Proof Bush Fixed The Facts

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Wed, 4 May 2005 17:34:15 -0700 (PDT)

Proof Bush Fixed The Facts

http://www.tompaine.com/20050504/articles/proof_bush_fixed_the_facts.php

 

 

 

Proof Bush Fixed The Facts

Ray McGovern

May 04, 2005

 

 

 

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.