US intelligence 'dead wrong' on Iraq threat

US intelligence ‘dead wrong’ on Iraq threat
By James Harding and Edward Alden in Washington, Financial Times,
Published: March 30 2005 20:52 | Last updated: March 31 2005 18:47
http://news.ft.com/cms/s/647326e0-a145-11d9-95e5-00000e2511c8.html

The presidential commission tasked with investigating intelligence failures warned on Thursday that the US knows “disturbingly little” about efforts by Iran, North Korea and others to acquire nuclear weapons, adding that in some cases the quality of intelligence had deteriorated over the past decade.

At the same time, it issued the harshest assessment yet of the US pre-war intelligence on Iraq, concluding: “The intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.”

The findings of the commission, appointed last year by President George W. Bush, will increase the pressure for restructuring the intelligence-gathering agencies that began after the September 11 terrorist attacks and continued with the creation by Congress last year of a new director of national intelligence.

The panel, led by Laurence Silberman, a Republican, and Charles Robb, a Democrat, blames spies at the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency for providing “worthless or misleading” information.

It absolved the Bush administration of responsibility, concluding that “it was the paucity of intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence assessments”.

Mr Bush welcomed the “sharp critique”. He appointed Fran Townsend, his homeland security adviser, to review the recommendations with a view to swift adoption.

Scott McClellan, White House press secretary, noted the investigation found no individual or agency to blame, but said “systemic failure” was responsible for the flawed intelligence on Iraq.

But the most striking conclusion of the report may be that the intelligence on future threats to US security is little better than the Iraq intelligence. Most of the commission's findings on Iran, North Korea, China and Russia were not released. But the unclassified summary said the US had “only limited access to critical information about several of these high-priority intelligence targets”.

That conclusion will do little to reassure US allies, which are heavily dependent on US intelligence. The panel offered a fatalistic assessment of its proposals: the intelligence community, it noted, “has an almost perfect record of resisting external recommendations”.

Still, the Silberman-Robb report laid out 74 proposed changes, many with an emphasis on improving co-ordination and information-sharing in an intelligence community that is “not so much poorly managed as unmanaged”. The chief recommendations include:

● Give the new director of national intelligence (DNI) more power, including the ability to set the budget and make personnel choices; otherwise the CIA and the Pentagon will “run around or over the DNI”. Under the 2004 reforms of US intelligence, the new position of DNI was created to oversee the agencies, but the official was not given clear budgetary and personnel authority.

*Reform the Federal Bureau of Investigation, an agency singled out for its reluctance to work as part of the broader intelligence community. The panel proposes the creation of a National Security Service inside the FBI.

*Press the intelligence community to “explain what they don't know”.

*Rethink the President's Daily Brief. The commission insists it is not a good idea for the new director of national intelligence to deliver, or even regularly attend, the briefing.

If John Negroponte, Mr Bush’s nominee to take up the new post, is consumed by current intelligence, the panel warns, the long-term needs of the intelligence community will suffer.

The commission also took a dim view of the high-technology elements of US information gathering, noting how ineffective satellite imaging as well as measurement and signature intelligence (MASINT) proved in assessing Iraq’s weapons programmes.

“The collection of technologies known as MASINT, which includes a virtual grab bag of advanced collection and analytic methods, is not yet making a significant contribution to our intelligence efforts,” the Commission noted.

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THERE HAS NEVER BEEN A TIME ON THIS PLANET WHERE SO FEW WILL DO SO MUCH FOR SO MANY

"The practice of discernment is part of higher consciousness. Discernment is not just a step up from judgment. In life's curriculum, it is the opposite of judgment. Through judgment a man reveals what he needs to confront and learn. Through discernment, one reveals what he has mastered." Quote from: Love Without End, by Glenda Green

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FLASHBACK: CIA official 'sacked over WMD'
A sacked CIA official is suing the agency for allegedly retaliating against him for refusing to falsify his reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to support the White House's pre-war position, The Washington Post said on Thursday.
Posted Mar 31, 2005 04:11 PM PST
Category: COVER-UP/DECEPTIONS
http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,6119,2-10-1462_1633530,00.html

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Recent White House Leak by APFN
http://p092.ezboard.com/fthetruth81901frm13.showMessage?topicID=90.topic

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This White House Scandal Finally Tips the Scale!
LEAK-GATE: The White House Scandal Page 2
http://www.apfn.org/apfn/leakgate2.htm

Let's take a look at the gaping holes in Novak's story:

NOVAK STORY: He claims he had absolutely no idea that the information about Plame was a big deal. He says he got the impression that she was a paper pusher in one of the CIA's DC offices. He said the comment about Plame working for the CIA was "just an offhand remark" at the end of the conversation.

HOLE: The fact that the White House informant called several other journalists looking for a place to plant the leak is, by itself, enough to blow this story out of the water. But even more damning to Novak's case is that in his article on Plame, he referred to her repeatedly as a CIA "operative." Since when would anyone - even the slowest-witted among us - describe someone who files papers in an office as a "CIA operative?"

NOVAK STORY: "I've been in this business 40 years."

HOLE: Anyone who has been a journalist for 40 years, unless they are senile (maybe that's Novak's best defense!) would know the difference between "CIA paper pusher" and "CIA operative."

NOVAK STORY: He claims he is not revealing his source because that is his prerogative as a journalist.

HOLE: That prerogative is supposed to apply only to sources who, at the time of imparting the information, made the journalist promise not to reveal the source. In the case of Turner vs. Dolcefino, for example, the issue was that the reporter had vowed silence in exchange for the information given by the source.

In addition, journalistic prerogative usually involves PRIVATE CITIZENS. The protection of White House officials is, to say the least, overstretching prerogative by most anyone's definition. Why? The press is supposed to be in the business of PROTECTING the public from unethical officials, not protecting the unethical officials! Once Novak knew that he had been induced to out a CIA agent, it should have become his duty as a journalist to expose the perpetrator. In any case, Novak claimed that the comment about Plame was "an offhand remark" made at the end of a regular conversation. Since when does an "offhand remark" at the end of an "ordinary conversation" involve swearing the listener to secrecy? C'mon, Novak. It was either leak and you KNEW it, or it was a casual conversation and needn't be kept secret.

NOVAK STORY: When Tim Russert asked Novak is he was afraid he might go to prison for refusing to reveal his sources, Novak smirked smugly and said he hardly thought that would be a danger.

HOLE: If Novak takes his own story about journalistic prerogative seriously, then he SHOULD be worried. Why isn't he worried? First, because he doesn't take his own line seriously - it's bullsh-t and he knows it. Second, because he knows in any case that his good buddy John Ashcroft would never put him in jail. That treatment is reserved for young women (Vanessa Leggett) without friends in high places who aren't jeapordizing national security and who aren't officially even journalists!

NOVAK STORY: The CIA called Novak and told him not to use Plame's name because it would make things very difficult for her, especially when she went abroad. Novak claims that this didn't seem strong enough to compel him not to reveal Plame's name.

HOLE: As Novak is so fond of sayinghe's "been in this business 40 years" and knows how Washington works. It this is true, then he KNOWS that the CIA cannot provide him with any details about an agent and the nature of her work (like mentioning that she could be killed in retaliation) because to do so would further compromise her.

NOVAK STORY: Incredibly, Novak tries to justify his injustifiable act against Plame by saying that he thinks Wilson was too left-leaning to have been entrusted with investigating the Iraq WMD issue.

HOLE: Novak proves here that he is anything but a patriotic American citizen. In our system, we are supposed to have an unbiased jury, an unbiased judge, and, ideally, a government that represents the check and balance of two parties. When we are talking about going to WAR, then it seems critical above all things to have an unbiased "jury" examining the evidence. Who would think it was "American" to have a jury trying a black man, for example, stacked with white racists? We have worked decades to root out that kind of injustice. If Novak were a patriotic American, he would applaud Wilson's role, especially as Wilson's take on the WMDs has been confirmed by David Kay.

But the fact of the matter is, Novak and Rove -regardless of whether Rove was the direct leaker or merely the highest-level (short of Bush) "leak condoner"- are NOT good citizens nor are they patriotic Americans. Here are the crimes against Democracy, the American public, and private individuals they have committed:

1. Undermining of national security by exposing a CIA operative and by creating a rift of trust between the White House and CIA.

2. Attempted murder. That is what outing a CIA agent amounts to, purely and simply. In the 1990s, an agent named Welch was outed and, within a short time, found murdered outside his home. Some of the people in the chain of contacts of which Plame was a part may be murdered, even if she is not. Sadly, these retaliatory murders may never be revealed because of the secrecy of the chain.

3. Subversion of the American press. Novak allowed the American press to be used as a tool by the White House for revenge. This is not "free speech" or "journalistic prerogative." This is premeditated abuse of the press, just as surely as the Mockingbird program, through which the CIA planted phony, damaging stories in the press to help gain White House and Pentagon objectives. Just as no one would call the Mockingbird program "the right of free speech," no one would consider what Novack did his "right." What possible public"need to know" was there in revealing Valerie Plame as an agent?

4. Theft of American tax dollars. By refusing to come forward with the leaker, both Rove and Novack are forcing the need for an investigation - a very expensive investigation. The right thing to do, the selfless thing to do, would be for Novak to come clean about his source and/or for the leaker to step forward for the good of the country. The fact that this is not happening is glaring, incontrovertible proof that Novack and Rove's self interest outweigh all other considerations, including the welfare of the American people they are supposed to serve.

5. Advocation of a dictatorship: The fact that Wilson's report on the WMDs was considered reason enough to make he and his wife targets at the expense of American security and tax dollars shows a despotic - in fact murderous - intolerance of dissent that is appropriate only to the most oppressive fascist dictatorships. That is certainly not the America that real patriots want to be a part of or to uphold.

In future history books when they list those who made constructive contributions to America in the early 21th century, missing from the list will be Karl Rove, Bob Novak, Tim Russert, Rush Limbaugh and all the otherr hypocritical, treasonous losers who have made it their personal mission in life to tear down the American ideal so many thousands have given their lives over the past 250 years to build.

This White House Scandal Finally Tips the Scale! www.apfn.org/APFN/LEAKGATE.HTM

"Dissent is the highest form of patriotism" - Thomas Jefferson

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, it expects what never was and never will be... The People cannot be safe without information." -- Thomas Jefferson

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