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Broadcast on CBC : 01/04/04

Ray McGovern Exposes the deceit behind the Bush WMD "Investigation"

In the United States, Where the Bush administration has called an inquiry, sceptics are convinced that it is a political stitch-up. "It's bullshit," said Ray McGovern, a retired CIA analyst with 27 years of experience. "The commission will be just like the [11 September] commission and it will not report back until after the election. It will not look into the politicisation of intelligence."

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Mr Bush is expected to announce within days the make-up of the panel to investigate why intelligence on which he said his administration based its claims about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction did not match what has been found on the ground in Iraq. Brent Scowcroft, who served as National Security Adviser in Mr Bush's father's administration, has been tipped to head the inquiry.

Mr McGovern said that there was outrage among intelligence professionals that they were being used as scapegoats. He said that intelligence provided by the CIA and other intelligence agencies was used selectively by the administration to support a political decision that it had already made to go to war with Saddam.

"Especially earlier on, the intelligence they were getting was accurate: [CIA director] George Tenet stood up to them. But after he was told that Bush was going to war he caved in," Mr McGovern said. "There is a sense of outrage among analysts, at least the good ones. The good ones are leaving. There are a lot of mid-level managers who are leaving."

In the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq there have been numerous examples of how initial drafts of US intelligence reports about Saddam's alleged weapons capability had caveats and "dissents" removed by the time the final report was drawn up. On the weekend it was revealed that a report into the ability of Iraqi unmanned aerial vehicles to carry biological weapons -- used by Colin Powell, Secretary of State, before the UN -- included a dissenting opinion from the US Air Force that had been watered down. The vehicles have since been proved to be harmless.

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=487289