Chalabigate
"Weapons of Mass Deception"
2003-06-01
US security men accuse Bush of twisting facts
WASHINGTON: A growing number of US national security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the facts and taking control of the $30 billion intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq.
A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terrorist groups.
This team, self-mockingly called the Cabal, "cherry-picked the intelligence stream" in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defence Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence.
The DIA was "exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD," or weapons of mass destruction, he added in a phone interview. He said the CIA had "no guts at all" to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by Pentagon that he said was now dominating US foreign policy.
Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of Central Intelligence Agency counter terrorist operations, said he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up "fraudulent" intelligence, "a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi."
The INC, which brought together groups opposed to Saddam, worked closely with the Pentagon for early use of force in Iraq. "There are current intelligence officials who believe it is a scandal," he said in a telephone interview. They believe the administration, before going to war, had a "moral obligation to use the best information available, not just information that fits your preconceived ideas."
CHEMICAL WEAPONS REPORT 'SIMPLY WRONG': The top Marine Corps officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway, said very recently that US intelligence was "simply wrong" in leading military commanders to fear troops were likely to be attacked with chemical weapons in the March invasion of Iraq.
Richard Perle, a member of the Defence Policy Board that advises Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has defended the four-person unit in a television interview.
SHAPED 'FROM THE TOP DOWN': Greg Thielmann, who retired in September after 25 years in the State Department, the last four in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research working on weapons, said it appeared to him that intelligence had been shaped "from the top down." "The normal processing of establishing accurate intelligence was sidestepped" in the run up to invading Iraq, said David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security and who deals with US intelligence officers.
Anger among security professionals appears widespread. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group that says it is made up mostly of CIA intelligence analysts, wrote to US President George Bush earlier last month to hit what they called "a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions." "In intelligence there is one unpardonable sin - cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy," it wrote. "There is ample indication this has been done with respect to Iraq."
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/jun2003-daily/01-06-2003/world/w1.htm
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A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi President Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terrorist groups.
This team, self-mockingly called the Cabal, "cherry-picked the intelligence stream" in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defence Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence.
The DIA was "exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD," or weapons of mass destruction, he added in a phone interview. He said the CIA had "no guts at all" to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by Pentagon that he said was now dominating US foreign policy.
Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of Central Intelligence Agency counter terrorist operations, said he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up "fraudulent" intelligence, "a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi."
The INC, which brought together groups opposed to Saddam, worked closely with the Pentagon for early use of force in Iraq. "There are current intelligence officials who believe it is a scandal," he said in a telephone interview. They believe the administration, before going to war, had a "moral obligation to use the best information available, not just information that fits your preconceived ideas."
CHEMICAL WEAPONS REPORT 'SIMPLY WRONG': The top Marine Corps officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway, said very recently that US intelligence was "simply wrong" in leading military commanders to fear troops were likely to be attacked with chemical weapons in the March invasion of Iraq.
Richard Perle, a member of the Defence Policy Board that advises Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, has defended the four-person unit in a television interview.
SHAPED 'FROM THE TOP DOWN': Greg Thielmann, who retired in September after 25 years in the State Department, the last four in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research working on weapons, said it appeared to him that intelligence had been shaped "from the top down." "The normal processing of establishing accurate intelligence was sidestepped" in the run up to invading Iraq, said David Albright, a former UN weapons inspector who is president of the Institute for Science and International Security and who deals with US intelligence officers.
Anger among security professionals appears widespread. Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, a group that says it is made up mostly of CIA intelligence analysts, wrote to US President George Bush earlier last month to hit what they called "a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions." "In intelligence there is one unpardonable sin - cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy," it wrote. "There is ample indication this has been done with respect to Iraq."
http://www.jang-group.com/thenews/jun2003-daily/01-06-2003/world/w1.htm
This site may contain copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.
Milton Frihetsson, 04:20
