Read Ray McGovern and you will understand how
disgraceful the complicity of the propapunditgandists really is and how insidious their spin and misdirection really is...Worse yet, their sins of omission...
Ray McGovern, www.tompaine.com: The casting was a dead
giveaway. For the first time since annual threat assessment briefings by the heads of key intelligence agencies began a decade ago, the director of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was disinvited. Roberts and his Republican colleagues
decided to preclude the possibility that some
recalcitrant senator might ask why INR was able to get
it right on Iraq when everyone else was wrong. Recall
that the CIA and other intelligence agencies signed on
to the worst National Intelligence Estimate in 40
years—the one issued in October 2002 with the loaded
title "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass
Destruction." (The only near rival in infamy is the
NIE of September 1962, which said that the Soviet
Union would not risk trying to put missiles in Cuba.
The missiles were already en route.)
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No Skunks Allowed
Ray McGovern chaired National Intelligence Estimates
during his 27-year career and had high respect for the
expertise and dedication of INR analysts. Ray is
co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for
Sanity, which includes alumni from CIA, INR, and other
intelligence agencies. He is now co-director of the
Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach
ministry in Washington, DC.
It was a quite a show at the Senate Intelligence
Committee's worldwide threat assessment briefing on
Tuesday, Feb. 24. Committee Chairman Sen. Pat Roberts,
R-Kan., outdid himself as damage control officer for
fallout from failed intelligence.
Sen. Roberts captured the spirit when he told
reporters that, although "everybody would have some
second thoughts" about the reasons for the war, he
believes that Saddam Hussein posed a threat "in some
ways more dangerous [than weapons of mass
destruction]," because his leadership had deteriorated
(sic). Small wonder that Roberts took pains to ensure
there would be none who might snicker at the formal
briefing.
The casting was a dead giveaway. For the first time
since annual threat assessment briefings by the heads
of key intelligence agencies began a decade ago, the
director of the State Department's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research (INR) was disinvited.
Roberts and his Republican colleagues decided to
preclude the possibility that some recalcitrant
senator might ask why INR was able to get it right on
Iraq when everyone else was wrong. Recall that the CIA
and other intelligence agencies signed on to the worst
National Intelligence Estimate in 40 years—the one
issued in October 2002 with the loaded title "Iraq's
Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction."
(The only near rival in infamy is the NIE of September
1962, which said that the Soviet Union would not risk
trying to put missiles in Cuba. The missiles were
already en route.)
Punished For Honesty
INR has been forced to sit with its face to the wall
ever since it resisted White House pressure to cook
intelligence to the recipe of high policy. CIA
Director George Tenet and other malleable intelligence
managers acquiesced in that pressure and became
accomplices in the Bush administration's successful
effort in the fall of 2002 to deceive Congress into
forfeiting to the president its constitutional
prerogative to declare war.
INR was the skunk at that picnic. It dissented loudly
from some of the most important key judgments of the
NIE of October 2002. For example, the canard about
Iraq seeking uranium from Niger—impossible on its face
and based on a forgery—found its way into the
estimate, but INR's footnote dismissed the story as
"highly dubious."
This was no small matter. As Rep. Henry Waxman,
D-Calif., noted in an irate letter to the president on
March 17, 2002, the Iraq/Niger canard had been "a
central part of the U.S. case against Iraq" —a key
piece of "evidence" used to sway Congress to give its
approval for war.
INR analysts also debunked the fable about aluminum
tubes for uranium enrichment for Iraq. Although the
tubes had been advertised by National Security Adviser
Condolleeza Rice as useful only in a nuclear
application, State Department intelligence analysts
joined counterparts in the Department of Energy and
U.N. specialists in pointing out, correctly, that the
tubes were for conventional artillery.
Most obstreperous of all, on the highly neuralgic
nuclear issue, INR was unwilling to predict when
Iraq's "nuclear weapons program" was likely to yield a
nuclear device. Why? It saw no compelling evidence
that Vice President Dick Cheney was correct in
claiming that the previous nuclear weapons program had
been "reconstituted."
And if that were not enough, State Department
intelligence committed several sins not directly
connected with the NIE. INR's most experienced Middle
East specialists prepared a study exposing as a
chimera the notion that democracy could be brought to
the area at the point of a gun. INR also provided
invaluable support to the interagency team that worked
so hard to prepare sensibly for post-war Iraq. Its
analysis and recommendations were trashed by Pentagon
neophytes who knew the invasion would be a
"cakewalk"—and by Vice President Dick Cheney, who knew
that our troops would be seen as liberators.
Who Needs Context?
A bad lot, those State Department intelligence types!
Always trying to "put things in context;" unable to
see the overriding need to "get with the program."
Last year, INR's director, Carl Ford, harped on the
need for putting the country's best analysts to work
providing policymakers with the context in which
threats arise. Ford has retired, but the current
acting director, Thomas Fingar, is cut of the same
cloth—the kind of straight shooter likely to say
things that would embarrass the CIA, the
administration and maybe even the committee itself.
Who needs context? Better to let them talk about how
many terrorists they can kill than the conditions that
breed terrorism. Let them continue to use the paradigm
of combating malaria: Surely it's easier to try to
shoot down the mosquitoes as they leave the swamp than
to drain the swamp.
And tell Tenet, too, to lay off this context business.
The administration is still smarting from that
memorandum he sent up two years ago warning that "the
underlying causes that drive terrorists will persist."
That CIA report cited a Gallup poll of almost 10,000
Muslims in nine countries in which respondents
described the United States as "ruthless, aggressive,
conceited, arrogant, easily provoked and biased."
Rubbish! They just hate our democracy.
When senators ask—as they undoubtedly will—if the
United States is safer now than after the 9/11
attacks, we want to have folks who know the correct
answer. Tenet, FBI Director Robert Mueller and Defense
Intelligence Agency Director Lowell Jacoby know it has
to be "yes." As for the State Department, although
Secretary Colin Powell has now been brought into line,
you can never be sure his intelligence specialists
will see the light and "get with the program."
Better to keep them away.
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Published: Feb 26 2004