AB [Music] for [Music] for ins for for [Music] k so it's now summer of what 02 at this time you go back home yep abua goes to his first black site which we'll certainly come back to um so you get home that summer and what was your involvement in or how did how did the planning for the Iraq War come about so in CTC in the counterterrorist center everybody was so excited about I was a beta I went home it was so funny my first day back in the office I uh I punch in the
combination to get into the The Vault and I open the door and I walk in and what the Vault oh uh every every office in the CIA is like a bank vault okay okay so you you need combinations sometimes multiple combinations to get in cuz they're all secure areas so I do my combination to get in I walk in and a couple of the guys see me and one of them goes like this and I said no no no it was a team effort he's like dude you're my hero I said no no no and
my boss uh comes out he's like oh my God you're a legend and see I didn't know anything that was happening at head I was so busy in Pakistan and he goes um the deputy director wants to see you I said really Jim pavit yeah I said cool glad I wore a tie so I go up to uh to pavot's office and he said I just want to shake your hand thank you for what you did in Pakistan and he said uh we want to offer you a new position we want you to be chief
of Counter Intelligence in the um in Alex station the Osama bin lad unit so this was a job that put me in charge of trying to root out Al-Qaeda moles trying to identify CIA officers it's a freaking hard job let me tell you I only did that for 6 weeks because my station Chief in Pakistan on the strength of the abuaba capture was promoted to associate deputy director for operations so he calls me and he says you need a job I said actually know I just got a job they put me in charge of Counter
Intelligence for uh Alex station and he said yeah well they just made the me the associate deputy director and he said I want you to come up to the seventh floor and be an executive assistant I said oh done done Jose Rodriguez was so mad at me he never forgave me for that he actually passed me over for promotion he said I displayed a shocking lack of commitment to counterterrorism can you imagine because I left the counterterrorism office to go up to the executive floor so I didn't care and then the deputy director uh promoted
me anyway over Jose's objections so my first day on the job was the following Monday and I go in and I said okay so what are we doing and he says I actually can't tell you you have to go to this room on the sixth floor and there are some secrecy agreements for you to sign and then we'll tell you what we're doing and I said okay so I went to the sixth floor and knocked on the door and I knew the guy who told me to come in and I said oh hey what are
you what are you doing he said so you're the new executive assistant wow you've made a a heck of a a heck of a path for yourself I said yeah I got lucky Pakistan was totally positive um I said what are we doing and he said well why don't you sign these first and then I'll explain everything so there were six of them and I signed six secrecy agreements saying I'll never ever reveal what I'm about to learn unless it's Declassified which it has been and so I sign I go okay what's up and he
goes well now this is this is May of 2002 202 he goes well next year in February we're going to invade Iraq we're going to overthrow Saddam Hussein and we're going to open the largest Air Force Base in the world so that we can move all of our air assets out of Saudi Arabia and deprive Osama Bin Laden of the ability to say that we're polluting the land of the two holy mosques I was dumbfounded and all I could even blur out was but we haven't caught Bin Laden yet and he said buddy the decision's
been made and the battle lines have been drawn he said he said CIA is opposed to this state is opposed to this and The Joint Chiefs are opposed but the ones that are for it are ovp the office of the vice president OSD the office of the Secretary of Defense and the National Security Council and I said so the decision's been made he said the decision's been made bu so I walk back downstairs and the boss says so you read in and I said are they out of their minds and he said yes they are
but we're not a policy agency we're a support agency and if they tell us to invade Iraq and overthrow Saddam Hussein that's what we're going to do and so that's what we worked on until we invaded Iraq and overthrew Saddam Hussein so Tennant was the director at this time right yes and uh didn't you I don't know if it was the same day or not but walk by his office and see him doing a little art project in there oh it wasn't tenant okay I went up to the uh it was the chief of something
called the Iraq operations group um I had to pick up a briefing book uh there was a principal meeting the principal meeting it's it's a policy meeting chaired by the Vice President um and it has the Secretary of Defense Secretary of State National Security advisor um CIA director NSA director and chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff so I went to pick up the book and and uh and the chief of the Iraq operations group he's sitting there with a piece of paper and he's got these Crayola um what do you call
them the Crayons no not the crayons but the magic markers I go what are you doing he says oh I'm designing the new Iraqi flag I said don't you think the Iraqis should design the new Iraqi flag he goes I don't know I thought I'd do it and I said you're using the color of the Israeli flag like this is what happens when they put a Mexican guy in charge of the Iraq operations group I said buddy the Iraqi flag is is the colors that it is for a reason right you got to have green
because it represents Islam you have to have red because it represents the ethnic minorities right you got to have the three stars because that represents uh the the sunnis the Shia and the Kurds you can't just take the Israeli flag and change it around a little bit so thank God nothing ever came of that but they were serious it it got worse than that that was minor for it got way worse than that how so people just getting too big for their Bridges well the day before the day before we actually crossed the border um
there was a final it's called an order of battle meeting I always hated the order of battle meetings because I'm not a military analyst and I just don't care where elements of the Fifth Army Corps are in comparison to the third infantry division I don't care right let the generals figure that out I trust in their judgment I you don't have to tell me that the the 23rd infantry mounted division is I I don't care so George asked me to be the notetaker in this meeting George tenant the director of the CIA asked me to
to be the notetaker and um the meeting was chaired by the Vice President so it was Cheney and his guys like scooter Libby and a couple of of other people coni rice Colin Powell um the chairman and vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs Don Rumsfeld ki's Deputy um Hadley Steve Hadley Steve Hadley I couldn't remember his first name he was there and then General I forget his name he was commander of centcom at the time he had replaced uh you know Schwarz C and [ __ ] and all these other people that had come after
Schwarz General was it Taylor Maybe Taylor can't remember anymore so Cheney starts the meeting General why don't you give us the order of battle I'm like so I'm sitting George is at George is at the head of a conference room table and everybody else is on a TV screen right and George's microphone is right in front of him and he is just sitting there like this and I'm sitting directly behind his right shoulder taking the notes so we're sitting there and they're like the Fifth Army Corps is in this position and the 23rd infantry is
here and they're going to move north and this one's going to move west and this one's going to come South and the blah blah blah blah blah and I'm writing it all down and then the general says if all goes as planned we can be in teron on by August George is sitting there and then he leans forward and turns off his microphone and he says did he say Baghdad or did he say Teran and I said he said Teran and George says have these people lost their minds and then he turns the microphone back
on and just sits so I'm taking all the notes and one of these idiots from the NSC says when we cross the border they're going to throw flowers at us and I wrote it down the meeting ends I go back to the deputy director's office he said how'd the meeting go and I said did you know we were going to invade Iran and he goes ooh are they still talking about that and I go yeah they said we could be in Iran by by August and he goes listen we're not invading Iran we're probably not
even going to be successful in Iraq but these guys don't know anything about the Middle East nothing we're not going to invade Iran they talk about it like they they think they know what they're talking about and they don't know anything I go okay I I hope you're right and sure enough we got bogged down in Iraq never never went anywhere near Iran mhm M so like you said this is right in the middle of the global war and Terror yep right smack in the middle of it the focuses on Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda um
tennet is not psyched about Iraq right but the direction to move forward is coming from Cheney and few other folks that you just mentioned um there was somebody who was feeding Cheney uh in to substantiate those claims that Sadam had wmds that's right chelby Ahmed chelby who was he oh I always hated this guy from the minute I met him I was like this guy is a dirty used car salesman aan chelby was a an Iraqi Shia Muslim kurd which made him one of like a half of 1% of the Iraqi population he left Iraq
as a child in 1964 his parents fled to Jordan and chelby went to school in London and became quite a prominent Banker but he was also a crook and a criminal and so he opened a bank in Jordan that was specifically meant to cater to the needs of Iraqi refugees in fact it was a Ponzi scheme and he stole all their money by one account $36 Million worth of deposits he escaped in the trunk of his secretary's car across the border into Syria and then from Syria made his way to London in Jordan they filed
charges against him and found him guilty in absentia and sentenced him to 30 years in prison but chelby was able to convince the neocons in the Republican party that he was the only person who could unite Iraq and that he should be the president of Iraq and that the United States should install him as the president of Iraq so after the first Gulf War the George HW Bush Administration said hey we should take a look at this guy chelby well those of us at the CIA who knew chelby were writing until our fingers were raw
saying this is a huge mistake this guy is a criminal he's going to rob Us blind he's a liar he's making it all up and then the money that we began to funnel to the Iraq National Congress which was this exiled Iraqi opposition group that celby headed began to disappear and finally when $6 million of the cia's money couldn't be accounted for the CIA issued something called a Burn Notice against chelby forbidding any CIA officer anywhere in the world from having any contact with chelby you're burned you're done well what chelby did was he increased
the level of his relations with the Republican Party saying if those lefties like George HW Bush uh won't have Me Maybe the dick chenies of the world will well after the Clinton Administration was done and George W bush won and Dick Cheney is the vice president and Don Rumsfeld is the Secretary of Defense they like what Chene is providing Chene is giving them this intelligence that is everything they want to hear Saddam has wmds Saddam is going to use uh wmds against the United States Saddam is going to launch an attack on Kuwait again saddam's
going to attack the Saudis saddam's going to attack the American Military Base in Jordan or the American Military Base in Turkey none of this stuff was true he was just making it up so we went to Cheney and we said look this guy is a known liar he's a known fabricator he's a thief and everything he says is unreliable so what they did is they told chelby to start reporting through the US defense attache in Aman so we started getting these classified cables called dos Department of Defense intelligence reports yeah and they're like weapons of
mass destruction were found in at such and such coordinates and we're like oh my God what's the source of this report so I'd call over the Pentagon hey I'm looking at dodir 1 12345 who's the source we're not at Liberty to share that with you what what do you mean I'm the CIA you got to share it with me it's a particularly sensitive Source we're like [ __ ] this is chalaby so we put out the word in the rest of the intelligence community you can't you can't listen to any of these dods it's all
made up but that was the information that the Pentagon used to justify the attack on Iraq it was all fake now to make matters worse for for for s for Washington millenum challeng yorkist for for for for fr for for for for fore [Music]
