06 January 2006

Was Cheney Stovepiped?

By Mickey Kaus
Why might the Bushies believe in a Saddam-9/11 connection? Mark Hosenball has obtained copies of the slides used at the secret briefing given at the White House. They included some reports (perhaps bogus) on Atta-in-Prague I hadn't seen before. The implicit charge seems to be that these previously undisclosed tidbits (i.e., that Atta was seen in Prague by "several" airport workers) were "stovepiped" to the top levels of government without being vetted through normal channels, where they would have been discredited. ... It's always hard to believe top government officials actually make big war/no war decisions based on these simplified slide show briefings, as opposed to drilling down and assessing the veracity of the underlying raw intelligence. Did Cheney (who stuck with the Atta-in-Prague story) really not want to learn of any possibly-inconvenient doubts about what the briefings told him? Or are briefings less important than reporters tend to think they are? ... The actual slides can be seen here. ... 8:10 P.M.

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