A conference of top intelligence experts has just concluded deliberations, focusing on Iran, strategies for winning the war on terror and flaws in the work of American security agencies.
The main highlight of the gathering in Arlington, Va., was an evaluation of hours of tapes featuring Saddam Hussein, secretly recorded by foreign intelligence services in the former Iraq ruler’s palace in the mid-1990s.
The tapes, according to Intelligence Summit director John Loftus, author and analyst, clearly demonstrate that Saddam plotted a WMD attack on US. The Summit claimed that timely analysis of these recordings might have prevented the 9/11 attacks.
The 12 hours of recorded conversations are part of a vast trove of still untranslated documents, recordings, videotape and photographs captured in Iraq during the war. Whether this information will be examined for clues to the whereabouts of WMD stockpiles is a matter of debate within the intelligence community. The CIA, FBI, and directorate of national intelligence have resisted calls from Congress to reopen the search.
The Summit blamed the failure of US intelligence agencies to speedily assess information on the tapes on serious flaws in America’s foreign policy establishment, in particular on the cautious and pro-Arab stance of the State Department.
The State Department’s decision to deny an entry visa to the IntelSummit’s primary donor, Israeli businessman Michael Cherney, sparked another controversy.
John Deutch and James Woolsey, two former heads of the CIA, resigned positions as board members of The Intelligence Summit shortly before the conference began last week in protest over the decision to present the Distinguished Service Award to Cherney at the event. Woolsey’s office claimed that they were advised of the ‘new evidence’ against the Summit’s donor, linking him to “organized crime.” Loftus stated that the true reason for the resignations is the unwillingness of Directorate of National Intelligence to look into the Saddam tapes.
“Cherney’s award was vetted to my Board members three months ago, none of whom objected,” says Loftus. “There is no such new evidence against Michael Cherney who has proved his innocence in all courts. Smearing him is just a pretext.”
Another Intelligence Summit board member, Dr. Rachel Ehrenfeld, asked why the US has denied an entry visa to Cherney, “a proven US ally in the war on terror, a Jewish philtanthropist who donated more than $20 million in recent years to anti-terror activities and support for terror victims,” while “welcoming outspoken Islamists like Mustafa El Khalfi and former deputy Malaysian prime minister Anwar Ibrahim into the US as visiting scholars."
