Neoconservatives, and the Manipulation of Intelligence for the Justification for the Iraq War

[adwinistrator]

This post was originally written in response to someone who asked:

How did Cheney have so much say over major decisions and policy direction? How come he is seen as possibly more influential than Bush, the actual President?

The purpose of my response was to show how one of the primary justifications for the invasion of Iraq, the relationship between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, was the effort of a group of neoconservatives who had been working towards the specific goal of overthrowing Saddam.

I feel it's important to understand how dangerous a determined, ideological group of skilled government insiders can be. The ways this group influenced the Bush administration seems to get attributed to just Dick Cheney, and that is misleading at best. It's very difficult for one person to change the course of history, but if 10 people know where the weak points in the executive decision-making chain of command are, they can have an incredible impact on the future of our country.


Part 1 - The Neoconservative Influence

The neoconservative movement had been an influential force in government policy for over 40 years, most notably in the Reagan administration. Their main distinction from other conservative groups is based in foreign policy, mainly in regards to the use of military and diplomatic power to remain the preeminent global superpower, and to create a world that is favorable to "American principles and interests".

It is important to understand that neoconservatism was not it's own distinct subset of the Republican party, but could more accurately be described as political persuasion.

In the 1992 document, Defense Planning Guidance, Under Secretary for Defense for Policy Paul Wolfowitz stated:

The third goal is to preclude any hostile power from dominating a region critical to our interests, and also thereby to strengthen the barriers against the reemergence of a global threat to the interests of the U.S. and our allies. These regions include Europe, East Asia, the Middle East/Persian Gulf, and Latin America. Consolidated, nondemocratic control of the resources of such a critical region could generate a significant threat to our security.

The ability of this movement to influence American policy comes from it's policy think tanks, prominent government officials, and influential political commentators. A clear example of this coalition of like-minded individuals can be seen in the Project for the New American Century. PNAC was established in 1997 by William Kristol (political analyst, commentator, founder of The Weekly Standard, former Cheif of Staff to VP Dan Quayle) and Robert Kagan (columnist, foreign-policy commentator, and 1984-86 United States Department of State Policy Planning Staff member).

In their 1997 Statement of Principles, Elliot Abrams puts forth the group's main objectives:

• we need to increase defense spending significantly if we are to carry out our global responsibilities today and modernize our armed forces for the future;
• we need to strengthen our ties to democratic allies and to challenge regimes hostile to our interests and values;
• we need to promote the cause of political and economic freedom abroad;
• we need to accept responsibility for America's unique role in preserving and extending an international order friendly to our security, our prosperity, and our principles.

Of the 25 original signatories of PNAC, 14 were given positions in the George W. Bush administration, most notably:

• Dick Cheney – Vice President of the United States
• I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby - Chief of Staff to Vice President Cheney
• Donald Rumsfeld – Secretary of Defense
• Paul Wolfowitz – Deputy Secretary of Defense Department

Two other key figures in the neoconservative movement who played a very prominent role in shaping the early George W. Bush administration were:

• Douglas Feith - Under Secretary of Defense for Policy
• Richard Perle - Chairman of the Defense Policy Board

The September 2000 PNAC report, Rebuilding America's Defenses, lists the following objectives for the US military:

• Strategic goal - Preserve Pax Americana
• Main military mission(s) - Secure and expand zones of democratic peace; deter rise of new great-power competitor; defend key regions; exploit transformation of war
• Main military threat(s) - Potential theater wars spread across the globe

On September 20th, 2001, PNAC released the Letter to President Bush on the War on Terrorism, which states:

But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism.

As reported in John Kampfner's book, *Blair's Wars*, Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz were pushing for an invasion of Iraq immediately after the attacks.

It was in the first emergency meeting of the National Security Council on 11 September itself that Rumsfeld asked: 'Why shouldn't we go against Iraq, not just al-Qaeda?' From that moment on, he and Wolfowitz used every available opportunity to press the case.
...
Cheney suggested: 'To the extent we define our task broadly, including those who support terrorism, then we get at states. And it's easier to find them than it is to find Bin Laden.'
...
Bush hedged his bets. 'Start with Bin Laden, which Americans expect. And then if we succeed, we've struck a huge blow and can move forward.' Undeterred, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz held secret meetings about opening a second front - against Saddam. Powel was excluded.

Part 2 - Inappropriate Intelligence Activities

Note: Instead of sourcing every claim made in this section, I've included the main sources and additional reading after the conclusion. A large portion of this section has been sourced from a declassified 2007 Department of Defense Inspector General review, "Review of the Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.".

While there was unanimous agreement in The White House on the invasion of Afghanistan, proponents of the invasion of Iraq had more work to do in order to bring the president, State Department, congress, and the American people to their side. The ultimate decision on whether or not the executive branch would push for war with Iraq would come from the president, and their main goal would be to steer him into making the decisions they desired.

The way they accomplished this goal:

1. Create their own intelligence analysis department
2. Promote information provided by Ahmad Chalabi's exile group, the Iraqi National Congress, with data from the US intelligence community
3. Produce their own intelligence reviews that showed a "mature symbiotic relationship" between Al Qaeda and Iraq
4. Integrate this alternative intelligence into the intelligence assessments that would be provided to senior decision makers

This plan would be executed using the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (Douglas Feith), under the direction of the Deputy Secretary of Defense (Paul Wolfowitz).

The Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group was requested in a memo to Wolfowitz by the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs, Peter Rodman (member of PNAC), on November 26, 2001. Douglas Feith appointed David Wurmser and Michael Maloof to this unit, described as a new Team B with the mission to "study al-Qaida's worldwide organization including its suppliers, its relations with States and other terrorist organizations (and their suppliers)."

PCTEG requested 2 DIA detailees to be assigned to their project, which gave them access to additional intelligence databases. Using the same raw data that the intelligence community used, the considered the evidence that fit their agenda as fact, even when the CIA/DIA considered it unverifiable.

CIA - Iraq and al-Qaeda: Interpreting a Murky Relationship (June 21, 2002)

Overall, the reporting provides no conclusive signs of cooperation on specific terrorist operations, so discussion of the possible extent of cooperation between Iraq and al-Qa'ida is necessarily speculative.

DIA - Iraq's Inconclusive Ties to Al-Qaida (July 31, 2002)

[Atta/al-Ani meeting, having] significant information gaps that render the issue impossible to prove or disprove with available information.
...
compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation between the government of Iraq and al-Qaida has not been established (emphasis added), despite a large body of anecdotal information.

PCTEG/OUSD(P) - Assessing the Relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida (August 8th, 2002)

Intelligence indicates cooperation in all categories; mature, symbiotic relationship

The criteria used to come to this conclusion was explained in a July 25th, 2002 PCTEG memo:

Published intelligence analyses continue to suggest that ties between Iraq and al-Qaida are not "solid" or "provable." Intelligence assessments do not require juridical evidence to support them. Legal standards for prosecution needed in law enforcement do not obtain in intelligence assessments. which look at trends, patterns. capabilities, and intentions. Based on these criteria, the following Information clearly makes the case for an Intelligence Finding- that Iraq has been complicit in supporting ai-Qaida terrorist activities

With their draft intelligence briefings completed, PCTEG was deactivated by the end of September 2002.

The Office of Special Plans (OSP) was created in October 2002. Douglas Feith described OSP as a policy planning group. OSP has become generic terminology for the activities of the OUSD(P), including the PCTEG and Policy Support Office. I'll continue using OUSD(P) to describe the activities of Feith and his team, as they relate to advancing the intelligence products of PCTEG, as there is little documented evidence to determine where the OUSD(P) ends and the OSP begins.

Abram Shulsky served as Director of the Office of Special Plans. His worldview, as argued by Shulsky in his book, *Silent Warfare*, is:

"In a supportive role, intelligence must concentrate its efforts on finding and analyzing information relevant to implementing the policy" as "truth is not the goal" of intelligence operations, but "victory"

The final draft briefing, "Assessing the Relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida" was presented by OUSD(P) to:

• August 8th, 2002 - Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld
• August 15th, 2002 - Director of CIA George Tenet and Director of DIA Lowell Jacoby
• September 16th, 2002 - Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen Hadley (Pentagon aide to Wolfowitz in George H. W. Bush administration, added "yellowcake" SotU address) and Chief of Staff to the Office of the Vice President I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby

When the OUSD(P) presented this briefing to DCI (Tenet), they left out a slide called "Fundamental Problems with How Intelligence Community is Assessing Information". This meeting would also be the first instance of "dissemination" of this OUSD(P) intelligence report, which fundamentally changes it from a "intelligence review" to an "intelligence product"

Following the August 15th briefing of George Tenet, he directed the intelligence community to hold a round-table meeting for the upcoming CIA report, "Iraqi Support for Terrorism", in which OUSD(P) participated. This resulted in the CIA including some of OUSD(P)'s concerns in their report. The CIA was willing to add footnotes to its report stating that the conclusions represented by the OUSD(P) staffers differed from the CIA paper's findings, but the OUSD(P) staffers refused, knowing that they were acting in a policy capacity and were unable to speak for Defense Intelligence.

Even after this round-table discussion where the CIA had basically said that they would publically disagree with the OUSD(P) assessment, the OUSD(P) briefing presented to Hadley and Libby, including the slide "Fundamental Problems with How Intelligence Community is Assessing Information," which had been presented to the Secretary of Defense but omitted from the DCI (Tenet) briefing. This latest briefing would also include a new slide that had not been included in any previous presentations, "Facilitation: Atta Meeting in Prague," which discussed the alleged meeting between Mohammad Atta and al-Ani in April 2001 in Prague without caveats regarding Intelligence Community consensus.

According to the 2007 Department of Defense Inspector General report, "Review of the Pre-Iraqi War Activites of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy":

The Intelligence Community's assessment had not changed. The draft August 20, 2002, CIA Report, "Iraqi Support for Terrorism," discussed the relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida as "much less clearcut ... appears to more closely resemble that of two organizations trying to feel out or exploit each other." As far as knowledge or implication in 9/11 goes, the report offers, "no conclusive indication of Iraqi complicity or foreknowledge in the 11 September attacks." Further, the report cites "no conclusive reporting that al-Qa'ida and Iraq collaborated on terrorist operations," and called the reporting on the alleged meeting between Atta and al-Ani as "inconclusive."

The OUSD(P) did not provide "the most accurate analysis of intelligence" to senior decision makers. As this report states, the OUSD(P) produced and disseminated alternative intelligence assessments that included some conclusions that were not supported by the consensus of the Intelligence Community. The Intelligence Community discounted conclusions about the high degree of cooperation between Iraq and
al-Qaida; yet the decision makers were given information describing the relationship as "known contacts" or as factual conclusions.

While we cannot know exactly how the debate in The White House proceeded, due to the actions of Douglas Feith's OUSD(P), as directed by Paul Wolfowitz, at the behest of Donald Rumsfeld, both the Vice President (Cheney) and the National Security Advisor to The President (Rice) had intelligence reports stating that the Intelligence Community had serious flaws in their assessment, and that there is a "mature symbiotic relationship" between Iraq and Al-Qaeda, with no inclusion of the CIA's objection to stating that as fact.


Part 3 - Conclusion and Sources

According to the 2007 DOD IG report:

The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and alQaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers. While such actions were not illegal or unauthorized, the actions were, in our opinion, inappropriate given that the intelligence assessments were intelligence products and did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the Intelligence Community. This condition occurred because of an expanded role and mission of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from policy formulation to alternative intelligence analysis and dissemination. As a result, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy did not provide "the most accurate analysis of intelligence" to senior decision-makers.

All of this is considered technically legal, due to December 8, 1999 Department of Defense Directive 5111.1.

We recognize that the OUSD(P) performed some of the actions in response to inquiries regarding intelligence briefings from the Deputy Secretary of Defense and at the direction of the Secretary of Defense. One of the specified functions in DoD Directive 5111.1 requires OUSD(P) to "perform such other functions, as the Secretary of Defense may prescribe." As a result, we consider the actions of the OUSD(P) were not illegal or unauthorized.

This conclusion infers that Donald Rumsfeld "prescribed" the OUSD(P) to perform these "other functions".

The way in which this intelligence was "stovepiped" around the Intelligence Community consensus reports, was through the Office of VP (Cheney and Libby), and to the National Security Advisor (Hadley).

Sources:

• Office of Inspector General, Department of Defense. "Review of the Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy." February 9, 2007
• Republican Policy Committee, United States Senate. "Disaggregating the Pentagon Offices - The Department of Defense, the Office of Special Plans and Iraq Pre-War Intelligence." February 7, 2006
• Senetor Carl Levin, Ranking Member, Senate Armed Services Committee. "Report of an Inquiry into the Alternative Analysis of the Issue of an Iraq-al Qaeda Relationship." October 21, 2004
• Hersh, Seymore. "Selective Intelligence." *The New Yorker*, May 12, 2003.
• Risen, James. "How Pair's Finding on Terror Led To Clash on Shaping Intelligence." The New York Times, April 28, 2004

Additional Reading:

• Filkins, Dexter. "Where Plan A Left Ahmad Chalabi." The New York Times, November 5, 2006

[TheReal_ND]

This is too good. Excellent write up. I'm going to do a little research and write up something I noticed here.

[adwinistrator]

This is too good. Excellent write up. I'm going to do a little research and write up something I noticed here.

There is a lot that I came across in my research that I left out, as it was not relevant to the point being made. I could write another whole article on Ahmed Chalabi, and his relationships with key members in the neoconservative movement. Some say Chalabi played the neocons, some say the neocons used Chalabi, I think it's a bit of both...

Also, for other evidence presented, like the specifics of the intelligence analysis on missile components and enrichment machinery, the State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) saw through all the wishful thinking analysis from the start, and was raising objections every step of the way.

Also, I'm not sure if it's the one I linked to in the source, but I found a copy of the DoD OIG review, with the attached memorandums and comments from all those interviewed... The amount of deflection, covering of asses, and people who objected (but did nothing more at the time) is enlightening.

[ssu]

I think the neocons themselves were astonished how they took power during the Dubya years. After all, looking at the Bush Foreign Policy crew at the start of the administration, it looked like first it would be like his father's administration and the Republican school of foreign policy of Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Advisor of Dad Bush. Nope, really wasn't that.

There is the now the famous video of general Wesley Clark, which Clarke now absolutely hates btw, that tells a lot about the neocons in their heyday:


One of the epic clips about US foreign policy.

[adwinistrator]

I think the neocons themselves were astonished how they took power during the Dubya years. After all, looking at the Bush Foreign Policy crew at the start of the administration, it looked like first it would be like his father's administration and the Republican school of foreign policy of Brent Scowcroft, the National Security Advisor of Dad Bush. Nope, really wasn't that.

I don't think they were astonished. The key members of PNAC who were appointed in the executive branch and the DoD had been in government, in multiple administrations, in various roles. To reach this point where "their guys" were the VP, the Secretary of Defense, and you had two skilled officials in Wolfowitz and Feith in the DoD, they knew how to work outside of the normal channels to do an end run around the normal processes.

They were able to pull it off once, but not twice, because of the State Department's refusal to get burned again. Bush was not a 100% true believer, and he felt burnt as well. Rice was his National Security Advisor, and saw how they burned Bush and Powell. Powell was a soldier, and he did his "duty", he knew the intel was optimistic at best, and wasn't about to "abandon post" over his reservations (well he almost was, but Tenent personally assured him that he had a source, which he didn't).

Once rice was Sec. State, and Gates was Sec. Def., Cheney and friends could not get their war with Iran anymore, and that's why he had a broken heart, and needed a robotic ticker.

There is the now the famous video of general Wesley Clark, which Clarke now absolutely hates btw, that tells a lot about the neocons in their heyday:

One of the epic clips about US foreign policy.

I got to see General Clark debate Karl Rove a few years back. They both did well, and Rove was certainly brave in taking up the debate, but it seemed clear that even he knew some of the positions he (and the neocons during GWB) took were near indefensible.

[ssu]

Good post, adwinistrator. That surely was an interesting debate.

I think that the neocons biggest victory was that the whole "War on Terror" went on the same tracks ahead when Obama took office. That's the real revolution, how neocons basically made it to the democratic circles, perhaps not in person, but in policy. You could see earlier in the actions of the intelligence services that top White House officials had to sign under orders to use torture as anticipated "Jail Free"-cards to the intelligence services, but nothing of that sort happened with Obama. It was just like the same, perhaps not so belligerent, but still quite belligerent (as Libya showed).

For me one of the biggest questions is just how and why the Obama administration was so close in policy when it came to the War on Terror to Bush? It was like the new norm.

[adwinistrator]

In response to a discussion on why the Intelligence Community got the Iraqi intelligence analysis wrong, I decided to take the time to write a bit on the key arguments for going to war, and how the Bush administration pushed to get the results they wanted behind the scenes during the internal debate. A lot of people just sum up the whole situation as "the agencies got it wrong", where now looking back, we can see who got it right, and why the IC consensus went with the ones who got it wrong.

A lot of information has been declassified from the multiple Senate Select Committee on Intelligence investigations, as well the Defense Department Attorney General report on pre-war intelligence. I can provide many more sources if anyone is interested.

Some of this rehashes the info from my previous post, but there is some additional detail I've included this time around, so I'll post it all.

Relationship between Al-Qaeda and Iraq

Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon was one of the main forces of influence on the U.S. intelligence agencies. There, William Luti’s Near East and South Asia unit of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (OUSDP) was in close touch with the Vice President’s office. Papers circulated back and forth, and both offices utilized claims from Iraqi exiles—claims that Saddam trained terrorists or possessed various WMDs—to press the intelligence agencies for similar information. Under Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the undersecretary for policy, Douglas Feith, the Pentagon formed a special group to review reports on Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda. This unit, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) has been represented by Feith as merely charged with assembling a briefing on terrorism, but its real function was to bring additional pressure to bear on the CIA.

PCTEG analyzed raw intelligence data (accessed via DIA assigned personnel), with the mission to "study al-Qaida's worldwide organization including its suppliers, its relations with States and other terrorist organizations (and their suppliers)." Their objective was to product a draft briefing that showed how Iraq and Al-Qaeda had "cooperation in all categories; mature, symbiotic relationship", and also point out why all the other intelligence agencies are wrong about this. After the draft briefing was complete, PCTEG closed their office.

The justification for their conclusion was:

Published intelligence analyses continue to suggest that ties between Iraq and al-Qaida are not "solid" or "provable." Intelligence assessments do not require juridical evidence to support them. Legal standards for prosecution needed in law enforcement do not obtain in intelligence assessments. which look at trends, patterns. capabilities, and intentions. Based on these criteria, the following Information clearly makes the case for an Intelligence Finding- that Iraq has been complicit in supporting ai-Qaida terrorist activities

Douglas Feith, in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense (OUSD(P)), in conjunction with the Office of Special Plans, began presenting the PCTEG briefing, "Assessing the Relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida", to various decision-makers in Washington, fundamentally changing this document from "intelligence review" to an "intelligence product". First SecDef Rumsfeld, then DCI Tenet, then Hadley and VP staff.

Tenet called a round-table meeting for the upcoming CIA report, "Iraqi Support for Terrorism", and included the OUSD(P). The CIA was willing to include some of the analysis from the PCTEG briefing, but only with footnotes explaining that the CIA's conclusions differed from that of the OUSD(P). OUSD(P) refused to have their analysis included because they were operating under the guise of being a policy office and should not be operating as Defense Department Intelligence. I believe OUSD(P)'s goal was to get the CIA to include their intelligence analysis without crediting them or including their disagreement, which they failed to do.

In the end, the OUSD(P) briefing was presented to SecDef Rumsfeld and the decision-makers in the White House, Bush's National Security Adviser's office, and the Vice President's office. The briefing also included a slide that was not shown Tenet, which tried to explain why the other agencies analysis, that Iraq's relationship with Al-Qaeda was "much less clear-cut ... appears to more closely resemble that of two organizations trying to feel out or exploit each other." was wrong.

If you'd like to get a clear understanding of OUSD(P)'s modus operandi, see this declassified OUSD(P) memorandum that details the kinds of information seen as desirable to obtain from intelligence in order to strengthen the case for war against Iraq

To understand the degree of this disagreement between the Bush administration and the CIA, summarized from Paul Pillar's presentation, "Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq", at the Council on Foreign Relations on March 7, 2006:

Cheney was especially acerbic on CIA’s rejection of claims that one of the 9/11 terrorists had met with Iraqi intelligence officers in Prague. On a number of occasions, Cheney sent his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, to CIA headquarters to follow up on his concerns. Mr. Cheney went there himself, not just once but on almost a dozen occasions. The practice encouraged the CIA to censor itself, driven, as Pillar put it, by “the desire to avoid the unpleasantness of putting unwelcome assessments on the desks of policymakers.”

These action led to the CIA and the IC having a different determination than the White House and the Department of Defense. All of this started on November 26, 2001 with the creation of PCTEG, and all of the OUSD(P) alternative intelligence analysis stove-piping occurred between August 8th, 2002 and September 16th, 2002.

The White House was making the case for war, and stating to the public and congress, that Iraq and Al-Qaeda had a working relationship. Their PR team was out in full force, and unless you happened to know where to find the CIA and IC analysis, you would have thought this was the case. They used the same raw intelligence, but basically lowered the standard of evidence in order to state that there was an operational relationship.

Weapons of Mass Destruction

There are multiple claims that went in to making the case for the existence of Iraq's WMD (nuclear, chemical, or biological), and the Bush administration made the case for war with this ambiguous terminology. I'll break down the main pieces of evidence used, and explain where the disagreements happened in the Intelligence Community, and where people, agencies, and nations collaborated to overcome those disagreements.

Nuclear Weapons Program

The only concrete physical evidence was the aluminum tubes discovered being imported into Iraq.

Aluminum Tubes

Initial CIA assessment published on April 10, 2001, based largely on the work of a centrifuge analyst in the DCI WINPAC, stated that:

The tubes were probably intended for an Iraqi uranium enrichment centrifuge program.

The assessment did not provide any details outlining why the CIA assessed came to this conclusion, but noted:

using aluminum tubes in a centrifuge effort would be inefficient and a step backward from the specialty steel machines Iraq was poised to mass-produce at the onset of the Gulf War.

The very next day the DOE published their own analysis which stated:

Procurement activity more likely supports a different application, such as conventional ordnance production. For example, the tube specifications and quantity appear to be generally consistent with their use as launch tubes for man-held anti-armor rockets or as tactical rocket casings.

They also concluded:

The manner in which the procurement is being handled (multiple procurement agents, quotes obtained from multiple suppliers in diverse locations, and price haggling) seems to better match out expectations for a conventional Iraqi military buy than a major purchase for a clandestine weapons-of-mass destruction program.

By May 9, 2001, DOE published another analysis which said:

Further investigation reveals, however, Iraq has purchased similar aluminum tubes previously to manufacture chambers (tubes) for a multiple rocket launcher

The CIA decided to stick to their analysis, the DOE to theirs. The DIA sided with the CIA WINPAC analysis. This debate continued over a year, with the DIA and CIA saying the tubes were for a nuclear program, and the DOE and the State Department's INR saying the tubes were for a conventional rocket program.

In the end, the IC's National Intelligence Estimate sided with the CIA and DIA, and the DOE and INR included extensive text boxes outlining their analysis and disagreement.

If you're wondering why the CIA and DIA decided to ignore the (in my opinion) convincing analysis of the DOE and INR:

Behind the scenes at the State Department, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, also closely allied with the Office of the Vice President, pressured both the State Department and the CIA to fire individuals who refused to clear text in his speeches leveling the most extreme charges against other countries. Although Bolton’s actions did not concern Iraq directly, they came to a high point during the summer of 2002—the exact moment when Iraq intelligence issues were on the front burner—and they aimed at offices which played a central role in producing Iraq intelligence. These included the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at State plus the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and the Weapons Intelligence, Proliferation and Arms Control (WINPAC) center at CIA. Analysts working on Iraq intelligence could not be blamed for concluding that their own careers might be in jeopardy if they supplied answers other than what the Bush administration wanted to hear.

Nigerian Uranium Ore

As widely reported, this affair involved fabricated documents, a Bush administration effort to discredit the U.S. envoy sent to check on the report by outing his wife, a CIA undercover officer; and ultimately, the criminal trial of Vice President Cheney’s top national security aide; but those matters are not of concern now. What is disturbing here, in the context of politicization of the intelligence, is the specific treatment the CIA gave to the information it developed.

On February 13, 2002 Vice President Cheney asked his CIA briefer about reports that Iraq was procuring uranium in Niger. Cheney represented the information as having come from the DIA, which indeed had issued an “executive highlight” on February 12. If this was in actuality what Cheney saw, the DIA was basing its account on information provided by Italian military intelligence, already aware of the fabricated Nigerien documents that later became the heart of this affair. The CIA had reported the same information a week earlier. The briefer promised to check, and the CIA’s WINPAC center prepared a note which observed that the foreign information on which the claim was based was only single-source and lacked crucial detail. The agency subsequently set up a trip to Niger by retired Ambassador Joseph V. Wilson IV, who returned with the conclusion that there was no substance to these claims. Wilson arrived in Niger on February 26 and returned on March 4. Just as Wilson came home, Vice President Cheney renewed his inquiry into the Niger allegation, and WINPAC responded by noting that the foreign intelligence service had no new information, that the Nigerien government insisted it was making all efforts to ensure that its uranium was used only for peaceful purposes, and that CIA was about to debrief “a source who may have information related to the alleged sale.”

Ambassador Wilson was in fact debriefed by two CIA officers on March 5. The way this was handled is what raises questions. Wilson’s data was recorded by the officers and written up by a reports officer who, according to the SSCI, “added additional relevant information from his notes.” The declassified text of this March 8, 2002, report shows that CIA Headquarters added the comment that the officials who provided information to Wilson “may have intended to influence as well as inform.” The ambassador himself was described as “a contact with excellent access who does not have an established reporting record.” However, Wilson had in fact carried out a mission on behalf of CIA previously, and he had been the senior U.S. envoy in Baghdad (the deputy chief of mission) before the first Gulf War. Therefore, Wilson did have an established reporting record. The comment regarding the Nigerien officials was gratuitous. The combination of these remarks cast doubt within the U.S. government on the information.

Wilson’s was only one of a number of streams of reporting that undermined the Niger story, including an investigation by French intelligence and inquiries from the current U.S. ambassador and a senior U.S. military officer. Likely based on these materials and on the embassy cables reporting on Wilson from Niger, State Department intelligence filed a report doubting the claims of a Nigerien sale to Iraq, and filed a dissent when the claim was included in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. But the developments of early 2002 became only the beginning of a highly ambivalent treatment of the uranium claim. On the one hand, the CIA intervened to keep this material out of the major speech President Bush gave in Cincinnati in October 2002, and also objected when British intelligence included it in their own white paper about the Iraqi threat. On the other hand, senior CIA officials mentioned the uranium claim in congressional testimony at the same time, permitted it to be included in a December 2002 “fact sheet” on Iraq, and mounted only tepid opposition to inclusion of the charge in President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address, where it would become notorious as the “16 Words.”

Chemical Weapons, Biological Weapons, and Everything Else

The rest of the evidence is drawn from Iraqi exile sources, principally those of the organization known as the Iraqi National Congress (INC). Please see the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence's Report on The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress for all the details.

This anti-Saddam group has had a long and stormy history with the CIA, which actually severed relations with it, an action the Clinton administration’s NSC Deputies Committee approved in December 1996. The agency was later forced to resume ties, and even to fund the group, as a result of the Iraq Liberation Act, which Congress passed in 1998. Proponents of that legislation included many individuals who became senior officials of the Bush administration. The State Department took up funding of the INC. Both State and CIA questioned the value of the intelligence it provided, and State in turn sought to end the relationship. In 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) took over responsibility for the Iraqi exiles. During this period the INC opened channels to the Office of the Vice President as well as Pentagon units responsible to Douglas Feith. In his own account of this period, Feith takes pains to defend the exile group and its leaders.

In the summer of 2002, the intelligence community compiled a detailed assessment of the material provided by the INC on several subjects and found it to have little current intelligence value, with sourcing and attribution impossible to verify. Despite this, and in spite of the fact that the INC went beyond providing intelligence to using the defectors it brought to the attention of the U.S. government as part of an anti-Saddam publicity campaign, the SSCI report on the group concludes that “false information from the Iraqi National Congress (INC)-affiliated sources was used to support key Intelligence Community Assessments on Iraq and was widely distributed in intelligence products prior to the war” (pp. 113-122). Intelligence agencies also avoided identifying these sources as INC-related in their reporting. Among the defectors was the notorious source “Curveball,” whose false allegations concerning Iraqi mobile biological weapons factories underlay some of the most alarming Bush administration charges against Baghdad.

This begs the question why, given distrust of the INC’s information at both the CIA and State Department, and an awareness of these doubts even within the DIA, the data was used at all, much less relied upon. Part of the answer no doubt has to do with the desperation of U.S. intelligence to obtain any information from inside Iraq—in itself a reflection of an intelligence failure. But the other part of the answer most likely flows directly from the prodding of the intelligence community by high levels at the Pentagon and White House for reactions to the defector information. This point stands out in stark relief when contrasted with the fact that the alternate stream of Iraqi insider information—from high-level agent sources and Iraqi scientists—seems to have had no discernible role in U.S. intelligence reporting. That is very arguably politicization.

[TheReal_ND]

[adwinistrator]

I mean, is this not the sub-forum for geekery?

Reading the young and the uninformed argue about how and why the Iraqi intel was wrong was going to give me an aneurysm, so I figured I'd at least inform those who wanted to learn about what actually happened.

The nice thing is that now, there so much information that's been declassified and collected that you can actually get a coherent understanding of the debates that took place, who was fighting for the correct analysis, and how they got sidelined.

Very important lessons to learn for future intelligence debates, when you're trying to figure out who's bending to political pressure, and who is not.

[TheReal_ND]

I mean, is this not the sub-forum for geekery?

Reading the young and the uninformed argue about how and why the Iraqi intel was wrong was going to give me an aneurysm, so I figured I'd at least inform those who wanted to learn about what actually happened.

The nice thing is that now, there so much information that's been declassified and collected that you can actually get a coherent understanding of the debates that took place, who was fighting for the correct analysis, and how they got sidelined.

Very important lessons to learn for future intelligence debates, when you're trying to figure out who's bending to political pressure, and who is not.

Nah it's good. I need to finish reading it. I was going to make an analysis of your post regarding a certain group's influence and may still yet but I haven't gotten around to it.