Here is the truth...The CIA is being scapegoated once again, just as they were in regard to 9/11...Compare it with what you hear on SeeNotNews (CNN), NotBeSeen (NBC) and AnythingButSee (ABC)...This disgrace must be a major campaign issue, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mekong Delta) must make it one...The propapunditgandists will try to bury it, but I think much of the US electorate already understand what "all the _resident's men" have done...
Sidney Blumenthal, Guardian/UK: There was no failure
of intelligence: US spies were ignored, or worse, if
they failed to make the case for war
Support Our Troops, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4851939-103550,00.html
There was no failure of intelligence: US spies were ignored, or worse, if they failed to make the case for war
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday February 5, 2004
The Guardian
Before he departed on his quest for Saddam Hussein's
fabled weapons of mass destruction last June, David
Kay, chief of the Iraq Survey Group, told friends that
he expected promptly to locate the cause of the
pre-emptive war. On January 28, Kay appeared before
the Senate to testify that there were no WMDs. "It
turns out that we were all wrong," he said. President
Bush, he added helpfully, was misinformed by the whole
intelligence community which, like Kay, made
assumptions that turned out to be false.
Within days, Bush declared that he would, after all,
appoint a commission to investigate; significantly, it
would report its findings only after the presidential
election.
Kay's testimony was the catalyst for this u-turn, but
only one of his claims is correct: that he was wrong.
The truth is that much of the intelligence community
did not fail, but presented correct assessments and
warnings, that were overridden and suppressed. On
virtually every single important claim made by the
Bush administration in its case for war, there was
serious dissension. Discordant views - not from
individual analysts but from several intelligence
agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as
momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war
resolution.
Precisely because of the qualms the administration
encountered, it created a rogue intelligence
operation, the Office of Special Plans, located within
the Pentagon and under the control of
neo-conservatives. The OSP roamed outside the ordinary
inter-agency process, stamping its approval on stories
from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as
lacking credibility, and feeding them to the
president.
At the same time, constant pressure was applied to the
intelligence agencies to force their compliance. In
one case, a senior intelligence officer who refused to
buckle under was removed.
Bruce Hardcastle was a senior officer for the Middle
East for the Defence Intelligence Agency. When Bush
insisted that Saddam was actively and urgently engaged
in a nuclear weapons programme and had renewed
production of chemical weapons, the DIA reported
otherwise. According to Patrick Lang, the former head
of human intelligence at the CIA, Hardcastle "told
[the Bush administration] that the way they were
handling evidence was wrong." The response was not
simply to remove Hardcastle from his post: "They did
away with his job," Lang says. "They wanted only
liaison officers ... not a senior intelligence person
who argued with them."
When the state department's bureau of intelligence and
research (INR) submitted reports which did not support
the administration's case - saying, for example, that
the aluminum tubes Saddam possessed were for
conventional rocketry, not nuclear weapons (a report
corroborated by department of energy analysts), or
that mobile laboratories were not for WMDs, or that
the story about Saddam seeking uranium in Niger was
bogus, or that there was no link between Saddam and
al-Qaida (a report backed by the CIA) - its analyses
were shunted aside. Greg Thielman, chief of the INR at
the time, told me: "Everyone in the intelligence
community knew that the White House couldn't care less
about any information suggesting that there were no
WMDs or that the UN inspectors were very effective."
When the CIA debunked the tales about Niger uranium
and the Saddam/al-Qaida connection, its reports were
ignored and direct pressure applied. In October 2002,
the White House inserted mention of the uranium into a
speech Bush was to deliver, but the CIA objected and
it was excised. Three months later, it reappeared in
his state of the union address. National security
adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed never to have seen
the original CIA memo and deputy national security
adviser Stephen Hadley said he had forgotten about it.
Never before had any senior White House official
physically intruded into CIA's Langley headquarters to
argue with mid-level managers and analysts about
unfinished work. But twice vice president Cheney and
Lewis Libby, his chief of staff, came to offer their
opinions. According to Patrick Lang: "They looked
disapproving, questioned the reports and left an
impression of what you're supposed to do. They would
say: 'you haven't looked at the evidence'. The answer
would be, those reports [from Iraqi exiles] aren't
valid. The analysts would be told, you should look at
this again'. Finally, people gave up. You learn not to
contradict them."
The CIA had visitors too, according to Ray McGovern,
former CIA chief for the Middle East. Newt Gingrich
came, and Condi Rice, and as for Cheney, "he likes the
soup in the CIA cafeteria," McGovern jokes.
Meanwhile, senior intelligence officers were kept in
the dark about the OSP. "I didn't know about its
existence," said Thielman. "They were cherry picking
intelligence and packaging it for Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld to take to the president. That's the kind of
rogue operation that peer review is intended to
prevent."
CIA director George Tenet, for his part, opted to
become a political advocate for Bush's brief rather
than a protector of the intelligence community. On the
eve of the congressional debate, in a crammed
three-week period, the agency wrote a 90-page national
intelligence estimate justifying the administration's
position on WMDs and scrubbed of all dissent. Once the
document was declassifed after the war it became known
that it contained 40 caveats - including 15 uses of
"probably", all of which had been removed from the
previously published version. Tenet further
ingratiated himself by remaining silent about the OSP.
"That's totally unacceptable for a CIA director," said
Thielman.
On February 5 2003, Colin Powell presented evidence of
WMDs before the UN. Cheney and Libby had tried to
inject material from Iraqi exiles and the OSP into his
presentation, but Powell rejected most of it. Yet, for
the most important speech of his career, he refused to
allow the presence of any analysts from his own
intelligence agency. "He didn't have anyone from INR
near him," said Thielman. "Powell wanted to sell a
rotten fish. He had decided there was no way to avoid
war. His job was to go to war with as much legitimacy
as we could scrape up."
Powell ignored INR analysts' comments on his speech.
Almost every piece of evidence he unveiled turned out
later to be false.
This week, when Bush announced he would appoint an
investigative commission, Powell offered a limited mea
culpa at a meeting at the Washington Post. He said
that if only he had known the intelligence, he might
not have supported an invasion. Thus he began to show
carefully calibrated remorse, to distance himself from
other members of the administration and especially
Cheney. Powell also defended his UN speech, claiming
"it reflected the best judgments of all of the
intelligence agencies".
Powell is sensitive to the slightest political winds,
especially if they might affect his reputation. If he
is a bellwether, will it soon be that every man must
save himself?
Sidney_Blumenthal@yahoo.com
Sidney Blumenthal
Thursday February 5, 2004
The Guardian
Before he departed on his quest for Saddam Hussein's
fabled weapons of mass destruction last June, David
Kay, chief of the Iraq Survey Group, told friends that
he expected promptly to locate the cause of the
pre-emptive war. On January 28, Kay appeared before
the Senate to testify that there were no WMDs. "It
turns out that we were all wrong," he said. President
Bush, he added helpfully, was misinformed by the whole
intelligence community which, like Kay, made
assumptions that turned out to be false.
Within days, Bush declared that he would, after all,
appoint a commission to investigate; significantly, it
would report its findings only after the presidential
election.
Kay's testimony was the catalyst for this u-turn, but
only one of his claims is correct: that he was wrong.
The truth is that much of the intelligence community
did not fail, but presented correct assessments and
warnings, that were overridden and suppressed. On
virtually every single important claim made by the
Bush administration in its case for war, there was
serious dissension. Discordant views - not from
individual analysts but from several intelligence
agencies as a whole - were kept from the public as
momentum was built for a congressional vote on the war
resolution.
Precisely because of the qualms the administration
encountered, it created a rogue intelligence
operation, the Office of Special Plans, located within
the Pentagon and under the control of
neo-conservatives. The OSP roamed outside the ordinary
inter-agency process, stamping its approval on stories
from Iraqi exiles that the other agencies dismissed as
lacking credibility, and feeding them to the
president.
At the same time, constant pressure was applied to the
intelligence agencies to force their compliance. In
one case, a senior intelligence officer who refused to
buckle under was removed.
Bruce Hardcastle was a senior officer for the Middle
East for the Defence Intelligence Agency. When Bush
insisted that Saddam was actively and urgently engaged
in a nuclear weapons programme and had renewed
production of chemical weapons, the DIA reported
otherwise. According to Patrick Lang, the former head
of human intelligence at the CIA, Hardcastle "told
[the Bush administration] that the way they were
handling evidence was wrong." The response was not
simply to remove Hardcastle from his post: "They did
away with his job," Lang says. "They wanted only
liaison officers ... not a senior intelligence person
who argued with them."
When the state department's bureau of intelligence and
research (INR) submitted reports which did not support
the administration's case - saying, for example, that
the aluminum tubes Saddam possessed were for
conventional rocketry, not nuclear weapons (a report
corroborated by department of energy analysts), or
that mobile laboratories were not for WMDs, or that
the story about Saddam seeking uranium in Niger was
bogus, or that there was no link between Saddam and
al-Qaida (a report backed by the CIA) - its analyses
were shunted aside. Greg Thielman, chief of the INR at
the time, told me: "Everyone in the intelligence
community knew that the White House couldn't care less
about any information suggesting that there were no
WMDs or that the UN inspectors were very effective."
When the CIA debunked the tales about Niger uranium
and the Saddam/al-Qaida connection, its reports were
ignored and direct pressure applied. In October 2002,
the White House inserted mention of the uranium into a
speech Bush was to deliver, but the CIA objected and
it was excised. Three months later, it reappeared in
his state of the union address. National security
adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed never to have seen
the original CIA memo and deputy national security
adviser Stephen Hadley said he had forgotten about it.
Never before had any senior White House official
physically intruded into CIA's Langley headquarters to
argue with mid-level managers and analysts about
unfinished work. But twice vice president Cheney and
Lewis Libby, his chief of staff, came to offer their
opinions. According to Patrick Lang: "They looked
disapproving, questioned the reports and left an
impression of what you're supposed to do. They would
say: 'you haven't looked at the evidence'. The answer
would be, those reports [from Iraqi exiles] aren't
valid. The analysts would be told, you should look at
this again'. Finally, people gave up. You learn not to
contradict them."
The CIA had visitors too, according to Ray McGovern,
former CIA chief for the Middle East. Newt Gingrich
came, and Condi Rice, and as for Cheney, "he likes the
soup in the CIA cafeteria," McGovern jokes.
Meanwhile, senior intelligence officers were kept in
the dark about the OSP. "I didn't know about its
existence," said Thielman. "They were cherry picking
intelligence and packaging it for Cheney and Donald
Rumsfeld to take to the president. That's the kind of
rogue operation that peer review is intended to
prevent."
CIA director George Tenet, for his part, opted to
become a political advocate for Bush's brief rather
than a protector of the intelligence community. On the
eve of the congressional debate, in a crammed
three-week period, the agency wrote a 90-page national
intelligence estimate justifying the administration's
position on WMDs and scrubbed of all dissent. Once the
document was declassifed after the war it became known
that it contained 40 caveats - including 15 uses of
"probably", all of which had been removed from the
previously published version. Tenet further
ingratiated himself by remaining silent about the OSP.
"That's totally unacceptable for a CIA director," said
Thielman.
On February 5 2003, Colin Powell presented evidence of
WMDs before the UN. Cheney and Libby had tried to
inject material from Iraqi exiles and the OSP into his
presentation, but Powell rejected most of it. Yet, for
the most important speech of his career, he refused to
allow the presence of any analysts from his own
intelligence agency. "He didn't have anyone from INR
near him," said Thielman. "Powell wanted to sell a
rotten fish. He had decided there was no way to avoid
war. His job was to go to war with as much legitimacy
as we could scrape up."
Powell ignored INR analysts' comments on his speech.
Almost every piece of evidence he unveiled turned out
later to be false.
This week, when Bush announced he would appoint an
investigative commission, Powell offered a limited mea
culpa at a meeting at the Washington Post. He said
that if only he had known the intelligence, he might
not have supported an invasion. Thus he began to show
carefully calibrated remorse, to distance himself from
other members of the administration and especially
Cheney. Powell also defended his UN speech, claiming
"it reflected the best judgments of all of the
intelligence agencies".
Powell is sensitive to the slightest political winds,
especially if they might affect his reputation. If he
is a bellwether, will it soon be that every man must
save himself?
Sidney_Blumenthal@yahoo.com