Talk:Douglas Jay Feith

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/politics/28INTE.html?pagewanted=print&position=

Front page article on 4/28/04 NYTimes about Feith, Perle, Maloof, and Wurmser: How Pair's Finding on Terror Led to Clash on Shaping Intelligence, at, starts:

WASHINGTON, April 27 ? Soon after the Sept. 11 attacks, a two-man intelligence team set up shop in a windowless, cipher-locked room at the Pentagon, searching for evidence of links between terrorist groups and host countries.

The men culled classified material, much of it uncorroborated data from the C.I.A. "We discovered tons of raw intelligence," said Michael Maloof, one of the pair. "We were stunned that we couldn't find any mention of it in the C.I.A.'s finished reports."

They recorded and annotated their evidence on butcher paper hung like a mural around their small office. By the end of the year, as the rubble was being cleared from the World Trade Center and United States forces were fighting in Afghanistan, the men had constructed a startling new picture of global terrorism.

Old ethnic, religious and political divides between terrorist groups were breaking down, the two men warned, posing an ominous new threat. They saw alliances among a wide range of Islamic terrorists, and theorized about a convergence of Sunni and Shiite extremist groups and secular Arab governments. Their conclusions, delivered to senior Bush administration officials, connected Iraq and Al Qaeda, Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

In doing so, the team also helped set off a controversy over the shaping of intelligence that continues today.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is investigating whether the unit ? named the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group by its creator, Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy ? exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq to justify the war.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/politics/28INTE.html?pagewanted=print&position=

See also: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/07/11/wsept11.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/07/11/ixnewstop.html

Fury over Pentagon cell that briefed White House on Iraq's 'imaginary' al-Qaeda links By Julian Coman in Washington (Filed: 11/07/2004)

A Senior Pentagon policy maker created an unofficial "Iraqi intelligence cell" in the summer of 2002 to circumvent the CIA and secretly brief the White House on links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qa'eda, according to the Senate intelligence committee.

The allegations about Douglas Feith, the number three at the Department of Defence, are made in a supplementary annexe of the committee's review of the intelligence leading to war in Iraq, released on Friday. (rest snipped)