New NSA report has documentary evidence that the CIA Iraq "white paper" created months before NIE

[sabra]

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/index.htm


U.S. Intelligence and Iraq WMD
Compiled and edited by Dr. John Prados


<snip>

We shall offer only a few examples here. First is the case of the CIA white paper, “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs.” That document is dated October 2002 {Document 1} and was issued on October 4. It has been represented as a distillation of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq published two days earlier, with the most sensitive, secret information stripped out. Posted here today is the major portion of the text of the same paper in draft {Document 2}, as it existed in July 2002. This document demonstrates that the white paper existed long before the NIE was even requested by Congress. In fact the illustrations in the July version are the same as those in the final report. A close comparison of the text shows, further, that much of the argumentation is identical, and that the differences between the two are strictly in the nature of separating text to insert more charges or to sharpen them. The entire product has the character of rhetoric. Little of the text shows the kind of approach characteristic of intelligence analysis. The fact that this document was in preparation at the CIA in July indicates that the Bush administration was actively engaged in a process of building support for war months ahead of the time it has previously been understood to have done so. In fact evidence exists that the CIA white paper was commissioned as early as May 2002. (Note 7)

This point is made even sharper by recently declassified Department of Defense documents, including a memorandum from the OUSDP that details the kinds of information seen as desirable to obtain from intelligence in order to strengthen the case for war against Iraq {Document 3}. The timing of this document suggests that this text was a response to the draft CIA white paper, created at a point when Pentagon critics of CIA reporting were actively pressing their case against the agency’s refusal to accept arguments that Saddam Hussein was allied with Al Qaeda. Changes in the CIA white paper between its July draft and the final document track closely with the OUSDP comments. The net impression is that the CIA white paper was rewritten to conform to administration preferences. If so, U.S. intelligence a priori made itself a tool of a political effort, vitiating the intelligence function and confirming the presence of a politicized process. The specific analytic failures on Iraq intelligence become much less significant in such a climate, especially in that they all yielded intelligence predictions of exactly the kind the Bush administration wanted to hear.

This impression is strengthened, and suspicions of collusion broadened, when the record of the British government’s white paper on Iraqi WMD is laid side by side with that of the CIA. In the course of British official investigations of the antecedents to the war, and the death of physicist David Kelly, a draft of the British white paper was released that is dated June 20 . As in the American case, the Joint Intelligence Committee, which originated this document and plays a role similar to that of the National Intelligence Council in the U.S., modified its draft to issue a final version on September 24, 2002, that was even more somber {Document 5}. There is a considerable record on the Blair government’s efforts to shape the content of the British white paper in directions not supported by the intelligence.

...

The preparation of white papers on both the United States and British sides also needs to be taken into account. That Bush and Blair each turned to their intelligence agencies for the papers is significant—they were evoking the imprimatur of secret intelligence to justify policy preferences. Both papers had the function of justification, not analysis, and neither government waited until it had compiled all the evidence before demanding these products. Neither government asked for intelligence estimates, fashioned in secret, in order to inform policy on Iraq. Instead, both Bush and Blair did want their intelligence agencies to carry out avowed political agendas. And the timing of the white paper drafts—now established as being in the summer of 2002, before there ever was a UN debate or a Security Council resolution—clearly indicates their true function. The accumulating weight of evidence currently supports the interpretation Scott McClellan gives, not that supplied by apologists for the Iraq war.

[slipslidingaway]

1. Thanks K&R n/t

[sabra]

2. Pelosi says she wants "hard evidence"....

[slipslidingaway]

4. I think Pelosi just wants all of this to fade away and unfortunately

she'll probably get her wish.

:(

[leftofthedial]

6. pelosi just wants to maintain the status quo

and to all our regret, the bush cabal is part of the status quo

[Igel]

3. What a silly article.

An NIE is the views of various intelligence agencies all put together and, presumably, synthesized into a set of conclusions. One assumes that first, each agency looks at its own data and procedures and comes to a conclusion before sitting down with the others. The conclusions may be wrong--and, in fact, you'd expect them to be biased, since each agency has a slightly different set of data and heuristics.

The CIA is one of the intelligence agencies that would contribute to such a thing. It's job, otherwise, is to produce reports. Its own reports. Whether it does a good job or not is a radically different matter.

This person seems to be saying that the CIA should not produce reports unless asked by specifically and only by Congress, and then it shouldn't produce its own reports. It should only form an opinion after having looked at what all the other intelligence agencies say. In other words, the CIA's job isn't what it thinks its job is.

Moreover, instead of being first among equals, or among the first among equals, or just among equals, it's to be subservient. Why, then, have it? Just have some word processing staff compile what other agencies tell them and ship it off to the GPO for printing.

On the other hand, the CIA is also, apparently, supposed to be one of the agencies uniquely responsible--with Congress--for determining what issues it looks at. It serves only its own and Congress' policy goals. Should Clinton have had a question, he has to get permission from Congress, or hope that the CIA comes up with the question itself. The idea of formulating or altering a policy isn't political--it's first and foremost an intelligence function. This doesn't mean */Cheney were right. Just that the argument reduces to an absurdity that would be untenable 99% of the time, and is justified not by reason and logic, but politics. Skewing an organization or process for a one-time political, even partisan, goal is short-sighted, and, well, redolent of */Cheney.

[leveymg]

5. I think you misunderstand, mischaracterize,or simply didn't read the article

Prados is certainly not saying that U.S. intelligence shouldn't produce estimates until tasked by Congress to do so. Your assertion is absurd.

Second, that's not really the central issue of this paper. Instead, Prados finds that the facts reported in the summer 2002 CIA White Paper differed little from those in the October NIE. In both documents, the White House had pressured CIA to incorporate elements being stovepiped from Iraqi exile groups to OSP-OVP, and pressured analysts to self-censor data that contradicted those sources favored by the neocons.

Here's Prados' central point, as I read it:

There were several avenues by which the Bush administration made its preferences clear. Vice President Richard Cheney questioned his CIA briefers aggressively, pressing them to the wall when he saw intelligence from other agencies that portrayed a more somber picture than that in CIA’s reporting. He sent briefers back for more information, including in instances when they checked with headquarters and returned with the same word. Cheney was especially acerbic on CIA’s rejection of claims that one of the 9/11 terrorists had met with Iraqi intelligence officers in Prague. On a number of occasions, Cheney sent his chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, to CIA headquarters to follow up on his concerns. Mr. Cheney went there himself, not just once but on almost a dozen occasions. The practice encouraged the CIA to censor itself, driven, as Pillar put it, by “the desire to avoid the unpleasantness of putting unwelcome assessments on the desks of policymakers.” (Note 6)

A second avenue to influence U.S. intelligence lay through Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon. There, William Luti’s Near East and South Asia unit of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy (OUSDP) was in close touch with the Vice President’s office. Papers circulated back and forth, and both offices utilized claims from Iraqi exiles—claims that Saddam trained terrorists or possessed various WMDs—to press the intelligence agencies for similar information. Under Paul Wolfowitz, the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and the undersecretary for policy, Douglas Feith, the Pentagon formed a special group to review reports on Saddam’s links to Al Qaeda. This unit, the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) has been represented by Feith as merely charged with assembling a briefing on terrorism, but its real function was to bring additional pressure to bear on the CIA.

Not all the manipulation was visible. Behind the scenes at the State Department, Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton, also closely allied with the Office of the Vice President, pressured both the State Department and the CIA to fire individuals who refused to clear text in his speeches leveling the most extreme charges against other countries. Although Bolton’s actions did not concern Iraq directly, they came to a high point during the summer of 2002—the exact moment when Iraq intelligence issues were on the front burner—and they aimed at offices which played a central role in producing Iraq intelligence. These included the Bureau of Intelligence and Research at State plus the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and the Weapons Intelligence, Proliferation and Arms Control (WINPAC) center at CIA. Analysts working on Iraq intelligence could not be blamed for concluding that their own careers might be in jeopardy if they supplied answers other than what the Bush administration wanted to hear.


Under the circumstances, it is difficult to avoid the impression that the CIA and other intelligence agencies defended themselves against the dangers of attack from the Bush administration through a process of self-censorship. That is the very essence of politicization in intelligence. And the degree to which public statements on Iraq by Cheney, Bush, and others were “substantiated” by the existing intelligence must be viewed through that prism.

We shall offer only a few examples here. First is the case of the CIA white paper, “Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs.” That document is dated October 2002 and was issued on October 4. It has been represented as a distillation of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq published two days earlier, with the most sensitive, secret information stripped out. Posted here today is the major portion of the text of the same paper in draft , as it existed in July 2002. This document demonstrates that the white paper existed long before the NIE was even requested by Congress. In fact the illustrations in the July version are the same as those in the final report. A close comparison of the text shows, further, that much of the argumentation is identical, and that the differences between the two are strictly in the nature of separating text to insert more charges or to sharpen them. The entire product has the character of rhetoric. Little of the text shows the kind of approach characteristic of intelligence analysis. The fact that this document was in preparation at the CIA in July indicates that the Bush administration was actively engaged in a process of building support for war months ahead of the time it has previously been understood to have done so. In fact evidence exists that the CIA white paper was commissioned as early as May 2002. (Note 7)