From: George J. Tenet
To: All personnel
Re: Evidence

As most of you may have heard, some of our recent evidence against Iraq, vis a vis their correspondence with Nigeria, was just found out to be a complete fake.

I don’t need to tell you that this is a bit of a black eye for the intelligence community. We have to be on our guard, folks, let’s keep our eyes open & etc. With this in mind, we’ve prepared a preliminary list of Other Possibly Fraudulent Evidence that we’d previously believed to be helpful in “making the case:”

The Des Moines Dossier [ev. fl. #0345836p] - This alarming 542-page documentation of Iraqi plans to kidnap U.S. weapons experts after brutalizing their families turns out to most likely be a fake. It seems to be a slightly-altered version of “The Janson Directive,” a novel by Robert Ludlum. Field Agent DiSouza, who uncovered the file, urges all operatives to hold onto it, as it is apparently a “compelling read,” and a “gripping, suspenseful romp.”

The Lisbon Video [ev. fl. #498572v] - We’d thought that this video offering Iraqis advice on the construction of biological weapons was too good to be true, and further investigation bears this out: It seems to be an instructional video for employees of Domino’s Pizza, with the audio cleverly dubbed to substitute the words “biological agents” for “tasty toppings,” and “anthrax” for “anchovies,” and so forth. It’s a well-done piece of deception, but we really have to be more vigilant.

The Cairo Tape [ev. fl. #5628566c] - We got lucky with this one - if we’d gone public with the news that Saddam Hussein was planning to terrorize our cities with a giant radioactive lizard, well, it would’ve been embarrassing. Please cease all work on uncovering this particular plot, and abandon efforts to enlist the aid of the gigantic flying turtle that we’d assumed would be our only defense. Congratulations to Field Agent Harris for spotting that the footage of Saddam supposedly testing the reptile on his own people was, in fact, filmed in Tokyo. Good eye, Harry!

Once again, people, let’s try to be a little more thorough in the authentication process, all right? If we, for example, send Secretary Powell to the floor of the UN armed with a vial of Similac® again, well, I can’t guarantee the security of any of our jobs.

Best,

GJ Tenet, Director