State Department Intelligence? Not So Much.

You would think that the U.S. State Department would know the difference between a Detroit based charity and the Iraqi Intelligence Service. And you would be wrong.

In 2002, 3 House Democrats went on a visit to Iraq, 5 months before the start of the war. The trip was apporved by the State Department, who thought the roughly $34,000 price of the trip was provided by a charitable organization of Iraqi-American professionals, originally set up in 1992 after the first Gulf War.

This was right before we invaded. All eyes were on Iraq. Doesn't say much for our own intelligence services to miss this one.

well apparantly it's just now being discovered because the money came from the Iraqi intelligence service but was funded through the charity organization. The charity organization had been established for 10 years at this point and it doesn't seem that the organization itself is under any suspicion...just the one employee. State Dept. wouldn't be the one to investigate it, that would be more under the FBI umbrella. Nothing came of it, obviously. We still invaded.

even the suspect is out on house arrest.

kinda a non-story really.

What I don't get is that the congressmen were criticized for going. They were accused ofundermining the Bush administration's foreign policy. If that were the case, the State Department wouldn't have approved the trip.

Uh, would it?

they were democrats. all democrats are Traitors and anti-American.

the State Dept operates...not entirely independently...but somewhat from the administration. it's staffed largely by career civil servants...at least until Bush. He did a lot of appointing that messed with the normal hiring processes within the Dept. but even still...back in 2002 there were still a lot of non affiliated workers there.

and the congressmen were criticiszed by those supporting the war in congress and in the public in general. there really wasn't much the State Dept could do to limit their going, especially as the State Dept. wasn't footing the bill.

The main point is that this was pretty much a fuckup that the Iraqi intelligence service could even have contact with members of congress without anybody, including the congress members, noticing.

Oh, yeah. I forgot.

Hey at least the State Department knows the difference between Iraq and Iran [1] unlike one of the sixteen intelligence agencies. The Defense Intelligence Agency wrote a history of themselves for their Thirty-fifth anniversary (traditional gift coral or modern jade) but instead went for public embarrassment. The history included highlights from each year and for 1981 included

The DIA did correct themselves.

Ali G on the risk of confusion between Iran and Iraq
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[1] Upon consideration I could be wrong, the State Department could have approved the trip to the wrong country.

Or John McCain.