Although Pillar and other self-proclaimed apolitical ex-
    spooks and bureaucrats now insist that the leakers were 
    merely educating the public, it should be clear from the 
    sheer volume of senior intelligence officials quoted 
    regularly in the nation's newspapers that there was — and 
    is — a specific agenda. (For those curious about the 
    details, consult with the new group of ex-CIA types, 
    Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity). As a 
    result, agency officials regularly rejected Iraqi 
    informants out of hand and refused to recruit operatives 
    inside the country at all. That same antiwar agenda led 
    to dire and incorrect postwar scenarios. 

    There were, for example, inaccurate warnings that Hussein 
    would share WMD with terrorists, that the country would 
    erupt into civil war or dissolve altogether or both. In a 
    now infamous National Intelligence Council report probably
    written by Pillar in 2003 (and leaked in time for the 2004
    presidential debates), there were predictions that oil 
    fields would be taken over by Kurdish and Shiite factions.
    Even in his ballyhooed Foreign Affairs piece, Pillar 
    reiterates the ridiculous and premature assertion that 
    Iraq will have no value as a "democratic exemplar."