Proof Bush Fixed The Facts

Proof Bush Fixed The Facts
Ray McGovern
May 04, 2005
http://www.sourcewatch.org/wiki.phtml?title=Veteran_Intelligence_Professionals_for_Sanity

"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."

Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in
black and white, and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less. For three years
now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have
been saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were
ordered by their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an
unprovoked war on Iraq. More often than not, we have been greeted
with stares of incredulity.

It has been a hard learning, that folks tend to believe what they want
to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive,
remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief. It simply is
much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine
blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the
notion that we were sold a bill of goods.

Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized
disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from
official documents, this time authentic, not forged. Whether prompted
by the open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or
not, some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of
the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a
briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent,
MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove
briefed Prime Minister Blair and his top national security officials
on July 23, 2002, on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.

Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which
immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral. Apparently no
one felt free to ask the obvious questions. Or, worse still, the
obvious questions did not occur.

Juggernaut Before The Horse

In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that
President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war
that is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons
of mass destruction." Period. What about the intelligence? Dearlove
adds matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed
around the policy."

At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has
decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would
be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that Saddam
was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than
that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.

In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a
well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine. The
argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress
and Parliament by conjuring up:

* Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;

* Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;

* Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile biological weapons
laboratories;

* Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles
within 45 minutes of an order to do so;

* Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and

* A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure.

All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was
little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military
action." Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless
comment that one of the U.S. military options under discussion
involved "a continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus
belli" - the clear implication being that planners of the air campaign
would also see to it that an appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.

The discussion at 10 Downing St. on July 23, 2002 calls to mind the
first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security Council (NSC) on
Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it clear that toppling
Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list, according to then-Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neil, who was there. O'Neil was taken aback that
there was no discussion of why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam.
Rather, after CIA Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a
building in Iraq that he said might be involved in producing chemical
or biological agents, the discussion proceeded immediately to which
Iraqi targets might be best to bomb. Again, neither O'Neil nor the
other participants asked the obvious questions. Another NSC meeting
two days later included planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.

Obedience School

As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further grist for
those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's "poodle." The
tone of the conversation bespeaks a foregone conclusion that Blair
will wag his tail cheerfully and obey the learned commands. At one
point he ventures the thought that, "If the political context were
right, people would support regime change." This, after Attorney
General Peter Goldsmith has already warned that the desire for regime
change "was not a legal base for military action," a point Goldsmith
made again just 12 days before the attack on Iraq until he was
persuaded by a phalanx of Bush administration lawyers to change his
mind 10 days later.

The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the assumption that
the UK would take part in any military action."

I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting so
jarring. Surely it is what one might expect, given all else we know.
Yet seeing it in bloodless black and white somehow gives it more
impact. And the implications are no less jarring.

One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was his American
counterpart, CIA director George Tenet. (And there is no closer
relationship between two intelligence services than the privileged one
between the CIA and MI-6.) Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as
Dearlove, but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in serving up
to Bush the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew would be
welcome. If there is one unpardonable sin in intelligence work, it is
that kind of politicization. But Tenet decided to be a "team player"
and set the tone.

Politicization: Big Time

Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what happened.
The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured, with
the president of the United States awarding foreman George Tenet the
Medal of Freedom for his role in helping supervise the deceit. The
British documents make clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning
forward" in analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception, an
order of magnitude more serious. No other conclusion is now possible.

Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former case
officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers told their
minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our
job is to give him a reason to do it."

Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with the
alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed "Curveball" raised
strong doubt about Curveball's reliability before then-Secretary of
State Colin Powell used the fabrication about "mobile biological
weapons trailers" before the United Nations, the analyst got this
e-mail reply from his CIA supervisor:

"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen
regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that
be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what
he's talking about."

When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director late last
year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees explaining the
"rules of the road" first and foremost, "We support the administration
and its policies." So much for objective intelligence insulated from
policy pressure.

Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized environment of
Congress, brought with them a radically new ethos, one much more akin
to that of Blair's courtiers than to that of earlier CIA directors who
had the courage to speak truth to power.

Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence chiefs
chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up" (as the British
press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior decision for war.
There is no word to describe the reaction of honest intelligence
professionals to the corruption of our profession on a matter of such
consequence. "Outrage" does not come close.

Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures

Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who gave
this latest British government document to The Sunday Times a debt of
gratitude. Unauthorized disclosures are gathering steam. They need
to increase quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well, the more so,
inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be
counted on to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.

In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government
officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:

We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can
obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the
Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in
harm's way. We urge you to act on those higher
loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective way to serve
the nation. The time for speaking out is now.

If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring
them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch
another unprovoked war, against, say, Iran.

Ray McGovern served 27 years as a CIA analyst and is now on the
Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He
works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church
of the Saviour.

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WORLD VIEW NEWS SERVICE

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National Security Leaks Linked to Jeff Gannon
Conspiracy Planet - May 7, 2005
Now that Gannon is back in the news and being laughed at by various media members, perhaps some concrete background information on Mr. Guckert might be in order ...
http://www.conspiracyplanet.com/channel.cfm?channelid=65&contentid=2168

RBN LIVE INTERNET RADIO:
http://www.rbnlive.net/

The Voice of the White House: Fudgepacking, Pillow Talk and High Treason

May 4, 2005: “Now that Gannon is back in the news and being laughed at by various media members, perhaps some concrete background information on Mr. Guckert might be in order. There is quite a file on him here in the Fag Palace that was here long before he had to quit when his male prostitution web site was exposed. It is interesting to note that the Secret Service knew all about Gannon yet allowed him free access to the White House on over 200 occasions, at least twelve of which were spent sleeping there. With whom is becoming very evident, and after we study his background, I have some most interesting material for your education and that of the media. However, the readership is not hopeless but the media certainly is.
http://www.tbrnews.org/Archives/a1574.htm