Another controversial choice for NIC chair? (UPDATED WITH DENIAL)

UPDATE: Ben Smith at Politico reports that the Zinni rumor below isn’t true:

There’s been some buzz today that General Anthony Zinni — who had thought he was going to be Ambassador to Iraq — is now up for chairman of the National Intelligence Council, the job to which Chas Freeman was appointed.

Not so, says a source close to that decision, who hoped to spare Zinni another round of speculation.

"It’s just flat out not true," said the source.

Here’s a rumor on who might be Charles Freeman’s replacement as chairman of the National Intelligence Council from the man who started the ball rolling on Freeman’s eventual withdrawal, Steve Rosen:

I am told that General Anthony Zinni is the leading candidate to be asked to head the National Intelligence Council, after the withdrawal of Chas. Freeman.

Rosen prints the item without comment, but the retired four-star Marine general might stir up some controversy as well. A special envoy to the Middle East for a brief time during the first term of President George W. Bush, Zinni charged back in 2004 that the Iraq war was fought for Israel’s benefit. From a May 2004 report by "60 Minutes":

Zinni is talking about a group of policymakers within the administration known as "the neo-conservatives" who saw the invasion of Iraq as a way to stabilize American interests in the region and strengthen the position of Israel. They include Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz; Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith; Former Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle; National Security Council member Eliot Abrams; and Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

Zinni believes they are political ideologues who have hijacked American policy in Iraq.

“I think it’s the worst kept secret in Washington. That everybody – everybody I talk to in Washington has known and fully knows what their agenda was and what they were trying to do,” says Zinni.

“And one article, because I mentioned the neo-conservatives who describe themselves as neo-conservatives, I was called anti-Semitic. I mean, you know, unbelievable that that’s the kind of personal attacks that are run when you criticize a strategy and those who propose it. I certainly didn’t criticize who they were. I certainly don’t know what their ethnic religious backgrounds are. And I’m not interested.”

Adds Zinni: “I know what strategy they promoted. And openly. And for a number of years. And what they have convinced the president and the secretary to do. And I don’t believe there is any serious political leader, military leader, diplomat in Washington that doesn’t know where it came from.”

Zinni said he believed their strategy was to change the Middle East and bring it into the 21st century.

“All sounds very good, all very noble. The trouble is the way they saw to go about this is unilateral aggressive intervention by the United States – the take down of Iraq as a priority,” adds Zinni. “And what we have become now in the United States, how we’re viewed in this region is not an entity that’s promising positive change. We are now being viewed as the modern crusaders, as the modern colonial power in this part of the world.”

Zinni was most recently in the news for ripping the Obama administration after, he says, the job of ambassador to Iraq was given to someone else after it was already offered to and accepted by him:

When retired Marine Gen. Anthony Zinni told the Washington Times that he was offered the job of U.S. ambassador to Iraq before being passed over in favor of diplomat Christopher Hill, he did not say that one of the outrages of the experience was that his friend of 30 years, fellow former Marine Corps commandant and now national security advisor James L. Jones, had offered him the job, and then failed to tell him when the decision was changed.

"Jones had called me before the inauguration and asked if I would be willing to serve as ambassador to Iraq or in one of the envoy jobs, on the Middle East peace process," Zinni told Foreign Policy. "I said yes."

"Then two weeks ago, Jones called," Zinni continued, "and said, ‘We talked to the secretary of state, and everybody would like to offer you the Iraq job.’ I said yes.

"The [vice]* president called and congratulated me," Zinni said.

Then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton asked for a meeting last Monday night, Zinni said. He said he went to the meeting in her office at the State Department, where Deputy Secretary of State James Steinberg and Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Williams Burns were also in attendance.

"She thanks me, asked me my views on Iraq," Zinni recalled. "She said to Burns and Steinberg, ‘We’ve got to move quickly, Crocker is leaving, we’ve got to get someone in there and get the paperwork done and hearings… Lots to do to get ready to go."

Zinni said he expected a call from Burns the next day. Not hearing from him, he called him.

"To make a long story short, I kept getting blown off all week," Zinni said. "Meantime, I was rushing to put my personal things in order," to get ready to go.

"Finally, nobody was telling me anything," Zinni said. "I called Jones Monday several times. I finally got through late in evening. I asked Jones, ‘What’s going on?’ And Jones said, ‘We decided on Chris Hill.’"

"I said, ‘Really,’" Zinni recalled. "That was news to me."

Jones asked him if he would like to be ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Zinni said. "I said, ‘You can stick that with whatever other offers,’" Zinni recalled, saying he had used more colorful language with Jones. Asked Jones’s response and if he was apologetic, Zinni said, "Jones was not too concerned. He laughed about it."

Zinni said particularly galling is that had he not managed to get through to Jones on Monday night after repeated calls, he would have found out about the Chris Hill appointment in the Washington Post the next day with everybody else.

"You know, I would have appreciated if someone called me and said, ‘Minds were changed,’" Zinni said. "But not even to get a call. That’s what’s really embarrassing."