April 15, 2005 Paying the Price for Getting It Right
by Ray McGovern
Many have asked how it could be that a comparatively small group of intelligence analysts in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) was able to get it right on several key Iraq-related issues, while larger agencies like CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency – with, literally, a cast of thousands – got it so wrong. The answer is simple: INR had the guts to be the skunk at the picnic. That's how. State Department analysts showed backbone in resisting White House pressure, as well as in-house prodding from the likes of Undersecretary of State John Bolton, to cook intelligence to the White House recipe.
INR stood firm, while former CIA director George Tenet, his deputy John McLaughlin, and other malleable intelligence community managers caved in to administration pressure. (I note with some amusement that the euphemism now in vogue is "leaning forward," as if that is not politicization.) In caving in, they became accomplices in the successful attempt to deceive Congress into voting for an unprovoked war. INR analysts dissented loudly from some of the most important key judgments of the infamous National Intelligence Estimate, "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction" of Oct. 1, 2002.
For example:
- When the canard about Iraq seeking uranium from Niger insinuated its way into the estimate, INR inserted a strong footnote, dismissing the story as "highly dubious."
- INR analysts also debunked the fable about aluminum tubes for uranium enrichment for Iraq. Although then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice portrayed the tubes as useful only in a nuclear application, State Department intelligence analysts joined the experts in the Department of Energy and UN engineers in pointing out, correctly, that the tubes were for conventional artillery.
- Most obstreperous of all, on the highly neuralgic nuclear issue, INR flat-out refused to predict when Iraq's "nuclear weapons program" was likely to yield a nuclear device. Why? Because it saw no compelling evidence that Vice President Dick Cheney was correct in claiming that the previous nuclear weapons program had been "reconstituted." In the best diplomatic language it could summon, INR said it was just too difficult to predict the culmination of any such program without having a start (or restart) date.
If that were not provocation enough, State Department intelligence analysts committed several other transgressions not directly connected to the NIE. INR's most experienced Middle East specialists prepared a study exposing as a chimera the notion that democracy could be brought to the area at the point of a gun. INR also provided invaluable support to the interagency team that worked hard to prepare sensibly for postwar Iraq. Its analysis and recommendations were trashed by Pentagon neophytes who knew the invasion would be a "cakewalk" – and by Vice President Dick Cheney, who knew that our troops would be seen as liberators. INR's director at the time was the widely respected Assistant Secretary of State Carl Ford, a man not for sale.
For 10 years, it had been de rigueur for the head of INR, the CIA director and FBI directors, and the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency to present together the annual worldwide threat assessment briefing to the Senate intelligence committee. But in February 2004, INR experienced the supreme penalty for having been right – ostracism. Senator Roberts did not invite the INR director to participate in the threat assessment. Roberts apparently wanted to preclude the possibility that some over-curious senator might ask why INR was able to get it mostly right on Iraq when everyone else was almost all wrong.
Well, now we know. For who should show up at yesterday's Senate hearing on John Bolton's nomination for the post of UN representative but Carl Ford. He had not volunteered to testify and said he found it very awkward to do so – the more so, since he is a self-described conservative, a loyal Republican, an enthusiastic supporter of President Bush and his policies, and a "huge fan" of Vice President Dick Cheney. Nonetheless, Ford saw it as his duty to comment on the fitness of Bolton for the UN post, because of its importance and his profound misgivings regarding Bolton.
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