![]() |
|
Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts Volume 3, Number 17 June 1 - 7, 2003 Quezon City, Philippines |
Save Our Spooks BY NICHOLAS D. KRISTOF Back
to Alternative Reader Index
On
Day 71 of the Hunt for Iraqi W.M.D., yesterday, once again nothing turned up. Maybe
we'll do better on Day 72. But we might have better luck searching for something
just as alarming: the growing evidence that the administration grossly
manipulated intelligence about those weapons of mass destruction in the ruup to
the Iraq war. A
column earlier this month on this issue drew a torrent of covert communications
from indignant spooks who say that administration officials leaned on them to
exaggerate the Iraqi threat and deceive the public. "The
American people were manipulated," bluntly declares one person from the
Defense Intelligence Agency who says he was privy to all the intelligence there
on Iraq. These people are coming forward because they are fiercely proud of the
deepest ethic in the intelligence world — that such work should be
nonpolitical — and are disgusted at efforts to turn them into propagandists. "The
Al Qaeda connection and nuclear weapons issue were the only two ways that you
could link Iraq to an imminent security threat to the U.S.," notes Greg
Thielmann, who retired in September after 25 years in the State Department, the
last four in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research. "And the
administration was grossly distorting the intelligence on both things." The
outrage among the intelligence professionals is so widespread that they have
formed a group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, that wrote to
President Bush this month to protest what it called "a policy and
intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions." "While
there have been occasions in the past when intelligence has been deliberately
warped for political purposes," the letter said, "never before has
such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected
representatives into voting to authorize launching a war." Ray
McGovern, a retired C.I.A. analyst who briefed President Bush's father in the
White House in the 1980's, said that people in the agency were now "totally
demoralized." He says, and others back him up, that the Pentagon took
dubious accounts from émigrés close to Ahmad Chalabi and gave these tales
credibility they did not deserve. Intelligence
analysts often speak of "humint" for human intelligence (spies) and
"sigint" for signals intelligence (wiretaps). They refer
contemptuously to recent work as "rumint," or rumor intelligence. "I've
never heard this level of alarm before," said Larry Johnson, who used to
work in the C.I.A. and State Department. "It is a misuse and abuse of
intelligence. The president was being misled. He was ill served by the folks who
are supposed to protect him on this. Whether this was witting or unwitting, I
don't know, but I'll give him the benefit of the doubt." Some
say that top Pentagon officials cast about for the most sensational nuggets
about Iraq and used them to bludgeon Colin Powell and seduce President Bush. The
director of central intelligence, George Tenet, has been generally liked and
respected within the agency ranks, but in the last year, particularly in the
intelligence directorate, people say that he has kowtowed to Donald Rumsfeld and
compromised the integrity of his own organization. "We
never felt that there was any leadership in the C.I.A. to qualify or put into
context the information available," one veteran said. "Rather there
was a tendency to feed the most alarming tidbits to the president. Often it's
the most ill-considered information that goes to the president. "So
instead of giving the president the most considered, carefully examined
information available, basically you give him the garbage. And then in a few
days when it's clear that maybe it wasn't right, well then, you feed him some
more hot garbage." The
C.I.A. is now examining its own record, and that's welcome. But the atmosphere
within the intelligence community is so poisonous, and the stakes are so high
— for the credibility of America's word and the soundness of information on
which we base American foreign policy — that an outside examination is
essential. Congress
must provide greater oversight, and President Bush should invite Brent Scowcroft,
the head of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board and a man
trusted by all sides, to lead an inquiry and, in a public report, suggest steps
to restore integrity to America's intelligence agencies. May 31, 2003 Bulatlat.com We want to know what you think of this article.
|