The Empire strikes back

The mainstream media has joined the fray in the Iraqi document caper. To no one's surprise, they are attempting to throw cold water on the story.

For those following along, this blog and other more notable blogs have been covering Stephen Hayes' attempts to gain access to unclassified Iraqi docs held by the Defense Intelligence Agency. Many of these docs reportedly contain titles suggestive of smoking gun connections between Saddam and nefarious entities.


To bolster his story Hayes spoke with several analysts involved with the documents, under condition of anonymity of course, who provided him with the intriguing titles. They cannot provide him with documents themselves--like anyone else he must obtain them formally. Based on his account of that process his requests have been met with a 'shoo fly' reply from DIA officials.

Perhaps due to Mr. Hayes' repeated poking of this hornet's nest, we now have a response from the MSM via Mr. Hosenball of Newsweek:

Dec. 19, 2005 issue - Evidence validating claims by the Bush administration of a pre-war relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda seems more elusive than ever. Counterterrorism officials familiar with some of the latest assessments of intel collected in Iraq, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitive subject matter, say that the more U.S. analysts pore through raw info, the less evidence they find of any significant connection between Saddam and Osama bin Laden's terror network.

That of course sounds plausible--just another wingnut's wild story put to rest, right? However, I wonder which 'empire' these "counterterrorim officials who wish to remain anonymous due to the sensitivity of the subject" work within? Are they DIA, CIA, or perhaps even State Dept? Or perhaps just a staffer in Harry Reid's office who knows some counterterrorism officials?

At any rate, Hayes specifically mentioned that his anonymous sources were actually involved with the documents, while Newsweek grabbed the higher-ups. The Newsweek article looks suspiciously like it was thrown together at the last minute to address Hayes' assertions.

For example, Newsweek tries to provide a reason why Hayes was stonewalled. It claims the docs, although unclassified, cannot actually be read by anyone without a security clearance. Now, while I understand the rationale there, I'm gonna have to go back and re-read Hayes' columns since it's likely he would have addressed this issue had they told him upfront. The Weekly Standard could have hired a contractor with a clearance to read the docs, unless they required top secret code word or somesuch. And if the latter were true, one would think they would be classified.

The left will point and say the Newsweek article is proof that Bushitler is trying to sweep this under the rug--that they know the docs DO NOT show connections to al Qaida or WMD stockpiles and are trying to make them go away. Although that's certainly possible, the perverbial fly in the ointment remains the fact that Hayes claims to have sources on the ground and directly involved with the project. I'm sure we'll see his reply shortly, so as they say, stay tuned.