April 2, 2005

How to Interpret the Critique of America's Intelligence Community, Commissioned by the Bush Administration

By Walter C. Uhler

Was it just me? Or did every reader of Ron Suskind's book, The Price of Loyalty, about former Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill smile knowingly when he or she read pages 116–120 of the March 31, 2005 Report of The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction?

Yes, the Commission's report is an authoritative indictment of America's Intelligence Community (IC). And its recommendations for reforming the IC are sound and merit serious consideration. But it dutifully answered the sole question that President Bush asked of it, and thereby served his political purposes by once again emphasizing the IC's intelligence failures rather than addressing the Bush administration's willful misuse and embellishment of that flawed intelligence. This is especially true when it comes to Chapter One, which looks back at Iraq.

Nevertheless, it's on pages 116–120 that we learn that America's Intelligence Community (IC) used imagery intelligence to mistakenly determine that trucks were transshipping materials "to and from ammunition depots, including suspect CW sites" [p. 116] from March 2002 until early 2003. Thus, the IC mistakenly concluded: "Iraq had restarted CW [chemical warfare] production." [p. 116]

And, thus, like other findings in the Commission's report (e.g., that the IC was mistaken to conclude that Iraq's attempt to purchase aluminum tubes indicated that it had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program and that the IC grossly erred when it accepted the words of a Iraqi "fabricator" who asserted that Iraq had manufactured mobile biological warfare laboratories) this part would have the American public believe, at least by implication, that the poor, unwitting Bush administration was duped by the IC into invading Iraq.

Yet, as everyone who's followed the Bush administration knows, it was an article of faith among many American conservatives, including such chaps in the Bush administration as Vice President Cheney, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, his Deputy, Paul Wolfowitz and his assistant, Douglas Feith, that the intelligence community could not be trusted, which is why they set up a back channel in the Department of Defense to funnel "real" intelligence to Cheney, and then Bush.

But readers of Suskind's book already were familiar with a much more hilarious misuse of imagery intelligence by President Bush and the right-wing ideologues who filled most of his cabinet positions. Suskind dutifully captures Treasury Secretary O'Neill's details of the first meeting of the "principals" (department heads) of President Bush's National Security Council. That January 30, 2001 meeting, like so many others prior to al Qaeda's attacks on September 11, was devoted to Iraq, not Osama bin Laden.

CIA Director George Tenet commenced his briefing on the latest intelligence on Iraq by unrolling and flattening a long scroll, the size of an architectural blueprint, on the briefing table. O'Neill was there and recalls: "It was a grainy photograph of a factory. Tenet said that surveillance planes had just taken this photo. The CIA believed the building might be 'a plant that produces either chemical or biological materials for weapons manufacture.'" [Suskind p.72]

According to O'Neill, "Soon, everyone was leaning over the photo….[Vice President] Cheney motioned to the deputies, the backbenchers, lining the wall. 'Come on up,' he said with uncharacteristic excitement, waving his arm. 'You have to take a look at this.'" [Ibid]

With a dozen people now gazing intently at the surveillance imagery, including the President, O'Neill dropped the proverbial turd in the punchbowl: "I've seen a lot of factories around the world that look a lot like this one. What makes us suspect that this one is producing chemical or biological agents for weapons?" [p. 73]

I have visions of poor Cheney clutching his chest—the air rushing out of his lungs and his pacemaker about to implode—upon hearing poor (but subsequently, Medal of Freedom awardee) Tenet concede that there was "no confirming intelligence" about the materials being produced. [Ibid] It's called "buffoonery in high places," but it received the same devastating blow that Bush's self-serving Commission delivered on March 31, 2005 to the CIA's pre-war CW conclusions.

You see, O'Neill is one of those highly accomplished individuals who trades in skepticism and fact. Many predicted that he would not last long among the multitude of ideologues in the Bush administration that trade only in faith. But he lasted two years, and during that time he read the CIA intelligence dossiers that Tenet provided to the principals of the NSC. According to O'Neill: "Tenet was clearly being careful to say here's the little that we know and the great deal that we don't. That wouldn't change, 'and I read those CIA reports for two years.'" [p. 161]

But, the near "rapture" experienced by the Bush administration ideologues on January 30, 2001, even in the presence of pseudo-WMD intelligence, was a clear indicator. The IC might always lag behind, but perhaps find encouragement (if not intimidation) in the Bush administration's early obsession with Iraq and its WMD. Which is another way of saying that, for the Bush administration, faith carried the day until some evidence, any evidence, could be scratched up.

Although the Commission's Report of 31 March 2005 painstakingly demonstrates that Iraq had no WMD or WMD programs on the eve of America's illegal and immoral invasion, it cites the September 30, 2004 conclusions reached by the Iraq Survey Group, not to finally persuade and rebuke all the American blockheads out there who still believe that Iraq possessed WMD or that it actually had been found, but to irrefutably indict the slipshod work of the IC.

But, for the many blockheads still out there, here are the Commission's words:

(1) "The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) concluded that Iraq had not tried to reconstitute a capability to produce nuclear weapons after 1991."[p.60]

(2) "The ISG concluded that 'Iraq appears to have destroyed its undeclared stocks of BW [biological warfare] weapons and probably destroyed remaining holdings of bulk BW agent' shortly after the Gulf War" (some twelve years before Bush's invasion in March 2003). [p. 86]

(3) "The ISG concluded—contrary to the Intelligence Community's pre-war assessment—that Iraq actually unilaterally destroyed its undeclared CW stockpile in 1991 and that there were no credible indications that Baghdad resumed production of CW thereafter." [p. 119]

Thus, let's agree that the Commission has done a fine job of finding most of the flaws that enabled America's IC to provide bogus intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to the Bush administration. But, let's put the Commission's work in proper perspective. Given that most of its conclusions had already been reached in the July 2004 Senate Select Committee Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, it's what Samuel Johnson would have called a "foolish thing well done."

Consider the Commission's section on the IC's handling of information concerning Iraq's nuclear weapons program. It notes that, as of December 2000, the IC was of the opinion that "Iraq still did not appear to have taken major steps toward reconstitution." [p.55] Yet, "In March 2001, intelligence reporting indicated that Iraq was seeking high-strength tubes made of 7075 T6 aluminum alloy," that the CIA would mistakenly view as parts for centrifuges in Iraq's nuclear program. The Commission properly criticizes the CIA's misinterpretation as the critical factor in allowing the IC to conclude that Iraq has reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.

Yet, the commission's report fails to consider the Bush administration's early obsession with Iraq, which predates the March 2001 intelligence about aluminum tubes. Thus, the commission does not report that, during Bush's first principals meeting of the NSC (on January 30, 2001), National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice justified the NSC's early focus on Iraq, because "Iraq might be the key to reshaping the entire region [Middle East]. [Suskind, p. 72] It was not flawed intelligence from the IC that persuaded her to say that. Neither does flawed intelligence explain why Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz were obsessed with Iraq.

Neither does the Commission's report note that when the NSC met on February 1, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld talked about "going after Saddam," and mused: "Imagine what the region would look like without Saddam and with a regime that's aligned with U.S. interests." [p. 85] Then Rumsfeld clarified his position: "It's not my specific objective to get rid of Saddam Hussein. I'm after the weapons of mass destruction." [Ibid]

What weapons of mass destruction? For, in fact, only when the NSC met again, on February 5, was the head of each department tasked with increasing its collection of intelligence concerning Iraq's suspected WMD.

Thus, was it a mere coincidence that new evidence of WMD (in the form of aluminum tubes mistakenly identified by the CIA to be part of a reconstituted nuclear program) was found a month later? And if eager-to-please zealots in the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) rushed to judgment on the aluminum tubes, weren't they doing so under the inspired, if ill-informed, leadership of their department heads? Again, consider the case of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld.

When the NSC met on March 1, the highlight of that meeting was the heated exchange between Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Secretary of State Colin Powell. Rumsfeld complained that loose UN economic sanctions were permitting Iraq to purchase dumptrucks possessing hydraulic cylinders, which might be used as launchers for rockets.

Powell replied: "For Christ's sake, if somebody wants a cylinder to erect a rocket, they don't have to buy a $200,000 dumptruck to get one! [Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack, p.15] Such nonsense by the senior leaders of the Bush administration preceded the IC's nonsense about the aluminum tubes and chemical warfare imagery, as well as most of the mobile biological weapons labs fiasco.

Moreover, Rumsfeld's obsession with Iraq starkly manifested itself on September 11. Within five hours of al Qaeda's attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon, Rumsfeld demanded "the best info fast. Judge whether good enough to hit S. H." But he also said: "Go massive….Sweep it all up. Things related and not."

Such an obsession was not the product of the IC's faulty intelligence. Instead, it's much more probable that Rumsfeld's obsessions encouraged faulty, politicized intelligence by the IC. But you won't find such conclusions in the Commission's Report.

A thorough, unbiased, historical investigation would demonstrate that Rumsfeld was not alone, or even the major culprit. That honor belongs to Vice President Cheney. It was Cheney, who (in a speech delivered on August 26, 2002) distorted the evidence about Iraq's WMD; evidence that had been provided by Saddam's son-in-law. And it was Cheney, in the fall of 2002, who complained: "We're getting ready to go to war, and we're nickel-and-diming the INC at a time when they're providing us with unique intelligence on Iraqi WMD." [The New Republic, December 1, 2003]

The INC is the Iraqi National Congress. It was led by former Iraqi exile, Ahmed Chalabi, and has been accused of feeding self-serving lies about Iraq to an especially receptive back channel group in the Pentagon, which, in turn, fed them to a very receptive Cheney. And although the Commission's Report minimizes the impact of the INC (much to the glee of the right-wingers at the Wall Street Journal, see April 1, 2005 editorial "A Media Intelligence Failure") it fails to deal with the quote attributed to Cheney, let alone the larger issue of the propagandistic spin that the Bush administration's put on the IC's mistaken, but comparatively unembellished, intelligence estimates.

Thus, although the Commission superbly executed the narrow, self-exculpating task that President Bush assigned it, the March 31, 2005 report ignores the overwhelming evidence that the Bush administration, not the IC, worked tirelessly to shape the debate about invading Iraq. Consequently, the latest report on the failures of the IC should be viewed as no more than a "foolish thing well done."


Walter C. Uhler is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work has appeared in The Nation, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, The San Francisco Chronicle and Philadelphia Inquirer, among numerous other periodicals. His article, "Democracy or dominion?" will be republished in Annual Editions: World Politics 05/06 (McGraw Hill) scheduled for publication in April. He is President of the Russian-American International Studies Association.

waltuhler@aol.com