Weird stuff going on at this weekend’s Intelligence Summit in which the Saddam tapes were supposed to played in it’s entirety. Participants are starting to drop like flys from the summit and it seems the major reason being John Loftus:
Two former CIA directors have resigned from the board of the organization planning tomorrow to make public secret recordings of Saddam Hussein and his advisers.
In the last week both John Deutch and James Woolsey abruptly left their positions at Intelligence Summit, according to its president, John Loftus, who said their departure is part of a campaign by the directorate of national intelligence to punish him for releasing the recordings.
The reason both men gave for their resignations was new information they received regarding one of the summit’s biggest donors, Michael Cherney, an Israeli citizen who has been denied a visa to enter America because of his alleged ties to the Russian mafia.
Mr. Loftus said Mr. Cherney was framed by the Russian mob as part of a scheme to extort him. Mr. Woolsey, however, wrote in an e-mail, “My only response is that I got new information this week about the funder from someone I know and whose judgment on these matters I trust. Based on that information I decided to withdraw. If Mr. Loftus is saying that anyone pressured me about this issue he is quite wrong.” Mr. Deutch did not respond to a request for comment.
[…]Mr. Loftus claimed that he is a victim of this intramural intelligence battle. “Why is Negroponte and the FBI trying to smash my little charity operation?” he asked. “They have called my board members saying you have to resign. As soon as the audio tapes hit Negroponte’s office, they are told they have to quit.”
But the reason Messrs. Deutch and Woolsey gave for their resignation centered on concerns about Mr. Cherney. The Russian businessman immigrated to Israel in 1995 after allegations in his native country swirled that he was involved with assassinations and other criminal enterprises.
In 1998, he was barred from Bulgaria for an alleged plot to assassinate the son of a Cabinet minister. The information originally was passed on by Israeli law enforcement authorities, who later rescinded the claim.
Mr. Loftus said he checked with his board last year when Mr. Cherney offered to make a large donation to Intelligence Summit and did not hear any reservations. In December, Mr. Loftus authored a piece for the group’s Website titled, “The Framing of Michael Cherney.”
A spokeswoman for the Directorate of National Intelligence would not comment on the resignations of Messrs. Deutch and Woolsey. About the Saddam recordings she said, “Intelligence community analysts from the CIA and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that while fascinating from a historical perspective, the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq’s weapons programs, nor do they change the findings contained in the comprehensive Iraq Survey Group report.
“The tapes mostly date from the early to mid-1990s and cover such topics as relations with the United Nations, efforts to rebuild industries from Gulf War damage, and the pre-9/11 situation in Afghanistan.”
Mr. Loftus, however, expressed disagreement. “There is a candid discussion between Saddam and his top aides to launch a sneak attack against the United States, whether to use a nuclear or germ weapon. It is discussed that maybe we would have the others do it, that is an unclear reference. It becomes very clear, though. Saddam thinks this is something the Iraqis should do.”
The Intelligence Summit will make the recordings public tomorrow at its annual conference in Arlington, Va.
Now Debbie Schlussel has backed out and gives some background on John Loftus:
To all my readers and friends, I’ve cancelled my appearance and will NOT be appearing or speaking at this weekend’s Intelligence Summit in the Washington, DC area, as I had originally planned. I apologize if you made plans to go to this conference to see and hear me.
This is the first time I have ever cancelled an appearance. I cancelled my appearance at the Intelligence Summit for a number of reasons. I reluctantly agreed to appear at this event, based on representations that were made to me that were never backed up. I had questions and issues, the answers and resolutions to which were never satisfactorily provided after repeated requests. Therefore, I felt it was not in my best interest to appear.
The chief organizer of the event–according the the group’s website–is John Loftus, a former Justice Department official who wrote “The Secret War Against the Jews,” about American cooperation with the Nazis. As a prosecutor, his work in that area is highly commendable.
Mr. Loftus has presented himself–and continues to–as a “terrorism expert” over the years, and many foolish parties have bought in, including The Washington Post and FOX News Channel. FOX News hired Loftus as its terrorism expert, but fired him after he broadcast the address of a California home as being the home of an Islamic terrorist. It was not, and the innocent people who lived there had their homes vandalized.
My first experience with Mr. Loftus, in 2002–well before FOX News hired him–showed me, glaringly, that he is a fraud. He spoke at a counter-protest to the University of Michigan Palestinian Students Divestment Conference. I was the keynote speaker at the event. At the time, Mr. Loftus had recently filed a silly–and quickly dismissed–lawsuit against Islamic Jihad terrorist/founder and South Florida Professor Sami Al-Arian, a man about whom I know, and have written, a great deal.
Mr. Loftus’ speech betrayed him to be almost completely ignorant on Mr. Al Arian, Islam in general (claimed Mohammed loved the Jews and treated them well; tell that to the Jews who built Medina, whom Mohammed slaughtered, forcibly converted to Islam, or expelled), and to be a blatant liar. I watched in amazement as he claimed to the large audience assembled, that he was the attorney for INS, Customs, and FBI agents, and others who’d investigated Sami Al-Arian. I know several of those parties, and to my knowledge, none of them have ever been represented by Loftus.

See author page