CIA warned administration of postwar guerrilla peril

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ASHINGTON - In February, the CIA gave a formal briefing to the National Security Council, including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Vice President Dick Cheney, and President Bush himself: ''A quick military victory in Iraq will likely be followed by armed resistance from remnants of the Ba'ath Party and Fedayeen Saddam irregulars.''

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The February report was not the only warning Bush received that a guerrilla war was in the offing. According to US intelligence officials who compiled or contributed to the reports, and provided excerpts to the Globe, on multiple occasions in the months before the war the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency warned that fighting would probably continue after the formal war. The assessments went so far as to suggest that guerrilla tactics could frustrate reconstruction efforts.

But intelligence officials, former military officers, and national security specialists say the administration instead clung to the optimistic predictions of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group headed by Ahmed Chalabi, who left Iraq in 1958. Chalabi, who is now a member of Iraq's US-backed Governing Council, is a close Rumsfeld and Cheney ally who had the ears of top administration officials in the months before the war.

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Yet the CIA in particular forewarned policymakers of some of the problems likely to arise, according to one intelligence official who asked not to be identified. The reports, for example, predicted that armed insurgents would attack coalition forces. One prewar report, he said, forecast that after the war ''things would get worse before they get better'' and that there would be a high likelihood of ''backsliding'' - progress followed by setbacks.

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http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/222/nation/CIA_warned_administration_of_postwar_guerrilla_peril+.shtml

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Columnist Robert Novak wrote recently that the wife of former Ambassador Joseph Wilson -- the man who blew the whistle on the Niger uranium fraud -- is a Central Intelligence Agency operative, specializing in weapons of mass destruction. Novak attributed his information to two senior administration officials. Time magazine has said officials provided similar information.

It's illegal for government officials to reveal the identities of CIA operatives who have worked overseas within the preceding five years.

In carefully discussing what he called the hypothetical possibility his wife is a CIA employee, Wilson noted that the use of her maiden name would compromise work done before their marriage five years ago.

Properly, Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., has asked the FBI to look into the disclosures. But Congress must vigorously examine whether there is an organized effort to suppress information about the administration's handling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/opinion/134261_ambassed.html