The Woolsey Factor

Josh Marshall notes the, shall we say ironic, qualities of using James Woolsey as a surrogate to call Barack Obama "delusional." There's a lot of Woolsey-ania out there, but it's important to recall that his September 24, 2001 New Republic article "Blood Baath: The Iraq Connection" (in the magazine's first post-9/11 issue) was one of the very first and boldest strokes in the journalistic campaign for the Iraq War:

In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's attacks, attention has focused on terrorist chieftain Osama bin Laden. And he may well be responsible. But intelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks--whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others--were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein.

To this end, investigators should revisit the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. A few years ago, the facts in that case seemed straightforward: The mastermind behind the bombing, who went by the alias Ramzi Yousef, was in fact a 27-year-old Pakistani named Abdul Basit. But late last year, AEI Press published Study of Revenge: Saddam Hussein's Unfinished War Against America, a careful book about the bombing by AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie. The book's startling thesis is that the original theory of the attack, advanced by James Fox (the FBI's chief investigator into the 1993 bombing until his replacement in 1994) was correct: that Yousef was not Abdul Basit but rather an Iraqi agent who had assumed the latter's identity when police files in Kuwait (where the real Abdul Basit lived in 1990) were doctored by Iraqi intelligence during the occupation of Kuwait. If Mylroie and Fox (who died in 1997) are right, then it was Iraq that went after the World Trade Center last time. Which makes it much more plausible that Iraq has done so again.

Like a lot of other TNR content, the article's vanished from their website and I don't want to infringe their copyrights. But I will post a link to this other guy who seems happy to infringe the copyright on the web version of the article that seems to have been posted on 9/13/2001 and is identical as far as I can tell.

Comments

The New Republic is a flaming bag of shit.

Posted by IvanG | June 17, 2008 6:22 PM

The fact that a radical neocon, flaming nitwit like Woolsey was in charge of the CIA should give everyone pause.

What crap was he responsible for that we don't know about?

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 17, 2008 6:27 PM

Why isn't the article available online? This sounds like something that needs to be looked in to further. Is it only pro-war articles that disappeared, or ones people criticize? I've heard about this before, and it sounds dangerously like a memory-hole.

Posted by Jeremy | June 17, 2008 6:32 PM

In the immediate aftermath of Tuesday's attacks, attention has focused on terrorist chieftain Osama bin Laden. And he may well be responsible. But intelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks--whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others--were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein.

Let's reiterate:

The New Republic is a flaming bag of cowardly shit.

Posted by Monty | June 17, 2008 7:06 PM

I never -- ever, ever, ever -- thought I would be defending Woolsey, but here goes:

But intelligence and law enforcement officials investigating the case would do well to at least consider another possibility: that the attacks--whether perpetrated by bin Laden and his associates or by others--were sponsored, supported, and perhaps even ordered by Saddam Hussein.

You know, I agree with this.

My problem with the Al Qaeda-Iraq connection cheerleaders is that they asserted with certainty a connection that was extremely tenuous at best. Curveball, etc., etc., etc.

They also dismissed/ignored all of the numerous reasons why a Saddam-Al Qaeda connection was unlikely given the relative interests of the parties.

But that said, it would have been nuts to dismiss out of hand that ANY party with an interest in harming the U.S. was behind the attacks. Elements in any of N. Korea, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Cuba, China, and, yes, Iraq could have had a hand in the attack. And that is all that Woolsey was saying at that point.

Posted by space | June 17, 2008 7:06 PM

But that said, it would have been nuts to dismiss out of hand that ANY party with an interest in harming the U.S. was behind the attacks. Elements in any of N. Korea, Iran, Egypt, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, Cuba, China, and, yes, Iraq could have had a hand in the attack. And that is all that Woolsey was saying at that point.

Wrong! He was saying a great deal more than that. Not one of those other countries had an entire movement ready to mobilize both inside and outside the government before 9/11. Context matters, and Woolsey was speaking knowing that no lesser man than the Vice President of the United States believed that failing to occupy Baghdad in 1991 was a major blunder.

Lighting a match in a dark room is different than lighting a match in a closet full of fireworks.

Posted by NSinNY | June 17, 2008 7:34 PM

To be clear, I wasn't saying Iraq had a movement ready to mobilize in the US. I meant to say that there was a powerful cohort in the US (PNAC, etc.) that was ready to mobilize to push the country to war.

I should type more slowly.

Posted by NSinNY | June 17, 2008 7:37 PM

And Woolsey was a card carrying member of the PNAC crowd. He signed the PNAC document that is usually quoted about a "terrorist Pearl Harbor". His bias was quite clear.

The full list of signatories is here - including one Senator John McCain.
http://www.rightweb.irc-online.org/charts/pnac-chart.htm

Posted by Richard Steven Hack | June 17, 2008 8:07 PM

That's fascinating that TNR might have a significant memory hole, at least as regards the Web. I wonder how big the memory hole is? I subscribed from 1980 to 2004, and saved all the back issues. The evolution of TNR in that quarter century has been fearsome to witness and it would make a really interesting book. Second-best would be to start a blog featuring the more salient landmarks on their road to perdition. Why not both?

With just a little bit of ambition....

Posted by Marc Valdez | June 17, 2008 8:12 PM

That's fascinating that TNR might have a significant memory hole, at least as regards the Web. I wonder how big the memory hole is? I subscribed from 1980 to 2004, and saved all the back issues. The evolution of TNR in that quarter century has been fearsome to witness and it would make a really interesting book. Second-best would be to start a blog featuring the more salient landmarks on their road to perdition. Why not both?

With just a little bit of ambition....

Posted by Marc Valdez | June 17, 2008 8:15 PM

As Josh has pointed out in an update, Woolsey believes that the Oklahoma City bombing was also an Iraqi plot. This should be repeated out every time this guy opens his mouth.

Posted by Walker | June 17, 2008 8:18 PM

That's fascinating that TNR might have a significant memory hole, at least as regards the Web. I wonder how big the memory hole is? I subscribed from 1980 to 2004, and saved all the back issues. The evolution of TNR in that quarter century has been fearsome to witness and it would make a really interesting book. Second-best would be to start a blog featuring the more salient landmarks on their road to perdition. Why not both?

With just a little bit of ambition....

Posted by Marc Valdez | June 17, 2008 8:35 PM

That's fascinating that TNR might have a significant memory hole, at least as regards the Web. I wonder how big the memory hole is? I subscribed from 1980 to 2004, and saved all the back issues. The evolution of TNR in that quarter century has been fearsome to witness and it would make a really interesting book. Second-best would be to start a blog featuring the more salient landmarks on their road to perdition. Why not both?

With just a little bit of ambition....

Posted by Marc Valdez | June 17, 2008 8:48 PM

MY:
Nothing ever completely vanishes on the internet. Not when you have the help of the way back machine:

http://web.archive.org/web/20011109085953/tnr.com/092401/woolsey092401.html

Posted by Joe Klein's conscience | June 17, 2008 9:15 PM

And citing Lady Wackadoodle Laurie Milroy gets you double points for sheer wingnut flatulence.

Posted by SqueakyRat | June 17, 2008 11:31 PM

TNR was pushing Iraq's responsibility for 9/11 by 24 Sept 2001? But don't let anyone tell you that Israeli lobby mentalities had anything to do with the US invasion of Iraq.

Posted by otto | June 18, 2008 2:42 AM

"..a careful book about the bombing by AEI scholar Laurie Mylroie."

The words careful and scholar cannot be used in the same sentence as Laurie Mylroie.

Posted by bob h | June 18, 2008 5:28 AM

Don't forget that Woolsey actually gave himself his own supersekrit mission - he went to the UK and was found snooping around the campus of the University of Wales (Swansea) (I think) trying to prove they falsified their own records or something.

I mean, he was found by cops, who were responding to the burglar alarm. He claimed to be on a mission for the State Department, but of course the embassy knew nothing of it, which didn't help. I believe he paid his own bail.

Posted by Alex | June 18, 2008 8:57 AM

Don't forget that Woolsey actually gave himself his own supersekrit mission - he went to the UK and was found snooping around the campus of the University of Wales (Swansea) (I think) trying to prove they falsified their own records or something.

I mean, he was found by cops, who were responding to the burglar alarm. He claimed to be on a mission for the State Department, but of course the embassy knew nothing of it, which didn't help. I believe he paid his own bail.

Posted by Alex | June 18, 2008 9:10 AM

Woolsey was pushing this tripe on 9/11. I remember on one of the networks saying he thought this was Saddam Hussein.

Posted by Dan | June 18, 2008 10:00 AM

It's well known that James Woolsey is one of Stephen Glass's overused pseudonyms.

Posted by Walsh | June 18, 2008 12:48 PM

Don't forget that Woolsey actually gave himself his own supersekrit mission - he went to the UK and was found snooping around the campus of the University of Wales (Swansea) (I think) trying to prove they falsified their own records or something.

I mean, he was found by cops, who were responding to the burglar alarm. He claimed to be on a mission for the State Department, but of course the embassy knew nothing of it, which didn't help. I believe he paid his own bail.

Posted by Alex | June 18, 2008 4:00 PM