Of these theories, the least plausible on the face of it would seem to be that Perle is behind the story. It's true that the conniving neocon initially comes off looking good, albeit in a most unexpected way (perhaps the founder of the Bring Me the Head of Saddam Hussein University just wanted to have a good laugh by portraying himself as a dedicated seeker after peace), and the CIA comes off looking like the bad guys -- which neatly fits the Bush hawks' script these days. But in fact the larger import of the story runs completely against everything that Perle believes in. Telling the American public, at a moment when the Iraq occupation is becoming a blood-soaked, slow-motion nightmare, that the U.S. turned down a possibly credible peace offer does not advance his hard-line agenda. As for smearing the CIA, that won't work either, because in the end it's not credible that only the CIA knew. A source close to the intelligence community derided the idea that Perle, who detests the CIA, would have gone to the spy agency rather than to his friends in the Pentagon, where he serves on Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's advisory board, if he really wanted results.

The New York Times report, which was written by Jim Risen, doesn't go into this. That's not the only nagging question left hanging by Risen's account. According to the Times, Maloof passed along the Iraqi offer to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz's top aide Jaymie Durnan, but inexplicably Durnan "never discussed the Hage channel to the Iraqis with Mr. Wolfowitz." Risen left unexplored why Durnan would not have discussed a matter of such potential moment with his boss.

Newsweek, however, goes deeper -- although in the end the impression it leaves of Durnan's attitudes toward Hage and his offer raise as many questions as the Times piece. The Newsweek story, by Michael Isikoff and Mark Hosenball, reports that Durnan said he never thought Hage's story was worth pursuing. Of Durnan's one meeting with Hage (which Maloof also attended) on Jan. 28, 2003, in Washington, Newsweek says that Durnan "didn't recall El-Hage pushing any particular peace plan. 'I just listened to him,' Durnan said. 'It was a non-event.'" But Newsweek also reports (as did the Times) that Durnan subsequently asked in e-mails for background information about Hage.

The Times piece leaves the impression that Durnan was checking because he was trying to assess the credibility of the possible peace offer. But Newsweek quotes Durnan as saying, "I wasn't concerned about the issues. I was concerned that [El-Hage] had my name and phone number and that I could become a target of some a-hole from the Middle East." When Hage was detained, U.S. officials found Durnan's card in his possession. Durnan told Newsweek that Maloof, not he, had given Hage his card. "'I was pissed,' Durnan said."

That Maloof (perhaps with Perle's tacit blessing) or even Hage could have an interest in spinning this story seems at this point more plausible. Maloof in particular has a most enigmatic story. Maloof worked in a two-man Pentagon intelligence unit that was created by fellow hawk Feith to find connections between Iraq and al-Qaida, connections the Bush administration desperately wanted to produce to justify going to war. Maloof lost his security clearance for reasons that are in dispute. The Times notes in parentheses: "In May, Mr. Maloof, who has lost his security clearance, was placed on paid administrative leave by the Pentagon, for reasons unrelated to the contacts with Mr. Hage."

Other news outlets go deeper, however. Newsweek reported that Maloof and his allies believe his security clearance was not restored (it was originally revoked because he allegedly failed to "properly report his marriage to a citizen of a former Soviet republic") because he "questioned official analyses that played down alleged state sponsorship of al-Qaida." They also assert that his role in putting Hage together with Durnan angered his enemies, who saw it as evidence that he and other hawks were a rogue outfit. (The two-man team he and fellow hawk David Wurmser manned was the precursor of the now-notorious Office of Special Plans, set up by Rumsfeld to bypass normal intelligence channels and provide the administration with the evidence they wanted to justify war with Iraq.)

"It's clear Maloof is in some kind of trouble, though we don't know what kind," Powers said. A source with close ties to the intelligence community speculates that Maloof may have lost his clearance for leaking classified information to the press.

It's impossible to untangle these threads, without the full power of a congressional hearing (and don't hold your breath for that, with the Republicans in firm control of Capitol Hill). But the fact remains that even if the story was put out by figures with self-serving agendas, that doesn't necessarily make it untrue.

At this point we have only the word of Hage and Maloof, both problematic figures, that the Iraqi regime's peace offer was legitimate. But working through a shadowy cutout would be quite in character for a desperate Saddam Hussein. Thursday's Guardian reported that Iraqi officials also attempted to contact former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro about a peace deal. Cannistraro said he passed the message along to senior officials at the State Department, but heard later that the Iraqi offer had been "killed" by the Bush administration.

Which leaves the question hanging: Did Bush and company decline to pursue the increasingly urgent peace feelers coming out of Iraq simply because they were determined to go to war no matter what?

That decision might have played well last March, when the public was terrified by a drumbeat of misinformation about the urgent threat posed by Saddam Hussein's nukes and other weapons of mass destruction. And it is certain to be defended in the days ahead by supporters of the war who argue that nothing Saddam Hussein offered could be trusted. But as Americans die every day in Iraq, the public may not view it so kindly.

"The interesting question is, Why did the U.S. government reject the Hage offer so quickly? Why was it so uninterested?" says Thomas Powers. "I could be wrong, but I think the principle reason was that the administration absolutely wanted to go to war. It's hard to get a war going; the great achievement of the Bush administration was that they got the war they wanted -- and there were so many things stacked against them."

Additional reporting by Mark Follman.

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