SOMETHING FISHY

I'm beginning to feel like Johnny One-Note: Here's a revealing footnote to the definitive WMD report by the CIA's Iraq Survey Group. It sketches how technical experts who doubted that Saddam Hussein had nuclear weapons were silenced by the Bush gang. Although it appeared in August 2003 at WorldNetDaily, it came to a Straight Up reader's attention only yesterday. "I understand its substance to be correct," he adds.

WASHINGTON -- A former Energy Department intelligence chief who agreed with the White House claim that Iraq had reconstituted its defunct nuclear-arms program was awarded a total of $20,500 in bonuses during the build-up to the war, WorldNetDaily has learned.

Thomas Rider, as acting director of Energy's intelligence office, overruled senior intelligence officers on his staff in voting for the position at a National Foreign Intelligence Board meeting at CIA headquarters last September.

His officers argued at a pre-briefing at Energy headquarters that there was no hard evidence to support the alarming Iraq nuclear charge, and asked to join State Department's dissenting opinion, Energy officials say.

Rider ordered them to "shut up and sit down," according to sources familiar with the meeting.

As a result, State was the intelligence community's lone dissenter in the key National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, something the Bush administration is quick to remind critics of its prewar intelligence. So far no banned weapons have been found in Iraq to confirm its charges.

The secret 90-page report, prepared Oct. 1 [and used to justify preemptive war in Iraq], was rushed to sway members of Congress ahead of a key vote on granting the White House war-making authority. It also formed the underlying evidence for the White House's decision to go to war.

Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham gave Rider a $13,000 performance bonus after the NIE report was released and just before the war, department sources say. He had received an additional $7,500 before the report.

"That's a hell of a lot of money for an intelligence director who had no experience or background in intelligence, and who'd only been running the office for nine months," said one source who requested anonymity. "Something's fishy."

Rider declined to talk about the payments.

A report by Paul Sperry, also for WorldNetDaily.com, notes: "Rider, a long-time human resources bureaucrat, served nine months as acting director of [the Department of] Energy's intelligence office. He stepped down in February, the month before the war.

"Energy officials say Rider rubber-stamped the administration's conclusion that Baghdad was reactivating a nuclear weapons program over the objections of Energy's nuclear weapons research labs and senior members of his own staff."

And from this morning's Washington Post: "David Kay, who preceded [Charles A.] Duelfer as the chief U.S. weapons inspector, said the latest [WMD] report clearly shows that Hussein was not a threat to the United States. 'Look, Saddam was delusional,' Kay said on NBC's 'Today' show Thursday. 'He had a lot of intent. He didn't have capabilities. Intent without capabilities is not an imminent threat.'"

Have a look at the Kay interview. (Scroll down and click on the Kay's views video.) It's a must-see, especially as a prelude to tonight's second presidential debate.