LANG: DRINKING THE KOOL-AID

DRINKING THE KOOL-AID

W. Patrick Lang

Col. Lang is president of Global Resources, Inc. and former defense intelligence officer at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA).

hroughout my long service life in preferable to living under their control. He the Department of Defense, first called together his followers in the town as an army officer and then as a square and explained the situation to them. Tmember of the Defense Intelli- There were a few survivors, who all said gence Senior Executive Service, there was afterward that within the context of the a phrase in common usage: “I will fall on “group-think” prevailing in the village, it my sword over that.” It meant that the sounded quite reasonable. Jim Jones then speaker had reached a point of internal invited all present to drink from vats of commitment with regard to something that Kool-Aid containing lethal doses of poison. his superiors wanted him to do and that he Nearly all did so, without physical coercion. intended to refuse even though this would Parents gave their children the poison and be career suicide. The speaker preferred then drank it themselves. Finally Jones career death to the loss of personal honor. drank. Many hundreds died with him. This phrase is no longer widely in use. What does drinking the Kool-Aid mean What has taken its place is far more today? It signifies that the person in sinister in its meaning and implications. “I question has given up personal integrity and drank the Kool-Aid” is what is now said. has succumbed to the prevailing group- Those old enough to remember the think that typifies policymaking today. This Jonestown tragedy know this phrase all too person has become “part of the problem, well. Jim Jones, a self-styled “messiah” not part of the solution.” from the United States, lured hundreds of What was the “problem”? The innocent and believing followers to Guyana, sincerely held beliefs of a small group of where he built a village, isolated from the people who think they are the “bearers” of world, in which his Utopian view of the a uniquely correct view of the world, universe would be played out. He con- sought to dominate the foreign policy of the trolled all news, regulated all discourse and United States in the Bush 43 administra- expression of opinion, and shaped behavior tion, and succeeded in doing so through a to his taste. After a time, his paranoia practice of excluding all who disagreed grew unmanageable and he “foresaw” that with them. Those they could not drive from “evil” forces were coming to threaten his government they bullied and undermined “paradise.” He decided that these forces until they, too, had drunk from the vat. were unstoppable and that death would be What was the result? The war in Iraq.

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It is not anything like over yet, and the tion. Insiders knew it all along. State- body count is still mounting. As of March ments made by the Bush administration 2004, there were 554 American soldiers often seem to convey the message that dead, several thousand wounded, and more Iraq only became a focus of attention after than 15,000 Iraqis dead (the Pentagon is the terrorist attacks on 9/11. The evidence not publicizing the number). The recent points in another direction. PBS special on Frontline concerning Iraq Sometime in the spring of 2000, mentioned that senior military officers had Stephen Hadley, now Condoleeza Rice’s said of General Franks, “He had drunk the deputy at the National Security Council Kool-Aid.” Many intelligence officers have (NSC), briefed a group of prominent told the author that they too drank the Republican party policymakers on the Kool-Aid and as a result consider them- national-security and foreign-policy agenda selves to be among the “walking dead,” of a future George W. Bush administration. waiting only for retirement and praying for Hadley was one of a group of senior an early release that will allow them to go campaign policy advisers to then-Texas away and try to forget their dishonor and Governor Bush known collectively as “the the damage they have done to the intelli- Vulcans.” The group, in addition to gence services and therefore to the Hadley, included Rice, Paul Wolfowitz and republic. Richard Perle and had been assembled by What we have now is a highly cor- George Shultz and Dick Cheney beginning rupted system of intelligence and in late 1998, when Bush first launched his policymaking, one twisted to serve specific presidential bid. group goals, ends and beliefs held to the Hadley’s briefing shocked a number of point of religious faith. Is this different from the participants, according to Clifford the situation in previous administrations? Kiracofe, a professor at the Virginia Yes. The intelligence community (the Military Institute, who spoke to several of information collection and analysis functions, them shortly after the meeting. Hadley not “James Bond” covert action, which announced that the “number-one foreign- should properly be in other parts of the policy agenda” of a Bush administration government) is assigned the task of describ- would be Iraq and the unfinished business ing reality. The policy staffs and politicals in of removing Saddam Hussein from power. the government have the task of creating a Hadley also made it clear that the Israel- new reality, more to their taste. Neverthe- Palestine conflict, which had dominated the less, it is “understood” by the government Middle East agenda of the Clinton adminis- professionals, as opposed to the zealots, that tration, would be placed in the deep freeze. a certain restraint must be observed by the Dr. Kiracofe’s account of the pre- policy crowd in dealing with the intelligence election obsession of the Vulcans with the people. Without objective facts, decisions ouster of Saddam Hussein is corroborated are based on subjective drivel. Wars result by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul from such drivel. We are in the midst of O’Neill’s memory of the first meetings of one at present. the Bush National Security Council, which The signs of impending disaster were he attended in late January and early clear from the beginning of this administra- February of 2001. Ron Suskind’s book

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The Price of Loyalty, based on O’Neill’s is that no one present or in the background memory and notes, tells us of an NSC had any substantive knowledge of the meeting, ten days into the Bush administra- Middle East. It is one thing to have tion, at which both the Israel-Palestine and traveled to the area as a senior government Iraq situations were discussed. official. It is another to have lived there Referring to President Clinton’s efforts and worked with the people of the region to reach a comprehensive peace between for long periods of time. People with that the Israelis and the Palestinians, President kind of experience in the Muslim world are Bush declared, “Clinton overreached, and it strangely absent from Team Bush. In the all fell apart. That’s why we’re in trouble. game plan for the Arab and Islamic world, If the two sides don’t want peace, there’s most of the government’s veteran Middle no way we can force them. I don’t see East experts were largely shut out. The much we can do over there at this point. I Pentagon civilian bureaucracy of the Bush think it’s time to pull out of the situation.” administration, dominated by an inner circle Next, Condoleeza Rice raised the issue of think-tankers, lawyers and former of Iraq and the danger posed by Saddam’s Senate staffers, virtually hung out a sign, arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. A “Arabic Speakers Need Not Apply.” They good deal of the hour-long meeting was effectively purged the process of Ameri- taken up with a briefing by CIA Director cans who might have inadvertently devel- George Tenet on a series of aerial photo- oped sympathies for the people of the graphs of sites inside Iraq that “might” be region. producing WMD. Tenet admitted that Instead of including such veterans in there was no firm intelligence on what was the planning process, the Bush team opted going on inside those sites, but at the close for amateurs brought in from outside the of the meeting, President Bush tasked Executive Branch who tended to share the Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld views of many of President Bush’s earliest and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Hugh foreign-policy advisors and mentors. Shelton to begin preparing options for the Because of this hiring bias, the American use of U.S. ground forces in the northern people got a Middle East planning process and southern no-fly zones in Iraq to support dominated by “insider” discourse among an insurgency to bring down the Saddam longtime colleagues and old friends who regime. As author Ron Suskind summed it ate, drank, talked, worked and planned only up: “Meeting adjourned. Ten days in, and with each other. Most of these people it was about Iraq. Rumsfeld had said little, already shared attitudes and concepts of Cheney nothing at all, though both men how the Middle East should be handled. clearly had long entertained the idea of Their continued association only reinforced overthrowing Saddam.” If this was a their common beliefs. This created an decision meeting, it was strange. It ended environment in which any shared belief in a presidential order to prepare contin- could become sacrosanct and unchallenge- gency plans for war in Iraq. able. A situation like this is, in essence, a Surely, this was not the first time these war waiting for an excuse to happen. If people had considered this problem. One there is no “imminent threat,” one can be interesting thing about those at the meeting invented, not as a matter of deliberate

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deception, but rather as an artifact of group tion as leading figures of the politically self-delusion. In normal circumstances, appointed civilian bureaucracy in the there is a flow of new talent into the Pentagon and in the Office of the Vice government that melds with the old timers President. in a process both dynamic and creative. Those ties paid off. The Information- This does not seem to have happened in Collection Program, launched in the early the Bush 43 administration. Instead, the months of the Bush administration, was newcomers behaved as though they had aimed at providing funds to the INC for seized control of the government in a silent recruiting defectors from Saddam’s military coup. They tended to behave in such a and secret police, and making them avail- way that civil servants were made to feel able to American intelligence. But what the that somehow they were the real enemy, program really did was to provide a steady barely tolerated and under suspicion. stream of raw information useful in chal- There seemed to be a general feeling lenging the collective wisdom of the among the newcomers that professional intelligence community where the “War intelligence people somehow just did not with Iraq” enthusiasts disagreed with the “get it.” To add to the discomfort, the new intelligence agencies. If the president and Bush team began to do some odd things. Congress were to be sold the need for war, information had to be available with which INFORMATION COLLECTION to argue against what was seen as the lack Early in the Bush 43 administration, of imagination and timidity of regular actions began that clearly reflected a intelligence analysts. To facilitate the flow predisposition to place regime change in of such “information” to the president, a Iraq at the top of the foreign-policy dedicated apparatus centered in the Office agenda. Sometime in January 2001, the of the Vice President created its own Iraqi National Congress (INC), the opposi- intelligence office, buried in the recesses of tion group headed by Ahmed Chalabi, the Pentagon, to “stovepipe” raw data to began receiving U.S. State Department the White House, to make the case for war funds for an effort called the “Information- on the basis of the testimony of self- Collection Program.” Under the Clinton interested émigrés and exiles. administration, some money had been given At the time of the first Gulf War in to Iraqi exiles for what might be called 1991, I was the defense intelligence officer agit-prop activities against Saddam’s for the Middle East in the Defense Intelli- government, but the INC (Chalabi) had not gence Agency. This meant that I was in been taken very seriously. They had a bad charge of all DIA substantive business for reputation for spending money freely with the region. In discussions at the time of the very little to show for it. The CIA had victorious end of that campaign and the concluded that Chalabi and his INC subsequent Shia and Kurdish revolts in colleagues were not to be trusted with Iraq, it became abundantly clear that the taxpayers’ money. Nevertheless, Chalabi same people who later made up the war had longstanding ties to a group of well- party in the Bush 43 administration were established anti-Saddam American activists not completely reconciled to the failure of who were installed by the Bush administra- U.S. forces to overthrow the Saddam

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regime. In spite of the lack of U.N. Before coming to the United States to sanction for such an operation and the obtain a doctorate, Chalabi lived in Jordan, probable long-term costs of the inevitable Lebanon and Britain. He returned to American occupation of Iraq, the group Beirut after obtaining his doctorate, but in later known as the neocons seemed deeply 1977, he moved to Jordan and established a embittered by the lack of decisive action to new company, the Petra Bank, which grew remove the Iraqi dictator. Soon after the into the second largest commercial bank in dust settled on Operation Desert Storm, the the country. Twelve years later, the first Bush administration helped launch the Jordanian government took over the bank Iraqi National Congress (INC). The INC and charged Chalabi, who fled the country, was initially an umbrella of anti-Saddam with embezzling $70 million. In 1992, groups largely composed of Kurdish and Chalabi was tried and convicted in absentia Shia organizations. In the beginning, the and sentenced to 22 years at hard labor. CIA provided seed money as a result of One of the persistent stories concerning presidential direction, and a private consult- this scandal is that Chalabi’s Petra Bank ing firm, the Rendon Group, provided the was involved in arms sales to Iran during initial public-relations support. To this day, the Iran-Iraq War, and that Saddam one of the Rendon advisors to the INC, Hussein discovered this and pressured Francis Brooke, serves as the INC’s chief King Hussein of Jordan to crack down on Washington lobbyist. Chalabi. Chalabi’s American connections played Shortly after his hasty departure from a dominant role in the INC’s evolution over Jordan, Chalabi, with the backing of his the next dozen years. At the University of neocon allies in Washington, most notably, Chicago, Chalabi had been a student of Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle and Profes- Albert Wohlstetter, a hard-line Utopian sor Bernard Lewis of Princeton, helped nuclear-war planner who had been the launch the INC. Chalabi had first been dissertation adviser to another University introduced to Perle and Wolfowitz in 1985 of Chicago Ph.D., Paul Wolfowitz. by their mutual mentor, Albert Wohlstetter. Wohlstetter had also been a mentor to Bernard Lewis met Chalabi in 1990 and Richard Perle. In the summer of 1969, soon thereafter asked his own allies inside Wohlstetter arranged for both Wolfowitz the Bush 41 administration, including and Perle to work for the short-lived Wolfowitz’s Pentagon aide Zalmay Committee to Maintain a Prudent Defense Khalilzad, to help boost the Iraqi exile. Policy, a Washington-based group co- Another future Bush 43 Iraq War player founded by two icons of American Cold also met Chalabi about that time. General War policy, Dean Acheson and Paul Nitze. Wayne Downing was first introduced to Wolfowitz and Perle remained close Chalabi in 1991, when Downing com- collaborators from that time forward. manded the Joint Special Operations Chalabi, an Iraqi Shia Arab, had fled Command (JSOC) at Fort Bragg, North Iraq in 1958, just after the overthrow of the Carolina. royal Hashemite government. His father In November 1993, Chalabi presented and grandfather had held cabinet posts in the newly inaugurated Clinton administra- the British-installed Hashemite regime. tion with a scheme for the overthrow of

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the Saddam Hussein regime. Dubbed became military “consultants” to Chalabi’s “End Game,” the plan envisioned a limited INC and then drafted their own updated revolt by an insurgent force of INC-led version of the Chalabi plan, now dubbed Kurds and Shiites in the oil regions around “the Downing Plan.” It was different in Basra in the south and Mosul and Kirkuk in name only. The Downing-Clarridge plan the north. The “End Game” scenario: at insisted that a “crack force” of no more the first sign of revolt against Saddam, than 5,000 INC troops, backed by a group there would be a full-scale insurrection by of former U.S. Army Special Forces military commanders, who would over- soldiers (Green Berets), could bring down throw the Saddam clique and install a the Iraq Army. “The idea from the begin- Washington- and Tel Aviv-friendly, INC- ning was to encourage defections of Iraqi dominated regime in Baghdad. The plan units,” Clarridge insisted to The Washing- was based on a belief that Iraq was ripe ton Post. “You need to create a nucleus, for revolt and that there were no units in something for people to defect to. If they the armed forces that would fight to could take Basra, it would be all over.” It preserve Saddam’s government. Since is difficult to understand how a retired the same units had fought to keep Saddam four-star army general could believe this to in power during the Kurdish and Shia be true. revolts of a few years before, it is difficult In subsequent congressional testimony, to see why the sponsors of End Game then-Central Command head General would have thought that. A limited effort Anthony Zinni (USMC) denounced the to implement End Game ended in disaster Downing scheme in no uncertain terms, in 1995, when the Iraqis did fight to defeat warning that it would lead to a “Bay of the rebels and the Iraqi Army killed over Goats,” adding that, by his most recent 100 INC combatants. From that point on, counts, there were 91 Iraqi opposition both the CIA and DIA considered Chalabi groups. None of them had “the viability to “persona non grata.” The CIA also overthrow Saddam.” Elsewhere he dropped all financial backing for Chalabi, mocked Chalabi and the INC as “some as the INC, once an umbrella group of silk-suited, Rolex-wearing guys in Lon- various opposition forces, degenerated into don.” Despite CIA and uniformed military little more than a cult of personality, repudiation of End Game, the Downing gathered together in London, where Plan and other variations on the same Chalabi and his small group of remaining theme, the neoconservative group contin- INC loyalists retreated. ued to crank out advocacy for Chalabi’s In spite of this, neoconservatives inside proposed revolution. the United States, largely in exile during the On February 19, 1998, a group of Clinton administration, succeeded in neocons calling themselves the Committee influencing the Congress enough to obtain for Peace and Security in the Gulf issued passage of the “Iraq Liberation Act of an “Open Letter to the President” (this 1998,” largely to revive Chalabi’s End was before the passage of the Iraq Libera- Game scheme. Now retired, Gen. Down- tion Act) calling for the implementation of ing, along with retired CIA officer Duane yet another revised plan for the overthrow “Dewey” Clarridge of Iran-contra fame, of Saddam. The letter was remarkable in

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that it adopted some of the very formula- neocons, many of whom would form the tions that would later be used by Vice core of the Bush administration’s national President Cheney and other current security apparatus: Elliot Abrams, Richard administration officials to justify the Armitage, John Bolton, Stephen Bryen, preventive war in Iraq that commenced on Douglas Feith, Frank Gaffney, Fred Ikle, March 20, 2003. The letter stated, Robert Kagan, Zalmay Khalilzad, William Kristol, Michael Ledeen, Bernard Lewis, Despite his defeat in the Gulf War, Peter Rodman, Donald Rumsfeld, Gary continuing sanctions, and the Schmitt, Max Singer, Casper Weinberger, determined effort of U.N. inspectors to Paul Wolfowitz, David Wurmser and Dov root out and destroy his weapons of Zakheim. Some of these gentlemen may mass destruction, Saddam Hussein have had cause to reconsider their gener- has been able to develop biological osity in signing this document. This was in and chemical munitions . . . . This poses a danger to our friends, our February 1998. A month after the release allies, and to our nation. of the letter, Paul Wolfowitz and Gen. Wayne Downing briefed a group of U.S. Equally striking were the recommenda- senators on the INC war scheme. The tions in the letter. Chapter and verse, the senators at the meeting may also have document called for the implementation of cause to regret their subsequent sponsor- the Downing Plan with a few added ship of the Iraq Liberation Act. This law wrinkles. After demanding that the Clinton clearly set the stage for renewed fighting in administration recognize a “provisional the Middle East in 2003. government of Iraq based on the principles and leaders of the Iraqi National Congress THE BUSH-CHENEY “CLEAN (INC),” the letter called for the creation of BREAK” INC-controlled “liberated zones” in the A core group of neoconservatives, north and south of the country; the lifting of including Vulcans Paul Wolfowitz and sanctions in those areas and the release of Richard Perle, came into the Bush adminis- billions of dollars of frozen Iraqi govern- tration fully committed to the overthrow of ment funds to the INC; the launching of a the Saddam Hussein regime in Baghdad as “systematic air campaign” against the the number-one foreign-policy priority for Republican Guard divisions and the mili- the United States, but they found it neces- tary-industrial infrastructure of Iraq; and sary to spend much of the first nine months the prepositioning of U.S. ground-force in bureaucratic combat with the State equipment “so that, as a last resort, we Department, the Joint Chiefs of Staff and have the capacity to protect and assist the the CIA, all of whom remained anti-Saddam forces in the northern and unconvinced that Saddam posed any southern parts of Iraq.” serious threat to American strategic The letter was co-authored by former interests. At the first NSC meeting of the Congressman Stephen Solarz (D-NY) and new administration, Colin Powell argued Richard Perle. The signers included some that the existing sanctions regime against people merely sympathetic to the cause of Iraq was ineffective, and he promoted the Iraqi freedom and a pantheon of Beltway idea of a change to “smart sanctions.”

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These would zero in on vital military rather than against the Afghan strongholds technologies that might enable Saddam to of Osama Bin Laden’s al-Qaeda, was rebuild his military machine, which had rejected at the Camp David session, and been devastated by Desert Storm, a two days later, on September 17, President decade of sanctions, no-fly-zone bombing Bush signed a two-and-a-half page direc- sorties, six years of U.N. inspections, and tive marked “Top Secret,” which spelled the 1998 Operation Desert Fox 70-hour out the plan to go to war against Afghani- bombing campaign. stan. The document also ordered the Arguments like this were hard to deal Pentagon to begin preparing military with for those completely convinced of the options for an invasion of Iraq. necessity of a new government in Instantly, the neocon apparatus inside Baghdad. But Colin Powell cast a mighty the Pentagon and in the office of Vice shadow on the American political scene, President Dick Cheney seized upon the and his military credentials were formi- opportunity represented by the authoriza- dable. If there had not been a cataclysmic tion. On September 19, 2001, the Defense event that tipped the balance, it is possible Policy Board (DPB) convened a closed- that the war party would never have won door meeting to discuss Iraq. Vulcan the struggle to have their point of view Richard Perle chaired the DPB. In the accepted as policy. It was the attacks on past, the board had been recruited from New York and Washington on September defense experts from both parties and with 11, 2001, that provided the neocons with a broad range of views. In contrast, the opportunity to turn dreams into reality. Perle’s DPB had become a neocon In a war-cabinet meeting at the presidential sanctuary, including such leading advocates retreat at Camp David four days after the of war on Saddam as former Speaker of 9/11 attacks, Deputy Defense Secretary the House Newt Gingrich (R-GA), former Paul Wolfowitz made an appeal for an CIA Director James R. Woolsey (a immediate American military invasion of Democrat, but nevertheless a longstanding Iraq in retaliation for the terrorist attacks. member of the neocon group), former arms Wolfowitz argued that attacking Afghani- control adviser Ken Adelman, former stan would be uncertain. He worried about Undersecretary of Defense Fred C. Ikle, 100,000 American troops getting bogged and former Vice President Dan Quayle. down in mountain fighting in Afghanistan Wolfowitz and Defense Secretary Donald indefinitely. In contrast, he said, Iraq was Rumsfeld attended the September 19 a brittle, oppressive regime that might session. The speakers at the event, who break easily. He said that Iraq was “do- aggressively advocated U.S. military action able.” He estimated that there was a 10- to overthrow Saddam Hussein, were 50 percent chance Saddam was involved in Ahmed Chalabi and Princeton professor the September 11 terrorist attacks (this, of Bernard Lewis. course, is a judgment that he was not One consequence of the DPB meeting involved). The United States “would have was that former CIA Director Woolsey to go after Saddam at some time if the war was secretly dispatched by Wolfowitz to on terrorism was to be taken seriously.” London to seek out evidence that Saddam Wolfowitz’s pitch for war against Iraq, Hussein was behind the 9/11 attacks and

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the earlier 1993 attack on the World Trade as the “Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Center. Part of Woolsey’s mission in- Group.” volved making contact with INC officials This kind of single-minded intensity in to get their help in further substantiating the pursuing his goals was nothing new link between hijacker Mohammed Atta and for Feith. In July 1996, he had been a Iraqi intelligence. This theory was the principal author of a study prepared for brainchild of Laurie Mylroie, a scholar Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin completely “in tune” with neocon thinking. Netanyahu. This paper advocated abroga- According to news accounts at the time, tion of the Oslo accords and the launch of Woolsey’s actions drew the attention of a new regional balance-of-power scheme police officials in Wales, who contacted the based on American-Israeli military domi- U.S. embassy to confirm that Woolsey was nance with a subsidiary military role for on “official U.S. government business,” as Turkey and Jordan. The study was he claimed. It was only then that Secre- produced by the “Institute for Advanced tary of State Colin Powell and CIA Direc- Strategic and Political Studies” (IASPS), a tor Tenet found out about Woolsey’s Jerusalem-based Likud-party-linked think mission. tank, and was called “A Clean Break: A By October 2001, Undersecretary of New Strategy for Securing the Realm.” In Defense for Policy Douglas Feith had it, Feith and company wrote, “Israel can established a two-man intelligence cell shape its strategic environment, in coopera- inside his office with the job of combing the tion with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, intelligence community’s classified files to containing and even rolling back Syria. establish a pattern of evidence linking This effort can focus on removing Saddam Saddam Hussein to al-Qaeda and the 9/11 Hussein from power in Iraq – an important attacks. The permanent, statutory agen- Israeli strategic objective in its own right – cies of the national intelligence community as a means of foiling Syria’s regional could not support such beliefs on the basis ambitions.” The study-group leader was of what they saw in their own files. Richard Perle. Other members of the Therefore, some other means was sought team included Charles Fairbanks Jr., a to obtain the conclusion that the Iraqi longtime friend of Paul Wolfowitz since government had been involved in 9/11. their student days together at the Univer- The team’s mission was to cull the massive sity of Chicago; and David Wurmser, an holdings of the intelligence database and to American Enterprise Institute Middle East uncover intelligence reports accumulated fellow, and his wife, Meyrav Wurmser, on the subject of Iraq-al-Qaeda links. The who headed the Washington, DC office of issue of whether or not the intelligence the Middle East Media Research Institute agencies considered these reports to be (MEMRI). Her boss in that group was a true was thought immaterial. Not surpris- retired Israeli intelligence officer, Yigal ingly, some of the sweetest cherries picked Carmon. On July 8, 1996, Richard Perle in the data searches came from informants presented the “Clean Break” document to provided by the INC’s “Information Netanyahu, who was visiting Washington. Collection Program.” The team in Feith’s Two days later, the Israeli prime minister office was later more formally constituted unveiled the document as his own regional

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foreign-policy design in a speech before a think the product they receive from the joint session of the U.S. Congress. agency is always what it should be.” The initial team selected by Feith to Gerecht was then consulting with the conduct the cherry picking data search in Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group. the Pentagon, consisted of “Clean Break” In September 2001, the State Department co-author David Wurmser and Michael inspector general issued a scathing audit of Maloof. Maloof was a career Pentagon the INC, charging that the group had failed bureaucrat who had joined forces with to account for how it was spending its U.S. Perle during the Reagan years, when Perle government cash. “The Information was a Pentagon official. At that time Collection Project” was singled out as one Maloof was a deputy to Stephen Bryen. of the particular problem cases. According The existence of the Wurmser-Maloof unit to the audit, there was no accounting for was kept a secret within the Pentagon for how informants were paid or what benefit more than a year. Only on October 24, had been derived from their work. As a 2002, did Defense Secretary Rumsfeld result of the audit, the State Department formally announce that he had commis- placed severe restrictions on the INC, sioned what The Washington Post called suspended some payouts, and insisted that “a small team of defense officials outside an outside auditor co-sign for all funds regular intelligence channels to focus on drawn by the group. unearthing details about Iraqi ties with al- It was not until June 2002 that the Qaeda and other terrorist networks.” The State Department loosened the restrictions unveiling of the “Policy Counterterrorism on the INC’s cash flows. By then, the Evaluations Group,” as Pentagon officials drive for a war against Iraq was in high dubbed it, coincided with a move by gear inside the Pentagon civilian bureau- Rumsfeld to directly take over the financ- cracy, and Feith and company (as opposed ing and management of the INC’s “Infor- to the State Department) sought direct mation Collection Project” from the State control over the INC, particularly the Department, which had developed serious informant program. reservations about maintaining an “off the reservation” intelligence operation. NO SADDAM-AL-QAEDA TIES Rumsfeld defensively told the Penta- The overwhelming view within the gon press corps on October 24, 2002, “Any professional U.S. intelligence community suggestion that it’s an intelligence-gathering was (and is) that there was no Saddam activity or an intelligence unit of some sort, Hussein link to the 9/11 terrorists. Admiral I think would be a misunderstanding of it.” Bob Inman, who served in both Demo- But former CIA case officer and AEI cratic and Republican administrations as fellow Reuel Marc Gerecht, a relatively head of the Office of Naval Intelligence, late recruit to the neocon cause, could Director of the National Security Agency barely conceal his enthusiasm in discussing and Deputy Director of the CIA, bluntly the group: “The Pentagon is setting up the stated, capability to assess information on Iraq in areas that in the past might have been the There was no tie between Iraq and 9/ realm of the agency (CIA). They don’t 11, even though some people tried to

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postulate one . . . . Iraq did support linkage. Laurie Mylroie promoted a lot terror in Israel, but I know of no of this, and people who came in [to the instance in which Iraq funded direct, Bush Administration], particularly in deliberate terrorist attacks on the the Defense Department – Wolfowitz United States. and Feith – were acolytes, promoting her book, The Study of Revenge, Vincent Cannistraro, who headed the particularly in the Office of Special CIA’s counterterrorism office before his Plans, and the Secretary’s Policy retirement in 1990, maintains close ties to Office. In any event, they already had the intelligence community to this day. He their preconceived notions….So the intelligence, and I can speak directly debunks the Saddam-9/11 claims: to the CIA part of it, the intelligence community’s assessments were never The policymakers already had considered adequate. conceits they had adopted without reference to current intelligence THE OFFICE OF SPECIAL PLANS estimates. And those conceits were: Some time before the 9/11 attacks, Saddam was evil, a bad man, he had evil intentions, and they were greatly Vice President Cheney dispatched one of influenced by neoconservative beliefs his Middle East aides, William Luti, over to that Saddam had been involved with the Pentagon as deputy undersecretary of the sponsorship of terrorism in the defense for Near East and South Asian United States since as early as 1993, affairs (NESA). Luti, a retired Navy with the first World Trade Center captain, is a member of the neocon group, bombing. . . . None of this is true, of recruited by Albert Wohlstetter. They had course, but these were their conceits, met in the early 1990s, when Luti was part and they continue in large measure to of an executive panel of advisers to the be the conceits of a lot of people like chief of naval operations. Jim Woolsey. Parenthetically, I received what seems This, he added, is not the view of the to have been an exploratory recruiting visit intelligence community: from Dr. Wohlstetter and his wife, Roberta. In 1992, the Wohlstetters unex- No, no, no. The FBI did a pretty pectedly arrived at my doorstep at the thorough investigation of the first Pentagon with the news that a mutual World Trade Center bombing, and friend, now a senior personage in the while it’s true that their policy was to Pentagon, had told them to visit me. There treat terrorism as a law-enforcement followed an hour and a half of conversation problem, nevertheless, they under- involving European and world history, stood how the first World Trade philosophy and a discussion of the various Center bombing was supported . . . illustrious people who were friends and and had linkages back to Osama Bin associates of the Wohlstetters. Roberta Laden. He was of course, not indicted Wohlstetter went so far as to show me . . . because the FBI until recently believed that you prosecuted perpe- various books that they and their friends trators, not the sponsors. In any had written. An unspoken question event they knew there was no Saddam seemed to hang in the air. After a while

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they became impatient with my responses of a new arsenal of mini-nuclear weapons, and left, never to return. Clearly, I had to be used against Third World targets failed the test. At the time, I only vaguely thought to be developing WMD arsenals. knew who these people were and did not Midway through 2001, Luti retired from really care, but since they have become so the Navy and took a civilian Pentagon post important to this story, I have inquired of as head of NESA. Under normal circum- various people who might have received stances, NESA is a Pentagon backwater, similar visits and found that this was not responsible primarily for arranging bilateral uncommon. An old academic colleague of meetings with military counterparts from a Wohlstetter has also told me that the region stretching “from Bangladesh to couple had done similar things in the Marakesh.” Before the recent war, the university setting. NESA staff worked daily with the defense In any case, Luti landed a job as a intelligence officer for the Near East, South military aide to Speaker of the House Asia and Counterterrorism. This was the Gingrich from 1996 to 1997. There, he most senior officer in DIA for that region worked with Air Force Col. William and the person responsible for seeing that Bruner, another active-duty military officer NESA was well provided with intelligence on loan to the speaker. Still on active duty information. During the early Luti period at when the Bush 43 administration came into NESA, the DIO was Bruce Hardcastle. office, Luti worked in the vice president’s There were DIOs for each of the major office as part of a shadow National regions of the world; Hardcastle happened Security Council staff, under the direction to be the man for the Middle East. I knew of Cheney’s chief of staff and chief policy Hardcastle and respected his work. He aide, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby. had been a middle-level analyst in DIA Libby was a Yale Law School protégé when I held the job of DIO for the Middle of Paul Wolfowitz. Beginning in the 1980s, East. Libby followed Wolfowitz into the Reagan Abruptly last year, the Defense and Bush 41 administrations. When he Department dismantled the entire DIO was not working for Uncle Sam or system. It now seems likely that frictions Wolfowitz, Libby was the law partner/ that developed between Luti and protégé of Richard Nixon’s personal Hardcastle were a significant factor in this attorney, Leonard Garment. Under his destruction of a very worthwhile intelli- direction, for a period of 16 years, on and gence-analytic system. Historically, the off, Libby was the attorney for fugitive DIO oversaw all of the regional analysts swindler and Israeli Mossad agent, Marc and assets of DIA, but reported directly to Rich. In the first Bush administration, the director of the DIA, avoiding bureau- Libby served with Wolfowitz in the policy cratic and managerial duties while retaining office of then-Defense Secretary Cheney, responsibility for all analysis within his or where he gained some notoriety as one of her geographical domain. The roots of the the principal authors, along with Wolfowitz friction between Hardcastle and Luti were and Zalmay Khalilzad, of the draft 1992 straightforward: Hardcastle brought with “Defense Planning Guidance” that advo- him the combined wisdom of the profes- cated preventive war and the development sional military intelligence community. The

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community had serious doubts about the nel were participating, along with officials lethality of the threat from Saddam from the DIA and CIA, in the debriefings Hussein, the terrorism links and the status of Chalabi-delivered informants. John of the Iraqi WMD programs. Luti could Trigilio, a DIA officer assigned to NESA, not accept this. He knew what he wanted: confirmed it to her in a heated discussion. to bring down Saddam Hussein. Hardcastle could not accept the very idea I argued with him (Tregilio) after the of allowing a desired outcome to shape the president’s Cincinnati speech (in results of analysis. October 2002). I told him that the Even before the Iraq desk at NESA president had made a number of was expanded into the “Office of Special statements that were just not sup- ported by the intelligence. He said Plans” in August 2002, Luti had trans- that the president’s statements are formed NESA into a “de facto” arm of the supported by intelligence, and he vice president’s office. While the normal would finally say, ‘We have sources chain of command for NESA ran through that you don’t have.’ I took it to mean Undersecretary for Policy Feith and up to the sources that Chalabi was bringing Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz and Secretary in for debriefing. . . . Trigilio told me Rumsfeld, Luti made it clear that his chain he participated in a number of de- of command principally ran directly up to briefs, conducted in hotels downtown, Scooter Libby, Cheney’s chief of staff. or wherever, of people that Chalabi We are lucky enough to have a description brought in. These debriefs had Trigilio from OSP, but also CIA and of this relationship from a participant in the DIA participated. . . . If it (the informa- business of the office itself. tion) sounded good, it would go Lt. Col. (ret.) Karen Kwiatkowski straight to the OVP or elsewhere. I (USAF), who served at NESA from June don’t put it out of possibility that the 2002 to March 2003, provides an interest- information would go straight to the ing perspective. She says she was media because of the (media’s) close “shocked to learn that Luti was effectively relationship with some of the working for Libby . . . . In one of the first neoconservatives. So this information staff meetings that I attended there,” she would make it straight out into the recalled recently, “Bill Luti said, ‘Well, did knowledge base without waiting for intelligence (analysts) to come by with you get that thing over to Scooter? their qualifications and reservations. Scooter wants this, and somebody’s got to get it over to him, and get that up to him NESA/OSP apparently carried the right away.’ After the meeting, I asked cherry-picking methods of the smaller one of my co-workers, who’d been there Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group longer, ‘Who is this Scooter?’ I was told, to a new level of effectiveness, according `That’s Scooter Libby over at the OVP to Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski, (Office of the Vice President). He’s the Vice President’s chief of staff.’ Later I At the OSP, what they were doing was came to understand that Cheney had put looking at all the intelligence they Luti there.” could find on WMD. That was the Kwiatkowski learned that OSP person- focal point, picking bits and pieces

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that were the most inflammatory, Kwiatkowski also knows a lot about removing any context that might have Luti’s efforts to exclude DIO Bruce been provided in the original intelli- Hardcastle from the briefings to foreign gence report, that would have caused military officials. Luti ordered that you to have some pause in believing it Hardcastle was not to be included in or reflected doubts that the intelli- briefings on Iraq, its WMD, and its links to gence community had, so if the intelligence community had doubts, terrorism. Instead, the Iraq desk of NESA, those would be left out. . . . They and later the Office of Special Plans, would take items that had occurred would produce “talking points” which, Luti many years ago, and put them in the insisted, were to be the only briefings present tense, make it seem like they provided on Iraq. Kwiatkowski says, occurred not many years ago . . . . But they would not talk about the dates; With the talking points, many of the they would say things like, ‘He has propagandistic bullets that were given continued since that time’ and ‘He to use in papers for our superiors to could do it tomorrow,’ which of inform them – internal propaganda – course, wasn’t true. . . .The other thing many of those same phrases and they would do would be to take assumptions and tones, I saw in Vice unrelated events that were reported in President Cheney’s speeches and the totally unrelated ways and make president’s speeches. So I got the connections that the intelligence impression that those talking points community had not made. This was were not just for us, but were the core primarily in discussing Iraq’s activities of an overall agenda for a disciplined and how they might be related to al- product, beyond the Pentagon. Over Qaeda or other terrorist groups that at the vice president’s office and the might be against us, or against Israel Weekly Standard, the media, and the . . . . These kinds of links would be neoconservative talking heads and made. They would be made casually, that kind of thing, all on the same and they would be made in a calcu- sheet of music. lated way to form an image that is definitely not the image that anyone Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski identified Abram reading the original reports would Shulsky as the principal author of the have. The summaries that we would NESA/OSP talking points on Iraq. Shulsky see from Intelligence did not match the kinds of things that OSP was putting was one of the Pentagon’s “defense out. So that is what I call propaganda intellectuals” who had been involved on the development. It goes beyond the periphery of intelligence work since the manipulation of intelligence to late 1970s, when he first came to Washing- propaganda development. ton as an aide to Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-NY). He also worked for A number of people have made the Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson (D-WA.) observation that Lt. Col. Kwiatkowski did Shulsky shared a common background with not have sufficient access to have seen Paul Wolfowitz. Both men had graduated what was going on with intelligence from the University of Chicago and had materials. The previous paragraphs would studied under Leo Strauss. In 1999, seem to disprove that idea. Shulsky, along with his fellow Chicago

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alumnus and Strauss protégé Gary Schmitt, instrumental in founding). In a clumsy act founder of the “Project for the New of indiscretion, the letter’s author explained American Century” (PNAC), wrote an that there was already a direct flow of essay entitled, “Leo Strauss and the World information from the INC into the hands of of Intelligence,” which attacked American Bill Luti and John Hannah, the latter being intelligence-community icon Sherman Kent Scooter Libby’s deputy in Cheney’s office. for failing to understand that all intelligence Armed with the INC product, Vice work ultimately comes down to deception President Cheney made a series of visits to and counterdeception. For Shulsky (as the CIA headquarters at Langley to expressed in his article), the goal of question agency analysts who were intelligence is to serve the needs of producing assessments that did not match policymakers in making possible the the material that had been funneled to him attainment of policy goals. Intelligence, he through Luti and Hannah. The vice wrote, “was the art of deception.” Shulsky president also made personal visits to many seems to have set out to use the OSP as members of Congress, to persuade them, in the means for providing the Bush adminis- the autumn of 2002, to grant the president tration policymakers all the ammunition the authority to go to war with Iraq. One they needed to get their desired results. leading Democratic senator says that Interestingly, neither Shulsky nor the great Cheney sat in his office and made what majority of the people employed at one now appear to be greatly exaggerated time or another by all these ad hoc intelli- claims about Saddam’s nuclear weapons gence groups were people with any program. The fear of Saddam’s possessing previous experience of intelligence work. a nuclear bomb compelled the senator to They were former congressional staffers, vote in favor of granting the war powers. scholars and activists of one kind or Part of the “Saddam bomb plot” tale another. They were people embarked on a came from Khadir Hamza, an Iraqi nuclear great adventure in pursuit of a goal, not scientist who defected in 1994 and settled craftsmen devoted to their art. in the United States through the assistance of the INC. Hamza initially went to work SUBVERTING AND SUBDUING THE for the Institute for Science and Interna- PROFESSIONALS tional Security, a think tank headed by Supporting the statements of former U.N. weapons inspector David Kwiatkowski and others about the pipeline Albright. According to a May 12, 2003, of unevaluated information that flowed New Yorker interview with Albright by straight into the hands of Vice President Seymour Hersh, Hamza and his boss Cheney and other key policymakers, there drafted a 1998 proposal for a book that is extant a June 2002 letter from the INC’s would have exposed how Saddam’s quest Washington office addressed to the Senate for a nuclear bomb had “fizzled.” There Appropriations Committee that argues for were no takers. But two years later, the transfer of the “Information Collection Hamza co-authored a very different book, Program” from the State Department to with Jeff Stein, vastly exaggerating the Defense Intelligence Agency’s De- Saddam’s nuclear weapons program. This, fense HUMINT Service (a service I was despite the fact that, in 1995, Saddam

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Hussein’s son-in-law, General Hussein The issue of the Niger yellowcake Kamel, who was the head of Iraq’s uranium precursor had been a point of weapons agency, escaped to Jordan with a controversy since late 2001, when the large collection of Iraqi government Italian secret service, SISMI, reported to documents showing how little was left of their American, British and Israeli counter- Iraqi WMD programs. Kamel was parts that they had obtained documents on interviewed by a team of U.N. weapons Niger government letterhead indicating that inspectors headed by Rolf Ekeus, chairman Iraq had attempted to purchase 500 tons of of the U.N. teams, and he confirmed that yellowcake. The yellowcake lead had the inspections had, in effect, uprooted been reported to the vice president by his most of what was left of the Iraqi WMD CIA daily-briefing officer, and Cheney had program after the 1991 Gulf War. tasked the CIA to dig deeper. Obviously, if It is telling that, in the more than two- the case could be made that Saddam was year run-up to the March 2003 invasion of aggressively seeking nuclear material, no Iraq, nobody in the Bush administration one in Congress could justifiably oppose sought to commission a National Intelli- war. The story proved to be a hoax. In gence Estimate (NIE) on Saddam February 2002, the CIA dispatched former Hussein’s WMD programs. Perhaps it is Ambassador Joseph Wilson to Niger to unsurprising that they did not want such an look into the report. Wilson had served in estimate. An estimate, if conducted over a several African countries, including Niger, period of months, would undoubtedly have and had also been the U.S. chargé revealed deep skepticism about the threat d’affaires in Baghdad, at the time of the posed by Saddam’s weapons program. It Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. He knew all the would have exposed major gaps in the players. After several days of meetings in intelligence picture, particularly since the Niger, he returned to Washington and was pullout of U.N. weapons inspectors from debriefed by the CIA. The yellowcake Iraq at the end of 1998, and it would have story simply did not check out. Case likely undercut the rush to war. It was only closed. as a result of intense pressure from Sen. Contrary to Wilson’s expectations, Bob Graham (D-FL.), chairman of the variations on the matter continued to creep Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, into policy speeches by top administration that the intelligence community was finally officials. Although CIA Director Tenet tasked, in September 2002, to produce an personally intervened to remove references NIE on Saddam’s WMD programs. The to the discredited African uranium story report was to be rushed to completion in from President Bush’s early October 2002 three weeks, so it could reach the desks of speech in Cincinnati, Ohio, promoting the the relevant congressional committee overthrow of Saddam Hussein, bogus members before a vote on war-powers yellowcake information appeared in a authorization scheduled for early October, December 19, 2002, State Department on the eve of the midterm elections. As “fact sheet” on Saddam’s failure to dis- the NIE went forward for approval, close his secret WMD programs. As we everyone knew that there were major all know, President Bush’s January 2003 problems with it. State of the Union speech contained the

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now infamous 16 words citing British views in the intelligence community. intelligence claims about Saddam’s seeking They could have read, for example, that uranium in Africa. the Department of Energy and the For Greg Thielmann, who retired in State Department INR believed that the September 2002 from his post as director aluminum tubes were not going into the nuclear weapons program and of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military instead were going into conventional Affairs Office at the State Department’s artillery rockets. And, if one assumes a Intelligence Bureau, the issue of the modicum of intelligence understanding aluminum tubes was an even more egre- at the NSC, they should know that the gious case of policymakers’ contamination agency that is most able to judge on of the intelligence process than the Wilson this would be the Department of yellowcake affair. His position is, Energy. They control all the laborato- ries that actually over the years have What was done with the aluminum enriched uranium and built centrifuges. tubes was far worse than what was done with the uranium from Africa. Thielmann also had an important Because the intelligence community observation about the Office of Special had debated over a period of months, Plans and the other intelligence boutiques and involved key scientists and that Cheney and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz engineers in the National Laboratories had established inside the Pentagon’s – and foreigners as well – in a long policy shop: and detailed discussion. The way I would have characterized it, if you had It was a stealth organization. They asked me in July 2002, when I turned didn’t play in the intelligence commu- over the leadership of my office, there nity proceedings that our office was a growing consensus in the participated in. When the intelligence intelligence community that this kind community met as a community, there of aluminum was not suitable for the was no OSP represented in these nuclear weapons program. So I was sessions. Because, if they had done really quite shocked to see – I was just that, they would have had to subject retired – the National Intelligence their views to peer review. Why do Estimate say that the majority of that when you can send stuff right in agencies came to the opposite to the vice president? interpretation, that it was going into the nuclear weapons program. THE NIE CONTAMINATION Even with this “majority” view, Two other major INC-foisted fabrica- Thielmann points out that anyone at the tions made their way into the NIE and White House or the National Security from there into policy speeches by top Council who was genuinely seeking the Bush administration officials, including the truth would have seen through the subter- president, the vice president and the fuge and drawn the proper conclusion: secretaries of Defense and State. The first involved claims that Iraq had mobile If they had read the NIE in October, it is biological-weapons labs that could produce transparent that there were different deadly agents. The declassified version of the October 2002 NIE stated, “Baghdad

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has mobile facilities for producing bacterial featured in Colin Powell’s Security Council and toxin BW agents; these facilities can presentation four months later. Powell evade detection and are highly survivable. warned the Council then that “Iraq could Within three to six months, these units use these small UAVs, which have a probably could produce an amount of agent wingspan of only a few meters, to deliver equal to the total that Iraq produced in the biological agents to its neighbors or, if years prior to the Gulf war.” The same transported, to other countries, including claim was a dramatic highlight of Colin the United States.” Powell’s February 5, 2003, presentation Yet the declassified version of the before the Security Council. October 2002 NIE, while reporting that But, a subsequent review of the “Baghdad’s UAVs could threaten Iraq’s intelligence files – long after the NIE had neighbors, U.S. forces in the Persian Gulf been produced – revealed that the sole and, if brought close to or into the United source for the mobile-lab story was an States, the U.S. homeland,” also noted that Iraqi military defector, a major, who had “the Director, Intelligence, Surveillance and been produced by the INC via the “Infor- Reconnaissance, US Air Force, does not mation Collection Program.” The CIA and agree that Iraq is developing UAVs DIA had both given warnings about the primarily intended to be delivery platforms defector, after concluding that he was a for chemical and biological warfare fabricator. But, as CIA Director Tenet (CBW) agents. The small size of Iraq’s would later admit in a February 2004 new UAV strongly suggests a primary role speech at Georgetown University, those of reconnaissance, although CBW delivery warnings fell on deaf ears. The fabrica- is an inherent capability.” Indeed, the tion judgment was shown to be correct specifications of the Iraqi UAVs, known to after the U.S. invasion, when two of the U.S. Air Force Intelligence, proved that mobile labs were captured. They were, as they were ill-suited for CBW dissemina- other Iraqi sources had claimed, mobile tion. According to several news accounts, facilities for producing hydrogen for even the formulation that “CBW delivery is weather balloons. an inherent capability” was foisted upon A somewhat different fiasco occurred the Air Force during the negotiating on the issue of the equally inflammatory sessions over the final wording of the NIE. claim that Iraq had unmanned airborne The subversion of the intelligence vehicles (UAVs), outfitted to deliver process was death by a thousand cuts, a biological and chemical weapons. Allega- cumulative process of badgering in which tions about the UAVs surfaced in early the pipeline of disinformation from the September 2002, prompting both CIA INC, through OSP, to the desk of the vice Director Tenet and Vice President Cheney president played a decisive role. to visit House and Senate leaders on the Vincent Cannistraro puts it this way: day Congress reconvened after the Labor Day recess to present their new “smoking Over a long period of time, there was a gun” argument for war. The UAV story subtle process of pressure and appeared in President Bush’s October 7, intimidation until people started giving 2002, speech in Cincinnati. It was also them what was wanted . . . . When the Senate Intelligence Committee

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interviewed, under oath, over 100 analysis that we’re receiving from the analysts, not one of them said, ‘I Pentagon says?’ That’s how you do changed my assessment because of it. You pressure people indirectly. pressure.’ . . . The environment was conditioned in such a way that the THE COUNTDOWN analyst subtly leaned toward the Why on earth didn’t [Saddam] let the conceits of the policymakers. . . .The inspectors in and avoid the war? intelligence community was vulnerable to the aggressiveness of – Sen. Pat Roberts, Chairman, Senate neoconservative policymakers, Select Committee on Intelligence, particularly at the Pentagon and at the quoted by Paul Krugman in a New VP’s office. As one analyst said to me, York Times, column February 6, 2004 ‘You can’t fight something with nothing, and those people had Sen. Pat Roberts of Kansas is the something. Whether it was right or Republican chairman of the Senate Select wrong, fraudulent or specious, it Committee on Intelligence, which is today almost didn’t make any difference, investigating the misuse of intelligence prior because the policymakers believed it to the Iraq war, the failures of intelligence, already, and if you didn’t have hard the Iraqi National Congress, and the Office countervailing evidence to persuade of Special Plans. The answer to his them, then you were at a loss.’ question is simple: Saddam did let the inspectors in, at a level of cooperation that Lt. Col. Dale Davis (USMC, ret.) was unprecedented. The question that concurs that the intelligence process was Senator Roberts should really be asking is, badly subverted by a “political operation.” Why didn’t it matter? Davis, through March 2004, headed It should have been a dire warning to International Programs at the Virginia the U.S. Congress when the man who had Military Institute. A fluent Arabic speaker, been convicted of lying to Congress during he has served throughout the Arab world. the Iran-contra affair – Elliot Abrams – Davis initially said that he did not think that was put in charge of the Middle East the intelligence analysts were pressured, section of the NSC staff. One underesti- “per se”: mated talent of the neocon group in the run-up to this war was its ability to manipu- They created an organization that late Congress. They were masters of the would give them the answers they wanted. Or at least piece together a game, having made the team in Washington very compelling case by rummaging in the 1970s on the staffs of two of the through all the various intelligence most powerful senators in recent decades, reports and picking out the best, the New York’s Patrick Moynihan and most juicy, but quite often the most Washington’s Henry “Scoop” Jackson. flimsy pieces of information. . . . By The old boy’s club – Abe Shulsky at OSP, creating the OSP, Cheney was able to Undersecretary of Defense Paul say, ‘Hey, look at what we’re getting Wolfowitz, Assistant Secretary of Defense out of OSP. How come you guys for Policy Douglas Feith, Middle East Desk aren’t doing as well? What is your Officer at the NSC Elliot Abrams, Defense response to what this alternative Policy Board Chairman Richard Perle –

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had not only worked together in their early programs. Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan government years in these two Senate has accused the administration, and offices, but they had stayed together as a especially CIA Director Tenet, of withhold- network through the ensuing decades, ing information because “the truth” – that floating around a small number of busi- the United States had withheld the loca- nesses and think tanks, including the tions of 21 high- and middle-priority sites – American Enterprise Institute and the might have slowed down the drive for war. openly neoimperialist Project for a New The truth might have convinced Congress American Century. The neocons were to take action to delay military action until openly contemptuous of Congress, as they the inspections were completed. were of the U.N. Security Council. And a The March 7, 2003, appearance by the number of tricks and manipulations of the chairmen of UNMOVIC (Hans Blix) and congressional process have now been the IAEA (Mohamed ElBaradei) before exposed. But was the trickery planned? the U.N. Security Council was a disaster Was it a well-orchestrated obfuscation, an for the neoconservatives. The Iraqis and accident or coincidence? What is the Saddam Hussein had “accelerated” evidence? cooperation with the United Nations, said First, there was the consistent refusal Dr. Blix. Blix told the Council that Iraq to provide witnesses and information to the had made a major concession: they had U.S. Senate, especially regarding the agreed to allow the destruction of the Al projected costs of the war and the lack of Samoud ballistic missiles. “We are not opportunities to question key players such watching the breaking of toothpicks,” Blix as General Jay Garner, who was appointed said. “Lethal weapons are being de- by the Defense Department to be the first stroyed. . . . The destruction undertaken head of the U.S. provisional authority in constitutes a substantial measure of Iraq. There was also the subtle hiding of disarmament – indeed, the first since the the objections of the Department of Energy middle of the 1990s.” and the State Department’s Bureau of The Al Samoud, a massive missile Intelligence and Research (INR) in the seven meters long weighing two tons with NIE of October 2002. One congressional its warhead, was being destroyed, without source explained that the classified NIE the slightest obstruction or even complaint was made available in its entirety to only a from the Iraqis. Major Corrine Heraud, a select few members of Congress. There French woman who served as the chief were verbal briefings and an elaborate weapons inspector for UNMOVIC in this process to access the document in a operation and who had also served from secure location. But it was never clear 1996 with UNSCOM, says that the level of that the 27-page unclassified version that cooperation from the Iraqis was unprec- was available to every office was missing edented, something that she never would any crucial information. have expected and did not encounter There were also false statements to during the 1996-98 inspections. Each Congress about providing the U.N. inspec- missile cost more than $1 million, estimates tors all the intelligence that might have Maj. Heraud, who also cautions that this helped them locate the Iraqi WMD and would be equivalent to a much higher

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amount in Western dollars, considering the ies. Then, ElBaradei told the press that an difficulty that Iraq encountered in buying IAEA staff member had, in fact, used the materials and parts, due to the U.N. common search engine Google to deter- sanctions. Yet, to President Bush, the mine, within hours, that the Niger docu- destruction of the Al Samoud, a missile ments, which had been passed on to the often mistaken in photographs for the U.S. embassy in Rome through an anony- better-known SCUD missile, was meaning- mous source, were fakes! Members of less. The missile destruction, said Bush, Congress then began to grumble. In light was a “campaign of deception.” For the of the contradictions, a bill was introduced U.N. inspectors, Bush’s words were a demanding that the administration disclose shock. “We didn’t know what to make of the intelligence reports that were the basis this,” an UNMOVIC official said. for the statements made by Bush, Cheney, “Blix came down hard on the Iraqis, Rumsfeld and Powell about the Iraqi and we actually were in the process of WMD threat. It was still locked in com- destroying all these Al Samoud missiles,” mittee when the war began. says Greg Thielman, the former head of The destruction of the Al Samoud the WMD section of INR. “As soon as missiles continued. It was not only mis- the Iraqis agreed to do that, I sighed a big siles, reports UNMOVIC chief weapons sigh of relief. I thought, the U.N. inspec- inspector Corrine Heroud, it was engines, tors are working; we’ve stared Saddam launchers, training missiles and missiles still down; we’ve forced him to do what he in production that were destroyed. desperately didn’t want to do, in that area Heroud, called “the terminator” in her of activity that was of most concern to us.” native France for her expertise in destroy- Thielman believes that the Al Samoud ing missiles, described the delicate process incident shows that the administration was of disarming the missiles, then crushing so intent on war that this compliance with them over and over till they “were a the inspections “made no difference.” pancake” that was then encased in con- But it was after the next presentation, crete and buried. by IAEA chairman Mohammed ElBaradei, How did the White House respond to that “all hell broke loose” in Washington. these instances of effective work by the ElBaradei, in his statement, sank the U.S. United Nations in Iraq? In the final weeks intelligence community’s prestigious NIE, of the countdown to war, the President Bush’s State of the Union administration’s actions resembled nothing address, and Colin Powell’s February 5 so much as some of the madder scenes address to the U.N. Security Council with from Alice in Wonderland. The fact that one blow. ElBaradei was calm in what he the documents the administration had used had to say: “Based on thorough analysis, to “prove” that Iraq was working on the IAEA has concluded, with the concur- nuclear weapons were forged only led to rence of outside experts, that these docu- greater insistence that Iraq was a danger. ments, which form the basis for reports of The absence of discovery of WMD by the recent uranium transactions between Iraq U.N. inspectors was only further evidence and Niger are, in fact, not authentic.” The that the Iraqis were the greatest deceivers Niger yellowcake documents were forger- in history and that they had succeeded in

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concealing their location. The destruction inspections, we have to date found no of the Al Samoud missiles was just more evidence or plausible indication of the evidence of a “grand deception.” revival of a nuclear weapons George Tenet has now told us, on programme in Iraq. . . . I should note February 5, 2004, exactly one year after he that, in the past three weeks, possibly as a result of ever-increasing pressure and Colin Powell drank the Kool-Aid at the by the international community, Iraq U.N. Security Council, that there was no has been forthcoming in its co- imminent danger. The administration spin- operation, particularly with regard to doctors immediately responded to this the conduct of private interviews and statement by saying that nobody from the in making available evidence that administration ever claimed there was an contributes to the resolution of “imminent danger.” matters of IAEA concern. On March 7, 2003, Mohammed ElBaradei spoke to the U.N. Security On March 16, 2003, the neocons Council in an open session watched by tens struck back with the heavy artillery. Vice of millions of Americans and countless President Dick Cheney appeared on Meet congressional and government offices. He the Press. When pressured by Tim Russert said, about Iraq’s nuclear danger, Cheney retorted, In conclusion, I am able to report today that, in the area of nuclear We know he has been absolutely weapons – the most lethal weapons of devoted to trying to acquire nuclear mass destruction – inspections in Iraq weapons. And we believe he has, in are moving forward. One, there is no fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons indication of resumed nuclear activi- (emphasis mine). I think Mr. ElBaradei ties in those buildings that were frankly is wrong. And I think if you identified through the use of satellite look at the track record of the Interna- imagery as being reconstructed or tional Atomic Energy Agency on this newly erected since 1998, nor any kind of issue, especially where Iraq’s indication of nuclear-related activities concerned, they have consistently at any inspected sites. Second, there underestimated or missed what it was is no indication that Iraq has at- Saddam Hussein was doing. I don’t tempted to import uranium since 1990. have any reason to believe they’re Third, there is no indication that Iraq any more valid this time than they’ve has attempted to import aluminum been in the past. tubes for use in centrifuge enrichment. Moreover, even had Iraq pursued On March 17, 2003, President George such a plan, it would have encoun- W. Bush went on national television to tell tered practical difficulties in manufac- Saddam and his sons, “They have 48 hours turing centrifuges out of the aluminum to get out of town.” No new evidence or tubes in question. Fourth, … there is reason was given. It was the ultimate no indication to date that Iraq im- imperial moment. ported magnets for use in a centrifuge On March 19, 2003, the bombs began enrichment programme. After three months of intrusive to fall.

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