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Chapter 8: Discord in Washington

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232 North Korea or another outside source: Iran had already bought ballistic missiles from North Korea. See Lionel Beehner, “The Impact of North Korea’s Nuclear Test on Iran Crisis,” Council on Foreign Relations, October 13, 2006.

232 killed more Americans than any other terrorist group: See U.S. Department of State, Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, “Background Note: Lebanon,” August  2005. See also Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism, U.S. Department of State, Country Reports on Terrorism 2005, April 2006, p. 198.

234 spread democracy by the sword: See, e.g., Gerard Baker, “Bush’s vision of free world will keep the neocon faith alive,” The Times (London), November 6, 2004; Francis Fukuyama, America at the Crossroads: Democracy, Power, and the Neoconservative Legacy (New Haven: Yale University Press), 2007.

238 No one asserted that the risks of leaving Saddam in power: See Richard Armitage interview, The Charlie Rose Show, December 10, 2004.

238 general rationale for regime change in Iraq: The accompanying quotes may be found in Congressional Record, 107th Congress, 2nd Session, Vol. 148, No. 133, pp. S10319 - S10320 (Conrad); p. S10302 (Schumer), and p. 10288 (Clinton)  (October 10, 2002).

239 This much is undisputed: Senator Hillary Clinton, “October 10, 2002, Floor Speech of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton on S.J. Res. 45, A Resolution to Authorize the Use of United States Armed Forces Against Iraq.”

240 who had fallen out with Saddam: See Congressional Research Service, “Iraq: U.S. Regime Change Efforts and Post-War Governance,” October 10, 2003:

"The INA, originally founded in 1990 with Saudi support, consists of military and security defectors who were perceived as having ties to disgruntled officials currently serving within their former organizations. It is headed by Dr. Iyad Alawi, former president of the Iraqi Student Union in Europe and a physician by training. He is a secular Shiite Muslim, but most of the members of the INA are Sunni Muslims."

244 to review the INC’s finances: See U.S. Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors Office of Inspector General, Follow Up Review of Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation, Report Number AUD/CG-02–44, September 2002, p. 4.

244 recommendations to resolve the problems: See U.S. Department of State and the Broadcasting Board of Governors Office of Inspector General, Review of Awards to Iraqi National Congress Support Foundation, Report Number 01-FMAR-092, September 2001, pp. 1–2, 12.

245 Powell came to be seen . . . as opposing regime change: One article claims that Powell, on the eve of his UN speech, “had argued against the war for months.” Bryan Burrough, Evgenia Peretz, David Rose, and David Wise, “The Path to War,” Vanity Fair, May 2004, p. 230. Another asserts that “inside the foreign-policy, defense and intelligence agencies, nearly the whole rank and file, along with many senior officials, are opposed to invading Iraq. But because the less than two dozen neoconservatives leading the war party have the support of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, they are able to marginalize that opposition.” Robert Dreyfuss, “The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA: Devising bad intelligence to promote bad policy,” The American Prospect, December 16, 2002, p. 26. Regarding assertions of CIA opposition to the war, see John B. Judis and Spencer Ackerman, “Selling of the Iraq War: The First Casualty,” The New Republic, June 30, 2003.

246 a solution other than war: For example: “Secretary of State Colin Powell, the most dovish member of the Bush Cabinet.” Barbara Slavin and Bill Nichols, “U.S. Says Omissions Put Iraq in ‘Material Breach,’” USA Today, December 20, 2002.

246 urgency of the threat: Powell, as Secretary of State, had his own intelligence office, known as the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, which did not dispute the basic intelligence community consensus that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons stockpiles. (That bureau did, however, dispute the view of the CIA and others that the famous interdicted aluminum tubes were for uranium enrichment.) See U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, National Intelligence Estimate: Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, October 2002, approved for release April 2004.

247 chemical and biological weapons stockpiles: See Armitage interview, The Charlie Rose Show, December 10, 2004:

Mr. Rose: Did you have reservations about Iraq? Deputy Secretary Armitage: Not about the need to take down Saddam Hussein. To the extent I had any questions, it was only about the timing, but not about the proposition. Mr. Rose: You might have preferred a delay for a while to let inspections continue? Deputy Secretary Armitage: I was one who thought that there would be weapons of mass destruction, like everyone else . . .

247 as reluctant warrior in the George W. Bush Administration: Senator Robert Byrd summarized Powell’s role as “being a good soldier.” “Interview with Robert Byrd,” Larry King Live, CNN, March 7, 2003.

248 “and becoming the occupiers”: Sarah Baxter, “Powell tried to talk Bush out of war,” Sunday Times (London), July 8, 2007.

249 the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland: See U.S. Department of State website listing of Powell’s foreign travels.

250 leaking their criticisms of the President: Examples of anonymous State Department and CIA criticisms abound: See, e.g., Glenn Kessler, “U.S. Decision on Iraq Has Puzzling Past: Opponents of War Wonder When, How Policy was Set,” Washington Post, January 12, 2003, p. A1; Gerard Baker and Stephen Fidler, “The best-laid plans? How turf battles and mistakes in Washington dragged down the reconstruction of Iraq,” Financial Times, August 4, 2003, p. 15; Anonymous, “The State Department’s Extreme Makeover,” Salon.com, October 4, 2004; Seymour M. Hersh, “Manhunt,” The New Yorker, December 23, 2002, p. 66; Bryan Burrough, “The Path to War,” Vanity Fair, May 2004, p. 228.

252 to “avoid a political vacuum” in Iraq: Rodman memo to Rumsfeld, “Support for Iraqi Opposition,” May 9, 2002.

253 and perhaps violent resistance: The likelihood that a prolonged occupation government would engender violent resistance was recognized by everyone. It was a theme of another State Department paper (“Diplomatic Plan for the Day After,” [undated], discussed in Chapter 9), and it was flagged (though not emphasized as a key finding) in the CIA’s intelligence summary, “Principal Challenges in Post- Saddam Iraq,” reprinted in U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, July 7, 2004, as Appendix B: National Intelligence Council, “Principal Challenges in Post- Saddam Iraq,” January 2003. CENTCOM included the point prominently, as the third and last “Don’t” of its Phase IV planning: “Don’t . . . Create any appearance of occupying Iraq.” United States Central Command, Phase IV IPB, as of March 1, 2003, p. 60 (cited in SSCI Report on Prewar Intelligence on Postwar Iraq, May 2007, p. 97).

253 “and effectively neutralize the Communists”: Rumsfeld Memo to Cheney, Powell, Tenet, and Rice, “Supporting the Iraqi Opposition,” July 1, 2002.

254 “only the I.N.C. can lead the opposition”: Seymour M. Hersh, “The Debate Within,” The New Yorker, March 4, 2002 (emphasis added).

254 whether Chalabi or anyone else: “Asked about the status of Ahmad Chalabi, the leader of the Iraqi National Congress, who is often seen as a political favorite of Wolfowitz and other neoconservatives, the Pentagon official said this: ‘We ought to be supporting everyone who can do something useful. I think the decision has been made to support democracy and a big tent.’” David Ignatius, “‘Wolfowitz’s War’: Not Over Yet,” Washington Post, May 13, 2003. A remarkable aspect of the “anoint-Chalabi” myth is the credence it received throughout the media, in spite of the lack of evidence. The explanation may be that the source was someone whose word was taken as sufficient authority, with no need of corroboration.

255 selecting particular leaders for Iraq: Contemporary news stories quoted Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and me on this question: “Mr Rumsfeld denied he had ever endorsed Mr Chalabi. ‘If anyone has attributed anything to me about that, it’s inaccurate,’ he said. . . . ‘The Iraqi people are going to sort out what their Iraqi government ought to look like.’ ” Guy Dinmore, “Opposition leader’s role ‘no guarantee of power,’” Financial Times, April 8, 2003, p. 7. Alan Beattie and Roula Khalaf (“U.S. 'aims for a legitimate Iraqi government’,” Financial Times, April 7, 2003, p. 4) reports that Wolfowitz emphasized that the Iraqis should choose their own leaders. Peter Slevin (“U.S. Won’t Install Iraqi Expatriates; Inclusive Interim Authority Is Pledged,” Washington Post, April 5, 2003, p. A28) quotes me as saying, “Our intention is not to be picking and choosing among Iraqis but arranging a platform on which Iraqi leaders can emerge by some natural process.”

255 “every one of the opposition leaders”: Interview with General Jay Garner [2003],  in “Truth, War and Consequences,” Frontline, Public Broadcasting System, July 17, 2003. Curiously, Garner elsewhere mentions, as a generally known fact, that Chalabi was a favored candidate of Wolfowitz and me—though he does not claim that Wolfowitz or I, or anyone else, ever tried to get Garner to favor him. Interview with General Jay Garner [2006], in “The Lost Year in Iraq,” Frontline, Public Broadcasting System, August 11, 2006.)

256 “crawling their way back”: Hersh, “The Debate Within.”

256 “contributing to liberating their country”: State Department paper, “The Iraqi Opposition,” [undated], distributed at a Deputies Lunch meeting on June 6, 2002.

258 tap some of the remaining funds: The $97 million was to be used for defense articles, defense services, and military education and training for “Iraqi democratic opposition organizations.” President Clinton limited the training to “non-lethal” skills. See William J. Clinton, “Memorandum on Assistance to the Iraqi National Congress,” October 29, 1999, Presidential Determination No. 2000–05; Secretary of Defense William Cohen Memorandum for Secretaries of the Military Departments and Directors of the Defense Agencies, May 2, 2000, “Support for the Implementation of the Iraq Liberation Act.”

260 devoted to WMD-related matters: “After 1998, the CIA had no dedicated unilateral sources in Iraq reporting on Iraq’s nuclear, biological, and chemical program; indeed, the CIA had only a handful of Iraqi assets in total as of 2001.” See also U.S. Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence, Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, July 7, 2004, p. 263. “Committee staff asked why the CIA had not considered placing a CIA officer in the years before Operation Iraqi Freedom to investigate Iraq’s WMD programs. A CIA officer said, ‘because it’s very hard to sustain. . . .’” (Ibid.)

260 “one of the United States’ top intelligence priorities”: Silberman-Robb Commission, p. 157.

260 would not cooperate with al Qaida: The Silberman-Robb Commission specifically faults the CIA’s reporting on Iraq’s BW program for creating the impression that its assessment was “more broadly based than was in fact the case” (see discussion in Chapter 10).

260 styled in his own handwriting: See U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, The World Factbook. See also Sonni Efron and Sebastian Rotella, “Saddam profile,” in Los Angeles Times. The profile cites former CIA Director James Woolsey’s observation that the inscription on the Iraq flag was in Saddam Hussein’s handwriting.

260 in a Foreign Affairs article: Paul Pillar, “Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq,” Foreign Affairs, Spring 2006, p. 15.

261 even chemical and biological weapons, into Afghanistan: Jeffrey Goldberg, “The Great Terror: In northern Iraq, there is new evidence of Saddam Hussein’s genocidal war on the Kurds—and of his possible ties to Al Qaeda,” The New Yorker, March 25, 2002, p. 52.

262 CIA in fact had very few American personnel at all in Iraq: The SSCI Report on Iraq Prewar Intelligence states (p. 25):

"Intelligence Community HUMINT efforts against a closed society like Iraq prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom were hobbled by the Intelligence Community’s dependence on having an official U.S. presence in-country to mount clandestine HUMINT collection efforts. When UN inspectors departed Iraq, the placement of HUMINT agents and the development of unilateral sources inside Iraq were not top priorities for the Intelligence Community. The Intelligence Community did not have a single HUMINT source collecting against Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs in Iraq after 1998. The Intelligence Community appears to have decided that the difficulty and risks inherent in developing sources or inserting operations officers into Iraq outweighed the potential benefits."

The Silberman-Robb Commission notes (pp. 157–158):

"We had precious little human intelligence, and virtually no useful signals intelligence, on a target that was one of the United States’ top intelligence priorities. The preceding sections, which have focused on the Intelligence Community’s assessments on particular aspects of Iraq’s weapons programs, have tended to reflect shortcomings in what is commonly referred to as “tradecraft”; the focus has been on questions such as whether a critical human source was properly validated, or whether analysts drew unduly sweeping inferences from limited or dubious intelligence. But it should not be forgotten why these tradecraft failures took on such extraordinary importance. They were important because of how little additional information our collection agencies managed to provide on Iraq’s weapons programs. This was a problem the Intelligence Community saw coming. As early as September 1998, the Community recognized its limited collection on Iraq. The National Intelligence Council noted these limits in 1998, the specifics of which cannot be discussed in an unclassified forum. Yet the Intelligence Community was still unwilling—or unable—to take steps necessary to improve its capabilities after late 1998. In short, as one senior policy maker described it, the Intelligence Community after 1998 “was running on fumes,” depending on “inference and assumptions rather than hard data.”

 

262 impression that diligent efforts had been made to uncover such evidence: See, e.g., James Risen and David Johnston, “Split at C.I.A. and F.B.I. on Iraqi Ties to Al Qaeda,” New York Times, February 2, 2003, p. 13.

263 The CIA officials . . . overstated or erred about other political and military matters before the Iraq war: The CIA failed to warn (for example) that Baathists would remain a significant factor after Saddam’s overthrow. A CIA report stated that “we expect the Ba’th Party to collapse with the regime. . . . [It] lacks ideological coherence or organizational autonomy.” CIA, Iraq: The Day After, October 18, 2002, p. 1 (cited in SSCI Report on Prewar Intelligence on Postwar Iraq, May 2007, p. 100).

263 CIA officials reacted to criticism by going on the offensive: See David Brooks, “The C.I.A. versus Bush,” New York Times, November 13, 2004; Douglas Jehl, “C.I.A-White House Tensions Are Unusually Public,” New York Times, October 2, 2004.

264 members of Congress persist in asserting it: See, e.g., Peter Spiegel, “Report outlines Pentagon effort to link Iraq, al Qaeda. Declassified memo shows how officials shaped intelligence,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 6, 2007. See also Senator Carl Levin’s comments that Pentagon “intelligence” work “which was wrong, which was distorted, which was inappropriate . . . is something which is highly disturbing.” Robert Burns, “Levin: Investigation says Pentagon Manipulated Intelligence,” Washington Post, February 9, 2007.

264 “playing into the hands of people like Wolfowitz”: Eric Edelman, “Comments by the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense on a Draft of a Proposed Report by the DOD Office of Inspector General Project no. D2006DINTOl-0077.000 Review of Pre-Iraqi War Activities of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy,” January 16, 2007.

265 a disturbingly unprofessional comment: The analyst’s comment, while unprofessional, is not unprecedented. Former CIA Director (and current Secretary of Defense) Robert Gates described the phenomenon almost twenty years ago—in circumstances remarkably similar to those of the debates over the Iraq–al Qaida relationship:

"It is no surprise that few policymakers welcome CIA information or analysis that directly or by implication challenges the adequacy of their chosen policies or the accuracy of their pronouncements. . . . On the other hand, I concede that on more than a few occasions, policymakers have analyzed or forecast developments better than intelligence analysts. And, truth be known, analysts have sometimes gone overboard to prove a policymaker wrong. When Secretary of State Alexander Haig asserted that the Soviets were behind international terrorism, intelligence analysts initially set out, not to address the issue in all its aspects, but rather to prove the secretary wrong—to prove simply that the Soviets do not orchestrate all international terrorism. But in so doing they went too far themselves and failed in early drafts to describe extensive and well-documented indirect Soviet support for terrorist groups and their sponsors. Far from kowtowing to policymakers, there is sometimes a strong impulse on the part of intelligence officers to show that a policy or decision is misguided or wrong, to poke an analytical finger in the policy eye. Policymakers know this and understandably resent it." Robert Gates, “The CIA and American Foreign Policy,” p. 221.

265 such nonrigorous, prejudicial terminology: For Shelton’s summary of methods used by intelligence officials to discount the credibility of the 1990s reporting on the Iraq–al Qaida relationship, see Christina Shelton, “Iraq, al-Qaeda and Tenet’s Equivocation,” Washington Post, June 30, 2007, p. A21.

267 Shelton and Carney spoke well: Conflicting versions of this briefing may be found in Tenet, At the Center of the Storm, pp. 346–349, and Christina Shelton, “Iraq, al-Qaeda, and Tenet’s Equivocation,” p. A21.

267 dating from the early 1990s: SSCI Report on Iraq Prewar Intelligence, p. 314. The report went on to describe the underlying information:

". . . The CIA provided 78 reports, from multiple sources, documenting instances in which the Iraqi regime either trained operatives for attacks or dispatched them to carry out attacks. Each of the reports provided by the CIA was accurately reflected in Iraqi Support for Terrorism and the majority of them were summarized as examples to support the CIA’s assessment." Ibid., p. 315.

Tenet testified on February 11, 2003, about training provided by Iraqi intelligence for al Qaida associates:

"Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bombmaking to al-Qaida. It has also provided training in poisons and gases to two al-Qaida associates. One of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful." Ibid., p. 329.

268 trying to politicize the intelligence: See, e.g., James Risen, “Prewar Views of Iraq Threat Are Under Review by CIA,” New York Times, May 22, 2003, p. A1; Walter Pincus and Dana Priest, “Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure from Cheney Visits,” Washington Post, June 5, 2003, p. A1; Pillar, “Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq.”

269 did not pressure intelligence officials to politicize the intelligence: The SSCI Report on Iraq Prewar Intelligence notes:

"The Committee did not find any evidence that Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgements related to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities (p. 284). Committee staff also conducted interviews with IC analysts regarding their interaction with staffers from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (OUSDP), particularly in the coordination of the September 2002 version of Iraqi Support for Terrorism. . . . Although IC analysts considered the attendance of OUSDP staffers at the meeting unusual, all of the meeting attendees interviewed by the Committee staff (eight of the twelve individuals) agreed that the OUSDP staffers were not given special treatment and their attendance contributed to a frank exchange of opinions. . . . Each analyst, as well as the meeting’s chairman, indicated the OUSDP staffer “played by IC rules” in terms of their participation. In other words, each point that was raised was discussed, debated, and incorporated only if there was agreement around the table (pp. 361–363).
"Conclusion 102. The Committee found that none of the analysts or other people interviewed by the Committee said that they were pressured to change their conclusions related to Iraq’s links to terrorism. . . . All of the participants in the August 2002 coordination meeting on the September 2002 version of Iraqi Support for Terrorism interviewed by the Committee agreed that while some changes were made to the paper as a result of the participation of two Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy staffers, their presence did not result in changes to their analytical judgments (p. 363)."

269 stories about pressure to come forward: Regarding the Committee’s advertising for analysts to come forward with any information they had about politicization or improper pressure, see SSCI Report on Iraq Prewar Intelligence, pp. 357–358.

269 “are entirely legitimate”: Silberman-Robb Commission, p. 189. The report also stated:

"The Commission also found no evidence of “politicization” even under the broader definition used by the CIA’s Ombudsman for Politicization, which is not limited solely to the case in which a policymaker applies overt pressure on an analyst to change an assessment. The definition adopted by the CIA is broader, and includes any “unprofessional manipulation of information and judgments” by intelligence officers to please what those officers perceive to be policymakers’ preferences." (Ibid., p. 188)
"There is also the issue of interaction between policymakers and other customers on the one hand and analysts on the other. According to some analysts, senior decisionmakers continually probed to assess the strength of the Intelligence Community’s analysis, but did not press for changes in the Intelligence Community’s analytical judgments. We conclude that good-faith efforts by intelligence consumers to understand the bases for analytic judgments, far from constituting “politicization,” are entirely legitimate. This is the case even if policymakers raise questions because they do not like the conclusions or are seeking evidence to support policy preferences. Those who must use intelligence are entitled to insist that they be fully informed as to both the evidence and the analysis." (Ibid, p. 189; footnote omitted.)

270 had not interviewed either Hadley or Libby on this matter: Gimble stated incorrectly in his testimony that he had interviewed Hadley. In response to questioning, he corrected the statement: He had requested that interview and had been denied. He had not requested an interview with Libby. U.S. Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearing on the Defense Department Inspector General’s Report on the Activities of the Office of Special Plans Prior to the War in Iraq, February 9, 2007, pp. 41, 82.

271 “prepared in the first place”: Douglas J. Feith, “Tough Questions We Were Right to Ask,” Washington Post, February 14, 2007.

271 “on another point beggars belief”: Michael Barone, “Doug Feith Talks Back,” Barone Blog, U.S. News and World Report, February 14, 2007, 0600 p.m. ET.

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