Sy Hersh weighs in on the NIE Report

I heard this interview on CNN with Sy Hersh yesterday. It was really good. He was talking about this in November of 2006, and now must feel totally vindicated. Sy said he would have an article on this coming out next month in The New Yorker.

via: BradBlog

Sy Hersh: ‘[Cheney] Has Kept His Foot on the Neck of That Report … for a Year’

At a news conference yesterday, George Bush denied knowing that U.S. intelligence had learned the Iranian program had been suspended when he warned the American people last month that Iran was on the verge of launching World War III. He was not lying, Bush suggested, but rather his own incompetence and famous lack of curiosity led him to give the false warning. Bush said that when Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Mike McConnell told him in August that new information about the Iranian nuclear program had come to light, he simply did not bother to ask the DNI about the nature of the new developments.

If the muted response from reporters at the news conference to this assertion is a guide, journalists close to the White House appear to believe that it while it may be unacceptable for Bush to lie to them, it is perfectly okay for him to issue false predictions about an impending apocalypse if the warnings are based entirely on his ineptitude as commander-in-chief and his personal lack of curiosity.

Today we learn that Dick Cheney has known about — and actively suppressed — the intelligence community’s finding for over a year. In particular, Cheney knew that Iran suspended its weapons program when he made this statement on Oct. 21, 2007, in an address to a Washington think tank:

Dismissing Iran’s claims that it is seeking only nuclear energy and not a weapons program, Cheney accused Iranian leaders of pursuing a practice of “delay and deception in an obvious effort to buy time.”

“Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions … The Iranian regime needs to know that if it stays on its present course the international community is prepared to impose serious consequences.” Read on…

BradBlog has the transcript to this interview with Sy Hersh.