Fwd: Powell's Former Chief 'Hoax on the American People'

[Guest guest]

This article bothers me a lot. It all boils down to gee, we didn't know. That is

pretty hard to believe since all of the information was available in the world

press, and was all over the internet way before the invasion of Iraq. Look in

our archives prior to the invasion. See what was posted here. I hear others talk

of a " failure of intelligence " , etc. I mean shoot, you would expect the

secretary of state of the largest government apparatus in the world would be

privy to better intelligence than our online group. And this man expects us to

actually believe this? The whole thing smacks of more B.S.

 

 

ICH

NEWS YOU WON'T FIND ON CNN

 

Powell's Former Chief of Staff Lawrence Wilkerson Calls Pre-War Intelligence

a 'Hoax on the American People'

 

02/03/06 " PRNewswire " -- -- Colin Powell's former Chief of Staff Lawrence

Wilkerson makes the startling claim that much of Powell's landmark speech to

the United Nations laying out the Bush Administration's case for the Iraq

war was false.

 

" I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international

community, and the United Nations Security Council, " says Wilkerson, who

helped prepare the address.

 

" I recall vividly the Secretary of State walking into my office, " Wilkerson

tells NOW. " He said: 'I wonder what will happen if we put half a million

troops on the ground in Iraq and comb the country from one end to the other

and don't find a single weapon of mass destruction?' " In fact, no weapons of

mass destruction were found in Iraq.

 

An interview with Lawrence Wilkerson

 

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Mr. Wilkerson, thanks for doing this.

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Thank you for having me.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: We now know that there was deep skepticism within the

intelligence community about some of these pre-war claims than what's being

expressed publicly at the time. Is it reasonable to think that the

administration knew about this skepticism?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Six months ago I would have said " no. " Since that time,

however, there have been some revelations. Principally about Sheik Al

Libbi's testimony and how it was obtained. And how there was a DIA, for

example, Defense Intelligence Agency, dissent on that testimony, apparently

I'm hearing now, around the time the testimony was actually given.

 

And even more to the point than Al Libbi, Curve Ball. And the revelations

that have come out about Curve Ball. And in particular the German dissent

from the integrity of CurveBall's testimony.

 

I can tell you that having been intimately involved in the preparation of

Secretary Powell for his five February 2003 presentation at the UN Security

Council, neither of those dissents in any fashion or form were registered

with me or the Secretary by the DCI, George Tenent, by the DDCI, John

McLaughlin, or by any of their many analysts who were in the room with us

for those five, six days and nights at the Central Intelligence Agency.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: And they didn't give you any inkling that--

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Not a bit.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: -- there was this debate about some of this information?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Not a bit. In fact it was presented in the firmest

language possible that the mobile biological labs and the sketches we had

drawn of them for the Secretary's presentation were based on the iron clad

evidence of multiple sources.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Maybe they at the most senior level, like you, just didn't

know?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I have to believe that. Otherwise I have to believe some

rather nefarious things about some fairly highly placed people in the

intelligence community and perhaps elsewhere.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: What do you think really did happen with regards to this--

disconnect between what we now know about these profound questions about

some of these key sources and the fact that somebody had these questions in

real time?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, I've been a consumer, a user of intelligence at

the tactical, operational and strategic level for close to 35, 36 years. And

I've seen many errors in intelligence. And I know it's not a perfectible

business. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

 

However, I am astonished at the failures of our intelligence community over

the-- last decade in particular. We failed to predict the demise of the

Soviet Union. We failed to predict the Indian nuclear test in 1998.

 

We bombed a Chinese embassy in Belgrade in 1999. We failed to detect the

five year planning cycle of al Qaeda, the operatives who conducted 9/11. And

we failed in terms of predicting Iraq's WMDs.

 

So we have a significant problem in this nation with our intelligence

community. And, by the way, I don't think it's fixed in any way. Yet. This

administration has really done nothing to fix it. And-- so I-- I'm familiar

with intelligence failure.

 

However, this particular one seems to me to warrant a lot more investigation

than it has to this point warranted. And I take in the recognition the Robb

Silberman commission, the 9/11 commission and a host of other lesser--

investigations that have attempted to look at this. And the phase two

investigation now going on in the Congress, which I think as long as the

Republicans control the Congress will not be a-- an investigation that

reveals very much. But I think we really need to take a hard look at how not

just the intelligence failures I've enumerated occurred, but how this

particular one did. Because it could turn out to be one of the worst in our

history.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Your experience with evaluating intelligence-- you

understand from your experience evaluating intelligence, this is tough

stuff.

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Very.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: It often is inconclusive. And you have to use powers of

critical thinking to figure out what is the right thing to do.

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: And you have to listen to dissent. You must. You can't

squelch dissent. You can't put dissent in an obscure footnote on page 495 of

an intelligence annex. You must listen to dissent.

 

You must-- I-- I today regret the fact that I didn't listen better to the

Intelligence Bureau and the State Department. The-- the Intelligence Bureau

and the State Department at this time we were preparing Secretary Powell

dissented on one key issue. And they essentially said there was no active

nuclear program in Iraq.

 

And they were right. And the rest of the intelligence community was wrong.

But the rest of the intelligence community did not take that dissent,

massage it, compete it in the world of ideas in the intelligence community.

It simply footnoted it and relegated it to that footnote. To that

qualification, if you will.

 

INR was right. The rest of the intelligence community was wrong. Now INR was

wrong about bio and chem. They said the same thing the rest of the

intelligence community said. That he did have active bio and chem programs.

But they were right about the most important weapons of mass destruction

Saddam could have had, the one that backed up, for example, Dr. Rice and the

Vice President and the others who talked about mushroom clouds. And I did

not listen to INR. And the Secretary of State did not listen to INR. And as

it turns out we should have.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: In the case if pre-war intelligence are we just talking

about not listening to dissenting views?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think that's a big part of it, but it's larger than

that. A good friend of mine who was probably one of the most respected INR

intelligence personnel that we had at the State Department and who indeed

has gone on to join John Negroponte as one of his principle subordinates,

once told me that what was missing was competition. And that struck me,

because that's what we believe in in America.

 

You know business, education. Competition is an essential ingredient of what

we do. There is no competition in the intelligence community. In other words

leaders don't listen to various parts of the intelligence community debate

one another.

 

Instead it's a conformist community. And the DCI and-- at that time presided

over the conformity. In other words, if-- you had a dissenting view, that

dissenting view might make it into a footnote. It might make it into a

qualifying paragraph. But the intelligence community, speaking through the--

director of Central Intelligence, was going to have a conformist view.

 

And that view was going to be collected from the community, but it was going

to be a conformist view. And there's-- it's absurd to think that the

director for Central Intelligence, or now the National Director of

Intelligence, is not influenced by the politics around-- him or her.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well, that's a key question here. Is it just a-- an issue

of there's a dominant view in the intelligence community and the competing

views aren't heard? Or are you concerned that the view of the intelligence

community that, for instance, Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, is in a

sense being imposed from the top?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I think there's a certain amount of politicization of

intelligence. I-- don't think you can escape it because of human nature.

Particularly if you have a DCI like George Tenent who is frequently in the

presence of the President.

 

Then he is going to absorb during those meetings what the President wants.

What the President is looking for. What the angle of attack the President

has is. And he's going to search for intelligence that will support that

angle of attack.

 

That's just the nature of human beings. So it's absurd for someone to say

that the intelligence is not politicized at all. Of course it is. It has to

be. It has to conform to the leader's wishes-- to a certain extent. And what

you need in this competitive community I've described is people who will

stand up to power and tell truth to power. And say, " No, that's not right, "

to the Vice President of the United States, for example.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: We now know from published reports that Vice President

Cheney and his right hand man, Lewis Libby, went over to the headquarters of

the CIA about 10 times in late 2002 and early 2003. We don't know what was

said. What do you think was going on?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, if the Vice President was exercising his right as

one of the leaders of this country to go to one of its intelligence agencies

and to-- check on how they're doing and to make sure that they're doing

their jobs properly and so forth, I find it difficult to believe that took

10 times. And as I've said, it's absurd to think that intelligence isn't

somehow politicized at times.

 

It's equally absurd for the Vice President to assert that his trips out to

the agency were not bringing undue influence on the agency. That's

preposterous. Anytime a leader of his stature visits a single agency that

many times, he is, by simply the virtue of his position, bringing undue

influence on that agency.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: So you can imagine a scenario where the Vice President's

over there kind of CIA?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I-- could imagine that scenario easily.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: I've never met the Vice President. He's the kind of guy

who could lean on somebody?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Absolutely. And be just as quiet and taciturn about it

as-- he-- as he leaned on 'em. As he leaned on the Congress recently-- in

the-- torture issue.

 

 

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: We've been talking grand policy. The then director of the

CIA, George Tenent, Vice President Cheney's deputy Libby, told you that the

intelligence that was the basis of going to war was rock solid. Given what

you now know, how does that make you feel?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: It makes me feel terrible. I've said in other places

that it was-- constitutes the lowest point in my professional life. My

participation in that presentation at the UN constitutes the lowest point in

my professional life.

 

I participated in a hoax on the American people, the international community

and the United Nations Security Council. How do you think that makes me

feel? Thirty-one years in the United States Army and I more or less end my

career with that kind of a blot on my record? That's not a very comforting

thing.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: A hoax? That's quite a word.

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, let's face it, it was. It was not a hoax that the

Secretary in any way was complicit in. In fact he did his best-- I watched

him work. Two AM in the morning on the DCI and the Deputy DCI, John

McLaughlin.

 

And to try and hone the presentation down to what was, in the DCI's own

words, a slam dunk. Firm. Iron clad. We threw many things out. We threw the

script that Scooter Libby had given the-- Secretary of State. Forty-eight

page script on WMD. We threw that out the first day.

 

And we turned to the National Intelligence estimate as part of the

recommendation of George Tenent and my agreement with. But even that turned

out to be, in its substantive parts-- that is stockpiles of chemicals,

biologicals and production capability that was hot and so forth, and an

active nuclear program. The three most essential parts of that presentation

turned out to be absolutely false.

 

 

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: You've said that Vice President Cheney and Secretary of

Defense Donald Rumsfeld managed to hijack the intelligence process. You've

called it a cabal.

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Decision--

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: And--

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: -- making process.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: The decision making process.

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Right.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well, let me get it right. You've said that Vice President

Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld somehow managed to hijack

the intelligence decision making process. You called it a cabal.

 

And said that it was done in a way that makes you think it was more akin to

something you'd see in a dictatorship rather than a democracy. Now those are

strong words. Why a cabal?

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Well, the two decisions that I had the most profound

insights into and which I have spoken to are the decision to depart from the

Geneva Conventions and to depart from international law with regard to

treatment of detainees by the Armed Forces in particular. But by the entire

US establishment, now including the CIA and contractors in general.

 

And the post-invasion Iraq-- planning, which was as inept and incompetent as

any planning I've witnessed in some 30-plus years in public service. Those

two decisions were clearly-- made in the statutory process, the legal

process, in one way and made underneath that process in another way. And

that's what I've labeled secret and cabal-like.

 

Now let me hasten to add that I've taught the national security decision

making process in the nation's war colleges for six years. I'm a student of

that process. I will teach it again-- starting in January. This is no

aberration. It's been done before. It was done with regard to the Bay of

Pigs with John F. Kennedy. It was done with regard to Watergate with Richard

Nixon. It was done with regard to Iran-Contra with Ronald Reagan.

 

It was done to a certain and rather lasting effect-- with regard to Vietnam

by Lyndon Johnson and others. So you-- it's not anything new. And it's been

done many times before. That is to say, decisions have been made elsewhere

than in the Oval Office in other presidencies.

 

Normally nothing happens as long as the decision is effective, it's well

executed and it produces success. It's when the decision produces failure

that historians, politicians, Congressmen, American citizens want to know

why. And in this case I think both decisions did produce failures and so

they're going to want to know why. And-- we're seeing some of the

investigations and-- looks into those decisions now to decide why they were

failures.

 

 

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: There's an argument that swashbuckling executives, Defense

Secretary and the Vice President making executive decisions without

involving the bureaucracy is very efficient, gets the--

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh yes.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: --job done.

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh yes.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: But you're saying that--

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: This is the argument that's marshaled by presidents from

Truman on. Although I will say that Truman and Eisenhower were probably the

two least apartment to do this sort of thing.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: Well think about it. Involving, just for starters, the

entire National Security Council on, for instance, evaluating the

intelligence that-- would help inform a decision to go to war in Iraq. And

that's going to slow things down. They're going to be dissenting opinions.

You're never going to get that war done.

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: You mean kind of like what our founding fathers--

intended when they put the Constitution together? Checks and balances,

dissent would be listened to and so forth and so on.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: You're thinking that--

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Ferdinand Eberstadt was a bright man who participated in

these debates that were roiling � I mean truly roiling around Truman and

then around Eisenhower as we try to implement the National Security Council

and tried to implement the other parameters of the act, including the

formation of the Central Intelligence Agency. And other putting together the

National Defense, national military establishment and then turning it later

in an amendment to the act into the Defense Department. Many debates

occurred that are just like the debates we're having today.

 

And Ferdinand Eberstadt, remember now that the 1947 Act in part at least was

passed to prohibit ever having another Franklin Roosevelt. The 22nd

Amendment to the Constitution was also passed to prohibit having 12/16 years

of one man. But I think any critic of Roosevelt would've said even people

who, as my father used to say-- " Roosevelt ah terrible man. Terrible man. "

They might've hated his policies but they never would've accused him of

being anything other than brilliant.

 

Ferdinand Eberstadt now, remember that history. Ferdinand Eberstadt writes

to Walter Lippmann and he write-- he writes I believe in 1953 if I recall

Walter Lippmann being-- that columnist who didn't mind commenting on

anything. And Ferdinand says to Lippmann, " I understand that this may be a

more effective process, that a few men making a decision maybe a more

effective process, a secretive process may be very efficient. " But suppose

we get a dumb man?

 

Suppose we get people who can't make good decisions as FDR was pretty good

at. I'm worried and I would rather have the discussion and debate in the

process we've designed than I would a dictate from a dumb strongman. And

that dumb strongman is his felicitous phrase.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: You're worried that we not have come to that but that

we're heading down this path of--

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Oh I think it's come to that. I think we've had some

decisions at this administration that were more or less dictates. We've had

a decision that the Constitution as read by Alberto Gonzales, John Yoo and a

few other very selected administration lawyers doesn't pertain the way it

has pertained for 200-plus years. A very ahistorical reading of the

Constitution.

 

And these people marshal such stellar lights as-- Alexander Hamilton. They

haven't even read Federalist Six. I'm sure they haven't. Where Alexander

Hamilton lays down his markers about the dangers of a dictate-issuing chief

executive. This is not the way America was intended to be run by its

founders and it is not the interpretation of the Constitution that any of

the founders as far as I read the Federalist Papers and other discussions

about their views would have d to. This is an interpretation of the

constitution that is outlandish and as I said, clearly ahistorical.

 

DAVID BRANCACCIO: And if the system were shown to work that might be one

thing. But-- in the case of recent US for--

 

LAWRENCE WILKERSON: Dictatorships work on occasion. You're right.

Dictatorships do work but I-- I'm like Ferdinand Eberstadt. I'd prefer to

see the squabble of democracy to the efficiency of dictators.

 

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