BUSH WHITE HOUSE SOUGHT PERSONAL INFORMATION ON IRAQ WAR CRITIC PROF. JUAN COLE

A former C.I.A. official is claiming that the Bush White House sought personal information on University of Michigan Professor Juan Cole, a prominent critic of the Iraq war. The accusations, reported by the New York Times’s Pulitzer Prize winning journalist James Risen, allege that Glenn L. Carle, a top counter-terrorism official during the Bush administration, was asked by his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council to gather sensitive information on Cole. Carle says his supervisor told him in 2005 that the White House wanted “to get” Cole. Carle says he rebuffed the request to collect information on Cole, telling his superiors that such actions would be unlawful.