One of the sources for Ron Suskind’s explosive revelation that the White House forged a letter on Iraq-9/11 ties, former CIA official Rob Richer, recently retracted his statements. Suskind has posted the transcript of his interview with Richer, where Richer states that the CIA was asked by the White House via George Tenet to write the letter:

Rob: To characterize it right, I would say, right: it came to us, George had a raised eyebrow, and basically we passed it on–it was to–and passed this on into the organization. You know, it was: ‘Okay, we gotta do this, but make it go away.’ … It was: ‘This is unbelievable. This is just like all the other garbage we get about … I mean Mohammad Atta and links to al Qaeda. ‘Rob,’ you know, ‘do something with this.’ I think it was more like that than: ‘Get this done.’ [...]

Rob: What I remember is George saying, ‘we got this from’–basically, from what George said was ‘downtown.’

Ron: Which is the White House?

Rob: Yes.

“In the next couple days the transcripts will be coming out,” Suskind said yesterday. “[T]he issues, in this matter, are simply too important to stand as discredited in any way,” he added.

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In Ron Suskind’s new book, Suskind describes a disturbing case in Washington, D.C., where security officials detained and interrogated Usman Khosa, a Pakistani U.S. college graduate, because he was “fiddling” with his iPod near White House gates. Officials took Khosa to an interrogation room “beneath” the White House:

He turns as a large uniformed man lunges at him. The backpack!” the man yells, pushing Usman against the Italianate gates in front of Treasury and ripping off his backpack. Another officer on a bicycle arrives from somewhere and tears the backpack open, dumping its contents on the sidewalk. [...]

Usman is trundled from the SUV, escorted through the West Gate, and onto the manicured grounds. No one speaks as the agents walk him behind the gate’s security station, down a stairwell, along an underground passage, and into a room — cement-walled box with a table, two chairs, a hanging light with a bare bulb, and a mounted video camera. Even after all the astonishing turns of the past hour, Usman can’t quite believe there’s actually an interrogation room beneath the White House, dark and dank and horrific.

“Usman Khosa is a Pakistani national in his early twenties, a graduate of Connecticut College now working for the International Monetary Fund,” Suskind notes.

Ron Suskind’s new book alleges that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a letter from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein linking the dictator to the 9/11 terrorists. The American Conservative’s Philip Giraldi argues today that “an extremely reliable and well placed source in the intelligence community” told him Suskind’s overall claim “is correct,” but that it was Douglas Feith’s Office of Special Plans — not the CIA — that forged the letter:

My source also notes that Dick Cheney, who was behind the forgery, hated and mistrusted the Agency and would not have used it for such a sensitive assignment. Instead, he went to Doug Feith’s Office of Special Plans and asked them to do the job. … It was Feith’s office that produced the letter and then surfaced it to the media in Iraq. Unlike the [Central Intelligence] Agency, the Pentagon had no restrictions on it regarding the production of false information to mislead the public. Indeed, one might argue that Doug Feith’s office specialized in such activity.

A CIA counterrorism expert said that, in the run-up to war, Feith’s office recommended that the CIA’s finding of no link between Iraq al Qaeda relations “be ignored. Not challenged, not made the subject of a critical dialogue between policymakers and analysts, but ignored.”

Interviewed on C-SPAN’s Washington Journal this morning, Ron Suskind, author of a new book that reveals that the White House forged a letter concocting a fake link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11, criticized the administration’s pre-war arrogance. For example, Donald Rumsfeld once claimed that the U.S. could easily “bend” Iraq to think like the West:

SUSKIND: One of the quotes in the book which is picking up steam is Don Rumsfeld saying to folks, in meetings…saying essentially “we will bend,” he says, “Iraq to our reality. They will succumb to our view of how things should be.” That doesn’t happen. So we get into all manner of messes as we go forward.

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Suskind added that Condoleezza Rice also selectively ignored the reality on the ground. In summer 2003, just the insurgency was taking root in Iraq, Rice reportedly said, “I don’t want to hear the I-word,” or insurgency, in any meetings.

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Last night on MSNBC’s Countdown, host Keith Olbermann interviewed Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind about the claims in his new book that the White House ordered the CIA to forge a letter linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11.

Olbermann reported that one of Suskind’s sources, Ron Richer, has now backed off his allegations. Contradicting the statements he made on tape to Suskind, Richer told MSNBC last night, “I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document from Habbush as outlined in Mr. Suskind’s book.”

Asked to respond to the retraction, Suskind suggested that Richer’s business interests pressured him to disavow his previous comments:

You know, I‘m sympathetic in a way to all these guys. They‘re under acute pressure. They‘re individuals. They‘ve got to feed their families. They really survive off the government, both of them, they‘re contractors and whatnot.. [...]

You know, these guys, though, are feeling now great pressure. … [T]hey can be brought into a moment of crisis by the government saying, “You‘ll never work again, you‘ll never earn a living.”

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Richer’s business interests seem to have trumped his interest in defending the truth. His livelihood is dependent on maintaining strong but “discreet” relationships with the Bush administration and foreign governments.

After leaving the CIA, Richer “immediately” took a job with Blackwater USA as Vice President of Intelligence. In February 2007, Richer and Vice Chairman of Blackwater, Cofer Black, started a new company, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS). That company reportedly operates “under the purview of its secretive founder” and Blackwater owner, Erik Prince.

To achieve success in their new venture, Richer and Black have depended heavily on their ties with the Bush administration. The Nation reported last June:

“Cofer can open doors,” Richer told the Washington Post in 2007. “I can open doors. We can generally get in to see who we need to see. … [W]e can deal with the right minister or person.” Black told the paper he and Richer spend a lot of their time traveling. “I am discreet in where I go and who I see. I spend most of my time dealing with senior people in governments, making connections.” But it is clear that the existing connections from the former spooks’ time at the agency have brought business to Total Intelligence.

Suskind said Richer’s change of heart was quite sudden. “He was fine with it this morning. He was fine with it at midday. Now, reporters actually called him. He said to me, ‘I‘ll tell them no comment because it‘s in the book, but Ron Suskind is a fine journalist. That will be my comment.’ He said, ‘It‘s fine, Ron.’”

Given Richer’s business dealings, it seems appropriate to ask whether the Bush administration or one of its key allies (Cofer Black or Erik Prince) compelled Richer into retracting his allegations by threatening him with his job.

It’s already well-known that Amb. Joseph Wilson’s July 6, 2003 op-ed in the New York Times deeply troubled the White House. The piece, “What I Didn’t Find In Africa,” concluded that “some of the intelligence related to Iraq’s nuclear weapons program was twisted [by the Bush administration] to exaggerate the Iraqi threat.” The administration went to extraordinary lengths — including revealing the covert CIA identity of his wife, Valerie Plame — to smear Wilson.

Last night on MSNBC, Pulitzer-Prize winning author Ron Suskind revealed to Keith Olbermann more steps the administration took after Wilson’s op-ed. In 2003, the Bush administration tried to bury statements by head of Iraqi intelligence, Tahir Jalil Habbush, that Saddam Hussein had no WMD. According to former CIA agent Rob Maguire, the decision to then pay Habbush $5 million in hush money came after the run-in with Plame and Wilson:

And, you know, Joe Wilson and Valerie Plame popped up that summer. As Maguire says, “Everyone was terrified that Habbush would pop up on the screen.” That’s his quote. At that moment, they dotted the “I’s” and crossed the “T’s” on his financial arrangement of his resettlement. And they agreed to pay him $5 million.

Now, by almost any reckoning, considering what he provided and that we didn’t use him for anything else going forward, that would be considered hush money in almost any parlance.

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To recap: In order to push the American public into war, the Bush administration not only jeopardized the safety of a covert CIA agent, but it also paid off a wanted criminal to keep its secret.

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In the acknowledgments of his new book, Pulitzer-Prize winner Ron Suskind writes that his research assistant was “detained by federal agents” and “interrogated” while on a trip to New York related to the book. Politco’s Mike Allen reports:

Suskind writes in the acknowledgments that his research assistant, Greg Jackson, “was sent to New York on a project for the book” in September 2007 and was “detained by federal agents in Manhattan. He was interrogated and his notes were confiscated, violations of his First and Fourth Amendment rights.” The author provides no further detail.

A new book by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind claims that, after the Iraq war began, the White House ordered the CIA to forge a “backdated, handwritten letter” from the head of Iraqi intelligence to Saddam Hussein, in an attempt to tie Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Here’s what Suskind reports:

– Saddam Hussein’s intelligence chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, told U.S. and British officials there was no WMD in Iraq, “intelligence they received in plenty of time to stop an invasion.”

– In the fall of 2003, the White House ordered CIA Director George Tenet to forge a “fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001,” Suskind writes. “It said that 9/11 ringleader Mohammad Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq” and that Iraq bought yellowcake uranium from Niger with the help of al Qaeda.

– The letter was commissioned “from the highest reaches of the White House.” “It would have to come from the very top,” Suskind told NPR today.

After the fake letter was released in late 2003, press outlets reported it as evidence of a Saddam/al Qaeda link. “Now, if this is true, that blows the lid off al Qaeda—Saddam,” said Bill O’Reilly at the time.

“The White House plans to push back hard,” Politico reports. Former CIA Director George Tenet today called the charges “ridiculous” and questioned whether Suskind is a “serious journalist.” “There was no such order from the White House to me,” he said. On NBC’s Today Show, Suskind said Tenet simply does not remember the letter — but Tenet’s staff does:

I think this is part of George’s memory issue. … He seems not to remember it. That’s at least what he claims. In this book, instead of going to George, I went to all the people around George, close to George, who remember because they were involved in the thing, and they remember what George says to them.

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After a White House meeting, Tenet went back to the CIA and ordered his staff to forge the letter. “Listen Marine, you’re not going to like this, but here goes,” Tenet told Rob Richer, former head of the CIA’s Near East Division, according to Richer.

Suskind also said he spoke with U.S. intelligence officials who stated that Bush was informed unequivocally in January 2003 that Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.

White House press spokesman Tony Fratto attacked Suskind today, stating that he “makes a living from gutter journalism” and calling the book one of Suskind’s “bizarre conspiracy theories.”

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Since the New York Times and other media outlets revealed Thursday evening that at least two CIA tapes documenting harsh interrogation of detainees were destroyed in 2005, Bush administration officials have been claiming complete ignorance.

White House counsel Harriet Miers knew of CIA’s plans but told them not to do it:

ABC News has learned that at least one White House official knew about the CIA’s planned destruction of videotapes in 2005 that documented the interrogation of two al Qaeda operatives: then-White House counsel Harriet Miers. Three officials told ABC News Miers urged the CIA not to destroy the tapes.

President Bush didn’t know:

[Bush] has no recollection of being made aware of the tapes or their destruction before yesterday.

Vice President Cheney was in the dark as well:

The vice president learned about the tapes and their destruction at the same time [as Bush], another administration official told CNN.

CIA Director Porter Goss wasn’t informed:

Mr. Goss became C.I.A. director in 2004 and was serving in the post when the tapes were destroyed, but was not informed in advance about Mr. Rodriguez’s decision, the former officials said.

CIA Acting General Counsel John Rizzo also didn’t know:

The chief of the agency’s clandestine service nevertheless ordered their destruction in November 2005, taking the step without notifying even the C.I.A.’s own top lawyer, John A. Rizzo, who was angry at the decision, the officials said.

The full blame for the destruction of the tapes has fallen on Jose Rodriguez, then the CIA’s head of the clandestine division. Rodriguez reportedly undertook the destruction of the tapes in a unilateral manner, without receiving any instructions from his bosses or giving them advance notice of his actions.

Last night on CNN, Ron Suskind — author of the One Percent Doctrine — said the idea that Rodriquez didn’t get “some authorization from above” is “hard to believe.” “It simply doesn’t work that way,” Suskind said, noting that “at this point, lots was being authorized from the White House in terms of the CIA.” Watch it:

UPDATE: Spencer Ackerman wrote that in State of War, the NYT’s James Risen reported “an effort by senior officials ‘to insulate Bush and give him deniability‘ on torture.” Kevin Drum recounts a conversation between George Tenet and President Bush that was reported in the One Percent Doctrine. “You’re not going to let me lose face on this, are you?” “No sir, Mr. President,” Tenet replied.

UPDATE II: Marcy Wheeler documents the responses from Congressional members as to what they knew and when they knew it. She notes the ostensible silence of former Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), who is running for reelection next year.

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