WMD's: SECRETS AND LIES

Concerning: WMD's - SECRETS AND LIES

May we suggest that you, before reading the story further below - which is very interesting, remember the underreported fact that the United States tore more than 8000 crucial pages of Iraq's 11,800-page dossier on weapons, before passing on a sanitised version to the 10 non-permanent members of the United Nations security council.

The full extent of Washington's complete control over who sees what in the crucial Iraqi dossier calls into question the allegations made by US Secretary of State Colin Powell that 'omissions' in the document constituted a 'material breach' of the latest UN resolution on Iraq. [Url.: http://www.sundayherald.com/30195]

An Australian intelligence insider reveals how key dossiers on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were censored, and how his early reports to Canberra about prisoner abuse were ignored.

02/15/05 "Four Corners" - - Transcript of program broadcast by ABC Australia.

LIZ JACKSON: Rod Barton lives a quiet, low profile life in the outer suburbs of Canberra. Born in England, he came to Australia when he was nine.

To his neighbours he's just the bloke who comes and goes a lot, and loves his roses. But Rod Barton worked for Australian Intelligence for over 20 years and, most recently, on contract in Iraq.

ROD BARTON: If someone was brought to me in an orange jumpsuit with a guard with a gun standing behind him. Of course I didn't pull any fingernails out, but I think it's misleading to say that no Australian's involved. I was involved.

LIZ JACKSON: Last year Rod Barton was in Baghdad working for the CIA's special advisor to the Iraq Survey Group. He resigned in disgust when CIA officials censured his reports.

ROD BARTON: I said "We are not political. We are apolitical. We have to be objective". "No, you cannot write about this".

LIZ JACKSON: Since the early 1990s, Rod Barton has been in demand around the world as a top intelligence analyst of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. He's provided his services to Washington, Canberra and the United Nations. Former intelligence officers rarely talk about what they know and what they've seen, especially on camera.

ROD BARTON: Well, you're imbued with this idea of keeping secrets, and you're not allowed to talk about who you are, even who you work for, and so what we're saying now will come as a surprise even to some of my friends. And I guess I'm doing it partly because I'm at the end of this process now, and partly because I think the world should know some of the truths which at times I would have liked the world to have known, but felt I couldn't say anything.

LIZ JACKSON: Tonight on 'Four Corners' Rod Barton let's us into his world, a world of secrets and lies.

Rod Barton was in the first team of weapons inspectors that went into Iraq back in 1991. The fires from Gulf War I were still burning. This old footage, shot by Iraqi intelligence, shows him at work four years later.

Trained as a microbiologist, Rod was seconded from Australia's Defence Intelligence Organisation to work with UNSCOM, the United Nations team sent to verify that Iraq had destroyed its weapons of mass destruction. Here he's cross-examining Iraqi officials about 20 tonnes of missing bacterial growth medium, on the verge of one of UNSCOM's triumphs, forcing the Iraqis to concede they had, indeed, embarked on a biological weapons program. This discovery put him on the front page of 'The New York Times'.

But as time passed and the triumphs were few and far between, Rod Barton came to realise that there were secret arrangements between people at UNSCOM and the CIA. US intelligence arranged for a sophisticated bugging device to be hidden inside UNSCOM's base at the Canal Hotel, with United States having control of the information flow. The head of UNSCOM was Australian Richard Butler.

ROD BARTON: I think we were compromised towards the end, '98, at the end of UNSCOM, towards the end, because the United States wanted us to put in special equipment to intercept Iraqi communications, and we did this.

LIZ JACKSON: Was the United Nations itself aware that it was being used as a method for spying for the CIA?

More interesting reading: Secrets and Lies -
Full story - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/42xmy

Google on the 8000 by the US ripped Iraq-report pages - Url.: http://tinyurl.com/5um8j

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