vips

The Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have written a new memorandum to President Bush dated July 14, 2003, Intelligence Unglued.

On National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice:

Surely Dr. Rice cannot persist in her insistence that she learned only on June 8, 2003 about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s mission to Niger in February 2002, when he determined that the Iraq-Niger report was a con-job. Wilson’s findings were duly reported to all concerned in early March 2002. And, if she somehow missed that report, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff on May 6 recounted chapter and verse on Wilson’s mission, and the story remained the talk of the town in the weeks that followed.

Rice’s denials are reminiscent of her claim in spring 2002 that there was no reporting suggesting that terrorists were planning to hijack planes and slam them into buildings. In September, the joint congressional committee on 9/11 came up with a dozen such reports.

And it gets even hotter:

Recommendation #1

We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney “not guilty.” His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.

This looks to be the strongest Memorandum to the President to date. During a brief interview today on NPR, Ray McGovern (who is a member of the steering committee for VIPS) replied that membership and interest in VIPS was still growing. VIPS now has 30 members.

Previous memorandums and opinions published by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and an interview with Ray McGovern:

February 8, 2003 Re: War on Iraq

March 15, 2003 Re: Cooking Intelligence for War

March 18, 2003 Re: Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem

April 26, 2003 Re: The Stakes in the Search for Weapons of Mass Destruction

May 1, 2003 Re: Intelligence Fiasco

May 19, 2003 Re: We are Perplexed at the US Refusal to Permit the Return of UN Inspectors to Iraq

May 25, 2003 We need Inspectors to Return to Iraq by Ray McGovern

June 26, 2003 William Rivers Pitt interview with Ray McGovern at Truthout.org

June 27, 2003 Cheney, Forgery and the CIA, Not Business as Usual by Ray McGovern

July 14, 2003 Re: Intelligence Unglued