THE PROGRESSIVE CONSERVATIVE, USA
An Online Journal of Political Commentary & Analysis
Volume X, Issue # 46, February 17, 2008
Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
Government Committed to & Acting in Accord with Conservative Principles
Ensures a Nation's Strength, Progress, & Prosperity
UNINTELLIGENCE ON IRANIAN NUKES:
APPALING GAMESMANSHIP AT THE CIA
By Dr. Michael Rubin
THE CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY & ITS AGENDA POLITICS: HOW & WHY THE CIA FREQUENTLY WORKS AT
CROSS PURPOSES WITH THE PRESIDENCY -- HOW CIA BUREAUCRATS ENDEAVOR TO UNDERMINE THE CREDIBILITY OF
A PRESIDENT WITH WHOM THE THEY DISAGREE OVER ISSUES OF AMERICAN FOREIGN & NATIONAL SECURITY POLICY --
THE CIA'S INVOLVEMENT IN MAJOR POLICY INITIATIVES, WITHOUT COORDINATION WITH THE PRESIDENT, U.S.
DIPLOMATS, MILITARY OFFICIALS, OR PENTAGON CIVILIANS -- THE LEAK AS THE RECOURSE OF THE DIGRUNTLED, BORED,
OR POLITICIZED INTELLIGENCE ANALYST -- IRAN & IRAQ AS CASE STUDIES OF THE CIA'S AGENDA POLITICS -- THE CIA'S
ATTEMPT TO INFLUENCE THE OUTCOME OF THE 2004 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION, SEEKING THE DEFEAT OF PRESIDENT
GEORGE W. BUSH IN HIS REELECTION BID
FULL STORY:
During his February 5, 2008, testimony before the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, Director of National Intelligence Mike
McConnell backpedaled from the December, 2007, National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) and its claim that, "in Fall, 2003,
Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program."
Not only did McConnell testify that the Islamic Republic was working to master the enrichment of uranium -- "the most
difficult challenge in nuclear production" -- but he also acknowledged that, "because of intelligence gaps," the U.S.
government could not be certain that the Iranian government had fully suspended its covert nuclear programs. "We assess
with high confidence that Iran has the scientific, technical, and industrial capacity eventually to produce nuclear weapons,"
he testified. "In our judgment, only an Iranian political decision to abandon a nuclear weapons objective would plausibly
keep Iran from eventually producing nuclear weapons -- and such a decision is inherently reversible."
The NIE was no accident, and McConnell's pirouette does more than confirm the intelligence community's sloppiness. The
2007 NIE was built on geopolitical assumptions as much as on any hard intelligence, and historians will deem it important
not because it was accurate, but because it made utterly clear the collapse of the intelligence community. While the
crudeness of its assault on the President's Iran policy makes it the best example of the intelligence community's agenda
politics, it is far from the only one.
My initiation into CIA policy plays came less than a week after Baghdad's fall to Coalition forces in April, 2003. In the
months before the war, U.S. government officials had assessed thousands of Iraqi political activists and technocrats in
order to prepare to fill the Iraqi political vacuum. Representatives from the U.S. Department of State, the Pentagon, and the
National Security Council were meeting to vet invitations for the Nasiriya Conference, where Iraqis would discuss
post-liberation governance.
Rather than simply present the biographies of the various Iraqi figures, the Central Intelligence Agency sought to be a
privileged policy player. Its representative announced that, not only would Langley be inviting its own candidates outside
the interagency consensus, but the CIA would not be sharing the names or backgrounds of its invitees. Putting aside the
ridiculousness of the CIA belief that it could invite delegates anonymously to a public conference, more troubling was the
principle. Far from limiting its work to intelligence, the CIA leadership was unabashedly involving itself in major policy
initiatives.
The reverberations of Langley's policy games haunted reconstruction. CIA officials would promise governorships to Iraqis
without any coordination. Often, diplomats, military officials, and Pentagon civilians would learn of such deals only after
other Iraqis had been appointed or elected to such offices. (Some U.S. servicemen surely paid the price as spurned Iraqis
responded to what they saw as betrayal.) Once, the son of a Kurdish leader remarked how ridiculous State-Defense
bickering was when the CIA had implemented and funded a decision on the policy issue months before without any
coordination whatsoever.
Many of the Agency's senior analysts are arrogant after years behind their computers, believing they know far better what
U.S. policy should be than the policymakers for whom they draft reports. The recourse of the disgruntled, bored, or
politicized analyst is the leak -- the bread and butter of any national security correspondent. Journalists who fulfill the
leakers' objectives win ever more tantalizing scoops; those who maintain professional integrity and question the agenda
behind any leak, find their access cut. The result is a situation in which journalists who might otherwise double-check
sources, take a single intelligence analyst at his word, even if he is using them to fight a policy battle.
Iraq, again, provides a case study. In order to shield themselves from accountability over flawed intelligence or to bolster
their Iraqi proxies at the expense of competitors, CIA officials provided a steady stream of leaks to favored correspondents
like the New Yorker's Seymour Hersh or McClatchy's Warren Strobel. Such leaks ranged from allegations that
the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans -- a policy shop -- was a rogue intelligence operation to misattributions of the
provenance of prewar intelligence.
It was not uncommon, for example, to see false or exaggerated intelligence attributed to the Iraqi National Congress leader
Ahmad Chalabi, when it had actually come from Kurdish officials. This was never more clear than in a July 17, 2004, New
York Times correction. The paper was retracting three stories which alleged a connection between Chalabi and an Iraqi
source code-named Curveball, whose information later turned out to be bogus. The editors explained that their
correspondent had "attribute[d] that account to American intelligence officials who spoke on condition of anonymity."
They continued: "Those officials now say that there was no such established relationship." In other words, intelligence
officials lied to a reporter to achieve a policy aim.
Such behavior is not limited to debates over policies impacting countries thousands of miles away. W. Patrick Lang, a
former Defense Intelligence Agency official, told the American Prospect in 2005 that his intelligence community
colleagues used leaks to try to influence the 2004 presidential election.
"Of course they were leaking. They told me about it
at the time. They thought it was funny. They'd say
things like, 'This last thing that came out, surely
people will pay attention to that. They won't reelect
this man.'?"
The intelligence leadership did not refer the matter to the judiciary, unlike the leak concerning Valerie Plame.
To deflect criticism of the NIE, intelligence officials reached out to reporters. "Hundreds of officials were involved and
thousands of documents were drawn upon in this report .??.??. making it impossible for any official to overly sway it,"
the Wall Street Journal was told. Wayne White, a former analyst in State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research,
suggested it was "absolutely disgusting" that anyone could impugn the professionalism of lead author (and his former
colleague) Thomas Fingar. This is disingenuous. Personnel are policy. Half of Washington's battles involve who writes the
first and last drafts of any paper or memo.
McConnell's testimony undercut the idea that the intelligence agencies deserve a reputation for either professionalism or
integrity. A tolerance for political gamesmanship has besmirched the entire community. With the NIE giving Iran what
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declared its "greatest victory during the past 100 years," the consequence for U.S.
national security is grave.
In the wake of the Iraq war, many Democrats accused the Bush administration of politicizing intelligence. It was a false
charge, but good politics. But the fact is, the problem was the opposite: an intelligence community driven by the desire to
conduct policy.
LINKS TO RELATED TOPICS:
Military Weaponry & International Security:
Weapons of Mass Destruction & Arms Control
U.S. Intelligence & America's National Security
American Government & the Federal Bureaucracy
The Middle East & the Problem of Iran
American Foreign Policy -- The Middle East
Islamism & Jihadism -- The Threat of Radical Islam
Page Three
Page Two
Page One
International Politics & World Disorder:
War & Peace in the Real World
Page Two
Page One
Islamist Terrorist Attacks on the U.S.A.
Osama bin Laden & the Islamist Declaration of War
Against the U.S.A. & Western Civilization
Islamist International Terrorism &
U.S. Intelligence Agencies
U.S. National Security Strategy
Dr. Michael Rubin, a Ph.D. in History (Yale University) and a specialist in Middle Eastern politics, Islamic culture and Islamist
ideology, is Editor of the Middle East Quarterly, a senior lecturer at the Naval Postgraduate School, and a resident
scholar at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research. Dr Rubin is author of Into the Shadows: Radical
Vigilantes in Khatami's Iran (Washington Institute for Near East Policy, 2001) and is co-author, with Dr. Patrick Clawson,
of Eternal Iran: Continuity and Chaos (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005). Dr. Rubin served as political advisor to the Coalition
Provisional Authority in Baghdad (2003-2004); staff advisor on Iran and Iraq in the Office of the U.S. Secretary of Defense
(2002-2004); visiting lecturer in the Departments of History and International Relations at Hebrew University of Jerusalem
(2001-2002); visiting lecturer at the Universities of Sulaymani, Salahuddin, and Duhok in Iraqi Kurdistan (2000-2001); Soref
Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (1999-2000); and visiting lecturer in the Department of History at Yale
University (1999-2000). He has been a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the Leonard Davis Institute at Hebrew
University, and the Carnegie Council on Ethics and International Affairs.
The foregoing article by Dr Rubin was originally published in the Weekly Standard, February 25, 2008, and
can be found on the Internet website maintained by the Middle East Forum, a foreign policy think tank which seeks to
define and promote American interests in the Middle East, defining U.S. interests to include fighting radical Islam,
working for Palestinian Arab acceptance of the State of Israel, improving the management of U.S. efforts to promote
constitutional democracy in the Middle East, reducing America's energy dependence on the Middle East, more robustly
asserting U.S. interests vis-à-vis Saudi Arabia, and countering the Iranian threat.
(Article URL: http://www.meforum.org/article/1856 )
Republished with Permission of the Middle East Forum
Reprinted from the Middle East Forum News
mefnews@meforum.org (MEF NEWS)
February 17, 2008
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Dr. Almon Leroy Way, Jr., Editor
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