1275 Duration: 5.24 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
So why don't you go ahead and introduce yourself and what type of freelance work that you do.
1276 Duration: 53.75 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
My name is Bob Dreyfuss. I live in Alexandria, Virginia. I've been a freelance journalist in the Washington area for about 12 or 13 years. And I write for really 4 or 5 regular magazines, and then some others. I'm a contributing editor or writer at Mother Jones and The Nation, The American Prospect, and also I write a lot for Rolling Stone. Those are my basic magazines. I really cover everything. I've been doing Washington politics and features and profiles for all that time. But actually for the last 2 years I've been focusing pretty heavily on Iraq and the Middle East since it became the main story of the day. So I've done a number of investigative reports on the run up to the war, and the whole sort of post-war quagmire, and who's to blame and how we got there.
1277 Duration: 36.64 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
And so when you look at some of the investigative reports that you've done, can you -- Were you doing a lot of stuff that other people weren't looking at? Just speak kind of in general terms, where you saw holes and why you decided to? -- [I think, I did -- I can point to several different things. I did -- back in the, let's see --] -- Hold on. I'm also going to be eliminating my questions -- Yeah, sure whatever. Don't worry about it.] So if you have a pronoun or something that doesn't stand on it's own, then I may ask you to...
1278 Duration: 18.79 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
Back in 2002 in the Fall, I did really I think the first extensive profile of Ahmed Chalabi, the head of the Iraqi National Congress. And I had really, I guess, was surprised that no one had really dug into Chalabi's past before.
1280 Duration: 34.43 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
Partly I just started by doing a Nexus search, and all of this interesting stuff started turning up about his conviction in Jordan, and his general record as a charlatan. And at the time not many people were looking at him although he had been a key figure in Washington for a least a decade -- organizing with the neoconservatives on behalf of various movements and resolutions, and even the Iraq Liberation Act in the 1990s that funded the Iraqi National Congress among other groups.
1282 Duration: 32.5 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
What happened is I did an extensive profile of him and documented some of his connections to Richard Perle, and to some of the early pioneers of the neoconservative worldview like Albert Wohlstetter and others. And I found that that article got tremendous reaction, although I never saw a subsequent article until probably a year later that was as detailed as that.
1285 Duration: 21.59 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
To a large degree there were a lot of people who relied on Chalabi for information because he was providing people in the press as well as the intelligence agencies with a huge amount of material. And so nobody wanted to directly attack him because he'd cut them off, which was of course exactly what happened to me. They wouldn't talk to me after my story came out.
1287 Duration: 21.65 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
Not only that, but he had a lot of friends among the people who were the organizers of the war -- not just outside the administration, the think tanks and so forth, but also the people inside the administration, the neoconservatives who were sprinkled through 15 or 20 different positions in the Defense Department and other agencies.
1289 Duration: 5.94 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
That's one thing I could point to in terms of something people weren't looking at -- amazingly so.
1290 Duration: 22.29 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
And people were treating Chalabi with a lot of respect, and I found as I started calling around and talking to people that people were laughing at him, and calling him "a clown" and "a buffoon" and "a liar." And these were not -- I'm not talking about left-wing sources. I'm talking about CIA people and ambassadors, and people who were in senior positions or had been in the past.
1291 Duration: 10.74 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
And so that made me think there's more to this story than just a wayward exile trying to organize his return to his homeland.
1292 Duration: 36.84 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
When you look after the war there seems to be this turning point with Chalabi is -- you know, his house is raided and a few weeks later the New York Times finally has their mea culpa after their source is kind of officially discredited. When you look back at the article is seems to be very prophetic in a way. So can you speak to, just kind of encapsulate that change, and then after that point it seems like people were catching up in a way. [Well at the beginning, Chalabi was kind of seen as a hero and -- Let me start again --]
1293 Duration: 11.44 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
At the beginning, Chalabi was kind of seen as a hero and the leader of a noble cause. And nobody wanted to attack him because he was playing such a central role in the run up to the war.
1295 Duration: 8.58 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
Gradually, there began to creep in some naysayers, partly because the American National Security establishment was attacking him so strongly.
1297 Duration: 42.44 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
What really did him in is when he finally got back to Baghdad in the Spring of 2003. It turned out he exactly zero support. That he had no supporters, no followers, no organization, no credibility among Iraqis. And so that combined with the fact that all of his information was wrong, that there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- that there were no ties to terrorism that were uncovered. And especially that we weren't welcomed with open arms. I like to say just arms, but not open arms. As a result of all of this, Chalabi lost all of his credibility.
1298 Duration: 27.83 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
And he started quickly falling in the esteem of even the Pentagon because he couldn't deliver. And it kind of culminated in this almost farcical controversy over him blabbing to the Iranian intelligence office in Baghdad and telling them American secrets, which is really what eventually tripped him up.
1299 Duration: 16.95 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
When you look in the context of the New York Times, evaluating -- Can you kind of evaluate the New York Times coverage before the war -- Chalabi's influence? And then like how Chalabi was a trigger point, in a way? [Well--]
1300 Duration: 27.89 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
I think Chalabi was kind of a pied piper for most of the media. The New York Times, of course, leads the way. And some its writers, Judy Miller, of course, and many others, were constantly going to the Chalabi well and not realizing it was a poisoned one. And were getting information and secrets, and defectors, and people like that to talk to. And it all turned out to be bogus information, but it was so good -- it was so exciting that they just went with it.
1302 Duration: 48.52 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
You know, I wonder about Judy Miller. You know she is, I think, has an ideological edge to her writing too. She coauthored a book a few years ago with Laurie Mylroie a few years ago. Laurie Mylroie is an almost deranged advocate of attacking Iraq. She blames Iraq for the Oklahoma City bombing that Tim McVeigh was executed for, and of course he had no Iraqi connections. But she still -- to this day -- says that he did, and that Iraq was behind the bombing in Oklahoma City. So I mean, she is conspiracy theorist nut. And for her to have authored a book with Laurie -- With Laurie Mylroie to have authored a book with Judy Miller makes me wonder about her predilection for listening to someone like Chalabi, who had this axe to grind against Saddam from the beginning.
1303 Duration: 6.74 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
And wasn't Judy Miller also a member of the Benador Associates, which is kind of like --? [Yes she was --]
1304 Duration: 8.91 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
Eleana Benador promoted Judy Miller's work. I think not anymore, but in the early 90s she was one of their list.
1305 Duration: 12.18 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
The Benador Group is basically the public relations shop for the whole neoconservative movement. And everybody from Michael Ledeen to Richard Pearle to James Woolsey is on her list.
1307 Duration: 18.75 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
So again, for her to be associated with them and Laurie Mylroie and Benador and so forth indicates to me that she had some ideological predilection for supporting and entertaining Chalabi and his crew of liars and phonies.
1308 Duration: 17.85 seconds
Echo Chamber Project:
When you were in Baltimore you were speaking in terms of looking at the New York Times and Washington Post that if you read it carefully that you can still figure out everything that's going on. Can you speak to that? And also does still hold up during the build-up to the war? [You know --]
1309 Duration: 19.19 seconds
Robert Dreyfuss:
I think that if you look at the major newspapers in the United States most of the information is there. Sometimes it's buried in the 19th paragraph. Sometimes it's a small article in an inside page. And certainly it doesn't penetrate into the consciousness of most people, except for people who read it very carefully --
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