Our Country's New "Don't Ask. Don't Tell." Policy

FBI Is Taking Another Look at Forged Prewar Intelligence

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-niger3dec03,0,4700538.story?coll=la-home-headlines

From December 3, 2005 LA Times www.latimes.com

This LA Times article describes, in brief, the history of the forged Niger documents, the brouhaha over Joe Wilson’s Op-Ed piece in the New York Times and the results of the initial FBI investigation requested by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The lack of due diligence by the FBI screams out at the reader. The failure of the FBI to question Rocco Martino, the identified source of the forgeries, can only be construed as gross ineptitude at best, or, the more likely scenario, pressure by someone(s) to “not go there”. Is there anyone today over the age of 5 with an IQ over 50 and a body temperature of 98.6 degrees who couldn’t figure out that it might be a wise thing to interview the primary suspect in a case involving a crime somewhere above the level of littering?

It is beyond the imagination that the FBI had no interest in following your basic “Who-What-When-Where-and-Why” line of pursuing and resolving the case, even though that was the charge given the FBI by the Senate Intelligence Committee. The conclusion that the FBI reached that Martino was in it to make money (“end of story”!) stops midway in the line of answering the most basic of questions. Even if it were a money-making deal for Martino, why did Martino think he could make money by peddling these forgeries? And why would a national government that was contemplating GOING TO WAR based on documents such as these be so uninterested in authenticating them?

We’ve all watched the made-for-TV movies recounting the tales of real life police detectives, FBI agents, journalists and the infamous G-men tracking down and bringing to justice those people who have killed innocent victims. Those men and women “in uniform” who never gave up until they broke open the case and sent the perpetrators away for life believed in their duty to bring to justice those who would take the lives and liberties away from Americans. Here is a case of National Security. Here is a case where we are sending our sons and daughters overseas to die in a war based on this information. Here is a case where we went after the WRONG GUY! And, yet, there seems to be NO INTEREST in discovering WHY this guy thought he could (AND DID) sell these amateurish forgeries to the “best” intelligence agency in the world!

At the end of the day, this has become our country’s “Don’t ask. Don’t tell.” policy.