Seems the truth slowly shows.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-
dyn/content/article/2006/02/09/AR2006020902418.html
Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq
Intelligence 'Misused' to Justify War, He Says
By Walter Pincus Washington Post Staff Writer Friday, February 10, 2006;
The former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence on the Middle
East until last year has accused the Bush administration of "cherry-
picking" intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached
to go to war, and of ignoring warnings that the country could easily fall
into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam Hussein.
Paul R. Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East
and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, acknowledges the U.S. intelligence
agencies' mistakes in concluding that Hussein's government possessed
weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments did not drive
the administration's decision to invade.
Paul R. Pillar, , who was the national intelligence officer for the Near
East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, says warnings on Iraq were ignored.
"Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with
its flaws, it was not what led to the war," Pillar wrote in the upcoming
issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. Instead, he asserted, the
administration "went to war without requesting -- and evidently without
being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any
aspect of Iraq."
"It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making
even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence
was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill
will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and
that the intelligence community's own work was politicized," Pillar wrote.
Pillar's critique is one of the most severe indictments of White House
actions by a former Bush official since Richard C. Clarke, a former
National Security Council staff member, went public with his criticism of
the administration's handling of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and its
failure to deal with the terrorist threat beforehand.
It is also the first time that such a senior intelligence officer has so
directly and publicly condemned the administration's handling of
intelligence.
Pillar, retired after 28 years at the CIA, was an influential behind-the-
scenes player and was considered the agency's leading counterterrorism
analyst. By the end of his career, he was responsible for coordinating
assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the intelligence community. He
is now a professor in security studies at Georgetown University.
White House officials did not respond to a request to comment for this
article. They have vehemently denied accusations that the administration
manipulated intelligence to generate public support for the war.
"Our statements about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein were based on the
aggregation of intelligence from a number of sources and represented the
collective view of the intelligence community," national security adviser
Stephen J. Hadley said in a White House briefing in November. "Those
judgments were shared by Republicans and Democrats alike."
Republicans and Democrats in Congress continue to argue over whether, or
how, to investigate accusations the administration manipulated prewar
intelligence.
Yesterday, the Senate Republican Policy Committee issued a statement to
counter what it described as "the continuing Iraq pre-war intelligence
myths," including charges that Bush " 'misused' intelligence to justify the
war." Writing that it was perfectly reasonable for the president to rely on
the intelligence he was given, the paper concluded, "it is actually the
critics who are misleading the American people."
In his article, Pillar said he believes that the "politicization" of
intelligence on Iraq occurred "subtly" and in many forms, but almost never
resulted from a policymaker directly asking an analyst to reshape his or
her results. "Such attempts are rare," he writes, "and when they do
occur . . . are almost always unsuccessful."
Instead, he describes a process in which the White House helped frame
intelligence results by repeatedly posing questions aimed at bolstering its
arguments about Iraq.
The Bush administration, Pillar wrote, "repeatedly called on the
intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to
the case for war," including information on the "supposed connection"
between Hussein and al Qaeda, which analysts had discounted. "Feeding the
administration's voracious appetite for material on the Saddam-al Qaeda
link consumed an enormous amount of time and attention."
The result of the requests, and public statements by the president, Vice
President Cheney and others, led analysts and managers to conclude the
United States was heading for war well before the March 2003 invasion,
Pillar asserted.
They thus knew, he wrote, that senior policymakers "would frown on or
ignore analysis that called into question a decision to go to war and
welcome analysis that supported such a decision. . . . [They] felt a strong
wind consistently blowing in one direction. The desire to bend with such a
wind is natural and strong, even if unconscious."
Pillar wrote that the prewar intelligence asserted Hussein's "weapons
capacities," but he said the "broad view" within the United States and
overseas "was that Saddam was being kept 'in his box' " by U.N. sanctions,
and that the best way to deal with him was through "an aggressive
inspections program to supplement sanctions already in place."
"If the entire body of official intelligence analysis on Iraq had a policy
implication," Pillar wrote, "it was to avoid war -- or, if war was going to
be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath."
Pillar describes for the first time that the intelligence community did
assessments before the invasion that, he wrote, indicated a postwar
Iraq "would not provide fertile ground for democracy" and would need "a
Marshall Plan-type effort" to restore its economy despite its oil revenue.
It also foresaw Sunnis and Shiites fighting for power.
Pillar wrote that the intelligence community "anticipated that a foreign
occupying force would itself be the target of resentment and attacks --
including guerrilla warfare -- unless it established security and put Iraq
on the road to prosperity in the first few weeks or months after the fall
of Saddam."
In an interview, Pillar said the prewar assessments "were not crystal-
balling, but in them we were laying out the challenges that would face us
depending on decisions that were made."
Pillar wrote that the first request he received from a Bush policymaker for
an assessment of post-invasion Iraq was "not until a year into the war."
That assessment, completed in August 2004, warned that the insurgency in
Iraq could evolve into a guerrilla war or civil war. It was leaked to the
media in September in the midst of the presidential campaign, and Bush, who
had told voters that the mission in Iraq was going well, described the
assessment to reporters as "just guessing."
Shortly thereafter, Pillar was identified in a column by Robert D. Novak as
having prepared the assessment and having given a speech critical of Bush's
Iraq policy at a private dinner in California. The column fed the White
House's view that the CIA was in effect working against the Bush
administration, and that Pillar was part of that. A columnist in the
Washington Times in October 2004 called him "a longstanding intellectual
opponent of the policy options chosen by President Bush to fight terrorism."
Leaked information "encouraged some administration supporters to charge
intelligence officers (including me) with trying to sabotage the
president's policies," Pillar wrote. One effect of that, he said, was to
limit challenges to consensus views on matters such as the Iraqi weapons
program.
When asked why he did not quit given his concerns, Pillar said in the
interview that he was doing "other worthwhile work in the nation's
interest" and never thought of resigning over the issue.
Pillar suggests that the CIA and other intelligence agencies, now under
Director of National Intelligence John D. Negroponte, remain within the
executive branch but "be given greater independence."
The model he cites is the Federal Reserve, overseen by governors who serve
fixed terms. That, he said, would reduce "both the politicization of the
intelligence community's own work and the public misuse of intelligence by
policymakers."
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