Jason Leopold: How Pre-War Intelligence Was Cooked

[Guest guest]

Cindy Sheehan is back at the Bush Ranch where Dan Ellsberg has already been

arrested for " camping without a permit. " The system is now cracking even at

local levels, as the pretense of liberal civil rights and free press are exposed

as the sham they are in the Land of the Free. Can't stop Cindy from asking a

question whose answer may expose too much truth (why did my son die?)-- because

the Constitution's right of the people to peaceable protest gets in the way? No

problem, just create a new " no camping " law with which to jail peaceful

protesters, as corporate media simultaneously broadcast opinion columns boasting

of our many freedoms.

 

The longer one watches the system in action, the more one finds these glaring

incongruities. A.J. Liebling observed " Freedom of the press is guaranteed only

to those who own one. " We have about a half-dozen owners now controlling the

lion's share, transnational corporations chained by many links to defense

cheating, polluting, and other ruthless crimes against civilization.

 

Corporate media did not ask reasonable questions in the months before the

illegal invasion of Iraq because they are embedded in the same fascism

(Mussolini's " corporatism " ) about which they are reporting. The purges of those

journalists who questioned the war are nearly complete now with the firing of

Robert Scheer at the L.A. Times. Those remaining are the dark forces of

journalism who spread the lies.

 

 

However, they can't put a lid on it entirely. Too many people remember what

they were told in the months and years leading up to the illegal invasion. The

corporate media have the usual amnesia about their role, and are still doing

their best to ignore the role of administration partners (see our piece

yesterday), but revealing toothpaste now oozing from every National Security

State portal won't go back into the tube.

 

Justice screams for punishment of those who perpetrated the slaughter of

thousands of innocent Iraqis, for reasons we may never be given (but certainly

not for any of the reasons we have been provided to date-- all obvious lies).

 

Senator Harry Reid has forced an investigation to proceed into the cooking of

the books to bring about war. Whether or not it succeeds, information is now

leaking from the State Department, CIA, Pentagon--everywhere-- to sketch out

that which corporate media conveniently overlooked.

 

Those collecting critical timelines about this horror of a hoax, may wish to

save Jason Leopold's latest, following --Jack

 

 

 

 

How Pre-War Iraq Intelligence Was Cooked

 

 

 

By Jason Leopold

 

 

 

 

 

Democrats leading the charge into the second phase of a bipartisan investigation

into pre-war Iraq intelligence have said this week that they will spend the next

month or so working with Pentagon officials who last week agreed to probe a top

secret spy shop once headed by Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith that many

longtime CIA and FBI officials and other intelligence analysts believe was

responsible for providing the Bush administration with bogus intelligence used

to justify war with Iraq.

 

When the probe is complete, which aides to Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) and

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) -- both of whom are aggressively working to collect

pre-war intelligence documents that undercut administration's claims that Iraq

posed a grave threat to national security -- said will likely be in early 2006,

there could be some sort of " public reprimand " brought against lower-level

administration officials who work or worked at the Defense Department, the

National Security Council, and in the office of Vice President Dick Cheney, for

" cherry-picking " questionable intelligence on Iraq and using it to win public

support for the war.

 

Based on the way the probe is starting to shape up, it's clear the

administration, particularly Feith, who resigned earlier this year, Secretary of

Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and possibly Cheney will bear the brunt of the blame,

because the three of them sidestepped the usual intelligence gathering process

that historically was handled by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency in

favor of their own clandestine intelligence gathering operations in which

questionable information on the so-called Iraqi threat was collected and used by

administration officials to build a case for war but wasn't vetted by career

intelligence analysts, said a senior aide to McCain who requested anonymity for

fear of angering members of the GOP.

 

Last month, under pressure from Democrats and some Republicans, and with public

support for war eroding, the Pentagon's Inspector General agreed to probe

Feith's secret spy group, the Office of Special Plans (OSP), and whether the

operation played a role in manipulating pre-war Iraq intelligence in addition to

knowingly passing dubious intelligence from defectors, who were associated with

Ahmad Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress, to the White House to convince

lawmakers and the American public into backing the war.

 

The White House has been dogged by questions, since the start of the Iraq war

more than two years ago, regarding whether the intelligence information it had

relied upon was accurate and whether top White House officials knowingly used

unreliable intelligence in the buildup to war.

 

The furor started when President Bush said in his January 2003 State of the

Union address that, according to British intelligence, Iraq had tried to

purchase yellowcake uranium from Africa. The intelligence was based on forged

documents.

 

In July 2003, CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility for allowing Bush to

cite the 16 words in his State of the Union address, despite the fact that he

had warned Rice's office that the claims were likely wrong. Later that month,

then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said he had received two

memos from the CIA in 2002 alerting him to the fact that the uranium information

should not be included in the State of the Union address. Hadley, who also took

responsibility for failing to remove the uranium reference from Bush's speech,

said he forgot to advise the president about the CIA's warnings.

 

The White House and the Pentagon seized upon the uranium claims before and after

Bush's State of the Union address, telling reporters, lawmakers and leaders of

other nations that the only thing that could be done to disarm Saddam Hussein

was a preemptive strike against his country.

 

The only White House official at the time who didn't cite the uranium claim as

proof Iraq intended to obtain a nuclear bomb was Secretary of State Colin

Powell. Greg Thielmann, who resigned in 2002 from the State Department's Bureau

of Intelligence and Research -- whose duties included tracking Iraq's weapons of

mass destruction programs -- says he personally told Powell that the allegations

were " implausible " and the intelligence it was based upon was a " stupid piece of

garbage. "

 

What's interesting about the Office of Special Plans is that, two years ago,

Levin had called on his Republican colleagues to investigate the operation after

a number of CIA agents came forward and complained that the unit had been

cherry-picking intelligence information that was questionable at best. The probe

never got off the ground.

 

But back in 2003, just a few months after the start of the Iraq war, numerous

Democratic lawmakers had called on the Republican-controlled Senate and Congress

to launch an immediate investigation into the OSP's activities.

 

In a July 9, 2003, letter to Congressman Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.), chairman of

the Armed Services Committee, Congresswoman Ellen Tauscher (D-Calif.) said

Feith's OSP appeared to be competing with " other United States intelligence

agencies respecting the collection and use of intelligence relating to Iraqi

weapons of mass destruction and war planning. "

 

" I also think it is important to understand how having two intelligence agencies

within the Pentagon impacted the Department of Defense's ability to focus the

necessary resources and manpower on pre-war planning and post-war operations, "

Tauscher's letter said.

 

Congressman David Obey (D-Wis.) agreed. Back in 2003, he had also called for a

widespread investigation of Feith and the OSP to find out whether there was any

truth to the claims that the OSP willfully manipulated intelligence on the Iraqi

threat. During a July 8, 2003, congressional briefing, Obey described what he

knew about Special Plans and why an investigation into the group was crucial.

 

" A group of civilian employees in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, all of

whom are political employees, have long been dissatisfied with the information

produced by the established intelligence agencies both inside and outside the

Department. That was particularly true, apparently, with respect to the

situation in Iraq, " Obey said. " As a result, it is reported that they

established a special operation within the Office of the Secretary of Defense,

which was named the Office of Special Plans. That office was charged with

collecting, vetting, and disseminating intelligence completely outside the

normal intelligence apparatus. In fact, it appears that the information

collected by this office was in some instances not even shared with the

established intelligence agencies and in numerous instances was passed on to the

National Security Council and the president without having been vetted with

anyone other than [the Secretary of Defense]. "

 

" It is further alleged that the purpose of this operation was not only to

produce intelligence more in keeping with the pre-held views of those

individuals, but to intimidate analysts in the established intelligence

organizations to produce information that was more supportive of policy

decisions which they had already decided to propose. "

 

Republicans successfully thwarted a probe back then, but now some high-ranking

Republican lawmakers are saying that their " hands are tied " and that they must

go along with the intelligence investigation, no matter how bad it may turn out

for the White House, because they risk losing their seats in the Senate and

House, come next November's mid-term elections, if they are perceived as

thwarting the probe -- this in addition to a number of scandals that have

plagued the White House, notably the leaking of Valerie Plame Wilson's covert

CIA status to reporters as retribution against her husband for speaking out

against the administration.

 

Moreover, with public support for the war waning and with the US soldier body

count surpassing 2,000, Senator Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), chairman of the Senate

Select Committee on Intelligence, has agreed to take a look at Feith and the

OSP. In September, Roberts informed the Pentagon's inspector general that the

OSP, an important part of the second phase of the pre-war intelligence probe,

must become part of the overall investigation.

 

By working with the inspector general, Democrats argue, Republicans are hoping

some information about the OSP's work won't become public knowledge because

Rumsfeld still presides over the Pentagon. However, Levin's office said a

preliminary probe launched two years ago into the OSP has already turned up

explosive details about the operation.

 

The OSP, which was also headed by Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz,

described the worst-case scenarios on Iraq's alleged stockpile of chemical and

biological weapons and claimed the country was close to acquiring an atomic

bomb, according to four of the CIA agents, speaking on the condition of

anonymity because the information is still classified.

 

The agents said the OSP was responsible for providing then-National Security

Adviser Condoleezza Rice, Cheney, and Rumsfeld with the bulk of the intelligence

information on Iraq's weapons program that turned out to be wrong. But White

House officials used the information it received from the OSP anyway, despite

warnings from intelligence officials at the CIA and analysts at the State

Department.

 

The agents said the OSP told the National Security Council in 2002 that Iraq's

attempt to purchase aluminum tubes were part of a clandestine program to build a

nuclear bomb. The OSP and the White House Iraq Group (another top secret

operation headed by Bush's Chief of Staff Andrew Card and his deputy Karl Rove)

leaked the aluminum tube story to Judith Miller, the former reporter for the New

York Times, who resigned this month after spending 85 days in jail for refusing

to testify about her source in the Plame Wilson case.

 

Miller wrote the aluminum tube story, which was published on the front page of

the Times in September 2002. Shortly after the story was published, Bush and

Rice both pointed to the piece as evidence that Iraq posed a grave threat to the

United States and to its neighbors in the Middle East, even though experts in

the field of nuclear science, the CIA, and the State Department advised the

White House that the aluminum tubes were not designed for an atomic bomb

program.

 

Furthermore, the CIA had been unable to develop any links between Iraq and the

al-Qaeda. But under Feith's direction, the Office of Special Plans came up with

information of an Iraq/al-Qaeda relationship by looking at existing intelligence

reports that they felt might have been " overlooked or undervalued, " according to

a 2002 Defense Department briefing headed by Rumsfeld, who added that he had

" bulletproof " evidence that Iraq was harboring al-Qaeda terrorists.

 

In the months leading up to the war in Iraq, Rumsfeld became increasingly

frustrated that the CIA could not find any evidence of Iraq's chemical,

biological and nuclear weapons program, evidence that would have helped the

White House build a solid case for war in Iraq.

 

In an article in the New York Times in October 2002, the paper reported that

Rumsfeld had ordered the Office of Special Plans to " to search for information

on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists " that might have been

overlooked by the CIA.

 

At a Defense Department briefing following the Times report, Rumsfeld downplayed

the allegation, saying that whenever Feith handed him intelligence on Iraq's

WMD, Rumsfeld would respond by saying, " Gee, why don't you go over and brief

George Tenet? So they did. They went over and briefed the CIA. So there's no

mystery about all this. "

 

CIA analysts listened to the Pentagon team, nodded politely, and said, " Thank

you very much, " said one government official, according to a July 20 report in

the New York Times. That official said the briefing did not change the agency's

reporting or analysis in any substantial way.

 

Several current and former intelligence officials told the Times that they felt

pressure to tailor reports to conform to the administration's views,

" particularly the theories Feith's group developed. "

 

Moreover, the agents said the OSP routinely rewrote the CIA's intelligence

estimates on Iraq's weapons programs, removing caveats such as " likely, "

" probably " and " may " as a way of depicting the country as an imminent threat.

The agents would not identify the names of the individuals at the OSP who were

responsible for providing the White House with the wrong intelligence. But, the

agents said the intelligence the committee gathered was personally delivered by

Feith to the White House, to Cheney's office, and to Rice without first being

vetted by the CIA.

 

Feith, who has since returned to work in the private sector, did not return

calls made over the past week.

 

In cases where the CIA's intelligence wasn't rewritten, the OSP provided the

White House with uncorroborated intelligence it obtained from Chalabi, who the

CIA has publicly said is unreliable, the CIA agents said, and Iraqi defectors

employed by his agency.

 

Several other current and former CIA analysts working in the counter

proliferation division prior to the Iraq war said they were pressured by the

Pentagon and the OSP to hype and exaggerate intelligence to show Iraq as being

an imminent threat to national security.

 

Patrick Lang, the former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the

Defense Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence, said OSP

" cherry-picked the intelligence stream " in a bid to portray Iraq as a grave

threat. Lang said that the CIA had " no guts at all " to resist the allegedly

deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he said was now dominating

US foreign policy.

 

Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of CIA counter-terrorist operations, said he

had spoken to a number of working intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon

for playing up " fraudulent " intelligence, " a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi

National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi. "

 

In an October 11, 2002, report in the Los Angeles Times, several CIA agents " who

brief Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz on Iraq routinely return to the agency with a long

list of complaints and demands for new analysis or shifts in emphasis. "

 

" There is a lot of unhappiness with the analysis, " usually because it is seen as

not hardline enough, one intelligence official said, according to the paper.

 

Another government official said CIA agents " are constantly sent back by the

senior people at Defense and other places to get more, get more, get more to

make their case, " the paper reported.

 

By last fall, the White House had virtually dismissed all the intelligence on

Iraq provided by the CIA, which failed to find any evidence of Iraq's weapons

programs, in favor of the more critical information provided to the Bush

administration by the Office of Special Plans

 

In a rare Pentagon briefing recently, Office of Special Plans co-director

Douglas Feith said the committee was not an " intelligence project, " but rather a

group of 18 people who looked at intelligence information from a different point

of view.

 

Feith said that when the group had new " thoughts " on intelligence information it

was given; they shared it with CIA Director Tenet.

 

" It was a matter of digesting other people's intelligence, " Feith said of the

main duties of his group. " Its job was to review this intelligence to help

digest it for me and other policy makers, to help us develop Defense Department

strategy for the war on terrorism. "

 

© 2005 Jason Leopold

Jason Leopold is the author of the explosive memoir, " News Junkie, " to be

released in the spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit Leopold's

website at www.jasonleopold.com for updates.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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