Spooked by the White House
A CIA veteran says a growing faction of the U.S. intelligence community is furious over the way the administration corrupted the system -- and that the nation's security is at grave risk.
July 18, 2003 | Late last week the White House sought to close the books on the Iraq-Niger-uranium debacle, with President Bush officially pronouncing CIA director George Tenet responsible for the intelligence blunder. At the same time, the president reaffirmed his "absolute confidence" in Tenet and the rest of the agency.
But according to a former CIA officer, the politicization of U.S. intelligence has devastated many in the field -- and dangerously weakened our country's security.
"We're hearing from dozens of [intelligence] people. A lot of them are very demoralized," says Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who worked as an agency analyst under seven presidents, from Kennedy to the first President Bush. "The cardinal sin in this business is to cook intelligence to the recipe of high policy," he says.
McGovern is a member of the "steering group" of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group of retired spooks, some highly decorated, which has been speaking out for several months about a dangerous fundamental breakdown in the U.S. intelligence system -- a system, McGovern asserts, that must remain free of White House meddling if it is to play its vital role in protecting the nation's security. VIPS has published a series of articles and open letters to the White House; its latest letter to President Bush on Monday denounced the administration's "campaign of deceit" in driving the nation to war, and demanded Vice President Dick Cheney's immediate resignation in light of his central role -- particularly Cheney's allegedly deliberate use of the fraudulent Niger-uranium report to sell Congress on the war. The letter also called on Bush to appoint an independent committee to investigate the intelligence breakdown, and to allow U.N. weapons inspectors back into Iraq posthaste, for the sake of U.S. credibility. |
