To get in the middle of your little spat, Carl and Nadine, consider this interview on CNN:
BROWN: Back now to one of the big stories of the week, perhaps the biggest story of the week, the assertion by Dr. David Kay, the administration's chief weapons inspector, that this country's pre-war intelligence on Iraq was pretty much all wrong.
We heard the opinion a couple of nights back here from former CIA Director James Woolsey who said that the White House may have made "presentational errors" in the area of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. That was his phrase "presentational error" but that was about all the criticism he offered on the intelligence.
We talked earlier today with Greg Thielmann who is the director of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs at the State Department's Intelligence Bureau, a very high level intelligence analyst in other words. And, to say the least, Mr. Thielmann thinks what was going on was a whole lot more than a presentational error.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
BROWN: Sir, David Kay said the other day that it was the intelligence community that badly served the president and by extension I guess the country. You're not nearly ready to give the president or the administration a pass.
No, I'm not. I think there's plenty of blame to go around and the American people misunderstanding the nature of the Iraqi threat but one has to at least acknowledge that on certain issues on the short range ballistic missiles that Iraq was testing, for example, the intelligence community got it exactly right. On the lack of a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden the intelligence community also got it right and the administration in the way that they used the intelligence community product made the mistakes of the intelligence community much worse and did not report faithfully on some of the areas that the intelligence community did a good job on.
BROWN: Let's talk a bit more about that and then we'll work that area if you don't mind. Is it your view that the intelligence community in a sense knew exactly what the administration wanted to hear, what the vice president and the president wanted to hear and essentially served that master?
THIELMANN: I have the impression that at the top levels of the intelligence community, and I'm talking principally now of the CIA and George Tenet as director of Central Intelligence, that they knew what the president wanted to hear and they knew what the president wanted to hear and they knew, also, that the White House was essentially deaf to any dissenting opinion.
What the administration, what the White House wanted to hear was what kind of intelligence arguments could they use to convince the nation to go to war.
BROWN: Was Secretary Powell a part of this?
THIELMANN: I have said, from my point of view, as the director of the office that was responsible for monitoring all of the intelligence for the secretary of state and interpreting it, that we certainly had the impression at the time that the secretary of state wanted our best information and our honest explanation of what was going on.
So, our assumption at the time was that, at least in the case of Secretary Powell, there was someone in the inner circle of the administration that did represent the truth as we understood it. I have since revised my opinion a little bit, partly because of what Secretary Powell was willing to say to the world community during his February 5, 2003, address to the United Nations.
BROWN: And when you watched that, that talk to the U.N. that day, did you say to yourself and to others, that's not true?
THIELMANN: Well, what I said to myself was -- and I was already retired at that point -- that Secretary Powell was saying things to the world community and to the American nation that we certainly had not agreed with. And, in some cases, he was saying things that were exactly the opposite of some of the facts that I think that he was well aware of.
BROWN: These are enormously, I think, serious accusations to make. Beyond -- I guess what I'm wanting from you is to know that this is something more than a hunch. How do you know this?
THIELMANN: I was responsible professionally for following the intelligence for two years prior to the October national intelligence estimate.
And I know what my office wrote in analyzing these issues for the secretary of state. And I also have a pretty good idea of what others in the intelligence community were saying, because we would participate in interagency discussions about the evidence. And I know, on things like the uranium from Niger, on things like the aluminum tubes issue, that what was being said to the public did not represent accurately what the intelligence community was saying.
There should have at least been an acknowledgement on issues like the aluminum tubes allegedly going into the nuclear weapons program that there was an enormous disagreement within the intelligence community on this issue and that some of the most logical and distinguished experts on this issue had the opposite opinions.
(CROSSTALK)
BROWN: I'm sorry.
THIELMANN: There was no clue given by the White House that there was any dissent on this issue, when the president essentially declassified top-secret information and announced to the United Nations in September of 2002 that Iraq was obtaining aluminum tubes for the nuclear weapons program.
BROWN: Right.
Just finally, the president said -- and this is pretty close to a quote, what difference does it make whether it was exactly right or not, because Saddam was a bad guy? He killed lots of people. He was a danger in the region. The world is better off without him. Iraqis are better off without him. Americans are better off without him. What difference does it make?
What difference does it make?
THIELMANN: The implications of that statement astound me.
For the president of the United States to say that the reason that he gave for the nation going to war, a war which has cost us 500 dead already, thousands of Americans maimed, and has so tarnished America's credibility and reputation in the world, that he would say, essentially, that it does not matter if the reasons that we convinced the American people to go to war for are no longer applicable or were not true or were exaggerated or misstated, that is an astounding statement.
BROWN: Mr. Thielmann, we appreciate very much your time today. Thank you for joining us. Have a good weekend, sir.
THIELMANN: You're welcome.
BROWN: Thank you, sir.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
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