Ex-CIA officer accuses White House of 'misusing' data on Iraq
Bush administration 'cherry-picked' data before war, ignored warnings about postwar strife.
A recently retired CIA agent, who until last year was responsible for the collection and assessment of intelligence on the Middle East – including Iraq, wrote in the leading foreign policy magazine,
Foreign Affairs, that the White House misused intelligence on Iraq to
justify a decision to go to war. Paul Pillar, former national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, wrote that the Bush administration did not use intelligence to inform their decision about going to war in Iraq, but instead "cherry-picked" data that justified a decision that it had already reached.
The
Washington Post quotes Mr. Pillar as saying the US intelligence community made mistakes in concluding that Mr. Hussein's government possessed weapons of mass destruction. But he said those misjudgments
did not play a major role in the Bush administration's decision to go to war in 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 retired last year after almost 30 years at the CIA. Intelligence experts interviewed by the Post described him as "an influential behind-the-scenes player and was considered the agency's leading counterterrorism analyst." One of his main responsibilities was coordinating intelligence assessments on Iraq from the entire US intelligence community. Pillar now teaches security studies at Georgetown University in Washington.
In 2004, an assessment that Pillar had made for the Bush administration about post-war Iraq was leaked to the press. The assessment said that the insurgency in Iraq could evolve into a guerrilla war or civil war. Pillar was accused by Bush supporters of being ""a longstanding intellectual opponent of the policy options chosen by President Bush to fight terrorism."
In the article for
Foreign Affairs, Pillar writes that the proper roles of intelligence gathering and policy making are sharply divided. While that role can sometimes seem blurry, if the intelligence community is to maintain its credibility, it must "not advocate policy, especially openly."
The Bush administration's use of intelligence on Iraq did not just blur this distinction; it turned the entire model upside down. The administration used intelligence not to inform decision-making, but to justify a decision already made. It went to war without requesting – and evidently without being influenced by – any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. (The military made extensive use of intelligence in its war planning, although much of it was of a more tactical nature.) ... As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community's assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.
Pillar also said that the intelligence community, on its own initiative, considered the challenges the US would face in a postwar Iraq. The analysis pointed to a political culture that "would not provide fertile ground for democracy and foretold a long, difficult, and turbulent transition."
The
Post reports in the above article that Senate Republicans
tried to limit the damage from Pillar's statements.
Thursday, 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 a separate article,
The Post reports that court records show that I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's former chief of staff, testified that "
his bosses instructed him to leak information to reporters from a high-level intelligence report that suggested Iraq was trying to obtain weapons of mass destruction."
Cheney was one of the "superiors" I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby said had authorized him to make the disclosures, according to sources familiar with the investigation into Libby's discussions with reporters about CIA operative Valerie Plame.
But it is unclear whether Mr. Cheney instructed his former top aide to release classified information, because parts of the National Intelligence Estimate were previously declassified.
The disclosure came in a legal document written by special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald. The Post writes that it shows one way in which the vice president was involved in the response to statements by Ms. Plame's husband, former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, that the administration had exaggerated questionable intelligence to justify war with Iraq.
Finally,
The Washington Times reports that the top ranks of counterintelligence agencies in the US are vacant, "due to resignations and retirements amid
a dispute over the role of counterspying." Intelligence officials say that the failure to fill the top posts in counterintelligence is a "sign of bias" against counterspying by senior intelligence officials under Director of National Intelligence (DNI) John Negroponte, and at other agencies.
Former FBI Counterintelligence Chief Dave Szady, who left Jan. 27 for a private-sector job, said in a recent interview that the threat from foreign spies "is worse now than it was in the Cold War." An FBI official said FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III has identified spying by China as the most serious foreign intelligence threat.
Mr. Szady has not been replaced. The acting counterspy chief is Tim Bereznay, a veteran special agent. "At a time of maximum need for counterintelligence, the administration has put out good words, but is showing by deed that counterintelligence is not a priority," said a senior US intelligence official.
DNI officials say they expect the vacancies to be filled shortly.
Also...
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Putin to invite Hamas leaders to visit Moscow (Los Angeles Times)
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Israel 'furious' at Putin invitation to Hamas leaders (Khaleej Times, UAE)
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US force feeding prisoners at Guantanamo Bay: report (CBC, Canada)
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Tom Regan
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