I want to add a personal note to Dayo’s
post about anthrax and Iraq. I, too, recommend reading Glenn
Greenwald's speculations.
On the eve of the U.S.
invasion of Iraq--I think
it was a month or two before--I attended a two-day CIA conference in Wilmington that brought
together CIA officials, foreign policy experts and journalists. On the morning
of the second day, one of the policy experts pulled me aside and told me that
the night before over drinks, some CIA people had told him that they believed Iraq was behind
the anthrax attacks. He was taken aback,
and so was I, because we presumed they had access to information that might demonstrate
this. I don’t who they were; I also don’t
believe that the CIA itself was officially engaged in spreading rumors of this
kind--most of CIA officialdom was very skeptical of the invasion--but I think
it is possible that there was a network people who were promoting a theory
about anthrax that helped make the case for war. They may have been unwittingly spreading mis-information that emanated
from the perpetrator. Or they may have been winging it irresponsibly. It’s not clear,
but I join those who believe that some kind of congressional investigation is
in order. There are too many echoes of Niger and uranium.
--John B. Judis