William Safire's Feith-Based Initiative Revealed

William Safire, the snappy etymologist of the New York Times Sunday Magazine was famous, during his tenure as a regular political columnist for that Paper of Record, for a private direct-line phone to some mysterious source. Now that the Pentagon Inspector General has reported on the build-up to the Iraq War, Amphictyony has concluded that Douglas Feith was, indeed, the man at the other end of that telephone.

Safire scoffed at the CIA disbelief in an Iraq-al-Qaida connection and referred, on one or more occasions, to sources asserting the connection was a fact. That there was a meeting between Mohammed Atta and a high-ranking Iraqi Intelligence Officer in Prague. Now we know where that discredited "fact" originated: with Douglas Feith, in Rumsfeld's possibly illegal Office of Special Plans.

Amphictyony wonders if Safire still has that phone connected.