Ray McGovern (Tom Paine): Exposing Incompetent Incumbents

From Tom Paine
Dated Thursday April 14

Exposing Incompetent Incumbents
By Ray McGovern

Many have asked how it could be that a comparatively small group of intelligence analysts in the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was able to get it right on several key Iraq-related issues, while larger agencies like CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency—with, literally, a cast of thousands—got it so wrong. The answer is simple: INR had the guts to be the skunk at the picnic. That’s how. State Department analysts showed backbone in resisting White House pressure, as well as in-house prodding from the likes of Under Secretary of State John Bolton, to cook intelligence to the White House recipe.

INR stood firm, while former CIA director George Tenet, his deputy John McLaughlin and other malleable intelligence community managers caved in to administration pressure. (I note with some amusement that the euphemism now in vogue is “leaning forward,” as if that is not politicization.) In caving in, they became accomplices in the successful attempt to deceive Congress into voting for an unprovoked war. INR analysts dissented loudly from some of the most important key judgments of the infamous National Intelligence Estimate, “Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction” of Oct. 1, 2002.

For example:

• When the canard about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger insinuated its way into the estimate, INR inserted a strong footnote, dismissing the story as "highly dubious."
• INR analysts also debunked the fable about aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment for Iraq. Although then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice portrayed the tubes as useful only in a nuclear application, State Department intelligence analysts joined the experts in the Department of Energy and U.N. engineers in pointing out, correctly, that the tubes were for conventional artillery.
• Most obstreperous of all, on the highly neuralgic nuclear issue INR flat-out refused to predict when Iraq's "nuclear weapons program" was likely to yield a nuclear device. Why? Because it saw no compelling evidence that Vice President Dick Cheney was correct in claiming that the previous nuclear weapons program had been "reconstituted." In the best diplomatic language it could summon, INR said it was just too difficult to predict the culmination of any such program without having a start (or re-start) date.

If that were not provocation enough, State Department intelligence analysts committed several other transgressions not directly connected to 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 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. INR’s director at the time was the widely respected Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford, a man not for sale.

Read more.

John Bolton was part of the cabal that manipulated intelligence prior to the war. This didn't work as successfully in the State Department, were Bolton worked, as it did in Pentagon, where Donald Rumsfeld gave the ball to Douglas Feith.

Nevertheless, following the familiar pattern, Mr. Bush is promoting Bolton in what appears to be a reward for his pre-war prevarications. One would think that Mr. Bush was deliberately promoting lies, wouldn't one?

One thing in the article caught my eye.

<snip>
This is by no means a water-over-the-dam issue. If plans go forward for an attack on Iran, it may become necessary for those intelligence professionals with the requisite courage—if any are left—to mount their own pre-emptive strike against the kind of corrupted intelligence that greased the skids for war on Iraq. That they would be forced to go to the press, preferably with documentation, is a sad commentary.
<end snip>

Let me throw this question out: What press? Do you think one of the Corporate Owned Networks would tell the story?

Mr. McGovern wrote about analysts being pressured to come up with the right answers:

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"INR had the guts to be the skunk at the picnic.... State Department analysts showed backbone in resisting White House pressure, as well as in-house prodding from the likes of Under Secretary of State John Bolton, to cook intelligence to the White House recipe.
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Many of us former intelligence professionals are astonished that, of the hundreds of analysts who knew in 2002 and early 2003 that Iraq posed no threat to the United States and were aware of Dick Cheney’s frequent visits to CIA Headquarters to argue otherwise, no one had the courage to blow the whistle on such pressure tactics and warn about the coming war."
******************************************

Jack,
Do you have links to any artciles in which the analysts themselves describe how they were pressured? Ford's testimony about Bolton's bullying on the Cuba issue is a good example, but what I need are examples about Iraq. I've been battling some wingnuts on another forum, and they're gloating over the recent Robb-Silberman report that "in no instance" did any intelligence analyst report being pressured. Even though the commission did not examine whether Bush misrepresented the intelligence to the public, they're triumphantly asserting that this report puts to rest the "Bush lied" accusations.

I've got plenty of links to articles chronicling Bush administration lies about Iraq; what I need now is evidence that the analysys were indeed pressured. Cheney's visits to Langley do not suffice without credible accounts of what happened during those visits.

I'm sure McGovern is absolutely right about analysts being pressured, but I need something to back it up.

From the Washington Post via the Houston Chronicle
Dated June 5, 2003

Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits
By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers

Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.

With Cheney taking the lead in the administration last August in advocating military action against Iraq by claiming it had weapons of mass destruction, the visits by the vice president and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here," one senior agency official said yesterday.


Other agency officials said they were not influenced by the visits from the vice president's office, and some said they welcomed them. But the disclosure of Cheney's unusual hands-on role comes on the heels of mounting concern from intelligence officials and members of Congress that the administration may have exaggerated intelligence it received about Iraq to build a case for war.

While visits to CIA headquarters by a vice president are not unprecedented, they are unusual, according to intelligence officials. The exact number of trips by Cheney to the CIA could not be learned, but one agency official described them as "multiple." They were taken in addition to Cheney's regular attendance at President Bush's morning intelligence briefings and the special briefings the vice president receives when he is at an undisclosed location for security reasons.

A spokeswoman for Cheney would not discuss the matter yesterday. "The vice president values the hard work of the intelligence community, but his office has a practice of declining to comment on the specifics of his intelligence briefings," said Cathie Martin, the vice president's public affairs director.

Read more.

To my knowledge, nothing has ever been established that would support a charge that Cheney or Libby specifically ordered any analyst to say something that wasn't true or to alter language in order to make something more certain than justifeid by known facts.

A White House official was quoted in the article:

I know of no pressure, I know of nobody who pressured anybody."

Of course, I'm not going to accept the word of Douglas Feith on anything.