.
What
Happens When You Remain Silent?
Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
August 22, 2003
MEMORANDUM FOR: Colleagues in Intelligence
FROM:
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT:
Now It’s Your Turn
Sixty-four summers ago, when Hitler fabricated
Polish provocations in his attempt to justify Germany’s invasion of
Poland, there was not a peep out of senior German officials.
Happily, in today’s Germany the imperative of truth telling no longer
takes a back seat to ingrained docility and knee-jerk deference to the
perceived dictates of “homeland security.” The most telling
recent sign of this comes in today’s edition of Die Zeit,
Germany’s highly respected weekly. The story, by Jochen Bittner
holds lessons for us all.
Die Zeit’s report leaves in tatters
the “evidence” cited by Secretary of State Colin Powell and other
administration spokesmen as the strongest proof that Iraq was using
mobile trailers as laboratories to produce material for biological
weapons.
German Intelligence on Powell’s “Solid” Sources
Bittner notes that, like their American
counterparts, German intelligence officials had to hold their noses as
Powell on February 5 at the UN played fast and loose with intelligence
he insisted came from “solid sources.” Powell’s specific
claims concerning the mobile laboratories, it turns out, depended
heavily—perhaps entirely—on a source of the Bundesnachrichtendienst
(BND), Germany’s equivalent to the CIA. But the BND, it turns
out, considered the source in no way “solid.” A “senior
German security official” told Die Zeit that, in passing the
report to US officials, the Germans made a point of noting “various
problems with the source.” In more diplomatic language, Die
Zeit’s informant indicated that the BND’s “evaluation of the
source was not altogether positive.”
German officials remain in some confusion
regarding the “four different sources” cited by Powell in presenting
his case regarding the “biological laboratories.” Berlin has
not been told who the other three sources are. In this context, a
German intelligence officer mentioned that there is always the danger of
false confirmation, suggesting it is possible that the various reports
can be traced back to the same original source, theirs—that is, the
one with which the Germans had “various problems.”
Even if there are in fact multiple sources, the
Germans wonder what reason there is to believe that the others are more
“solid” than their own. Powell indicated that some of the
sources he cited were Iraqi émigrés. While the BND would not
give Die Zeit an official comment, Bittner notes pointedly that
German intelligence “proceeds on the assumption that émigrés do not
always tell the truth and that the picture they draw can be colored by
political motives.”
Plausible?
Despite all that, in an apparent bid to
avoid taking the heat for appearing the constant naysayer on an issue of
such neuralgic import in Washington, German intelligence officials say
that, the dubious sourcing notwithstanding, they considered the
information on the mobile biological laboratories “plausible.”
In recent weeks, any “plausibility” has all
but evaporated. Many biological warfare specialists in the US and
elsewhere were skeptical from the start. Now Defense Intelligence
Agency specialists have joined their counterparts at the State
Department and elsewhere in concluding that the two trailer/laboratories
discovered in Iraq in early May are hydrogen-producing facilities for
weather balloons to calibrate Iraqi artillery, as the Iraqis have said.
Perhaps it was this DIA report that emboldened
the BND official to go public about the misgivings the BND had about the
source.
Insult to Intelligence
What do intelligence analysts do when their
professional ethic—to tell the truth without fear or favor—is
prostituted for political expedience? Usually, they hold their
peace, as we’ve already noted was the case in Germany in 1939 before
the invasion of Poland. The good news is that some intelligence
officials are now able to recognize a higher duty—particularly when
the issue involves war and peace. Clearly, some BND officials are
fed up with the abuse of intelligence they have witnessed—and
especially the trifling with the intelligence that they have shared with
the US from their own sources. At least one such official appears
to have seen it as a patriotic duty to expose what appears to be a
deliberate distortion.
This is a hopeful sign. There are
indications that British intelligence officials, too, are beginning to
see more distinctly their obligation to speak truth to power, especially
in light of the treatment their government accorded Ministry of Defense
biologist Dr. David Kelly, who became despondent to the point of
suicide.
Even more commendable was the courageous move
by senior Australian intelligence analyst Andrew Wilkie when it became
clear to him that the government he was serving had decided to take part
in launching an unprovoked war based on “intelligence” information
he knew to be specious. Wilkie resigned and promptly spoke his
piece—not only to his fellow citizens but, after the war, at
Parliament in London and Congress in Washington. Andrew Wilkie was
not naïve enough to believe he could stop the war when he resigned in
early March. What was clear to him, however, was that he had a
moral duty to expose the deliberate deception in which his government,
in cooperation with the US and UK, had become engaged. And he knew
instinctively that, in so doing, he could with much clearer conscience
look at himself in the mirror each morning.
What About Us?
Do you not find it ironic that State
Department foreign service officers, whom we intelligence professionals
have (quite unfairly) tended to write off as highly articulate but
unthinking apologists for whatever administration happens to be in
power, are the only ones so far to resign on principle over the war on
Iraq? Three of them have—all three with very moving explanations
that their consciences would no longer allow them to promote
“intelligence” and policies tinged with deceit.
What about you? It is clear that you have
been battered, buffeted, besmirched. And you are painfully aware
that you can expect no help at this point from Director George Tenet.
Recall the painful morning when you watched him at the UN sitting
squarely behind Powell, as if to say the Intelligence Community endorses
the deceitful tapestry he wove. No need to remind you that his
speech boasted not only the bogus biological trailers but also
assertions of a “sinister nexus” between Iraq and al-Qaeda, despite
the fact that your intense, year-and-a-half analytical effort had turned
up no credible evidence to support that claim. To make matters
worse, Tenet is himself under fire for acquiescing in a key National
Intelligence Estimate on “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq that
included several paragraphs based on a known forgery. That is the
same estimate from which the infamous 16 words were drawn for the
president’s state-of-the-union address on January 28.
And not only that. In a dramatic
departure from customary practice, Tenet has let the moneychangers into
the temple—welcoming the most senior policymakers into the inner
sanctum where all-source analysis is performed at CIA headquarters,
wining and dining Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin
Powell, National Security Assistant Condoleezza Rice, and even former
House Speaker Newt Gingrich (now representing the Pentagon) on their
various visits to make sure you didn’t miss anything! You have
every right to expect to be protected from that kind of indignity.
Small wonder that Gingrich, in a recent unguarded moment on TV, conceded
that Tenet “is so grateful to President Bush that he will do anything
for him.” CIA directors have no business being so integral a
“part of the team.”
Powell, who points proudly to his four
day-and-night cram course at the CIA in the days immediately prior to
his February 5 UN speech, seems oblivious to the fact that personal
visitations of that frequency and duration—and for that purpose—are
unprecedented in the history of the CIA. Equally unprecedented are
Cheney’s “multiple visits.” When George H. W. Bush was vice
president, not once did he go out to CIA headquarters for a working
visit. We brought our analysis to him. As you are well
aware, once the subjects uppermost in policymakers’ minds are clear to
analysts, the analysis itself must be conducted in an unfettered,
sequestered way—and certainly without the direct involvement of
officials with policy axes to grind. Until now, that is the way it
has been done; the analysis and estimates were brought downtown to the
policymakers—not the other way around.
What Happens When You Remain Silent?
There is no more telling example than
Vietnam. CIA analysts were prohibited from reporting accurately on
the non-incident in the Tonkin Gulf on August 4, 1964 until the White
House had time to use the “furious fire-fight” to win the Tonkin
Gulf resolution from Congress—and eleven more years of war for the
rest of us.
And we kept quiet.
In November 1967 as the war gathered steam, CIA
management gave President Lyndon Johnson a very important National
Intelligence Estimate known to be fraudulent. Painstaking research
by a CIA analyst, the late Sam Adams, had revealed that the Vietnamese
Communists under arms numbered 500,000. But Gen. William
Westmoreland in Saigon, eager to project an image of progress in the US
“war of attrition,” had imposed a very low artificial ceiling on
estimates of enemy strength.
Analysts were aghast when management caved in
and signed an NIE enshrining Westmoreland’s count of between 188,000
and 208,000. The Tet offensive just two months later exploded that
myth—at great human cost. And the war dragged on for seven more
years.
Then, as now, morale among analysts plummeted.
A senior CIA official made the mistake of jocularly asking Adams if he
thought the Agency had “gone beyond the bounds of reasonable
dishonesty.” Sam, who had not only a keen sense of integrity but
first-hand experience of what our troops were experiencing in the
jungles of Vietnam, had to be restrained. He would be equally
outraged at the casualties being taken now by US forces fighting another
unnecessary war, this time in the desert. Kipling’s verse
applies equally well to jungle or desert:
If they question why we died, tell them because our fathers lied.
Adams himself became, in a very real sense,
a casualty of Vietnam. He died of a heart attack at 55, with
remorse he was unable to shake. You see, he decided to “go
through channels,” pursuing redress by seeking help from imbedded CIA
and the Defense Department Inspectors General. Thus, he allowed
himself to be diddled for so many years that by the time he went public
the war was mostly over—and the damage done.
Sam had lived painfully with the thought that,
had he gone public when the CIA’s leaders caved in to the military in
1967, the entire left half of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial would not
have had to be built. There would have been 25-30,000 fewer names
for the granite to accommodate.
So too with Daniel Ellsberg, who made the
courageous decision to give the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam to the New
York Times and Washington Post for publication in 1971.
Dan has been asked whether he has any regrets. Yes, one big one,
he says. If he had made the papers available in 1964 or 65, this
tragically unnecessary war might have been stopped in its tracks.
Why did he not? Dan’s response is quite telling; he says the
thought never occurred to him at the time.
Let the thought occur to you, now.
But Isn’t It Too Late?
No. While it is too late to prevent
the misadventure in Iraq, the war is hardly over, and analogous
“evidence” is being assembled against Iran, Syria, and North Korea.
Yes, US forces will have their hands full for a long time in Iraq, but
this hardly rules out further adventures based on “intelligence” as
spurious as that used to argue the case for attacking Iraq.
The best deterrent is the truth. Telling
the truth about the abuse of intelligence on Iraq could conceivably give
pause to those about to do a reprise. It is, in any case,
essential that the American people acquire a more accurate understanding
of the use and abuse of intelligence. Only then can there be any
hope that they can experience enough healing from the trauma of 9/11 to
be able to make informed judgments regarding the policies pursued by
this administration—thus far with the timid acquiescence of their
elected representatives.
History is littered with the guilty consciences
of those who chose to remain silent. It is time to speak out.
/s/
Gene Betit, Arlington, VA
Pat Lang, Alexandria, VA
David MacMichael, Linden, VA
Ray McGovern, Arlington, VA
Steering Group
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
Join our Daily News Headlines
Email Digest
|
|
Information
Clearing House
Daily News Headlines
Digest
|
HOME
COPYRIGHT NOTICE
|
