Intelligence Officers, Learn From History
By Ray McGovern
05/26/06 "Information
Clearing House" -- --
The truth will
out. If you fabricate, or acquiesce in the fabrication of,
evidence used to “justify” launching a war of choice, you will
have to live with that for the rest of your life.
Call me quaint, but having spent 27 years in intelligence on
both the analysis and operations ends of the business, I
continue to believe that most intelligence officers have a
conscience. The problem is they are often too late in acting on
it.
Take the former chief of the European Division of CIA’s
directorate of operations, Tyler Drumheller, for example, who is
now spelling out chapter-and-verse the deceitful “intelligence”
adduced by “Slam Dunk” George Tenet and his “if-you-say-so”
deputy John McLaughlin. Yesterday’s Washington Post
article by Joby Warrick has Drumheller elaborating on the raging
dispute within CIA over the credibility of a defector labeled
(appropriately) “Curveball.” Curveball is the source of bogus
stories about “biological weapons trailers” to which
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell gave such prominence in his
(in)famous speech on Feb. 5, 2003 at the UN: “We have first-hand
descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and
rails.”
Who’s Telling the Truth?
I think Drumheller. My reasoning has much to do with
motive. Readers can come to their own judgments. Here’s some
background that might help.
I knew McLaughlin well. When he was a young analyst, I chaired
his first National Intelligence Estimate and shared after-hour
sandwiches as we crafted articles for the President’s Daily
Brief. Sadly, he fell in with bad companions and let
himself be seduced by Robert Gates, who had his own agenda as he
climbed the ranks to be head of CIA analysis and then CIA
director.
Full disclosure: Gates worked for me when I was chief of the
Soviet foreign policy branch in the early seventies. To this
day, I am proud to have put in his efficiency report a warning
about the Cassius-like ambition that later succeeded in
advancing his career so rapidly.
Was there a Russian under every rock? Gates found two. Were
there “moderates” in the Iranian leadership? Gates found as
many as you would like. How about the Soviet Union, Gates’ area
of substantive expertise; would the Communist party ever lose
control? Never, said Gates, as he pandered to his mentor,
William Casey, at whose feet he learned so well. Gates has
publicly admitted that he watched Casey on “issue after issue
sit in meetings and present intelligence framed in terms of the
policy he wanted pursued.” (He was quoted by Walter Pincus in
the Washington Post on March 15, 1995.)
McLaughlin was a perfect choice to head the Soviet analysis
division. His lack of expertise in Soviet affairs was seen by
Gates as an asset, as was the fact that —unlike Gates—he came
across as a “nice guy.” Above all, he did what he was told.
And his career zoomed, like Gates’.
As Drumheller listened to President George W. Bush’s state of
the union address on Jan. 28, 2003, he was amazed to hear him
describe Curveball’s “mobile laboratories” in detail.
Drumheller’s earlier warnings about Curveball had been ignored.
When just a few days later Curveball’s “intelligence” turned up
featured in an advance copy of Powell’s UN speech, Drumheller
called McLaughlin’s office and was summoned there at once.
Sitting across from McLaughlin and an aide in a small conference
room, Drumheller told him of a warning from a German
intelligence officer (the Germans were debriefing Curveball)
that, “He’s a fabricator and he’s crazy.” McLaughin says he has
“no recall” of that meeting.
According to an aide to then-Deputy Director for Operations,
James Pavitt (Drumheller’s immediate boss), McLaughlin’s
executive assistant held two meetings in December 2002 to
discuss the issue and was told that the Operations Directorate
“did not believe that Curveball’s information should be relied
upon.” The two meetings took place during the week before
Christmas 2002. Ironically, George Tenet’s famous “slam-dunk”
came that same week (on Dec. 21), according to Bob Woodward.
Boss, There’s Problems.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
On the night before Powell’s UN speech, Drumheller’s
home telephone rang; Tenet was calling to get a telephone
number. A Los Angeles Times story of April 2, 2005
quotes Drumheller:
“I gave him the phone number for the guy he wanted, then it
struck me, ‘I better say something.’ I said, ‘You know, boss,
there’s problems with that [Curveball] case.’ He says, ‘Yeah,
yeah, yeah, I’m exhausted. Don’t worry about it.’”
More recently, Drumheller told the Washington Post’s
Joby Warrick that he referred directly to the draft of Powell’s
speech: “Hey, boss, you’re not going to use that stuff in the
speech...? There are real problems with that.” Warrick, too,
quotes Drumheller on how “distracted and tired” Tenet seemed to
be.
Tenet must have been really tired not to remember that.
Let’s assume for the moment that Drumheller’s memory is better
than Tenet’s. It is then easier to sympathize with Tenet’s
predicament, without excusing his behavior.
Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, senior aide to Powell, who was at
Powell’s side as he prepared his address, has told the press of
his own and Powell’s misgivings because there were no photos of
the “mobile labs”—just artist renderings. According to
Wilkerson, Tenet and McLaughlin that same day (Feb. 4, 2003)
“described the evidence on the mobile labs as exceptionally
strong, based on multiple sources, whose stories were
independently corroborated.” Speech rehearsals showed that the
CIA graphics shop could still turn out eye-catching artist
renderings, and copies had been distributed to top aides. How
inconvenient to have a senior CIA officer still casting cautions
at this time of night.
What is truth? The president wants war, and we’re here to
help. Besides, Curveball’s reporting is no worse than the other
cockamamie garbage we’ve given Powell to say. We’ll win this
war handily; the Iraqis will welcome us with cut flowers and
open arms. We’ll be in the Middle East big time, sitting on all
that Iraqi oil and building permanent military bases, having
deposed a “ruthless dictator” and eliminated a sworn enemy of
Israel—now tell me, who is going to come along at that point and
fault us for using bogus intelligence?
Enough on Tenet’s possible motives. How about Drumheller’s? In
the days ahead, expect to hear that he is just trying to promote
the book he has written, or that he has axes to grind with Tenet
and McLaughlin. I had a chance to hear Drumheller speak,
together with Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-NJ), on Iraq at George Mason
University on June 21. He was asked about Curveball, but never
once mentioned the book—strange way to promote it. He did not
go much beyond what he had already told the press and the
various commissions investigating CIA performance.
The Ugly Question
And then it came up. Drumheller was also asked why he
did not go public before the war, when his candor might
have contributed to stopping unnecessary killing. In an
apologetic tone, he adduced the familiar reasons: the hope that
by staying in place he might prevent still worse; a sense of
responsibility to his colleagues, especially those he had
mentored; a mortgage; the fact that he had not yet reached
retirement age.
One ringing lesson here is the need for whistleblower
protection for those working in the national security arena.
There is none now, and Congress has just rejected all recent
attempts to craft legislation with teeth in it.
The tone of Drumheller’s remarks left the distinct
impression that he regrets remaining silent and wishes he had
summoned the courage to blow the whistle. It was also clear
that he does not look forward to having to answer that ugly
question for the rest of his life.
That said, better late than never. Drumheller deserves a lot of
credit for coming clean. It takes no little courage to come
forward at the risk of ostracizing yourself from many years
worth of colleagues in the brotherhood and making yourself
vulnerable to the “Joe-Wilson” treatment he can now expect from
the administration and our domesticated press.
Drumheller’s boss at the time, Deputy Director for Operations
James Pavitt, has shown no such courage. He made light of the
whole issue in telling the Los Angeles Times:
“I remember the guffaws by myself and others when we said,
‘How could they have put this much emphasis on this guy?...He
wasn’t worth [anything] in our minds.”
It would have been nice if you shared that with us at the
time, Jim.
The Silberman-Robb commission’s investigation of intelligence
performance on Iraq called the failure to prevent Curveball’s
material from being included in Powell’s UN speech a “serious
failure of management and leadership.”
No One Accountable
Surprise, surprise. No one has been held accountable.
And please, don’t tell me that is the job of the congressional
“watchdog” committees. This week witnessed the latest hoax from
Hoekstra, Rep. Peter Hoekstra (R-MI), chair of the House
intelligence committee, who tried to boost Sen. Rick Santorum’s
(R-PA) lagging election campaign by shamelessly supporting his
fanciful claim that the US did indeed find weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq. With customary chutzpah, FOX News
immediately aired a statement by Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld to the effect that the 20 year-old degraded chemical
munitions in question “are weapons of mass destruction.” I don’t
know how that squares with his answer to my questioning on May 4
in Atlanta, when he stated “Apparently there were no weapons of
mass destruction.” There is no other sign that he means to
revise that judgment—but, hey, if it will help Santorum,
Hoekstra will oblige—even if that means holding them both up to
ridicule from those who have been paying attention (perhaps not
too many of them in Pennsylvania). Some watchdog, Hoekstra.
The Senate intelligence committee is headed by arch-White House
loyalist Pat Roberts (R-KS), the fellow who refused to
investigate the Iraq-Niger forgery and the Wilson-Plame affair
and reneged on a promise to complete the so-called Phase II
study regarding what the administration did with the
intelligence it got on Iraq. Drumheller’s revelations provide
yet another case study making clear why Roberts has been
dragging his feet on the Phase II study.
Intelligence Failure?
It depends on your vantage point. From the point of
view of Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rove, and Bush—and Hoekstra and
Roberts—Tenet and McLaughlin performed well, with their elastic
consciences never feeling much apparent strain. The
“Cheney-Rumsfeld cabal” (Col Wilkerson’s label) and associates
got their war with Iraq with the help of intelligence cooked to
their recipe. Tenet was the quintessential "team player," an
attribute antithetical to his statutory duty to tell the emperor
when he had no clothes on.
Rumsfeld adviser (and former House Speaker) Newt Gingrich, like
Cheney a frequent visitor to CIA Headquarters, told the press in
2003 that "George Tenet is so grateful to the president
[presumably for not firing him on Sept. 12, 2001] that he will
do anything for him." When Tenet retired a year later “for
family reasons,” Bush reciprocated and gave him the highest
civilian award, the Medal of Freedom, for services performed.
John McLaughlin now has a cushy job as national security adviser
for CNN, and is still showing great elasticity—in commenting on
NSA’s end-run around the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act,
for example. Drumheller will have to be content with the
satisfaction of having told the truth. But, for some of us,
this is no little thing.
Lessons for Today
No one will be held responsible for the corruption of
intelligence unless there are changes in Congress and the White
House. Meanwhile, as intelligence is used/abused to support
administration aims vis-à-vis Iran and North Korea, Drumheller’s
former colleagues will probably have to grapple with difficult
decisions. Let me close by citing our pre-war appeal to CIA and
other intelligence officers from a Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity Memorandum of March 12, 2003,
“Cooking Intelligence for War.”
“Many former colleagues and successors are facing a dilemma
all too familiar to intelligence veterans—the difficult choices
that must be faced when the demands of good conscience butt up
against deeply ingrained attitudes concerning secrecy, misguided
notions of what is true patriotism, and understandable
reluctance to put careers—and mortgages—on the line...We appeal
to those still working inside the Intelligence Community to
consider turning state’s evidence.”
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of
the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington, DC. He was
a CIA analyst for 27 years, from the administration of John
Kennedy to that of George H. W. Bush, and is co-founder of
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
This opinion piece appeared first on Truthout.org
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