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Former CIA Official Accuses Bush Administration of Selectively Using Prewar Iraq Intelligence
A former top CIA official said the Bush administration used prewar Iraq intelligence selectively to make the public case for war after having already decided to invade the country, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Feb. 8). “Official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war,” Paul Pillar, national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, wrote in the upcoming issue of the journal Foreign Affairs. The administration “went to war without requesting — and evidently without being influenced by — any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq.” “It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policy-makers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized,” Pillar wrote. Pillar, now a security studies professor at Georgetown University, was considered the CIA’s top counterterrorism analyst prior to his retirement. He was responsible for coordinating assessments on Iraq from throughout the U.S. intelligence community, according to the Post. Pillar said the “politicization” of intelligence occurred more subtly than outright requests for analysts to alter their work to fit a particular result. “Such attempts are rare, and when they do occur … are almost always unsuccessful,” he wrote. Instead, the Bush administration “repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war,” including information on the “supposed connection” between then-Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and the al-Qaeda terror organization, according to Pillar. “Feeding the administration’s voracious appetite for material on the Saddam-al Qaeda link consumed an enormous amount of time and attention,” he wrote. Based on administration requests and public statements by senior officials, analysts “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 wrote. While the White House focused on Iraq’s suspected weapons of mass destruction, the “broad view” in the United States and other nations “was that Saddam was being kept in his box” through U.N. sanctions. Hussein was thought to be best dealt with through “an aggressive inspections program to supplement sanctions already in place.” The White House did not respond to a request to comment, the Post reported (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Feb. 10). Meanwhile, the former chief of staff to Vice President Dick Cheney told a federal grand jury that he was authorized by superiors to disclose the contents of a classified National Intelligence Estimate to reporters in the summer of 2003 as the White House sought to justify the invasion, the Associated Press reported today. “It is our understanding that Mr. Libby testified that he was authorized to disclose information about the NIE to the press by his superiors,” special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald wrote in a Jan. 23 letter to lawyers for Lewis “Scooter” Libby (see GSN, Oct. 31, 2005). Libby faces five felony charges in connection with the public naming of a CIA operative whose husband, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, had criticized use of intelligence leading to the invasion. While portions of the National Intelligence Estimate are sometimes declassified and made public, according to AP, the circumstances in this instance remain unclear. The White House refused to comment, citing the pending legal proceedings (Toni Locy, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, Feb. 10).
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