No Evidence CIA Slanted Iraq Data

[kskiska]

Probers Say Analysts Remained Consistent

Saturday, January 31, 2004; Page A01

Congressional and CIA investigations into the prewar intelligence on Iraq's weapons and links to terrorism have found no evidence that CIA analysts colored their judgment because of perceived or actual political pressure from White House officials, according to intelligence officials and congressional officials from both parties.

Richard J. Kerr, a former deputy CIA director who is leading the CIA's review of its prewar Iraq assessment, said an examination of the secret analytical work done by CIA analysts showed that it remained consistent over many years.

(snip)

There have been instances in which intelligence analysts said they sensed pressure to reach certain conclusions, but the House and Senate investigators said there was no indication they bowed to such wishes.

Last year, for example, some analysts at the CIA complained to senior officials when Vice President Cheney made multiple trips to CIA headquarters to question their studies of Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda.

And analysts at the Defense Intelligence Agency told investigators they sensed pressure when civilian Defense Department leaders constantly questioned why their analysis had found only tentative links between al Qaeda and Iraq.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A64626-2004Jan30.html?nav=hptop_tb

[PartyPooper]

1. What was Dick Cheney doing at the CIA all of those times?

Having tea?

These were repeated and "unprecedented visits" by a sitting vice president!

:crazy:

[0007]

5. twisting arms!

[dogpatch]

2. and so the whitewash begins

I guess the way the Bush people bent the intellegnce reports like crazy to get the Niger yellowcake uranium allegation into last years SOTU, dropping all of the caveats from the reports about Saddam's allged capacity for WMD productiong, and leaving Valerie Plame's name to the press --- all this seems to have been totally and suddenly forgotten. Unbelievable!

[underpants]

22. WH spin coming-Reports already show that these are baseless charges

Expect to see that hard and heavy on the talk shows tomorrow morning and Monday morning. This is a attempt to quickly put this issue down.

[alfredo]

3. they didn't need to slant intelligence, that was the

job of the OSP.

[gulliver]

4. Not verifying the evidence slants it.

Maybe Cheney just told the analysts he was happy with the old, erroneous data. "No need to assess the current state of the threat, fellas. I like the answer just the way it is: old and scary."

[diamond14]

6. WH outed a CIA agent....which threatens her life....THAT is pressure

the reason Plame was 'outed by the WH', was because her husband wrote that bush*'s SOTU 'saddam got yellow-cake from Africa' was a LIE, and proved it too...so bush* put PRESSURE on and sent a message to all CIA agents:

you object to anything bush* says, and your wife could be KILLED, after WH outs her as a spy....

THAT is a LOT OF PRESSURE, for all CIA agents...

the WH outed the CIA spy in JULY 2003....since then, bush* has made NO EFFORT to find the "traitor in the White House", so that bush*'s pressure stays on the CIA...

[The_Casual_Observer]

7. Bush didn't use any intelligence

He doesn't have any, but otherwise, all of information was taken from reports prior to the Ritter inspections of the 90's in old UN documents. This is all old news, however it is probably new information to the walking dead otherwise known as the media.

[F.Gordon]

8. Errr....bullshit!!!

During the Clinton adminstration the CIA accidently "slipped" and downplayed the significance of the Iraq weapons programs. Enter Rumsfeld and his band of merry fuckwads....they "corrected" this information.

And, what did most members of congress read before the IWR vote? Essentially a version of this.....

http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.pdf

I can't find any distorted facts in this at all. (sarcasm overload) Actually, Cheney probably wrote this fucking thing himself.

I've posted this a couple of times before, but it's still worth a gander or two now and then.

[Corgigal]

9. The CIA

is fighting like Senate Democrat's. They need to defend themselves and stop allowing this adminstration to bully them.

[young_at_heart]

10. How many other VP's have done this sort of thing?

Seems a little off the mark for his position.

[ozymandius]

11. Answer: NONE

No VP has ever spend four days at Langley for any reason.

[underpants]

20. Will Pitt had an interview with ex-CIA agent who said the same.

www.truthout.org

[diamond14]

12. CIA consistently said: NO WMD in Iraq....(links)

the whole list is on this site

here's a few snips


JANUARY, 2002 – TENET DOES NOT MENTION IRAQ IN NUCLEAR THREAT REPORT: "In CIA Director George Tenet's January 2002 review of global weapons-technology proliferation, he did not even mention a nuclear threat from Iraq, though he did warn of one from North Korea."

FEBRUARY 6, 2002 – CIA SAYS IRAQ HAS NO WMD, AND HAS NOT PROVIDED AL QAEDA WMD: "The Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade, and the agency is also convinced that President Saddam Hussein has not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related terrorist groups, according to several American intelligence officials."

APRIL 15, 2002 – WOLFOWITZ ANGERED AT CIA FOR NOT UNDERMINING U.N. REPORT: After receiving a CIA report that concluded that Hans Blix had conducted inspections of Iraq's declared nuclear power plants "fully within the parameters he could operate" when Blix was head of the international agency responsible for these inspections prior to the Gulf War, a report indicated that "Wolfowitz ‘hit the ceiling’ because the CIA failed to provide sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new U.N. weapons inspection program."

SUMMER, 2002 – CIA WARNINGS TO WHITE HOUSE EXPOSED: "In the late summer of 2002, Sen. Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes."

http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=24889

[underpants]

19. WP says they didn't buckle AND didn't give them the answers they wanted so

it sounds like the information didn't come from them.

Your links show that the didn't support or give support to the accusations W&Co. were making.

[grytpype]

13. This is very suspicious.

What about all those reports of undue influence we kept hearing????? This story is turning very strange.

[The_Gopher]

14. could this article be a set-up to show......

to show just how the bushies were cherry-picking the most ominous estimates and overlooking estimates which were much more realistic?

talkingpointsmemo.com has a good take on all this.

[ithacan]

15. that's a lie. Here's the proof:

In late 2002 there were numerous reports coming out of the CIA that the BUshies were in fact pressuring them to cook the intelligence books. Here below are two examples. My guess: this is a setup. The insiders are going to remain quiet until the Bushies' lies are so deeply set that they end up screwing themselves...

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1607676
Houston Chronicle
Oct. 8, 2002, 10:47AM
Some administration officials expressing misgivings on Iraq
By WARREN P. STROBEL and JONATHAN S. LANDAY

WASHINGTON -- While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.

These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses -- including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network -- have overstated the amount of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East.

They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary.

Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews.

No one who was interviewed disagreed.


http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/22/dreyfuss-r.html
The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA

Devising bad intelligence to promote bad policy
By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 12.16.02
The American Prospect

Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq, according to former CIA officials. Key officials of the Department of Defense are also producing their own unverified intelligence reports to justify war. Much of the questionable information comes from Iraqi exiles long regarded with suspicion by CIA professionals. A parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation, in the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, collects the information from the exiles and scours other raw intelligence for useful tidbits to make the case for preemptive war. These morsels sometimes go directly to the president.

The war over intelligence is a critical part of a broader offensive by the party of war within the Bush administration against virtually the entire expert Middle East establishment in the United States -- including State Department, Pentagon and CIA area specialists and leading military officers.

<snip>

But the sharpest battle is over the CIA. "There is tremendous pressure on <the CIA> to come up with information to support policies that have already been adopted," says Vincent Cannistraro, a former senior CIA official and counterterrorism expert. What's unfolding is a campaign by well-placed hawks to undermine the CIA's ability to provide objective, unbiased intelligence to the White House.

<more>

Someone needs to get this out. Or maybe the strategy is to wait a bit more, until the real campaign is on, and then the CIA guys will come out and say, yes, indeed, books were cooked...

[Palacsinta]

16. and what about "stovepiping" the info?

or whatever it's called............the info is sent right up tp the top without making crucial "stops' along the way for analysis etc.

[underpants]

17. You can't spell "stovepiping" without O-S-P

That is your direct link up to the top. Rummy founded it and Wolfowitz ran it directly out of his office.

[DoYouEverWonder]

18. The CIA didn't slant the data, the boys at OSP did

that was why Rummie formed the OSP. Bu$h & Co weren't getting the answers they wanted to hear from CIA Intel, so they used 'other' sources.

Bu$hCo's other sources often include what they call 'private' intel. This is intel that they get from self made terrorist experts, most of whom have little credibility.

[fishnfla]

21. Bullshit! ask Sy Hersch.

its all there. Cheney the puppetmaster.

[underpants]

23. Boy THAT didn't take very long huh?

I don't see in the article when this investigation/study was started.

They can't really have started this since Kay testified on Wednesday could they?