Intelligence and Pressure Politics
Can any modern, professionally staffed, high tech intelligence service plying its trade for a Western democracy ever insulate itself from the biases of its sponsoring government? The answer is probably no.
CIA analysts told Senate investigators that they didn't cave to administration pressure in assessing that Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program. They may not have caved, but they sure bent a lot. The heat on analysts and their managers was enormous, especially from the Vice President's cheerleaders at State, the National Security Council and the Pentagon. As we have reported, this was not because the administration needed the intelligence to craft policy, but it was critical for selling it.
There is a valuable lesson learned in comparing CIA's-or most of the Intelligence Community's, for that matter-conclusions with those of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
U.S. intelligence reported, with varying degrees of confidence, that Iraq had been shopping for uranium in Africa and had purchased aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors as well as other industrial equipment, such as high-strength magnets, to process that uranium. The IAEA, on the other hand, told the UN Security Council shortly before our invasion that the uranium claim was based on forged documents, that the aluminum tubes were intended for rockets and the magnets were used for guidance systems, electric meters and field telephones.
Why was the IAEA so right and the U.S. so wrong? Because the IAEA was immunized from political pressure.
As Jacques Baute, the agency's chief Iraq nuclear weapons hunter in the 1990s and again in 2002, when the inspectors were reintroduced after a four-year hiatus, put it: "The fact that the (IAEA) has 137 member states forces it to put great distance from any single political agenda and its associated pressure." He penned that observation in an article for the June 2004 issue of the IAEA Bulletin and suggested, without identifying whom he had in mind, that U.S. and Western intelligence services are captive to policy bias. "National analysts...at any given time, may feel under the pressure, explicit or implicit, from a single political line," he wrote.
None of the member states, of course, would be willing to subsume their national intelligence services to a global agency. And U.S. intelligence has a better tradition of independence from executive branch manipulation than the services of many of our allies.
British intelligence, for example, is connected by umbilical cord to Downing Street, headquarters of the executive branch. This was clearly demonstrated in Britain's notorious Sept. 24, 2002, dossier on Iraq's imaginary weapons-the source of Bush's State of the Union claim that Iraq had been shopping for uranium. The document, based on reporting from MI6, the GCHQ and the military, was authored by the Joint Intelligence Committee, a cabinet office that oversees intelligence gathering and produces assessments supposedly based on that collection. But the dossier, which also claimed that Saddam could launch chemical or biological warheads on 45-minutes' notice, received considerable input from Tony Blair's political appointees and spinmeisters. Britain and MI6 has never backed away from the uranium claim. MI6 "is much more part of policy than we are," a former senior CIA officer who has worked closely with the British told us. "That's why they can't back off" the uranium claim for fear of embarrassing Blair.
Since no nation-certainly not the United States--will agree to a global intelligence pooling organization to inoculate itself from policy biases (as we have seen in the runup to the Iraq war, an administration may even want to encourage bias), the burden rests on independence and toughness at the top of the intelligence chain.
Those traits were lacking under George Tenet. "Leadership failed and failed badly," John Gannon, who served as the CIA's deputy for intelligence under Tenet until 2001, told us. "You certainly didn't have a director there who was encouraging people to tell it like they saw it, and to bring all information to the top so it could fairly be evaluated."
He said he could not recall such a strong bias in WMD intelligence reporting-"apart from the Soviet Union itself." But the Soviets did have those weapons. Iraq did not.
Critical, also, is intelligence oversight by Congress. That, alas, has not existed over the past several years.
Postscript: We are thankful to Josh and his team for giving us the opportunity this week to do a little preaching about a subject most of us consider important--intelligence and its occasional role in forming policy. Some of the preaching was to the choir; some of it obviously not. We are fascinated by the comments that flowed. Many of them were totally unrelated to the original postings, and created their own threads. Fascinating. In terms of wisdom, we can single out no one, since all had reasoned, if not always obvious, conclusions. Valdron may deserve the gold medal, however, for sustained logic expressed in the King's English. NumLock gets the silver for egging him on. The bronze, no small honor, goes to everyone else."
Comments (18)
Cheney knew what he wanted to do - grab Iraqi oil - and he did it. Everything else was window dressing to help the marketing campaign. Dick Cheney - one of the most despicable human beings in American history. As Welch said about McCarthy - "His forgiveness will have to come from a higher authority than mine" - or words to that effect.Tom
June 15, 2007 6:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
Although I haven't commented here this week, I very much enjoyed reading your posts. Thank you so much!
I've never had the opportunity to tell you, Mr. Royce, how much I appreciated your work in Newsday so I will do so here. Your story about Iran infiltrating US intelligence is the most recent one that I can remember and it was a doozy!
If I'm not mistaken, you also did the story about $13 million in cash missing after an cleric was murdered in southern Iraq in the early days of the war. The cash had come from the CIA. When I read that story, I got an uneasy feeling about things to come. Too much money, too little accountability.
June 15, 2007 6:43 AM | Reply | Permalink
We heard essentially nothing directly from analysts prior to war. (Excepting Seymour Hersh's contacts.) Whether they gave way or not, they could speak only to their superiors, who spoke only to the pols. It may not matter whether Cheney made analysts change their stance, he could have been looking for gaps in certainty that supported his view.
Since CIA did not make public assessments, responsibility resides with the WH for the "wrong" intel.
June 15, 2007 6:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excuse me, but it wasn't the case that "U.S. intelligence reported, with varying degrees of confidence, that Iraq had been shopping for uranium in Africa and had purchased aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors as well as other industrial equipment, such as high-strength magnets, to process that uranium."
Both DOE and State said that the aluminum tubes were unlikely to be useful for centrifuges. We don't know what happened in the interagency process, but those voices were ignored or drowned out in what was initially leaked to the media, in particular Judith Miller.
Politicals will politicize intelligence, but that does not necessarily mean that the intelligence itself was bad.
During the runup to the war, I was looking for some reliable reporting on the intelligence about the aluminum tubes. Miller's reports looked to be coming from the highest sources, but I kept wondering why we didn't hear from DOE intelligence. They're the guys who actually know how to build centrifuges.
I'm sorry, guys, it's not just enough to cast a "political" rap on intelligence. What you say about the IAEA is reasonable, but there were people and agencies within the US government who had the intelligence right and were reporting it that way.
Too bad the MSM reporters, like yourselves, didn't dig far enough to find that.
June 15, 2007 7:09 AM | Reply | Permalink
Mrs. Panstreppon:
Thank you for your kind words. Don't get them too often nowadays. And what a wonderful memory you have.
Cheers, Knut
June 15, 2007 7:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
Huh? Well, uhm, thanks.
Let me say that I've found your recurring posts here valuable and informative. In my profession, its always useful to return to first principles. Your work does that in excavating origins that some would like to leave buried.
Often, when looking at Iraq and the comments of the war party, I'm reminded of Homer Simpson's words to Bart, "Let's stop arguing about who stopped at Moes for six hours and forgot to pick who up, let's just admit we were both wrong and move on from there."
It strikes me that the grieviously flawed judgement, dishonesty and distorted agendas that lead to the Iraq war carried through to the occupation. Poisoned fruit from a poisoned tree.
June 15, 2007 8:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
The last time Britain had diplomatic fucntion in Niger to any extent Hill & Knowlton worked with them.
That company, famous for the baby incubators hoax of Desert Storm, had offices in Prague where the Mohammed Atta story falsely was put out in media.
Hill & Knowlton is the world's largest PR firm, headquartered in the UK(as is the Iraqi National Congress), very Blair friendly.
Follow the Money.
June 15, 2007 11:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
While the details of how to build efficient centrifuges are not public, a reasonable amount is open literature. It doesn't take much digging, for example, to find that maraging steel is preferable to aluminum.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
June 15, 2007 2:46 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes, but let's look at the whole context, Howard. Iraq had purchased around 2K Playstation 2s around the same time. Linked together they could have had a supercomputer that could design an aluminum centrifuge in a twink of a pixel.
(what ever happened to that story? My last recollection was that Sony announced it wouldn't work).
Neoboho
June 16, 2007 10:11 AM | Reply | Permalink
PS - here's a link for those interested in this kind of stuff. It apparently surfaced in WorldNetDaily, but The Register picked it up for its entertainment value.
And it was 4k, not 2.
Neoboho
June 16, 2007 10:22 AM | Reply | Permalink
Bad idea when for less money they could buy an equivalent number of industrial controllers of better power.
Silly because they don't need it for designing a centrifuge cascade. And if it was sufficient for modeling thermonuclear explosion dynamics, we'd be doing it here.
And why buy aluminum, usually more expensive, to use instead of the better material?
June 16, 2007 11:39 AM | Reply | Permalink
But Tom, think of the most horrible implication: Iraqi kids playing video games. The mind boggles (kind of knocks the wind out of Islamist conservatism.) It's too easy to feel comfortable with the notion of bombing kids in a mosque praying for the downfall of western civilization, right? But playing PS2 games? That's problematical.
disclaimer - don't read my satire as supporting bombing kids under any circumstances.
Neoboho
June 16, 2007 7:16 PM | Reply | Permalink
Was it Michael Moore that suggested we could have bombed Iraq with air conditioners?
June 16, 2007 10:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
On the premise that wars are not won with PowerPoint presentations, but perhaps won by forcing the other guy to make PowerPoint presentation, there's a continuing theory in the Army that we should have parachuted laptops and video displays to anywhere Osama might have hidden.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
June 16, 2007 11:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent and important post.
The more of this sort of reporting at TPM Cafe the better. I hope you guys keep posting here, you have some serious contacts in the industry and access to major figures that none of the rest of don't. Looking forward to it.
June 18, 2007 10:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
Taken thematically, I think it's a sound theory. In fact I was convinced that such a thing would be the most effective approach when I read an analysis somewhere that cited passive terrorist and active terrorist. It seemed obvious to me that the passives, who the actives depend upon, was the component who should have some compelling reason not to support active terrorists. Making their lives that much more miserable with bomb and invasions is obviously counter-productive in that sense.
Neoboho
June 19, 2007 11:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
The writings of guerilla theoreticians of assorted ideologies, but perhaps most clearly Carlos Marighella, speak to the desirability of getting the central government to overreact. In some cases, this would drive the friends and family of injured innocents into the guerilla camp. In other cases, it would serve to show the impotence of the central government.
As a general rule, when an insurgency has not led to dominance by one side, perhaps 10% of the population associates with the insurgency and another 10% with the central government. Any parallels to the Republican and Democratic bases, are, of course, completely coincidental.
Vietnam had slightly different dynamics when dealing with the peasantry that had a special bond with their land, including ancestor worship. Relocating villagers was especially likely to engender opposition, while those in villages would put up with more from both sides.
--
Howard
*equal opportunity offense to both extremes*
"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" [George Santayana]
June 19, 2007 10:41 PM | Reply | Permalink
The Strategic Hamlet program would be fodder for a high-spirited debate, Howard. One position would be that the hamlets were pretty oppressive - like concentration camps. But I'm always keenly interested in culinary issues (and you may be too.) Rice. Those hamlets, I understand, were supplied with California rice, and the Khmers and Anamese hated it. In many of the VC caches that were found, I understand, the sacks of rice found buried were from the Sacramento Valley. After eating that sweet VN rice for a year, I can certainly understand how California rice could drive a man to insurection!
I've filed that story along with the India/China war that failed because both armies could not cook rice at that altitute, and the impact of the Andean potato on the European industrial revolution.
BTW, the Strategic Hamlet program was also used in Guatemala in the late 70s early 80s. But the hamlets were run by Evangelical Xtians from the states, notibly from the church that had "saved" Efrain Rios-Montt from his mid-life crises. They called it the Beans for Bullets program.
Neoboho
June 20, 2007 10:01 AM | Reply | Permalink