Frederick Fleitz reappears - Neocons at work on Iran

Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA officer and Bolton's "dirty work" man at the State Department, has reappeared working for Peter Hoekstra (R-Mich) on the House Intelligence Committee.

You may remember Fleitz as he was mentioned alot around the Plame leak, the Niger forgeries, the questionable Iraq intel, and my favorite, the Cuba biological weapons claim made by Bolton. Fleitz is one of the neocon footsoldiers. He is definitely in with the neocon "in crowd."

And, now, Fleitz has authored "stinging critique" for the House Intelligence Committee on the CIA's intel operations on Iran. The report was very unusually published before it was approved in the full committee.

The 29-page report, principally written by a Republican staff member on the House intelligence committee who holds a hard-line view on Iran, fully backs the White House position.....

"American intelligence agencies do not know nearly enough about Iran's nuclear weapons program" to help policymakers at a critical time, the report's authors say. Information "regarding potential Iranian chemical weapons and biological weapons programs is neither voluminous nor conclusive," and little evidence has been gathered to tie Iran to al-Qaeda and to the recent fighting between Israel and Hezbollah in southern Lebanon, they say.

This has gotten big coverage all over the place (WaPo, NYTimes, USAToday.) I just thought someone should notice its neocon genesis and unusual publication.

(The giant two page NYTimes piece doesn't even mention Fleitz. It paints the discussion as whether intelligence officers are "gun shy" after Iraq. In other words, it buys the front story.

Oh, and don't miss this quote in the NYTimes article from Gingrich, “When the intelligence community says Iran is 5 to 10 years away from a nuclear weapon, I ask: ‘If North Korea were to ship them a nuke tomorrow, how close would they be then?”)

The hawks are coming out on Iran.

Later: Make sure to note these two bullet points from the report (.pdf). (My emphasis) "Iran likely has an offensive chemical weapons research and development capability. Iran probably has an offensive biological weapons program."

Funny, there's no real proof to back up the "likely" or "probably" (that was the whole point of the report,) but Fleitz makes the unsubstantiated claim anyway.