October 6, 2003
WASHINGTON DC - For the Bush Administration, which has wrapped itself in faux patriotism, accusations that it revealed the identity of a serving CIA agent are a huge political embarrassment and another blow to its sinking credibility.
Last July, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson IV contradicted President Bush's assertions that Iraq had imported uranium ore from Niger. Wilson said his investigations in Niger found the whole story was a fake, based on forged documents. Bush nevertheless claimed Iraq was importing uranium in his keynote State of the Union address.
Wilson's patriotic act ruined his career and made him the target of a vicious White House smear campaign. At least six Washington journalists were told by Bush administration sources that Wilson's wife was an active CIA officer. Journalist Robert Novak cited her name in his column. Revealing names of CIA agents is a federal crime.
The consensus here is that the likeliest source of the story was office of Lewis Libby, Vice President Cheney's powerful chief of staff. Libby and Pentagon civilian allies, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, played the key role in engineering the war with Iraq. They brought intensive pressure on CIA to tailor intelligence to produce proof of hidden weapons and links between Iraq and al-Qaida.
Behind the Wilson scandal, a far more important battle is raging. The Bush Administration has so far spent $1 billion in the fruitless search for unconventional weapons in Iraq. The non-existence of these weapons - the main excuse for the invasion of Iraq - has badly damaged the White House; eroded the power of Cheney' `men' - Wolfowitz, Feith, Perle - who jestingly call themselves `the cabal,' - and humiliated the hapless Colin Powell.
Now, the `cabal' and some politicians blame CIA for the failure to find Iraq's non-existent weapons and alleged links to al-Qaida. But CIA is fighting back through leaks, accusing the Administration of distorting, corrupting and politicizing the conduct of national security.
CIA does deserve some sharp criticism over Iraq: it had a shocking lack of reliable human intelligence there, forcing the agency to rely heavily on dubious defectors and foreign intelligence, rather than its own resources. Ironically, France had excellent intelligence in Iraq and rightly warned Bush his war would lead to a disaster. But Bush was too busy listening to the neo-conservative's cooked intelligence to heed France's excellent and reliable advice.
So far, CIA chief George Tenet has refused public comment over the attacks on CIA, but agency sources report him furious with the White House and its neo-conservative Pentagon allies. CIA staffers are waiting for Tenet to go public and take on the neo-cons who are trying to blame CIA for the fiasco they created.
When VP Cheney and the Pentagon `cabal' decided CIA was not providing the damning evidence on Iraq they needed to promote war, they created a special intelligence unit reporting to Wolfowitz and Feith, that cherry-picked bits and pieces of negative data about Iraq, trumpeted lurid claims by Iraqi defectors, then passed them on to the White House as fact.
They used Iraqi exiles were used as a primary conduit for the disinformation, and provide the Iraqis funding and political support. The New York Times' Judith Miller repeatedly parroted the Iraqi defector's lies and distortions.
Wolfowitz's special intelligence office reportedly sought to link with Israel's Mossad intelligence agency in the anti-Iraq campaign. But Mossad was too professional to have anything to do with this ad hoc operation. However, members of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's cabinet reportedly provided the neo-cons's special intel unit with a stream of negative stories about Iraq.
CIA's professionals were enraged by this end-run, and appalled that defectors' wild tales and self-serving foreign-supplied material were being packaged as fact and used to formulate US national security policy.
Before the war on Iraq, Director Tenet took the unprecedented step of publicly warning that many of the claims about Iraq were not justified by facts. But he was ignored in Bush's rush to war and did not repeat his caution. Warnings by ranking CIA officers that their country was being stampeded into war by neo-conservatives with a hidden agenda were also ignored.
The Wilson affaire has exploded at a time when the extent that the nation's professional intelligence cadre was circumvented, or bullied and intimidated into silence by the Bush Administration has become a major issue.
Such politically motivated pressure on the nation's intelligence establishment by men with little American flags on their lapels is totally unacceptable and gravely endangers national security. Real patriots do not start wars to win elections and divert attention from financial scandals.
CIA chief Tenet ought to come out and denounce the cabal that led the US into an unnecessary war that has become a bloody and unimaginably expensive mess. But CIA officers are trained to remain silent and obey the chain of command.
So, it's up to Congress to demand a full investigation of the corruption of national security, and of the extremist ideologists who misled America into a war that should never have been waged.
Foreign Correspondent
Foreign Correspondent
