- WASHINGTON - A sacked CIA official is reportedly
suing the agency for allegedly retaliating against him for refusing to
falsify his reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to support the
White House's pre-war position.
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- Described as a senior CIA official who was sacked in
August "for unspecified reasons," the plaintiff's lawsuit appears
to be the first public instance of a CIA official charging that he was
pressured to produce intelligence to support the US government's pre-war
contention that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction were a grave threat
to US and international security, The Washington Post reported.
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- "Their official dogma was contradicted by his
reporting and they did not want to hear it," said Roy Krieger, the
officer's attorney.
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- CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher told the daily she could
not comment on the lawsuit, adding: "The notion that CIA managers
order officers to falsify reports is flat wrong. Our mission is to call
it like we see it and report the facts."
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- Krieger wrote a letter requesting a meeting with CIA
Director Porter Goss due to "the serious nature of the allegations
in this case, including deliberately misleading the president on intelligence
concerning weapons of mass destruction," said the daily quoting from
the letter.
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- The United States overthrew the Iraqi dictatorship
of Saddam Hussein in April 2003, but has found no weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq since then. The US government has acknowledged some of its pre-war
intelligence may have been faulty.
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- The plaintiff, whose identity is blacked out in the
lawsuit as well as any reference to Iraq, is of Middle Eastern descent,
worked 23 years in the Central Intelligence Agency, much of them in covert
operations to collect intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, said
the daily.
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- The lawsuit was filed in a US District Court in Washington
on Friday and made public Wednesday after it was screened by a judge, said
The Washington Post which obtained a copy.
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- It alleges that the CIA investigated alleged sexual
and financial improprieties by the plaintiff "for the sole purpose
of discrediting him and retaliating against him for questioning the integrity
of the WMD reporting ... and for refusing to falsify his intelligence reporting
to support the politically mandated conclusion" of matters that are
redacted in the lawsuit.
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- The document states that in 2002 the plaintiff was
"thwarted by CIA superiors" from reporting routine intelligence
from a contact of his and that later he was approached by a senior officer
"who insisted that Plaintiff falsify his reporting."
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- When the plaintiff refused, the lawsuit said, the CIA's
Counter-proliferation Division ordered that he "remove himself from
any further 'handling'" of the contact, referred elsewhere in the
document as "a highly respected human asset."
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- In 2003, the lawsuit goes on to say, the CIA officer
learned of the investigations against him and that he was refused a promotion
"because of pressure from the DDO (Deputy Director of Operations)
James Pavitt."
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- In September 2003, the plaintiff was placed on administrative
leave without explanation and in August 2004 he was sacked also "for
unspecified reasons."
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- The lawsuit requests that the plaintiff be restored
to his former position in the CIA and received compensatory damages and
legal fees.
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