WorldNetDaily, a conservative online news service, ran an interesting scoop this week, which I found via Josh Marshall.
We know that the Bush administration, in building its case against Iraq before the war, mistakenly argued that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted nuclear weapons. This claim, like so many of the White House’s arguments about Iraq, has been thoroughly debunked.
What we did not know was that an Energy Department intelligence officer pushed this bogus claim through his agency and is now reaping generous rewards.
As WorldNetDaily reported, “A former Energy Department intelligence chief who agreed with the White House claim that Iraq had reconstituted its defunct nuclear-arms program was awarded a total of $20,500 in bonuses during the build-up to the war, WorldNetDaily has learned.
“Thomas Rider, as acting director of Energy’s intelligence office, overruled senior intelligence officers on his staff in voting for the position at a National Foreign Intelligence Board meeting at CIA headquarters last September.
“His officers argued at a pre-briefing at Energy headquarters that there was no hard evidence to support the alarming Iraq nuclear charge, and asked to join State Department’s dissenting opinion, Energy officials say.
“Rider ordered them to ‘shut up and sit down,’ according to sources familiar with the meeting.”
This is a perfect example of mistaken priorities in the Bush administration. The Energy Dept’s intelligence officers didn’t believe the reconstituted nuclear weapons claim was true, but Rider browbeat them into submission. Now the world knows the administration was wrong about this and our nation’s credibility is suffering.
Does the White House ask for Rider’s resignation? Do they demote him? Reprimand him? No, they give him an extra $20,500 in bonuses.
This raises a host of questions. Why was Rider pushing so hard for the Energy Dept to come to this conclusion? Who, if anyone, was urging him on? And why in the world is he getting such a huge bonus now that he was proven wrong?
WorldNetDaily reported, “Bonuses that big are rare, and Energy insiders say they cannot recall previous intelligence chiefs receiving as much bonus money as Rider.” One anonymous agency source said, “That’s a hell of a lot of money for an intelligence director who had no experience or background in intelligence, and who’d only been running the office for nine months. Something’s fishy.”
This certainly has the whiff of scandal to it and can be a key piece to the larger puzzle of the Bush administration’s deceptive claims about Iraq in the months leading up to war.
As Josh Marshall noted in mentioning this story, it’d be nice to see some of the nation’s biggest dailies pick up on a story like this because “they’d probably have the muscle to bust it open a bit more.” Marshall also adds that it would have been nice if some of these papers had reported this in the first place, instead of having to rely on a small conservative outlet like WorldNetDaily.
Alas, the combined total of articles on this in the Washington Post, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and USA Today is — you guessed it — zero.
Let’s all say it together: What liberal media?