The chapter is “Demonstration Effect” which opens with Cheney’s September 2002 visit with Dick Armey, then Majority Leader, in Cheney’s Senate hideaway office, following Armey’s intransigence on supporting a war with Iraq. Armey walked away from the meeting feeling bullshitted.

Gellman’s segue from the Armey story to the G4 story tells us when the meeting occurred… “Cheney barely mentioned to Armey the central point of his briefing three weeks earlier for the Gang of Four… Cheney went to see them on September 3…

Gellman’s footnote on this meeting (p 442) – “The account of the meeting with the Gang of Four – Trent Lott, Tom Daschle, Dennis Hastert, and Richard Gephardt – draws on confidential interviews with two participants in July and August 2002, and sumultaneous reporting by my colleague Walter Pincus at the Washington Post. See also Isikoff and Corn, Hubris, p 23.

Coincedentally, the Armey briefing occurred “the same week Addington flew to Gitmo.”

Cheney had asked to see them on September 3, immediately after the Labor Day recess with utmost urgency. There was alarming new intelligence about Iraq’s unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAV’s…

Could you please confirm this is 2002 you are referencing?

Because if so,
26 Aug 2002: Cheney tells Vet of Foreign Wars, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has [WMD].” His speech not cleared by CIA.

4 Sept 2002: Pelosi briefed, but not accurately, by CIA.

5 Sept 2002: Sen Bob Graham, head of Sen Intell Comm, learns that Bu$hCo has not planned to produce an NIE. He requests one.

8 Sept 2002: Judith Miller and Michael Gordon NYT front page article about [Iraqi attempts to acquire aluminum tubes, WMD]

If it is 2002, then my iCal puts the 3rd as a Tuesday (so the end of the Labor Day weekend; it is always the first Monday of Sept, so it would have been Mon, 2 Sept 2002). So the 4th would have been a Wed, and the meeting with Sen Bob Graham on Thurs, 5 Sept 2002 sure sounds like a likely candidate for Cheney’s meeting with Gang of Four — and a time for Graham to very likely discover no NIE was in the works.

However, I didn’t hear any reports of Graham stating Cheney’s presence at the 5 Sept 2002 meeting, nor it’s location. So just tossing this out in case anyone else can confirm or disconfirm.

Again, would need more confirmation for my info.
All my dates are from p. 131 of “Anatomy of Deceit“

—
And might I just give a shout out for the fact that klynn and I have company in the ‘grab that book off the shelf and dig out those dates and data!’ mode.

Although I do believe the CIA has been left to hang out to dry on the false pre war intelligence when so many have reported that the majority if not all of the creation and cherry picking of false intelligence came out of Feiths little shop of horrors …the Office of Special Plans.

hell we have yet to witness anyone held accountable for those Niger forgeries.

,

Bob in HI

The CIA is a sacred cow that is undeserving of such faith and certainly undeserving of blind, thoughtless support simply because it claims to be doing what is necessary to the survival of the nation when such evidence as is available would suggest something very different, something that is more akin to the behavior of the KGB, for example.

And the claim that, “Everybody does it” is pathetic and unbecoming to a democracy, even to a merely ostensible democracy …

Considering that as much of their ‘propaganda’ (or ‘deceit’) is directed at the American public as toward any supposed ‘enemy’, we have to ask the question: Whose interests does the CIA really support or serve? Corporations, the Political Cla$$ or some shadow government to whom the CIA owes an essential allegiance?

I would wonder at the honesty and understanding of anyone, today, who claims to know the answer to that question, based on anything other than faith or complicity.

DW

I must just have taken a wrong turn somewhere. I just tried accessing the site again, and this time got in without any problem. I was trying to highlight this blog of Glenn’s:

Obama’s embrace of Bush terrorism policies is celebrated as “Centrism”. If he wants to be known as “Bush Light,” that’s his prerogative, but it will tar his legacy and maybe make him a war criminal for failing to investigate and prosecute the Bushies.

Bob in HI

“Sensitive data missing from National Archives“

By LARRY MARGASAK – 1 hour ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The National Archives lost a computer hard drive containing massive amounts of sensitive data from the Clinton administration, including Social Security numbers, addresses, and Secret Service and White House operating procedures, congressional officials said Tuesday.

Darrell Issa, of course, is on the case.