House intelligence committee chairman Silvestre Reyes (D-TX) suggested that -- surprise, surprise -- the Bush administration is misrepresenting the available intelligence on Iran:

I regard Iran as a threat to U.S. interests. By its actions, Iran clearly wants a nuclear weapon. Iran clearly supports international terrorism. And Iran clearly wants to undermine U.S. objectives in Iraq.

That said, we need to be very careful in our rhetoric. We don't want to get into a situation where hyped intelligence leads us into another invasion and another conflict....

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Iran

Iraqis: Qods Were Peacemakers

Spencer Ackerman | February 16, 2007, 9:24AM

Newsweek has an interesting investigation into the Qods Force presence in Iraq. Contrary to the Bush administration's claims this week that the Qods Force is in Iraq to sow chaos and sponsor attacks on U.S. troops, Iraqi Shiites from the SCIRI party -- whose leader President Bush hosted at the White House in December -- are saying that Qods operatives arrested by the U.S. were attempting to reign in Moqtada Sadr's Mahdi Army:

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Iran

New CENTCOM Chief: Stop All This War Talk

Spencer Ackerman | February 14, 2007, 4:58PM

Just so he didn't feel left out, Admiral Bill Fallon, the incoming head of U.S. Central Command, gave an interview to the Associated Press telling the press to stop talking about a possible war with Iran:

“Some in the world are talking some fear of alleged imminent attack by the U.S. on Iran,” Fallon said. It “serves no good purpose, (is) unhelpful, distracting and just serving to up the ante of fear and uncertainty.” ...

Fallon reiterated U.S. allegations that Iran is responsible for supporting some of the violence in Iraq. But he expressed hope Tehran would change course and start to play a constructive role.

“Of significant note, I believe, is the role that Iran is playing directly or indirectly, in fomenting, perpetuating, instability inside Iraq,” Fallon said.

Fallon said he believed Iran could help lower violence in Iraq and Afghanistan – countries on either side of Tehran's borders – but he hadn't yet seen any sign Iran was willing to lend its assistance.

“I believe that Iran could and should be playing a significant part. How that comes about remains to be seen,” Fallon said. “But the idea that we have yet another conflict in this region strikes me as not where we want to go, and not what we want to be engaged in.”

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Iran

State's Burns: Iranian Gov't Has 'Responsibility' for EFPs

Spencer Ackerman | February 14, 2007, 2:29PM

At Brookings just now, Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns went beyond what President Bush said this morning about official Iranian culpability for Iranian munitions used in attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq. Responding to Warren Strobel of McClatchy's efforts to get Burns to define the relationship between Qods and higher echelons of Iranian leadership, Burns said:

I'll resist the temptation to draw an organizational chart, for obvious reasons. They're part of the Iranian defense and intelligence establishment. They're a major part of the Iranian government. Therefore, the actions of that force are the responsibility of that government. If that force is supplying technology for Shiite militants, that government is responsible.

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Iran

Burns: Iran is 'Most Disruptive, Negative Force' in Mideast

Spencer Ackerman | February 14, 2007, 2:26PM

Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns is at the Brookings Institution right now discussing Iran. While he said that U.S.-Iranian conflict is "not inevitable, not desirable," Iran is "the most disruptive, negative force in the Middle East."

Al Qaeda, apparently, is yesterday's news.

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Iran

Bush Not Apace With Pace

Spencer Ackerman | February 14, 2007, 1:02PM

CNN's Barbara Starr just reported that President Bush and General Peter Pace are on the same page about munitions in Iraq. In reality, they're not even in the same book.

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Iran

Bush: Who Cares if Iran Ordered EFP Attacks?

Spencer Ackerman | February 14, 2007, 12:13PM

The Iran innuendo continues. In his press conference today, President Bush said that the U.S. knows "with certainty" that the EFPs coming in from Iran for attacks on U.S. forces originate with the Qods Forces -- a branch of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. That's nothing new: Sunday's briefing made the same allegation. What came next is:

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Iran

Snow Spins! And He Misses!

Spencer Ackerman | February 13, 2007, 2:41PM

How sharper than a serpent's tooth, the loss of message discipline.

One of the things we've been highlighting since Sunday's briefing on Iranian meddling in Iraq is the reliance on innuendo instead of fact. Remember that Bush administration had delayed the briefing out of fear of overstating its case and calling attention to its past history of inaccurate statements about intelligence.

As a result, the administration relied on anonymous military officials to present Iranian-made weapons, but relied on a chain of inferences to make the case that "the highest levels of the Iranian government" were involved. So the problem is a lack of clarity as to the actual significance of what was presented. Hence Gen. Peter Pace's agnosticism.

Today in his briefing, Tony Snow saw the wages of all that.

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Iran

English Markings on EFPs? BFD

Spencer Ackerman | February 13, 2007, 2:15PM

A number of TPM readers have been wanting to know: what's up with the fact that the Iranian weapons on display in Sunday's briefing have English markings on them? Isn't that fishy?

No, says John Pike of globalsecurity.org. "If they had Farsi markings on them, how would (the Iranians) sell them internationally?" English, after all, is "the lingua franca of the international arms trade."

In other words, there may be 99 problems with allegations of Iranian-directed attacks on U.S. forces, but English markings ain't one.

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Iran

State Dep't to Press: Stop Your War on Iran

Spencer Ackerman | February 13, 2007, 10:02AM

From Sean McCormack's State Department briefing yesterday:

QUESTION: I mean, Sean, sort of a follow-up on all these questions. In a general sense, the big (inaudible) at the moment we've seen, you know, cover of Newsweek, cover of Economist saying Iran could be next, a lot of speculation about military action. Can you give me any reaction to that?

MR. MCCORMACK: It seems to be the news media that is whipping up that storyline, not us....

...President Bush has made it very clear that we, as has Secretary Gates -- Secretary of Defense Gates has made it very clear that while we don't take option -- no President takes options off the table, our force protection actions are focused on activities inside of Iraq. We have no plans to attack Iran.

So I'll put it to you that it might be -- you might look amongst yourselves and your colleagues within the journalistic community in terms of people who are whipping this up. It's certainly not the U.S. Government.

McCormick is right, of course. It was the media that issued an order for the U.S. military to attack Iranian assets in Iraq; the media that's been raiding Iranian offices in Iraq; and the media that's deploying additional naval carrier groups to the Persian Gulf. How could anyone think otherwise?

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Iran

Ahmadinejad: When I Say You Should Die, It Means I Love You

Spencer Ackerman | February 13, 2007, 9:51AM

As if on cue to play the ranting villain after Sunday's briefing on Iran's supply of weapons to Iraq, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appeared on "Good Morning America" to stubbornly say nothing of substance to Diane Sawyer. He did, however, say that you shouldn't take it personally when he and his coterie say "Death To America":

Well, our position is clear: We are opposed to any proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and nuclear weapons. We believe that the time is now over for nuke weapons. It is a time for logic, for rationality and for civilization. Instead of thinking of finding new weapons, we are trying to find new ways to love people. And if talking about the "Death to America" slogans, I think you know it yourself, it is not related in any way to American public. Our people have no problem with American public, and we have a very friendly relationship.

Death To America: the new love movement.

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Iraq

IraqSlogger: Anonymous Iran Briefer Outed

Paul Kiel | February 12, 2007, 12:53PM

From Eason Jordan at IraqSlogger:

...one of the three supposedly unnamed US officials apparently has been outed by an Iraqi news service, Voices of Iraq, whose report on the Baghdad news conference identified one of the three speakers as Major General William Caldwell, whose portfolio includes public affairs and who holds frequent news conferences and grants one-on-one interviews. So, if the VOI report identifying Caldwell is correct, why did every other news organization apparently agree to grant anonymity to the general who's the official spokesman of the US-led Multi-National Force in Iraq? Why would Caldwell insist on not having his name associated with these allegations today?

Via Editor & Publisher and Laura Rozen.

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