11 February 2006
Ex-CIA official says war was goal from the start
By Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post
seattletimes.nwsource.com
WASHINGTON — The former CIA official charged with managing the U.S. government's secret intelligence assessments on Iraq says the Bush administration chose war first and then misleadingly used raw data to assemble a public case for its decision to invade.
Paul Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, said the Bush administration also played on the nation's fears after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, falsely linking al-Qaida to Saddam Hussein's government even though intelligence agencies had not produced a single analysis supporting "the notion of an alliance" between the two.
Instead, Pillar writes in the March-April issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, connections were drawn between the terrorists and Iraq because "the administration wanted to hitch the Iraq expedition to the 'war on terror' and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood."
The criticisms in Pillar's 4,500-word essay, "Intelligence, Policy and the War in Iraq," (see link at end of this report) are not new. But this apparently is the first time such attacks are being leveled publicly by such a high-ranking intelligence official directly involved behind the scenes before, during and after the Iraq invasion nearly three years ago.
Pillar also wrote that the administration went to war without considering strategic-level intelligence assessments "on any aspect of Iraq" and that the intelligence community foreshadowed many post-Saddam woes, though the findings largely were ignored before the March 2003 invasion.
Excerpts from Pillar's article were first reported by The Washington Post; Foreign Affairs posted it online Friday.
Pillar, retired after 28 years at the CIA, was an influential behind-the-scenes player and was considered the agency's leading counterterrorism analyst. By the end of his career, he was responsible for coordinating assessments on Iraq from all 15 agencies in the intelligence community. He is now a professor in security studies at Georgetown University.
The White House did not comment Friday, but Frederick Jones, a National Security Council spokesman, noted previous administration statements defending its use of intelligence.
He said the administration's prewar statements "about the threat posed by Saddam Hussein were based on the aggregation of intelligence from a number of sources and represented the collective view of the intelligence community."
But in his article, the man responsible for coordinating the intelligence community's collective view of Iraq challenged the notion that the nation's spy services supported the decision to invade. Indeed, Pillar wrote, "If the entire body of official intelligence analysis on Iraq had a policy implication, it was to avoid war — or, if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath.
"What is most remarkable about prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq is not that it got things wrong and thereby misled policymakers; it is that it played so small a role in one of the most important U.S. policy decisions in decades."
He also wrote that the Bush administration "used intelligence not to inform decision-making but to justify a decision already made": to topple Saddam's government.
Pillar wrote that the first request he received from one of President Bush's policymakers for an assessment of post-invasion Iraq was "not until a year into the war."
That assessment, completed in August 2004, warned the insurgency in Iraq could evolve into a guerrilla war or civil war. It was leaked to the media in September 2004 amid the presidential campaign, and Bush, who had told voters the mission in Iraq was going well, described the assessment to reporters as "just guessing."
Shortly after, Pillar was identified in a column by Robert Novak as having prepared the assessment and having given a speech critical of Bush's Iraq policy at a private dinner in California. The column fed the White House's view that the CIA was working against the Bush administration, and that Pillar was part of that.
Republicans and Democrats in Congress continue to argue over whether, or how, to investigate charges the administration manipulated intelligence.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., called for an investigation Friday: "Evidence that the Bush White House manipulated and selectively declassified intelligence to wage a public-relations campaign before, during and after the invasion of Iraq grows every day." Pillar wrote that the administration aggressively promoted pieces of "intelligence to win public support for its decision to go to war."
Pillar also said: "This meant selectively adducing data — 'cherry-picking' — rather than using the intelligence community's own analytic judgments."
Although he acknowledged the intelligence community was wrong about Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities, he said intelligence "was not what led to the war."
He saved some of his sharpest criticisms for the administration's repeated public statements in 2002 and 2003 about "links" between Iraq and al-Qaida, statements that have been repeated despite findings from the independent commission that investigated the Sept. 11 attacks that there was no collaborative relationship.
"The issue of possible ties between Saddam and Al Qaeda was especially prone to the selective use of raw intelligence to make a public case for war," Pillar wrote. "In the shadowy world of international terrorism, almost anyone can be 'linked' to almost anyone else ... [But] the intelligence community never offered any analysis that supported the notion of an alliance between Saddam and Al Qaeda."
Although he acknowledged analysts weren't strong-armed by anyone in the administration to bolster the case for war, Pillar said intelligence officials were more subtly influenced. Analysts, who often measure success by the attention they receive from policymakers, "felt a strong wind consistently blowing in one direction. The desire to bend with such a wind is natural and strong, even if unconscious," he said.
Pillar described for the first time intelligence community assessments before the invasion that indicated a postwar Iraq "would not provide fertile ground for democracy" and would need "a Marshall Plan-type effort" to restore its economy despite its oil revenue. It also foresaw Sunnis and Shiites fighting for power.
Pillar wrote that the intelligence community "anticipated that a foreign occupying force would itself be the target of resentment and attacks — including guerrilla warfare — unless it established security and put Iraq on the road to prosperity in the first few weeks or months after the fall of Saddam."
In an interview, Pillar said prewar assessments "were not crystal-balling, but in them we were laying out the challenges that would face us depending on decisions that were made."
Asked why he did not quit given his concerns, Pillar said in the interview he was doing "other worthwhile work in the nation's interest" and never thought of resigning.
Material from The Associated Press is included in this report.
Footnotes
To read article www.foreignaffairs.org/20060301faessay85202/paul-r-pillar/intelligence-policy-and-the-war-in-iraq.html?mode=print |
