Ron Suskind on Countdown: Bush Could get Impeached Over This Book

Ron Susskind was interviewed by Keith Olbermann on Countdown. He is the author of the book that claims the Bush White House paid an Iraqi insider to fabricate a letter as a way of pushing for war with Iraq. Read the entire transcript.

Ron Suskind in a moment. First, the details of what he has written in “The Way of the World” published today. The Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, writing that before the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, President Bush already knew that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction, something that did not stop him from ordering the invasion anyway.

Suskind speaking on the record with U.S. intelligence officials, who told him that in early 2003, in secret meetings with British intelligence, Saddam‘s own intelligence chief, Tahir Jalil Habbush, revealed that Iraq, in fact, did not have weapons of mass destruction, information that was passed on to the CIA.

When that information was then passed on to Mr. Bush—author Suskind says—the president became frustrated and said of Habbush, quote, “Why don‘t they ask him to give us something we can use to help us make our case?”

Habbush then held weekly meetings with British intelligence, telling them that Saddam had no WMD stockpiles and no active nuclear, chemical or biological weapons programs.

When all this was shared with CIA Director George Tenet, he said, quote, “They‘re not going to like this downtown,” downtown being the White House. It sounds like a police drama.

“The White House then buried the Habbush Report. They instructed the British that they were no longer interested in keeping the channel open.

Rob Richer, the CIA‘s Near East Division head, telling Suskind again on the record, quote, “Bush wanted to go to war in Iraq from the very first few days he was in office. Nothing was going to stop that.”

Now, for the smoking gun about the smoking gun that was never a smoking gun. CIA division head, Richer, is telling Suskind that not only did the order to forge a fake letter come from the White House, but the assignment had been written on creamy White House stationary.

“The White House had concocted a fake letter from Habbush to Saddam, backdated to July 1, 2001. It said that 9/11 ring leader , Mohammed Atta had actually trained for his mission in Iraq—thus showing finally that there was an operational link between Saddam and al Qaeda, something the Vice President‘s Office had been pressing CIA to prove since 9/11 as a justification to invade Iraq. There is no link.”

Another CIA official, John Maguire who oversaw the Iraq operations group also is confirming the existence of the forged letter to author Suskind, but Mr. Richer backtracking for both of them tonight in a statement to MSNBC, quote, “I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document from Habbush as outlined in Mr. Suskind‘s book.

Further, today, (5 August 2008) I talked with John Maguire, who has given me the permission to state the following on his behalf, ‘I never receive any instruction from then Chief/NE Rob Richer or any other officer in my chain of command instructing me to fabricate such a letter. Further, I have no knowledge to the origins of the letter and as to how it circulated in Iraq.”

The letter, whatever its origins, was passed in Baghdad to Con Coughlin, a reporter for the “Sunday Telegraph” of London who wrote it about in the front page of his newspaper on December 14th, 2003, the same day that Saddam Hussein was discovered in his hiding hole in Iraq. That day, Mr. Coughlin describing the significance of his find to Tom Brokaw on “MEET THE PRESS.”

[...]They‘re coming at you kind of forcefully. What‘s your response to that forcefulness and these comments?

SUSKIND: Well, the fact is, a lot of this is expected. I‘m one person who is standing at this point with the sources behind me, those who are holding firm, and, obviously, they‘re under acute pressure—to say this is an action that has constitutional implications along with, you know, the possibility of impeachment proceedings. All this in an odd way, you know, character assassination is what they do when they have nothing else to say.

OLBERMANN: Ask Scott McClellan.