MEDIA REACTION: IRAN, RUMSFELD; SAO PAULO

UNCLAS SAO PAULO 000501 SIPDIS SIPDIS STATE INR/R/MR; IIP/R/MR; WHA/PD DEPT PASS USTR USDOC 4322/MAC/OLAC/JAFEE E.O. 12958: N/A TAGS: KMDR OPRC OIIP ETRD BR SUBJECT: MEDIA REACTION: IRAN, RUMSFELD; SAO PAULO "Intelligence and Faith" Liberal Folha de S. Paulo columnist Carlos Heitor Cony wrote (5/10): "In a lecture he delivered last week, US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld was accused of having lied to the American people and to the world about the weapons of mass destruction that Iraq would be supposedly producing. The new fact was Rumsfeld's answer: he did not lie. He said he believed in good faith the information the US intelligence services provided to the Bush administration.... If the Bush administration and its secretary of Defense have good faith, the world has much to fear in regards to the US intelligence services, which apparently do not have any. Any nation can become dependent on Washington's intelligence agents and, of course, of the USG's faith in the quality of that intelligence. It is hard to think what the US will do with Iran, a nation that trampled the intelligence of both the CIA and the Pentagon and announced that it is developing its nuclear program independently. Occasionally the Americans claim to believe in good faith that Brazil will be unable to preserve the Amazon forest. Brazil does not constitute any potential nuclear threat, but a significant harm to the planet's ecology. The same government that refused to sign the Kyoto Protocol is, in good faith concerned with our trees and our wild animals. If the US intelligence services conclude that we represent a risk for the world, the Bush administration will in good faith make decisions to save Humanity from the Brazilian threat." McMullen