[Sosfbay-discuss] Background on pre-Iraq War Intelligence

[Wes Rolley]

A friend of mine sent me the following from the Washington Post, along 
with his own comments. (Does not want his email widely used so this was 
not forwarded.)  I will add ....

Interesting observation from David Brooks on the Charlie Rose show this 
week.  Brooks told Rose that the Administration was convinced that the 
CIA "never got anything right" and therefore discounted anything that 
came their way.  After all, the CIA missed 911, etc. etc.

That made it easy to believe the "alteratives" when they came forward 
and especially easy for them to convince themselves that they had the 
right stuff.  It proved embarrassing in that the CIA was more nearly 
right than they were.

-- From my friend....
According to the Pentagon's Inspector General (not some peace-nik 
Democrat), it was Douglas Feith (a political hack of Cheney's and a 
"leading" neo-con) who exaggerated the links between Iraq and al Qaeda 
in order to provide the false justification that took this took this 
country to war. Civil War, that is.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802387_pf.html 


Official's Key Report On Iraq Is Faulted
'Dubious' Intelligence Fueled Push for War

By Walter Pincus and R. Jeffrey Smith
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, February 9, 2007; A01

Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. 
Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included 
"reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the 
political views of senior administration officials rather than the 
conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the 
Pentagon's inspector general.

Feith's office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship 
between Iraq and al Qaeda," according to portions of the report, 
released yesterday by Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.). The inspector 
general described Feith's activities as "an alternative intelligence 
assessment process."

An unclassified summary of the full document is scheduled for release 
today in a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Levin 
chairs. In that summary, a copy of which was obtained from another 
source by The Washington Post, the inspector general concluded that 
Feith's assessment in 2002 that Iraq and al-Qaeda had a "mature 
symbiotic relationship" was not fully supported by available 
intelligence but was nonetheless used by policymakers.

At the time of Feith's reporting, the CIA had concluded only that there 
was an "evolving" association, "based on sources of varying reliability."

In a telephone interview yesterday, Feith emphasized the inspector 
general's conclusion that his actions, described in the report as 
"inappropriate," were not unlawful. "This was not 'alternative 
intelligence assessment,' " he said. "It was from the start a criticism 
of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I 
was not endorsing its substance."

Feith, who was defense policy chief before leaving the government in 
2005, was one of the key contributors to the administration's rationale 
for war. His intelligence activities, authorized by then-Defense 
Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz, and 
coordinated with Vice President Cheney's office, stemmed from an 
administration belief that the CIA was underplaying evidence of 
then-Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's ties with al-Qaeda.

In interviews with Pentagon investigators, the summary document said, 
Feith insisted that his activities did not constitute intelligence and 
that "even if they were, [they] would be appropriate given that they 
were responding to direction from the Deputy Secretary of Defense."

The report was requested in fall 2005 by Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), then 
chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Although the 
committee and a number of official inquiries had criticized the 
administration's prewar intelligence, Democratic senators, led by Levin, 
demanded further investigation of Feith's operation.

"The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda 
relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the Department 
of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq," 
Levin said yesterday. "The inspector general's report is a devastating 
condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that 
helped take this nation to war."

The summary document confirmed a range of accusations that Levin had 
leveled against Feith's office, alleging inaccurate work.

Feith's office, it said, drew on "both reliable and unreliable" 
intelligence reports in 2002 to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq 
"that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence 
Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials 
in the Administration."

It stated that the office produced intelligence assessments 
"inconsistent" with the U.S. intelligence community consensus, calling 
those actions "inappropriate" because the assessments purported to be 
"intelligence products" but were far more conclusive than the consensus 
view.

In particular, the summary cited the defense policy office's preparation 
of slides describing as a "known contact" an alleged 2001 meeting in 
Prague between Mohamed Atta, the leader of the terrorist attack on the 
World Trade Center, and an Iraqi intelligence officer.

That claim figured heavily in statements by Cheney and other senior 
administration officials alleging a link between al-Qaeda and the Iraqi 
regime, but it has since been discredited.

Three versions of the briefing prepared by Feith's office were presented 
in August and September 2002 -- months before the U.S. invasion of Iraq 
-- to I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, then Cheney's chief of staff; Rumsfeld; 
and then-deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, the summary 
states.

But only "some of the information" in those briefings was "supported by 
available intelligence," the summary said. The version of the briefing 
presented to senior Bush officials, it said, contained different 
information than a presentation to the CIA. Left out of the version for 
the CIA, the inspector general said, was "a slide that said there were 
'fundamental problems' " with the way the intelligence community was 
presenting the evidence.

While Pentagon officials said in responses cited in the summary that no 
senior policymakers mistook these briefings as "intelligence 
assessments," the inspector general said that administration officials 
had indeed cited classified intelligence that allegedly documented a 
close al-Qaeda-Iraq relationship.

The policy office, the summary stated, "was inappropriately performing 
Intelligence Activities . . . that should be performed by the 
Intelligence Community."

The summary recommended no action within the Defense Department because, 
it said, the current collaboration under new leadership at the Pentagon 
and the intelligence community "will significantly reduce the 
opportunity for the inappropriate conduct of intelligence activities 
outside intelligence channels."

Staff writer Karen DeYoung contributed to this report.

-- 

I have been impressed with the urgency of doing.
Knowing is not enough; we must apply.
Being willing is not enough; 
We must do. –Leonardo DaVinci
Wesley C. Rolley
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