Reply #64: Feith inflated Iraqi threat (Sen Carl Levin)

[Carl Brennan]

Levin's report
http://www.levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2004/10... <http://www.levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2004/102104inquiryreport.pdf>

from Laura Rosen's blog:

Congressional oversight makes a valiant comeback. Sen. Carl Levin, a ranking member of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence releases a report on the role of the office of the Pentagon's number three official Douglas Feith in alleged extracurricular intelligence analysis and advocacy. Here's the IHT/NYT's Douglas Jehl's take. And here are some highlights from Levin's report:

...B. INFLUENCING THE IC’S REPORT ON “IRAQI SUPPORT FOR TERRORISM”

In addition to developing their own alternative intelligence analysis, Under Secretary Feith’s office was also attempting to convince the IC to incorporate into a major finished report some of the raw intelligence reports the Feith office believed had been undervalued or ignored by the IC, and to change how the intelligence was characterized . . .

Feith’s staff also pressed dubious information, including criticizing the draft IC report for omitting reference to the “key issue of Atta.” . . .

Documents provided to the SASC indicate that Feith’s staff requested, both verbally and in written form, at least 32 changes to the draft, including inserting raw intelligence reports that had previously been omitted, deleting others, and altering the characterization of certain issues and raw reporting . . .

C. PRESENTING AN “ALTERNATIVE” VIEW DIRECTLY TO POLICYMAKERS
Feith’s staff went beyond interacting with the IC in an attempt to change an IC-issued product. They were also taking their view of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship directly to senior officials in the Executive branch . . .

Under Secretary Feith’s second charge . . . was that the IC undervalued the importance that both Iraq and al Qaeda would place on concealing a relationship, and therefore that the absence of evidence of such a relationship did not necessarily mean that such a relationship did not exist. Taken to its logical extreme, this argument implies that absence of evidence may in fact be evidence itself - that the fact that no evidence can be found is an indication that evidence exists but is being hidden. But, in fact, the IC’s reluctance to assert an Iraq-al Qaeda relationship was based on the information it possessed, not on hypotheticals, and the IC acknowledged lack of evidence as a factor limiting the strength of their conclusions. . . The reasonableness of the IC’s approach has subsequently been endorsed by the SSCI the 9/11 Commission . . .


Score one or two for the battered and beleaguered but still fighting Reality-Based Community.

<http://www.warandpiece.com> /

She's also listed documents at the link which Congress has requested from Feith, but which have not been produced.