Jim Lobe
[LEAK-GATE] - The truth leaks out
Thu Nov 20 22:25:49 2003
64.140.158.17
The truth leaks out
By Jim Lobe
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/EK21Ak01.html
WASHINGTON - This week's blockbuster leak of a secret memorandum from a senior
Pentagon official to the US Senate Intelligence Committee has spurred
speculation that neo-conservative hawks in the Bush administration are on the
defensive and growing more desperate.
Both the committee and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) have asked the
Justice Department to launch an investigation of the leak, which took the form
of an article published Monday by the influential neo-conservative journal,
The Weekly Standard.
Committee chairman Pat Roberts characterized the leak as ''egregious'', noting
that it might have compromised ''highly classified information'' on
intelligence sources and methods of collecting information, as well as ongoing
investigations. He also said he did not believe the leak came from his
committee or its staff. The Pentagon issued an unusual press statement
declaring that the leak was ''deplorable and may be illegal''.
The Weekly Standard article, "Case Closed", is a summary of a lengthy memo
sent to the committee October 27 by Undersecretary of Defence for Policy
Douglas Feith. He had been asked by the senators to provide support for his
assertion in a closed hearing in July that US intelligence agencies had
established a long-standing operational link between the al-Qaeda terrorist
group and Baghdad.
That, and similar assertions by senior Bush officials before the war, have
long been considered questionable, more so after the war when the
administration - as with its pre-war contentions about Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction (WMD) - failed to come up with evidence to back its case.
Investigative reporters and Iraq war critics have accused Feith's office of
having manipulated or ''cherry-picked'' the intelligence on Iraq's purported
ties to al-Qaeda and WMD programs before the war to persuade Bush and the
public that Saddam posed a serious threat to the United States.
The leaked memo consists mainly of 50 excerpts culled from raw intelligence
reports by four US intelligence agencies about alleged al-Qaeda-Iraqi contacts
from 1990 to 2003. Some of the reports include brief analysis, but most cite
accounts by unnamed sources, such as ''a contact with good access'', ''a well
placed source'', ''a former senior Iraqi intelligence officer'', a ''regular
and reliable source'', ''sensitive CIA reporting'', and ''a foreign government
service''.
Although the article's author, Weekly Standard correspondent Stephen Hayes,
concludes that much of the evidence is ''detailed, conclusive, and
corroborated by multiple sources'', the only example of real corroboration is
with respect to several reports regarding contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraqi
agents in Afghanistan in 1999.
Most of the excerpts deal instead with alleged meetings or less direct
contacts in which sources claim that al-Qaeda agents are requesting certain
kinds of assistance, such as a safe haven, training or, in one case, WMD.
While supporters of the war in Iraq, such as the New York Times' William
Safire, have jumped on the Hayes article as proof of what the administration
had alleged, retired intelligence officers have criticized it, both because of
the security breach of the leak itself and because its contents are anything
but ''conclusive'' of an operational relationship.
W Patrick Lang, former head of the Middle East section of the Defence
Intelligence Agency, told the Washington Post the article amounted to a
''listing of a mass of unconfirmed reports, many of which themselves indicate
that the two groups continued to try to establish some sort of relationship''.
At the same time, he added, it raises the question: ''If they had such a
productive relationship, why did they have to keep trying?”
Other retired officers stressed that, to the extent that virtually all of the
excerpts consist of raw intelligence unvetted by professional analysts, the
article appeared to prove precisely what critics had been saying: Feith's
office simply picked those items in raw intelligence that tended to confirm
their pre-existing views that a relationship must have existed, without
subjecting the evidence to the kind of rigorous analysis that intelligence
agencies would apply.
''This is made to dazzle the eyes of the not terribly educated,'' Greg
Thielmann, a veteran of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and
Research (INR) who retired in 2002, told Inter Press Service. ''It begs the
question, 'Is this the best they can do?' If you're going to expose this
stuff, you'd better have something more than this,'' he said, adding, ''My
inclination is to interpret this as probably a very good example of
cherry-picking and the selective use of intelligence that was so obvious in
the lead-up to the war.''
Melvin Goodman, a former top CIA analyst, said the leak is a sign of
desperation. ''To me, they had to leak something like this, because the
neo-conservatives (in the administration) have nothing to stand on. They're
trying to get the idea out there that, 'Hey, there was a case for war', and
they have 'useful idiots' like Safire who say they're right.''
The notion that the leak was ''friendly'' or ''authorized'' by hawks in the
Pentagon or their allies in Vice President Dick Cheney's office - as opposed
to an unauthorized leak designed to embarrass the author - is widely accepted
in Washington.
The Standard, particularly Hayes and executive editor William Kristol, have
acted as a mouthpiece for administration hawks like Feith, his immediate boss,
Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, and their friends in Cheney's office,
particularly his powerful chief of staff, I Lewis ''Scooter'' Libby, since
even before the administration declared its ''war on terror'' in September
2001.
But at the same time it raises serious questions about the judgment of those
responsible for the leak. Not only does the intelligence contained in the
article fall embarrassingly short of ''closing the case'' on Iraq-al-Qaeda
links, the leak itself of such highly classified material might fuel the
impression that the neo-conservatives, if they were indeed the source, are
willing to sacrifice the country's secrets to retain power.
''It shows a cavalier and almost contemptuous regard for the national security
rationale for keeping information classified,'' according to Thielmann. ''The
objective of silencing the critics is so overwhelming that you have to throw
national security secrets to the wind.''
Both he and Goodman noted striking similarities between this latest case and
the leak in July of the identity of retired ambassador Joseph Wilson's wife,
Valerie Plame, a covert CIA officer. Wilson had just embarrassed the
administration by disclosing his trip on behalf of the CIA to Niger to check
out a report that Iraq had bought uranium ''yellowcake''. He charged that
Bush's assertion about the yellowcake in his 2003 State of the Union address
was false and that the White House knew it or should have known it at the
time.
The evident purpose of the leak to the Washington Post was to discredit Wilson
by suggesting that his mission to Niger was suggested by his wife. In fact,
the leak provoked enormous anger in the intelligence community as a major
security breach that effectively ended Plame's career as a covert officer, and
potentially endangered her life and those of people who had worked with her
abroad. The FBI is currently running a criminal investigation into the matter.
''It's obvious that if you cared about the real national security interests of
this country, you wouldn't reveal an asset,'' said Goodman. ''That shows this
is a venal and desperate group who are not considering the real
national-security interests of this country.''
(Inter Press Service)
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