Forgery, Hyperbole, and Half-Truths
by Ray McGovern
... Summary: Retired and former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) professionals
write to President George Bush with an "increased sense of urgency
and responsibility" regarding the looming war between the US and
Iraq ...
March 18, 2003
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Forgery, Hyperbole, Half-Truth: A Problem
We last wrote to you immediately after Secretary of State Powell’s
UN speech on February 5, in an attempt to convey our concerns that insufficient
attention was being given to wider intelligence-related issues at stake
in the conflict with Iraq. Your speech yesterday evening did nothing to
allay those concerns. And the acerbic exchanges of the past few weeks
have left the United States more isolated than at any time in the history
of the republic and the American people more polarized.
Today we write with an increased sense of urgency and responsibility.
Responsibility, because you appear to be genuinely puzzled at the widespread
opposition to your policy on Iraq and because we have become convinced
that those of your advisers who do understand what is happening are reluctant
to be up front with you about it. As veterans of the CIA and other intelligence
agencies, the posture we find ourselves in is as familiar as it is challenging.
We feel a continuing responsibility to “tell it like it is”—or
at least as we see it—without fear or favor. Better to hear it from
extended family than not at all; we hope you will take what follows in
that vein.
We cannot escape the conclusion that you have been badly misinformed.
It was reported yesterday that your generals in the Persian Gulf area
have become increasingly concerned over sandstorms. To us this is a metaphor
for the shifting sand-type “intelligence” upon which your
policy has been built. Worse still, it has become increasingly clear that
the sharp drop in US credibility abroad is largely a function of the rather
transparent abuse of intelligence reporting and the dubious conclusions
drawn from that reporting—the ones that underpin your decisions
on Iraq.
Flashback to Vietnam
Many of us cut our intelligence teeth during the sixties. We remember
the arrogance and flawed thinking that sucked us into the quagmire of
Vietnam. The French, it turned out, knew better. And they looked on with
wonderment at Washington’s misplaced confidence—its single-minded
hubris, as it embarked on a venture the French knew from their own experience
could only meet a dead end. This was hardly a secret. It was widely known
that the French general sent off to survey the possibility of regaining
Vietnam for France after World War II reported that the operation would
take a half-million troops, and even then it could not be successful.
Nevertheless, President Johnson, heeding the ill-informed advice of civilian
leaders of the Pentagon with no experience in war, let himself get drawn
in past the point of no return. In the process, he played fast and loose
with intelligence to get the Tonkin Gulf resolution through Congress so
that he could prosecute the war. To that misguided war he mortgaged his
political future, which was in shambles when he found himself unable to
extricate himself from the morass.
Quite apart from what happened to President Johnson, the Vietnam War was
the most serious US foreign policy blunder in modern times…until
now.
Forgery
In your state-of-the-union address you spoke of Iraq’s pre-1991
focus on how to “enrich uranium for a bomb” and added, “the
British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa.” No doubt you have now been told
that this information was based on bogus correspondence between Iraq and
Niger. Answering a question on this last week, Secretary Powell conceded—with
neither apology nor apparent embarrassment—that the documents in
question, which the US and UK had provided to the UN to show that Iraq
is still pursuing nuclear weapons, were forgeries. Powell was short: “If
that information is inaccurate, fine.”
But it is anything but fine. This kind of episode inflicts serious damage
on US credibility abroad—the more so, as it appears neither you
nor your advisers and political supporters are in hot pursuit of those
responsible. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts has shown
little enthusiasm for finding out what went awry. Committee Vice-Chairman,
Jay Rockefeller, suggested that the FBI be enlisted to find the perpetrators
of the forgeries, which US officials say contain “laughable and
child-like errors,” and to determine why the CIA did not recognize
them as forgeries. But Roberts indicated through a committee spokeswoman
that he believes it is “inappropriate for the FBI to investigate
at this point.” Foreign observers do not have to be paranoid to
suspect some kind of cover-up.
Who Did It? Who Cares!
Last week Wisconsin Congressman Dave Obey cited a recent press report
suggesting that a foreign government might be behind the forgeries as
part of an effort to build support for military action against Iraq and
asked Secretary Powell if he could identify that foreign government. Powell
said he could not do so “with confidence.” Nor did he appear
in the slightest interested.
We think you should be. In the absence of hard evidence one looks for
those with motive and capability. The fabrication of false documentation,
particularly what purports to be official correspondence between the agencies
of two governments, is a major undertaking requiring advanced technical
skills normally available only in a sophisticated intelligence service.
And yet the forgeries proved to be a sloppy piece of work.
Chalk it up to professional pride by (past) association, but unless the
CIA’s capabilities have drastically eroded over recent years, the
legendary expertise of CIA technical specialists, combined with the crudeness
of the forgeries, leave us persuaded that the CIA did not craft the bogus
documents. Britain’s MI-6 is equally adept at such things. Thus,
except in the unlikely event that crafting forgery was left to second-stringers,
it seems unlikely that the British were the original source.
We find ourselves wondering if amateur intelligence operatives in the
Pentagon basement and/or at 10 Downing Street were involved and need to
be called on the carpet. We would urge you strongly to determine the provenance.
This is not trivial matter. As our VIPS colleague (and former CIA Chief
of Station) Ray Close has noted, “If anyone in Washington deliberately
practiced disinformation in this way against another element of our own
government or wittingly passed fabricated information to the UN, this
could do permanent damage to the commitment to competence and integrity
on which the whole American foreign policy process depends.”
The lack of any strong reaction from the White House feeds the suspicion
that the US was somehow involved in, or at least condones, the forgery.
It is important for you to know that, although credibility-destroying
stories like this rarely find their way into the largely cowed US media,
they do grab headlines abroad among those less disposed to give the US
the benefit of the doubt. As you know better than anyone, a year and a
half after 9/11 the still traumatized US public remains much more inclined
toward unquestioning trust in the presidency. Over time that child-like
trust can be expected to erode, if preventive maintenance is not performed…and
hyperbole shunned.
Hyperbole
The forgery aside, the administration’s handling of the issue of
whether Iraq is continuing to develop nuclear weapons has done particularly
severe damage to US credibility. On October 7 your speechwriters had you
claim that Iraq might be able to produce a nuclear weapon in less than
a year. Formal US intelligence estimates, sanitized versions of which
have been made public, hold that Iraq will be unable to produce a nuclear
weapon until the end of the decade, if then. In that same speech you claimed
that “the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear
weapons program”—a claim reiterated by Vice President Cheney
on Meet the Press on March 16.
Reporting to the UN Security Council in recent months, UN chief nuclear
inspector Mohammed ElBaradei has asserted that the inspectors have found
no evidence that Iraq has reconstituted its nuclear weapons program. Some
suspect that the US does have such evidence but has not shared it with
the UN because Washington has been determined to avoid doing anything
that could help the inspections process succeed. Others believe the “evidence”
to be of a piece with the forgery—in all likelihood crafted by Richard
Perle’s Pentagon Plumbers. Either way, the US takes a large black
eye in public opinion abroad.
Then there are those controversial aluminum tubes which you have cited
in major speeches as evidence of a continuing effort on Iraq’s part
to produce nuclear weapons. Aside from one analyst in the CIA and the
people reporting to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, there is virtually unanimous
agreement within the intelligence, engineering, and scientific communities
with ElBaradei’s finding that “it was highly unlikely”
that the tubes could have been used to produce nuclear material. It is
not enough for Vice President Cheney to dismiss ElBaradei’s findings.
Those who have followed these issues closely are left wondering why, if
the vice president has evidence to support his own view, he does not share
it with the UN.
Intelligence Scant
In your speech yesterday evening you stressed that intelligence “leaves
no doubt that the Iraqi regime continues to possess and conceal some of
the most lethal weapons ever devised.” And yet even the Washington
Post, whose editors have given unswerving support to your policy on Iraq,
is awash with reports that congressional leaders, for example, have been
given no specific intelligence on the number of banned weapons in Iraq
or where they are hidden. One official, who is regularly briefed by the
CIA, commented recently that such evidence as does exist is “only
circumstantial.” Another said he questioned whether the administration
is shaping intelligence for political purposes. And, in a moment of unusual
candor, one senior intelligence analyst suggested that one reason why
UN inspectors have had such trouble finding weapons caches is that “there
may not be much of a stockpile.”
Having backed off suggestions early last year that Iraq may already have
nuclear weapons, your administration continues to assert that Iraq has
significant quantities of other weapons of mass destruction. But by all
indications, this is belief, not proven fact. This has led the likes of
Thomas Powers, a very knowledgeable author on intelligence, to conclude
that “the plain fact is that the Central Intelligence Agency doesn’t
know what Mr. Hussein has, if anything, or even who knows the answers,
if anyone.”
This does not inspire confidence. What is needed is candor—candor
of the kind you used in one portion of your speech on October 7. Just
two paragraphs before you claimed that Iraq is “reconstituting”
its nuclear weapons program, you said, “Many people have asked how
close Saddam Hussein is to developing a nuclear weapon. Well, we don’t
know exactly, and that’s the problem.”
True, candor can weaken a case that one is trying to build. We are reminded
of a remarkable sentence that leapt out of FBI Director Mueller’s
testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee on February 11—a
sentence that does actually parse, but nonetheless leaves one scratching
one’s head. Mueller: “The greatest threat is from al-Qaeda
cells in the US that we have not yet identified.”
This seems to be the tack that CIA Director Tenet is taking behind closed
doors; i.e., the greatest threat from Iraq is the weapons we have not
yet identified but believe are there.
It is not possible to end this section on hyperbole without giving Oscars
to Secretaries Rumsfeld and Powell, who have outdone themselves in their
zeal to establish a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. You will recall
that Rumsfeld described the evidence—widely recognized to be dubious—as
“bulletproof,” and Powell characterized the relationship as
a “partnership!” Your assertion last evening that “the
terrorist threat to America and the world will be diminished the moment
that Saddam Hussein is disarmed” falls into the same category. We
believe it far more likely that our country is in for long periods of
red and orange color codes.
Half-Truth
Here we shall limit ourselves to one example, although the number that
could be adduced is legion.
You may recall that a Cambridge University analyst recently revealed that
a major portion of a British intelligence document on Iraq had been plagiarized
from a term paper by a graduate student in California—information
described by Secretary Powell to the UN Security Council as “exquisite”
intelligence. That same analyst has now acquired from the UN’s International
Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) the transcript of the debriefing of Iraqi
Gen. Hussein Kamel, son-in-law of Saddam Hussein, who defected in 1995.
Kamel for ten years ran Iraq’s nuclear, chemical, biological, and
missile development programs, and some of the information he provided
has been highly touted by senior US policymakers, from the president on
down. But the transcript reveals that Kamel also said that in 1991 Iraq
destroyed all its chemical and biological weapons and the missiles to
deliver them. This part of the debriefing was suppressed until Newsweek
ran a story on it on February 24, 2003.
We do not for a minute take all of what Kamel said at face value. Rather
we believe the Iraqis retain some chemical and biological warfare capability.
What this episode suggests, though, is a preference on the part of US
officials to release only that information that supports the case they
wish to make against Iraq.
In Sum
What conclusions can be drawn from the above? Simply that forgery, hyperbole,
and half-truths provide a sandy foundation from which to launch a major
war.
Equally important, there is danger in the temptation to let the conflict
with Iraq determine our attitude toward the entire gamut of foreign threats
with which you and your principal advisers need to be concerned. Threats
to US security interests must be prioritized and judged on their own terms.
In our judgment as intelligence professionals, there are two are real
and present dangers today.
1-- The upsurge in terrorism in the US and against American facilities
and personnel abroad that we believe would inevitably flow from a US invasion
of Iraq. Concern over this is particularly well expressed in the February
26 letter from FBI Special Agent Coleen Rowley to Director Mueller, a
letter well worth your study.
2-- North Korea poses a particular danger, although what form this might
take is hard to predict. Pyongyang sees itself as the next target of your
policy of preemption and, as its recent actions demonstrate, will take
advantage of US pre-occupation with Iraq both to strengthen its defenses
and to test US and South Korean responses. Although North Korea is economically
weak, its armed forces are huge, well armed, and capable. It is entirely
possible that the North will decide to mount a provocation to test the
tripwire provided by the presence of US forces in South Korea. Given the
closeness of Seoul to the border with the North and the reality that North
Korean conventional forces far outnumber those of the South, a North Korean
adventure could easily force you to face an abrupt, unwelcome decision
regarding the use of nuclear weapons—a choice that your predecessors
took great pains to avoid.
We suggest strongly that you order the Intelligence Community to undertake,
on an expedited basis, a Special National Intelligence Estimate on North
Korea, and that you defer any military action against Iraq until you have
had a chance to give appropriate weight to the implications of the challenge
the US might face on the Korean peninsula.
Richard Beske, San Diego, CA
Kathleen McGrath Christison, Santa Fe, NM
William Christison, Santa Fe, NM
Patrick Eddington, Alexandria, VA
Raymond McGovern, Arlington, VA
Steering Group, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
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