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by
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
July
15, 2003
MEMORANDUM
FOR: The President
FROM:
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT:
Intelligence Unglued
The
glue that holds the Intelligence Community together is melting under the hot
lights of an awakened press. If you do not act quickly, your intelligence
capability will fall apart—with grave consequences for the nation.
By
now you are all too familiar with the play-by-play. The
Iraq-seeking-uranium-in-Niger forgery is a microcosm of a mischievous nexus of
overarching problems. Instead of addressing these problems, your senior staff
are alternately covering up for one another and gently stabbing one another in
the back. CIA Director George Tenet’s extracted, unapologetic apology on July
11 was classic—I confess; she did it.
It
is now dawning on our until-now somnolent press that your national security
adviser, Condoleezza Rice, shepherds the foreign affairs sections of your
state-of-the-union address and that she, not Tenet, is responsible for the
forged information getting into the speech. But the disingenuousness persists.
Surely Dr. Rice cannot persist in her insistence that she learned only on June
8, 2003 about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s mission to Niger in February
2002, when he determined that the Iraq-Niger report was a con-job. Wilson’s
findings were duly reported to all concerned in early March 2002. And, if she
somehow missed that report, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff on May 6
recounted chapter and verse on Wilson’s mission, and the story remained the
talk of the town in the weeks that followed.
Rice’s
denials are reminiscent of her claim in spring 2002 that there was no reporting
suggesting that terrorists were planning to hijack planes and slam them into
buildings. In September, the joint congressional committee on 9/11 came up with
a dozen such reports.
Secretary
of State Colin Powell’s credibility, too, has taken serious hits as continued
non-discoveries of weapons in Iraq heap doubt on his confident assertions to
the UN. Although he was undoubtedly trying to be helpful in trying to contain
the Iraq-Niger forgery affair, his recent description of your state-of-the-union
words as “not totally outrageous” was faint praise indeed. And his explanations
as to why he made a point to avoid using the forgery in the way you did was
equally unhelpful.
Whatever
Rice’s or Powell’s credibility, it is yours that matters. And, in our view, the
credibility of the intelligence community is an inseparably close second.
Attempts to dismiss or cover up the cynical use to which the known forgery was
put have been—well, incredible. The British have a word for it: “dodgy.” You
need to put a quick end to the dodginess, if the country is to have a
functioning intelligence community.
Attempts
at cover up could easily be seen as comical, were the issue not so serious.
Highly revealing were Ari Fleisher’s remarks early last week, which set the
tone for what followed. When asked about the forgery, he noted tellingly—as if
drawing on well memorized talking points—that the Vice President was not guilty
of anything. The disingenuousness was capped on Friday, when George Tenet did
his awkward best to absolve the Vice President from responsibility.
To
those of us who experienced Watergate these comments had an eerie ring. That
affair and others since have proven that cover-up can assume proportions
overshadowing the crime itself. All the more reason to take early action to get
the truth up and out.
There
is just too much evidence that Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger at the
behest of Vice President Cheney’s office, and that Wilson’s findings were duly
reported not only to that office but to others as well.
Equally
important, it was Cheney who launched (in a major speech on August 26, 2002)
the concerted campaign to persuade Congress and the American people that Saddam
Hussein was about to get his hands on nuclear weapons—a campaign that
mushroomed, literally, in early October with you and your senior advisers
raising the specter of a “mushroom cloud” being the first “smoking gun” we
might observe.
That
this campaign was based largely on information known to be forged and that the
campaign was used successfully to frighten our elected representatives in
Congress into voting for war is clear from the bitter protestations of Rep.
Henry Waxman and others. The politically aware recognize that the same
information was used, also successfully, in the campaign leading up to the
mid-term elections—a reality that breeds a cynicism highly corrosive to our
political process.
The
fact that the forgery also crept into your state-of-the-union address pales in
significance in comparison with how it was used to deceive Congress into voting
on October 11 to authorize you to make war on Iraq.
It
was a deep insult to the integrity of the intelligence process that, after the
Vice President declared on August 26, 2002 that “we know that Saddam has
resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,” the National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) produced during the critical month of September featured a
fraudulent conclusion that “most analysts” agreed with Cheney’s assertion. This
may help explain the anomaly of Cheney’s unprecedented “multiple visits” to CIA
headquarters at the time, as well as the many reports that CIA and other
intelligence analysts were feeling extraordinarily great pressure, accompanied
by all manner of intimidation tactics, to concur in that conclusion. As a coda
to his nuclear argument, Cheney told NBC’s Meet the Press three days before
US/UK forces invaded Iraq: “we believe he (Saddam Hussein) has reconstituted
nuclear weapons.”
Mr.
Russert: …the International Atomic Energy Agency said he dose not have a
nuclear program; we disagree?
Vice
President Cheney: I disagree, yes. And you’ll find the CIA, for example, and
other key parts of the intelligence community disagree…we know he has been
absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has,
in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei (Director of the
IAEA) frankly is wrong.
Contrary
to what Cheney and the NIE said, the most knowledgeable analysts—those who know
Iraq and nuclear weapons—judged that the evidence did not support that
conclusion. They now have been proven right.
Adding
insult to injury, those chairing the NIE succumbed to the pressure to adduce
the known forgery as evidence to support the Cheney line, and relegated the
strong dissent of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research
(and the nuclear engineers in the Department of Energy) to an inconspicuous
footnote.
It
is a curious turn of events. The drafters of the offending sentence on the
forgery in president’s state-of-the-union speech say they were working from the
NIE. In ordinary circumstances an NIE would be the preeminently authoritative
source to rely upon; but in this case the NIE itself had already been cooked to
the recipe of high policy.
Joseph
Wilson, the former US ambassador who visited Niger at Cheney’s request, enjoys
wide respect (including, like several VIPS members, warm encomia from your
father). He is the consummate diplomat. So highly disturbed is he, however, at
the chicanery he has witnessed that he allowed himself a very undiplomatic
comment to a reporter last week, wondering aloud “what else they are lying
about.” Clearly, Wilson has concluded that the time for diplomatic language has
passed. It is clear that lies were told. Sad to say, it is equally clear that
your vice president led this campaign of deceit.
This
was no case of petty corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro
Agnew’s resignation. This was a matter of war and peace. Thousands have died.
There is no end in sight.
We
recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President
Cheney “not guilty.” His role has been so transparent that such attempts will
only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our
perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the
way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those
above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for
Cheney’s immediate resignation.
The
unedifying dance by the various oversight committees of the Congress over
recent weeks offers proof, if further proof were needed, that reliance on
Congress to investigate in a non-partisan way is pie in the sky. One need only
to recall that Sen. Pat Roberts, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee,
has refused to agree to ask the FBI to investigate the known forgery. Despite
repeated attempts by others on his committee to get him to bring in the FBI,
Roberts has branded such a move “inappropriate,” without spelling out why.
Rep.
Porter Goss, head of the House Intelligence Committee, is a CIA alumnus and a
passionate Republican and agency partisan. Goss was largely responsible for the
failure of the joint congressional committee on 9/11, which he co-chaired last
year. An unusually clear indication of where Goss’ loyalties lie can be seen in
his admission that after a leak to the press last spring he bowed to Cheney’s
insistence that the FBI be sent to the Hill to investigate members and staff of
the joint committee—an unprecedented move reflecting blithe disregard for the
separation of powers and a blatant attempt at intimidation. (Congress has its
own capability to investigate such leaks.)
Henry
Waxman’s recent proposal to create yet another congressional investigatory
committee, patterned on the latest commission looking into 9/11, likewise holds
little promise. To state the obvious about Congress, politics is the nature of
the beast. We have seen enough congressional inquiries into the performance of
intelligence to conclude that they are usually as feckless as they are
prolonged. And time cannot wait.
As
you are aware, Gen. Brent Scowcroft performed yeoman’s service as National
Security Adviser to your father and enjoys very wide respect. There are few, if
any, with his breadth of experience with the issues and the institutions
involved. In addition, he has avoided blind parroting of the positions of your
administration and thus would be seen as relatively nonpartisan, even though
serving at your pleasure. It seems a stroke of good luck that he now chairs
your President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
We
repeat, with an additional sense of urgency, the recommendation in our last
memorandum to you (May 1) that you appoint Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Chair of the
President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board to head up an independent
investigation into the use/abuse of intelligence on Iraq.
Your
refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq has left the international
community befuddled. Worse, it has fed suspicions that the US does not want UN
inspectors in country lest they impede efforts to “plant” some “weapons of mass
destruction” in Iraq, should efforts to find them continue to fall short. The
conventional wisdom is less conspiratorial but equally unsatisfying. The
cognoscenti in Washington think tanks, for example, attribute your attitude to
“pique.”
We
find neither the conspiracy nor the “pique” rationale persuasive. As we have
admitted before, we are at a loss to explain the barring of UN inspectors.
Barring the very people with the international mandate, the unique experience,
and the credibility to undertake a serious search for such weapons defies
logic. UN inspectors know Iraq, know the weaponry in question, know the Iraqi
scientists/engineers who have been involved, know how the necessary materials
are procured and processed; in short, have precisely the expertise required.
The challenge is as daunting as it is immediate; and, clearly, the US needs all
the help it can get.
The
lead Wall Street Journal article of April 8 had it right: “If the US doesn’t
make any undisputed discoveries of forbidden weapons, the failure will feed
already-widespread skepticism abroad about the motives for going to war.” As
the events of last week show, that skepticism has now mushroomed here at home
as well.
We
recommend that you immediately invite the UN inspectors back into Iraq. This
would go a long way toward refurbishing your credibility. Equally important, it
would help sort out the lessons learned for the intelligence community and be
an invaluable help to an investigation of the kind we have suggested you direct
Gen. Scowcroft to lead.
If
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity can be of any further help to you
in the days ahead, you need only ask.
/s/
Ray
Close, Princeton, NJ
David
MacMichael, Linden, VA
Raymond
McGovern, Arlington, VA
Steering
Committee
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is a coast-to-coast enterprise;
mostly intelligence officers from analysis side of CIA. They can be reached via
Ray McGovern, who is a member of the VIPS Steering Committee at: rmcgovern@slschool.org