Ray McGovern served 27 years as a CIA analyst and
is now on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity. He works for Tell the Word, the
publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour.
"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the
policy."
Never in our wildest dreams did we think
we would see those words in
black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less.
For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its
British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries'
leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on
Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted with
stares of incredulity.
It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what
they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however
abundant and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not
compel belief. It simply is much easier on the psyche to
assent to the White House spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco
on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that we were
sold a bill of goods.
Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an
unauthorized disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the
evidence now leaps from official documents—this time
authentic, not forged. Whether prompted by the open
appeal of the international Truth-Telling
Coalition or not, some brave soul has made the most
explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by giving London's
Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by
Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent,
MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in
Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top
national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the Bush
administration's plans to make war on Iraq.
Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document,
which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly
amoral. Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious
questions. Or, worse still, the obvious questions did
not occur.
Juggernaut Before The Horse
In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others
that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by
launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction of
terrorism and weapons of mass destruction."
Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds
matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed
around the policy."
At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that
Bush has decided on war, but notes that stitching together
justification would be a challenge, since "the case was
thin." Straw noted that Saddam was not threatening his
neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya,
North Korea or Iran.
In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by
a well-honed U.S.-U.K.
intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The argument
would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress
and Parliament by conjuring up:
-
Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear
related;
-
Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in
Africa;
-
Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile
biological weapons laboratories;
-
Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped
missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so;
-
Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and
-
A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for
good measure.
All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that
"there was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath
after military action." Another nugget from Dearlove's
briefing is his bloodless comment that one of the U.S.
military options under discussion involved "a continuous air
campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli"—the clear
implication being that planners of the air campaign would also
see to it that an appropriate casus belli was
orchestrated.
The discussion at 10 Downing St. on July 23, 2002 calls to
mind the first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security
Council (NSC) on Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it
clear that toppling Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list,
according to then-Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neil, who was
there. O'Neil was taken aback that there was no discussion of
why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam. Rather, after
CIA Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a building
in Iraq that he said might be involved in producing chemical
or biological agents, the discussion proceeded immediately to
which Iraqi targets might be best to bomb. Again,
neither O'Neil nor the other participants asked the obvious
questions. Another NSC meeting two days later included
planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.
Obedience School
As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further
grist for those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's
"poodle." The tone of the conversation bespeaks a
foregone conclusion that Blair will wag his tail cheerfully
and obey the learned commands. At one point he ventures the
thought that, "If the political context were right, people
would support regime change." This, after Attorney
General Peter Goldsmith has already warned that the desire for
regime change "was not a legal base for military action,"—a
point Goldsmith made again just 12 days before the attack on
Iraq until he was persuaded by a phalanx of Bush
administration lawyers to change his mind 10 days later.
The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the
assumption that the UK would take part in any military
action."
I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this
meeting so jarring. Surely it is what one might expect,
given all else we know. Yet seeing it in bloodless black
and white somehow gives it more impact. And the
implications are no less jarring.
One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was
his American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet.
(And there is no closer relationship between two intelligence
services than the privileged one between the CIA and
MI-6.) Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as
Dearlove, but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in
serving up to Bush the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that
he knew would be welcome. If there is one unpardonable
sin in intelligence work, it is that kind of
politicization. But Tenet decided to be a "team player"
and set the tone.
Politicization: Big Time
Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what
happened. The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it
was manufactured, with the president of the United States
awarding foreman George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his
role in helping supervise the deceit. The British
documents make clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning
forward" in analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass
deception—an order of magnitude more serious. No other
conclusion is now possible.
Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former
case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers
told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants
us to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do
it."
Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with
the alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed
"Curveball" raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability
before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the
fabrication about "mobile biological weapons trailers" before
the United Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from his
CIA supervisor:
"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to
happen regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and
the powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in
whether Curveball knows what he's talking about."
When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director
late last year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees
explaining the "rules of the road"—first and foremost, "We
support the administration and its policies." So much
for objective intelligence insulated from policy pressure.
Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized
environment of Congress, brought with them a radically new
ethos—one much more akin to that of Blair's courtiers than to
that of earlier CIA directors who had the courage to speak
truth to power.
Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence
chiefs chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up"
(as the British press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior
decision for war. There is no word to describe the
reaction of honest intelligence professionals to the
corruption of our profession on a matter of such
consequence. "Outrage" does not come close.
Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures
Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot
who gave this latest British government document to The
Sunday Times a debt of gratitude. Unauthorized
disclosures are gathering steam. They need to increase
quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well—the more so,
inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's
party-cannot be counted on to discharge its constitutional
prerogative for oversight.
In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S.
government officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said
this:
We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and
careers can obscure the higher allegiance all government
officials owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and
the young men and women put in harm's way. We urge you
to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a
patriotic and effective way to serve the nation. The
time for speaking out is now.
If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and
analyses bring them to light, the chances become less that a
president could launch another unprovoked
war—against, say, Iran.
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