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Former CIA Admits They Sought Information To Discredit Juan Cole For Bashing Bush

From March 2009, Laura Flanders interviews Juan Cole, who is about as supportive of Pres. Obama's foreign policy as he was of Pres. Bush. Hope the CIA is not still on the case. Some times it's not paranoia...they are genuinely after you:


From March 2009, Laura Flanders interviews Juan Cole, who is about as supportive of Pres. Obama's foreign policy as he was of Pres. Bush. Hope the CIA is not still on the case.

Some times it's not paranoia...they are genuinely after you:

C.I.A. official says that officials in the Bush White House sought damaging personal information on a prominent American critic of the Iraq war in order to discredit him.

Glenn L. Carle, a former Central Intelligence Agency officer who was a top counterterrorism official during the administration of President George W. Bush, said the White House at least twice asked intelligence officials to gather sensitive information on Juan Cole, a University of Michigan professor who writes an influential blog that criticized the war.

In an interview, Mr. Carle said his supervisor at the National Intelligence Council told him in 2005 that White House officials wanted “to get” Professor Cole, and made clear that he wanted Mr. Carle to collect information about him, an effort Mr. Carle rebuffed. Months later, Mr. Carle said, he confronted a C.I.A. official after learning of another attempt to collect information about Professor Cole. Mr. Carle said he contended at the time that such actions would have been unlawful.

I don't think this surprises anyone if they remember a systematic campaign of attack the Bush administration applied to anyone who criticized them: Joe Wilson, Scott Ritter, Don Siegelman, the list is long and distinguished. Though to use the CIA in this kind of personal, petty vendetta is a new twist and shows that there is no law, no ethic, no constitutional limitation of power they weren't willing to violate to pursue their agenda.

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