It's always all somebody else's fault, ain't it, Nadine? Anyway, I thought it was semi-officially acknowledged these days that the whole WMD thing was just the marketing line on the war, the real reasons were somewhere else. It's also my understanding that the neocons don't have it in for the CIA on WMDs, it's because the CIA wouldn't give them "proof" of other things the true believers just knew, like the Saddam- Al Qaeda linkage. Just to refresh your encyclopedic knowledge on such things, there's this recent snippet from he-who-must-not-be-named hisself. I got no idea what to make of this, since W himself has disavowed the alleged Saddam / 9/11 connection, or at least the existence of any evidence in the conventional sense of the word. Presumably, true believers got to believe, regardless. From pbs.org
It had no intelligence function? It wasn't there to look at the intelligence that was coming out and to see if links could be found between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda?
No. It was a different effort, a separate effort to reexamine previously collected intelligence to see whether we had explored sufficiently the involvement of Iraqi intelligence with terrorist organizations, because there had been a theory that dominated the collection and analysis of intelligence prior to Sept. 11.
That theory was that secular and religious terrorists were hostile to one another and would not work with each other. That theory, like all such theories, needed to be reexamined. So a very small effort was made to review previously collected intelligence to see whether there were links that had been overlooked in the period in which the theory acted as a filter. Indeed, once that effort got underway, links were found almost immediately.
Meetings between individuals in various terrorist organizations including members of Al Qaeda and including Iraqis and other intelligence organizations. The conclusion one came to was that there was a network of terrorist organizations that was-- You could call it "loose," if you like, not centrally directed, but working together, because they all had a common enemy. That enemy, unhappily, was the United States.
Who led that effort? Who led that group?
It was started originally with a couple of people. Dave Wurmser was one of them. Mike Maloof was another. A young academic who was doing reserve duty was brought in to work on this. It was never more than four people, and I think it was never more than two people at one time.
But was this the group that was led by Abram Schulsky ?
I think in the beginning it wasn't led by Abe Schulsky. When Abe started his activities, that was the Office of Special Plans.
So you're saying that this intelligence effort to look through the intelligence, it was coming out of wherever -- the CIA, NSA, DIA -- was not the Office of Special Plans.
That's correct.
Was it attached to it, or it was an adjunct or it was separate?
It was very simple. It was clear that no one had been looking for links of a kind that it was reasonable to consider might exist. We didn't know whether they existed. The evidence might have been that they didn't exist. So some people were brought in to take a look -- a very modest effort, tiny, minuscule, microscopic -- compared to the whole vast intelligence establishment.
Within a very short period of time, they began to find links that nobody else had previously understood or recorded in a useful way.
How can you explain that they were able to do that when the CIA and the DIA couldn't do it?
Because the CIA and the DIA were not looking. They had filtered out the whole set of possibilities, because it was inconsistent with their model. If you're walking down the street, [if] you're not looking for hidden treasure, you won't find it. If you're looking for it, you may find something. In this case, they hadn't been looking.
Conversely, one criticism made of these efforts is that if you look for something, you will find it, simply because you are looking. The nature of intelligence is very often vague, and things can be interpreted one way or another.
Of course. There's no absolute truth to this. There's no absolute truth. But what Chris Carney and Mike Maloof and Dave Wurmser were doing, is going over previously collected intelligence with a fresh eye -- something that ought naturally to be done.
The whinging, the complaints from the intelligence establishment who had overlooked this material, [is] really quite pathetic. They have tried to suggest that there was somehow a politicization of intelligence, because people who didn't subscribe to their blinkered view of the world took a fresh look at old intelligence. I think it's absurd.
What did they find that has stood up?
They found a number of links that I reviewed at one point, was briefed on at one point and found extremely interesting.
Can you say what it was?
No, I can't say.
So none of it made it to Powell's speech to the U.N. or any of the president's speeches, or any of the appearances of--
I don't know, because I saw some of the results at a point in time. I don't know what was reviewed by Powell or went into Powell's speech. I don't know the origin of every point in Powell's presentation.
But none of the intelligence that you saw that was coming out of this group in the Pentagon was recognizable in the speeches?
I don't think so. But remember, this group was not developing intelligence; it was examining previously collected intelligence.
But you say they found things that nobody else had found?
They [noticed] things that nobody else had noticed. It was there all along; it simply hadn't been noticed.
Critics have said that this is a prosecutorial approach to intelligence -- that one is culling, being selective, and finding what one wants to find.
I'm sorry. The culling was done by people who ignored whole areas because it wasn't consistent with their theory. Let me be blunt about this. The level of competence on past performance of the Central Intelligence Agency, in this area, is appalling. They are defensive -- and I think quite destructive -- in suggesting that anybody who didn't stand up and salute and accept that the CIA was the source of all wisdom on this is somehow engaged in nefarious activity. [That's] really outrageous. …
But is the scandal that our intelligence agencies are woefully inadequate to do the job that they need to do? Or that people were cherry picking intelligence inappropriately and presenting only half the case?
I think that our intelligence agencies have been woefully inadequate, first. Second, the charge of cherry picking implies that information that was not representative of what was known to us, was somehow accentuated to a degree that would lead one to a misleading conclusion. I haven't seen a shred of evidence to suggest that. It's an accusation by an intelligence community that is defensive about its own appalling performance. What exactly are they talking about when they talk about cherry picking?
The secretary of state reviewed a lot of material that had come through the intelligence agencies, and threw out an enormous amount of it. More than half of it he threw out before he made a speech before the U.N.. He certainly didn't feel that what he had laid before him was adequate.
Forgive me. Anyone could take a series of intelligence reports, examine them, decide how much was incontrovertible, how much was uncertain, how much was questionable-- If you're making a presentation to the United Nations, you want the most ironclad information you can get.
But to return to the accusations made against my friends in the Defense Department, I haven't seen anyone suggest that the Defense Department was responsible for the intelligence that Colin Powell reviewed. I believe he reviewed it at the CIA and with CIA. As I recall, George Tenet was present when he made those remarks.
That's correct.
It's very important to be precise about who did what and when and who knew what and when and who said what and when. I think the record of the Defense department in this is impeccable.
It's hard to know, because I don't know what intelligence actually came out of the effort in the Defense department that made a case for going to war.
I don't believe that anything originated in the Department of Defense that was used by Colin Powell or that motivated the administration.
So that effort was useful, or not?
I think it was useful, because it established some links that it was important for us to know about. But it wasn't the basis upon which we took the action that we took.
But it was influential
No one had suggested that. … |
