WHY NO INVESTIGATIONS ABOUT PHONY LETTER LINKING SADDAM & MOHAMED ATTA

The new book by Ron Suskind, The Way of the World, makes the sensational charge that the White House instructed the CIA to create a bogus letter from the former head of Saddam's Intelligence Agency that Saddam had ties with Mohamed Atta.

The White House has issued non-denial denials, calling the assertion "ridiculous" but not saying that it is false. So has George Tenet, formerly head of the CIA, that "to the best of [his] knowledge," he received no such instructions.

But where are the reports we should expect about this in the public media? Where are the stories in The New York Times or on CBS? Investigative reporters should be swarming all over this story, but so far, there has been relative silence.

DAN FROOMKIN'S MUST-READ POST TODAY - WHITE HOUSE ORDERED PHONY LETTER LINKING SADDAM WITH ATTA

Dan Froomkin has a fascinating post in his blog in The Washington Post today about Ron Suskind's new book, The Way of the World, in which Suskind recounts that the White House ordered the CIA in 2003 to make up a phony letter saying that there was a definite connection between 9/11 mastermind Mohammad Atta and Saddam Hussein.

Writes Froomkin:

"Investigative reporter Ron Suskind's new book charges that the White House, seeking to justify its invasion of Iraq, ordered the CIA in late 2003 to forge evidence of a link between Iraq and al Qaeda.

"Suskind, a Pulitzer-winning reporter and relentless chronicler of this administration's secrets, depicts a White House with a simpleminded bully in the Oval Office taking direction from a paranoid vice president -- and caps off his latest expose with what he acknowledges sounds a lot like an impeachable offense."

Froomkin always reports the latest on the machinations of Bush, Cheney and the rest of the White House gang, but his post today introduces Suskind's startling assertions that Bush and Cheney just made things up so that the "evidence was made to fit around the policy," as the British Foreign Secretary reported to Tony Blair in early 2003.