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Jolie Rouge
03-31-2005, 09:15 AM
President says he shares central conclusion
Elise Amendola / AP
NBC News and news services
Updated: 11:48 a.m. ET March 31, 2005

WASHINGTON - In a scathing report released Thursday, President Bush’s commission on weapons of mass destruction found that America’s spy agencies were “dead wrong” in most of their judgments about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction capabilities.

The commission was also highly critical of U.S. abilities to assess what existing adversaries have, stating that the United States knows “disturbingly little” about their weapons programs.

The president, after receiving the unsparing critique, said that “the central conclusion is one which I share. America’s intelligence community needs fundamental change.”

He said he had directed Fran Townsend, his White House-based homeland security adviser, to “review the commission’s finding and to assure that concrete actions are taken.”

On Saddam, the commission stated that “we conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its prewar judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure.”

The main cause, the commission said, was the intelligence community’s “inability to collect good information about Iraq’s WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence. “On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude,” the report said.

[i]But the commission also said that it found no indication that spy agencies distorted the evidence they had concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, a charge raised against the administration during last year’s presidential campaign. “The analysts who worked Iraqi weapons issues universally agreed that in no instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of their analytical judgments,” the report said.

But it added: “It is hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the conventional wisdom.”


Unanimous advice: Strengthen intel chief

The commission called for dramatic change to prevent future failures. It outlined more than 70 recommendations, saying that Bush must give John Negroponte, nominated to the new post of national intelligence director, broader powers for overseeing the nation’s 15 spy agencies. “It won’t be easy to provide this leadership to the intelligence components of the Defense Department or to the CIA,” the commissioners said. “They are some of the government’s most headstrong agencies. Sooner or later, they will try to run around — or over — the DNI. Then, only your determined backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways,” the commission told Bush.

The panel, which was unanimous in its report and advice, also recommended that Bush demand more of the intelligence community, which has been repeatedly criticized for failures as various investigations have looked back on the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks. “The intelligence community needs to be pushed,” the report said. “It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policymakers — sometimes to the point of discomfort.”

It said analysts must be pushed to explain what they don’t know and that agencies must be pressed to explain why they don’t have better information on key subjects. At the same time, the report said the administration must be more careful about accepting the judgment of intelligence agencies. “No important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the (intelligence) community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true,” the report said.

The commission also called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the bureau’s counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7331220


Problems with 'Curve Ball'

The proposals were prompted in part by an Iraqi defector code-named “Curve Ball” who may have had a drinking problem and who provided suspect information on Saddam’s purported mobile weapons labs, officials said. The defector and the questions about his veracity have been described in recent government reports.

The information the defector provided was included in the much-maligned October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, a high-level collection of intelligence that the White House used to argue for invading Iraq. That document said Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, but no such weapons have been found.

The commission's report will single out that document, which said there was “compelling evidence” that Iraq sought uranium for nuclear weapons.

The document included dissent in the form of cautionary footnotes from the State Department’s intelligence bureau, the Energy Department and the Air Force.

But a senior administration official acknowledged in July 2003 that Bush and then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice did not read footnotes in the 90-page document.

By glossing over or omitting dissenting views about Iraq’s weapons programs, the estimate overstated the accuracy of U.S. intelligence, according to an official who described the commission’s report. “There’s a need for more complete reporting,” the official said.

The estimate was also the basis for then Secretary of State Colin Powell going to the United Nations Security Council in February 2003 to lobby for military action.

Powell this week told the German magazine Stern that he was “furious and angry” that he had been misinformed about Iraq’s capabilities. “It was information from our security services and from some Europeans, including Germans. Some of this information was wrong. I did not know this at the time,” he said. “Hundreds of millions followed it on television. I will always be the one who presented it. I have to live with that.”

600-page report

The commission released its final report, spanning more than 600 pages, after more than a year of work that included closed-door sessions with Bush and other top administration officials.

Numerous government reports have detailed intelligence failures since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. This commission is the first formed by Bush to look at why U.S. spy agencies mistakenly concluded that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, one of the administration’s main justifications for invading in March 2003.

The panel also considered a range of intelligence issues beyond Iraq, including congressional oversight, satellite imagery and electronic snooping. Among numerous soft spots, officials familiar with the findings say “human intelligence” — the work of actual operatives on the ground — is lacking.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7331220/page/2/


((continues))

Jolie Rouge
03-31-2005, 09:18 AM
Some of the recommendations
Among other things, the report:

Recommends forming a new intelligence center to focus on weapons proliferation.

Chastises intelligence agencies for their continued failure to share information, despite numerous reforms aimed at improving coordination.

Stresses the need for ongoing training for analysts and operatives and new procedures for considering dissenting intelligence analysis.

Calls on intelligence agencies to take concrete steps to ensure information from their sources is valid — a move prompted in part by 'Curve Ball'.

Proposes updating the FBI’s computers and creating a new national security division within the Justice Department.


Bush formed the commission — led by Republican Laurence Silberman, a retired federal appeals court judge, and Democrat Charles Robb, a former senator from Virginia — as it became clear that U.S. weapons inspectors were not going to find stockpiles of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Top intelligence officials were already taking steps to soften the impact of the criticism. The head of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes satellite imagery, told employees in an e-mail that they should “take on the lessons learned, and drive on.”

“You may find the report difficult to read and you may not agree with the commission’s analysis, opinions, or recommendations,” retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper wrote. “I understand that it’s much more difficult to be criticized rather than praised in public.”

Little known about adversaries

The unclassified version of the report does not go into significant detail on the intelligence community’s abilities in Iran and North Korea because commissioners did not want to tip the U.S. hand to its leading adversaries. Those details are included in the classified version. “The bad news is that we still know disturbingly little about the weapons programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries,” the report said.

The commission did not name any country, but appeared to be talking about nations such as North Korea and Iran. “Our review has convinced us that the best hope for preventing future failures is dramatic change,” the report said. “We need an intelligence community that is truly integrated, far more imaginative and willing to run risks, open to a new generation of Americans and receptive to new technologies.”

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7331220/page/3/

Jolie Rouge
03-31-2005, 09:20 AM
Letter to Bush from the intelligence panel
U.S. knows ‘disturbingly little’ about adversaries' weapons
Updated: 9:24 a.m. ET March 31, 2005

President George W. Bush’s commission on weapons of mass destruction issued its 618-page report Thursday. Below is the three-page introductory letter submitted by the panel to the president.

Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction
Washington, DC 20503

Co-Chairmen:
The Honorable Laurence H. Silberman
The Honorable Charles S. Robb

Mr. President:

With this letter, we transmit the report of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction. Our unanimous report is based on a lengthy investigation, during which we interviewed hundreds of experts from inside and outside the Intelligence Community and reviewed thousands of documents. Our report offers 74 recommendations for improving the U.S. Intelligence Community (all but a handful of which we believe can be implemented without statutory change). But among these recommendations a few points merit special emphasis.

We conclude that the Intelligence Community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure. Its principal causes were the Intelligence Community's inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions, rather than good evidence. On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude.

After a thorough review, the Commission found no indication that the Intelligence Community distorted the evidence regarding Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. What the intelligence professionals told you about Saddam Hussein's programs was what they believed. They were simply wrong.

As you asked, we looked as well beyond Iraq in our review of the Intelligence Community's capabilities. We conducted case studies of our intelligence agencies' recent performance assessing the risk of WMD in Libya and Afghanistan, and our current capabilities with respect to several of the world's most dangerous state and non-state proliferation threats. Out of this more comprehensive review, we report both bad news and good news. The bad news is that we still know disturbingly little about the weapons programs and even less about the intentions of many of our most dangerous adversaries. The good news is that we have had some solid intelligence successes-thanks largely to innovative and multi-agency collection techniques.

Our review has convinced us that the best hope for preventing future failures is dramatic change. We need an Intelligence Community that is truly integrated, far more imaginative and willing to run risks, open to a new generation of Americans, and receptive to new technologies.

We have summarized our principal recommendations for the entire Intelligence Community in the Overview of the report. Here, we focus on recommendations that we believe only you can effect if you choose to implement them:

Give the DNI powers--and backing-to match his responsibilities.

In your public statement accompanying the announcement of Ambassador Negroponte's nomination as Director of National Intelligence (DNI), you have already moved in this direction. The new intelligence law makes the DNI responsible for integrating the 15 independent members of the Intelligence Community. But it gives him powers that are only relatively broader than before. The DNI cannot make this work unless he takes his legal authorities over budget, programs, personnel, and priorities to the limit. It won't be easy to provide this leadership to the intelligence components of the Defense Department, or to the CIA. They are some of the government's most headstrong agencies. Sooner or later, they will try to run around---or over-the DNI. Then, only your determined backing will convince them that we cannot return to the old ways.

Bring the FBI all the way into the Intelligence Community.

The FBI is one of the proudest and most independent agencies in the United States Government. It is on its way to becoming an effective intelligence agency, but it will never arrive if it insists on using only its own map. We recommend that you order an organizational reform of the Bureau that pulls all of its intelligence capabilities into one place and subjects them to the coordinating authority of the DNI-the same authority that the DNI exercises over Defense Department intelligence agencies. Under this recommendation, the counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources of the Bureau would become a single National Security Service inside the FBI. It would of course still be subject to the Attorney General's oversight and to current legal rules. The intelligence reform act almost accomplishes this task, but at crucial points it retreats into ambiguity. Without leadership from the DNI, the FBI is likely to continue escaping effective integration into the Intelligence Community.

Demand more of the Intelligence Community.

The Intelligence Community needs to be pushed. It will not do its best unless it is pressed by policymakers-sometimes to the point of discomfort. Analysts must be pressed to explain how much they don't know; the collection agencies must be pressed to explain why they don't have better information on key topics. While policymakers must be prepared to credit intelligence that doesn't fit their preferences, no important intelligence assessment should be accepted without sharp questioning that forces the community to explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what alternatives might also be true. This is not "politicization"; it is a necessary part of the intelligence process. And in the end, it is the key to getting the best fi-om an Intelligence Community that, at its best, knows how to do astonishing things.

Rethink the President's Daily Brief

The daily intelligence briefings given to you before the Iraq war were flawed. Through attention-grabbing headlines and repetition of questionable data, these briefings overstated the case that Iraq was rebuilding its WMD programs. There are many other aspects of the daily brief that deserve to be reconsidered as well, but we are reluctant to make categorical recommendations on a process that in the end must meet your needs, not our theories. On one point, however, we want to be specific: while the DNI must be ultimately responsible for the content of your daily briefing, we do not believe that the DNI ought to prepare, deliver, or even attend every briefing. For if the DNI is consumed by current intelligence, the long-term needs of the Intelligence Community will suffer.

There is no more important intelligence mission than understanding the worst weapons that our enemies possess, and how they intend to use them against us. These are their deepest secrets, and unlocking them must be our highest priority. So far, despite some successes, our Intelligence Community has not been agile and innovative enough to provide the information that the nation needs. Other commissions and observers have said the same. We should not wait for another commission or another Administration to force widespread change in the Intelligence Community.

Very respectfully,

Laurence H. Silberman
Co-Chairman

Charles S. Robb
Co-Chairman

Richard C. Levin
John McCain
Henry S. Rowen
Walter B. Slocombe
William 0. Studeman
Patricia M. Wald
Charles M. Vest
Lloyd Cutler (Of Counsel)


http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7346310/

Jolie Rouge
03-31-2005, 09:25 AM
Report joins 10 others on intelligence failures
The Associated Press
Updated: 8:16 a.m. ET March 31, 2005

Some past investigations and reports regarding intelligence failures:

President Bush’s Commission on Weapons of Mass Destruction

Federal officials say the president’s commission on weapons of mass destruction is expected to call for dozens of changes, including improved information sharing among spy agencies, better traditional spying and new steps to improve analysis.

Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Prewar Intelligence on Iraq

Senators concluded that the CIA kept key information from its own and other agencies’ analysts, engaged in “group think” by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and allowed Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to make false statements.

Duelfer Iraq Weapons Investigation

Charles Duelfer, the chief U.S. arms inspector, said he found no evidence that Iraq produced weapons of mass destruction after 1991 and that Saddam Hussein’s ability to develop such weapons had diminished, not grown, during a dozen years of sanctions imposed on Iraq. But Duelfer supported Bush’s argument that Saddam remained a threat.

Sept. 11 Commission

America’s leaders failed to grasp the gravity of terrorist threats before the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but the commission stopped short of saying the suicide hijackings could have been prevented. While the panel did not fault Bush or former President Clinton, it said both failed to make anti-terrorism a top priority.

Sept. 11 Commission on Aviation

A portion of the Sept. 11 Commission report said the Federal Aviation Administration received repeated warnings in the months prior to Sept. 11 about al-Qaida and its desire to attack airlines.

Joint Inquiry Into Sept. 11 From the House and Senate Intelligence Committees

The committees’ final report identified numerous blunders, oversights and miscalculations that prevented authorities from stopping the attacks.

CIA Inspector General Inquiry Into Sept. 11 Failures

The report is expected to find personal culpability for Sept. 11. The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Jane Harman, D-Calif., has called for its release.

Justice Department Inspector General Investigation

The inspector general investigated handling of intelligence information prior to Sept. 11, including the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the only U.S. defendant indicted in connection with the attacks. The inspector general is trying to get approval to release an unclassified version.

Justice Department Inspector General Report on Prisoner Abuse

The report found that the warden and guards at an unidentified federal prison discriminated and retaliated against Muslim inmates.

Church Report Into Prisoner Abuse

Vice Adm. Albert Church’s report said there was no single explanation for the mistreatment of Iraqi, Afghan and other prisoners under the control of U.S. military personnel.



http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7345568/

Jolie Rouge
03-31-2005, 09:39 AM
How Chinagate Led to 9/11
By Jean Pearce
FrontPageMagazine.com | May 25, 2004

http://www.frontpagemag.com/Article...le.asp?ID=13516

As the 9/11 Commission tries to uncover what kept intelligence agencies from preventing September 11, it has overlooked two vital factors: Jamie Gorelick and Bill Clinton. Gorelick, who has browbeaten the current administration, helped erect the walls between the FBI, CIA and local investigators that made 9/11 inevitable. However, she was merely expanding the policy Bill Clinton established with Presidential Decision Directive 24. What has been underreported is why the policy came about: to thwart investigations into the Chinese funding of Clinton’s re-election campaign, and the favors he bestowed on them in return.

In April, CNSNews.com staff writer Scott Wheeler reported that a senior U.S. government official and three other sources claimed that the 1995 memo written by Jamie Gorelick, who served as the Clinton Justice Department’s deputy attorney general from 1994 to 1997, created "a roadblock" to the investigation of illegal Chinese donations to the Democratic National Committee. But the picture is much bigger than that. The Gorelick memo, which blocked intelligence agents from sharing information that could have halted the September 11 hijacking plot, was only the mortar in a much larger maze of bureaucratic walls whose creation Gorelick personally oversaw.

It’s a story the 9/11 Commission may not want to hear, and one that Gorelick – now incredibly a member of that commission – has so far refused to tell. But it is perhaps the most crucial one to understanding the intentional breakdown of intelligence that led to the September 11 disaster.

Nearly from the moment Gorelick took office in the Clinton Justice Department, she began acting as the point woman for a large-scale bureaucratic reorganization of intelligence agencies that ultimately placed the gathering of intelligence, and decisions about what – if anything – would be done with it under near-direct control of the White House. In the process, more than a dozen CIA and FBI investigations underway at the time got caught beneath the heel of the presidential boot, investigations that would ultimately reveal massive Chinese espionage as millions in illegal Chinese donations filled Democratic Party campaign coffers.

When Gorelick took office in 1994, the CIA was reeling from the news that a Russian spy had been found in CIA ranks, and Congress was hungry for a quick fix. A month after Gorelick was sworn in, Bill Clinton issued Presidential Decision Directive 24. PDD 24 put intelligence gathering under the direct control of the president’s National Security Council, and ultimately the White House, through a four-level, top-down chain of command set up to govern (that is, stifle) intelligence sharing and cooperation between intelligence agencies. From the moment the directive was implemented, intelligence sharing became a bureaucratic nightmare that required negotiating a befuddling bureaucracy that stopped directly at the President’s office.


First, the directive effectively neutered the CIA by creating a National Counterintelligence Center (NCI) to oversee the Agency. NCI was staffed by an FBI agent appointed by the Clinton administration. It also brought multiple international investigations underway at the time under direct administrative control. The job of the NCI was to “implement counterintelligence activities,” which meant that virtually everything the CIA did, from a foreign intelligence agent’s report to polygraph test results, now passed through the intelligence center that PDD 24 created.

NCI reported to an administration-appointed National Counterintelligence Operations Board (NCOB) charged with “discussing counterintelligence matters.” The NCOB in turn reported to a National Intelligence Policy Board, which coordinated activities between intelligence agencies attempting to work together. The policy board reported “directly” to the president through the Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs.

The result was a massive bureaucratic roadblock for the CIA – which at the time had a vast lead on the FBI in foreign intelligence – and for the FBI itself, which was also forced to report to the NCOB. This hampered cooperation between the two entities. All this occurred at a time when both agencies were working separate ends of investigations that would eventually implicate China in technology transfers and the Democratic Party in a Chinese campaign cash grab.

And the woman charged with selling this plan to Congress, convincing the media and ultimately implementing much of it? Jamie Gorelick.


Many in Congress, including some Democrats, found the changes PDD 24 put in place baffling: they seemed to do nothing to insulate the CIA from infiltration while devastating the agency’s ability to collect information. At the time, Democrat House Intelligence Chairman Dan Glickman referred to the plan as “regulatory gobbledygook." Others questioned how FBI control of CIA intelligence would foster greater communication between the lower levels of the CIA and FBI, now that all information would have to be run through a multi-tier bureaucratic maze that only went upward.

Despite their doubts, Gorelick helped the administration sell the plan on Capitol Hill. The Directive stood.

But that wasn’t good enough for the Clinton administration, which wanted control over every criminal and intelligence investigation, domestic and foreign, for reasons that would become apparent in a few years. For the first time in Justice Department history, a political appointee, Richard Scruggs – an old crony or Attorney General Janet Reno’s from Florida – was put in charge of the Office of Intelligence and Policy Review (OIPR). OIPR is the Justice Department agency in charge of requesting wiretap and surveillance authority for criminal and intelligence investigations on behalf of investigative agencies from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court. The court’s activities are kept secret from the public.

A year after PDD 24, with the new bureaucratic structure loaded with administration appointees, Gorelick drafted the 1995 memo Attorney General John Ashcroft mentioned while testifying before the 9/11 Commission. The Gorelick memo, and other supporting memos released in recent weeks, not only created walls within the intelligence agencies that prevented information sharing among their own agents, but effectively walled these agencies off from each other and from outside contact with the U.S. prosecutors instrumental in helping them gather the evidence needed to make the case for criminal charges.

The only place left to go with intelligence information – particularly for efforts to share intelligence information or obtain search warrants – was straight up Clinton and Gorelick’s multi-tiered chain of command. Instead, information lethal to the Democratic Party languished inside the Justice Department, trapped behind Gorelick’s walls.

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Jolie Rouge
03-31-2005, 09:44 AM
The implications were enormous. In her letter of protest to Attorney General Reno over Gorelick’s memo, United States Attorney Mary Jo White spelled them out: “These instructions leave entirely to OIPR and the (Justice Department) Criminal Division when, if ever, to contact affected U.S. attorneys on investigations including terrorism and espionage,” White wrote. (Like OIPR, the Criminal Division is also part of the Justice Department.)

Without an enforcer, the walls Gorelick’s memo put in place might not have held. But Scruggs acted as that enforcer, and he excelled at it. Scruggs maintained Gorelick’s walls between the FBI and Justice's Criminal Division by threatening to automatically reject any FBI request for a wiretap or search warrant if the Bureau contacted the Justice Department's Criminal Division without permission. This deprived the FBI, and ultimately the CIA, of gathering advice and assistance from the Criminal Division that was critical in espionage and terrorist cases.

It is no coincidence that this occurred at the same time both the FBI and the CIA were churning up evidence damaging to the Democratic Party, its fundraisers, the Chinese and ultimately the Clinton administration itself. Between 1994 and the 1996 election, as Chinese dollars poured into Democratic coffers, Clinton struggled to reopen high-tech trade to China. Had agents confirmed Chinese theft of weapons technology or its transfer of weapons technology to nations like Pakistan, Iran and Syria, Clinton would have been forced by law and international treaty to react.

Gorelick’s appointment to the job at Justice in 1994 occurred during a period in which the FBI had begun to systematically investigate technology theft by foreign powers. For the first time, these investigations singled out the U.S. chemical, telecommunications, aircraft and aerospace industries for intelligence collection.

By the time Gorelick wrote the March 1995 memo that sealed off American intelligence agencies from each other and the outside world, all of the most critical Chinagate investigations by American intelligence agencies were already underway. Some of their findings were damning:

In an investigation originally instigated by the CIA, the FBI was beginning its search for the source of the leak of W-88 nuclear warhead technology to China among the more than 1,000 people who had access to the secrets. Despite Justice Department stonewalling and the Department’s refusal to seek wiretap authority in 1997, the investigation eventually led to Wen Ho Lee and the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

The FBI first collected extensive evidence in 1995 linking illegal Democratic Party donations to China, according to the Congressional Record. But Congress and the Director of the CIA didn’t find out about the Justice Department’s failure to act upon that evidence until 1997, safely after the 1996 election.

According to classified CIA documents leaked to the Washington Times, between 1994 and 1997, the CIA learned that China sold Iran missile technology, a nuclear fission reactor, advanced air-defense radar and chemical agents. The Chinese also provided 5,000 ring magnets to Pakistan, used in producing weapons-grade uranium. The Chinese also provided uranium fuel for India's reactors.

In many cases the CIA resorted to leaking classified information to the media, in an effort to bypass the administration’s blackout.

Gorelick knew these facts well. While Clinton may have refused to meet with top CIA officials, Gorelick didn’t. According to a 1996 report by the legal news service American Lawyer Media, Gorelick and then-Deputy Director of the CIA George Tenet met every other week to discuss intelligence and intelligence sharing.

But those in the Clinton administration weren’t the only ones to gain from the secrecy. In 1994, the McDonnell Douglas Corporation transferred military-use machine tools to the China National Aero-Technology Import and Export Corporation that ended up in the hands of the Chinese army. The sale occurred despite Defense Department objections. McDonnell Douglas was a client of the Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin, L.L.P. (now called Baker Botts), the Washington, D.C., law firm where Gorelick worked for 17 years and was a partner. Ray Larroca, another partner in the firm, represented McDonnell in the Justice Department’s investigation of the technology transfer.

In 1995, General Electric, a former client of Gorelick’s, also had much to lose if the damaging information the CIA and the FBI had reached Congress. At the time, GE was publicly lobbying for a lucrative permit to assist the Chinese in replacing coal-fired power stations with nuclear plants. A 1990 law required that the president certify to Congress that China was not aiding in nuclear proliferation before U.S. companies could execute the business agreement.

Moreover, in 1995, Michael Armstrong, then the CEO of Hughes Electronics – a division of General Electric and another client of Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin – was publicly lobbying Clinton to switch satellite export controls from the State Department to the Commerce Department. After the controls were lifted, Hughes and another company gave sensitive data to the Chinese, equipment a Pentagon study later concluded would allow China to develop intercontinental and submarine-launched ballistic missiles aimed at American targets. Miller Cassidy Larroca & Lewin partner Randall Turk represented Hughes in the Congressional, State Department, and Justice Department investigations that resulted.

The Cox Report, which detailed Chinese espionage for Congress during the period, revealed that FBI surveillance caught Chinese officials frantically trying to keep Democratic donor Johnny Chung from divulging any information that would be damaging to Hughes Electronics. Chung funneled $300,000 in illegal contributions from the Chinese military to the DNC between 1994 and 1996.

It was this web of investigations that led Gorelick and Bill Clinton to erect the wall between intelligence agencies that resulted in the toppling of the Twin Towers. The connections go on and on, but they all lead back to Gorelick, the one person who could best explain how the Clinton administration neutered the American intelligence agencies that could have stopped the September 11 plot. Yet another high crime will have been committed if the September 11 Commission doesn’t demand testimony from her.

Jaidness
04-01-2005, 09:08 AM
ok so by dead wrong, that means they basically lied or "fudged" or intentionally played up reports in order to justify invading Iraq?


Hmmmmmmm I guess there is a sucker born every minute
to quote janelle...makes one wonder...
makes ME wonder about the legitimacy of the reports about Iran, Syria, and N Vietnam

Jaidness
04-01-2005, 09:44 AM
Some CIA analysts felt pressure from Cheney over Iraq


By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest / Washington Post

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Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.

With Cheney taking the lead in the administration last August in advocating military action against Iraq by claiming it had weapons of mass destruction, the visits by the vice president and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here," one senior agency official said Wednesday.

Other agency officials said they were not influenced by the visits from the vice president's office, and some said they welcomed them. But the disclosure of Cheney's unusual hands-on role comes on the heels of mounting concern from intelligence officials and members of Congress that the administration may have exaggerated intelligence it received about Iraq to build a case for war.

While visits to CIA headquarters by a vice president are not unprecedented, they are unusual, according to intelligence officials. The exact number of trips by Cheney to the CIA could not be learned, but one agency official described them as "multiple." They were taken in addition to Cheney's regular attendance at President Bush's morning intelligence briefings and the special briefings the vice president receives when he is at an undisclosed location for security reasons.

A spokeswoman for Cheney would not discuss the matter Wednesday. "The vice president values the hard work of the intelligence community, but his office has a practice of declining to comment on the specifics of his intelligence briefings," said Cathie Martin, the vice president's public affairs director.

Concern over the administration's prewar claims about Iraq has been growing in Congress and among intelligence officials as a result of the failure to uncover any weapons of mass destruction two months after the collapse of the Iraqi government. Similar ferment is building in Britain, where Prime Minister Tony Blair is under pressure from within the Labor Party to explain whether British intelligence may have overstated the case of Iraq's covert weapons programs. Blair pledged yesterday to cooperate with a parliamentary probe of the government's use of intelligence material.

In a signal of administration concern over the controversy, two senior Pentagon officials yesterday held a news conference to challenge allegations that they pressured the CIA or other agencies to slant intelligence for political reasons. "I know of no pressure," said Douglas J. Feith, undersecretary for policy. "I know of nobody who pressured anybody."

Feith said a special Pentagon office to analyze intelligence in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks did not necessarily focus on Iraq but came up with "some interesting observations about the linkages between Iraq and al Qaeda."

Officials in the intelligence community and on Capitol Hill, however, have described the office as an alternative source of intelligence analysis that helped the administration make its case that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein posed an imminent threat.

Government sources said CIA analysts were not the only ones who felt pressure from their superiors to support public statements by Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others about the threat posed by Hussein.

Former and current intelligence officials said they felt a continual drumbeat, not only from Cheney and Libby, but also from Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, Feith, and less so from CIA Director George J. Tenet, to find information or write reports in a way that would help the administration make the case that going into Iraq was urgent.

"They were the browbeaters," said a former defense intelligence official who attended some of the meetings in which Wolfowitz and others pressed for a different approach to the assessments they were receiving. "In interagency meetings," he said, "Wolfowitz treated the analysts' work with contempt."

Others saw the intervention of senior officials as being more responsible. Libby, who helped prepare intelligence analysis for the vice president, made several trips to the CIA with National Security Council officials during preparations for Powell's Feb. 5 presentation to the U.N. Security Council, officials said. He was described by one senior analyst as "an avid consumer of intelligence and the asker of many questions."

Such visits permitted Cheney and Libby to have direct exchanges with analysts, rather than asking questions of their daily briefers, who direct others to prepare responses that result in additional papers, senior administration sources said. Their goal was to have a free flow of information and not to intimidate the analysts, although some may well have misinterpreted questions as directives, said some sources sympathetic to their approach.

A senior defense official also defended Wolfowitz's questioning: "Does he ask hard questions? Absolutely. I don't think he was trying to get people to come up with answers that weren't true. He's looking for data and answers and he gets frustrated with a lack of answers and diligence and with things that can't be defended."

A major focus for Wolfowitz and others in the Pentagon was finding intelligence to prove a connection between Hussein and Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda terrorist network.

On the day of the attacks on the Pentagon and the World Trade Center,Wolfowitz told senior officials at the Pentagon that he believed Iraq might have been responsible. "I was scratching my head because everyone else thought of al Qaeda," said a former senior defense official who was in one such meeting. Over the following year, "we got taskers to review the link between al Qaeda and Iraq. There was a very aggressive search."

In the winter of 2001-02, officials who worked with Wolfowitz sent the Defense Intelligence Agency a message: Get hold of Laurie Mylroie's book, which claimed Hussein was behind the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, and see if you can prove it, one former defense official said.

The DIA's Middle East analysts were familiar with the book, "Study of Revenge: The First World Trade Center Attack and Saddam Hussein's War Against America." But they and others in the U.S. intelligence community were convinced that radical Islamic fundamentalists, not Iraq, were involved. "The message was, why can't we prove this is right?" said the official.

Retired Vice Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, then director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, directed his Middle East analysts to go through the book again, check all the allegations and see if they could be substantiated, said one current and one former intelligence official familiar with the request. The staff was unable to make the link.

This recounting of the book incident was disputed by a defense official who, like many others interviewed, requested anonymity.

Rep. Porter J. Goss (R-Fla.), chairman of the House intelligence committee, said there is no indication that analysts at the DIA or CIA changed their analysis to fit what they perceived as the desire of the administration officials. Goss and other members of the intelligence oversight panels said they have received no whistle-blower complaints from the CIA or other intelligence agencies on the issue.

Tenet has asked four retired senior CIA analysts to review all the major prewar intelligence analyses of Hussein's weapons of mass destruction distributed to top policymakers before March 20, when the fighting began. They plan to compare what was written with postwar intelligence data.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John W. Warner (R-Va.) reiterated his desire to hold hearings on the administration's handling of the intelligence on Iraq despite divisions among congressional Republicans over whether an investigation, including public hearings, is necessary. Cheney privately briefed GOP senators on the weapons intelligence Tuesday.

Warner is discussing a joint probe with intelligence committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.).
http://www.detnews.com/2003/nation/0306/05/nation-184523.htm

schsa
04-01-2005, 12:12 PM
And how many have died because he got bad information and acted on it? Must be nice to be a lame duck president where you can walk away from the mess you made.

mesue
04-04-2005, 01:59 PM
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=24889
Neglecting Intelligence, Ignoring Warnings

A chronology of how the Bush Administration repeatedly and deliberately refused to listen to intelligence agencies that said its case for war was weak

January 28, 2004
Updated January 29, 2004
Download: DOC, PDF, RTF

Former weapons inspector David Kay now says Iraq probably did not have WMD before the war, a major blow to the Bush Administration which used the WMD argument as the rationale for war. Unfortunately, Kay and the Administration are now attempting to shift the blame for misleading America onto the intelligence community. But a review of the facts shows the intelligence community repeatedly warned the Bush Administration about the weakness of its case, but was circumvented, overruled, and ignored. The following is year-by-year timeline of those warnings.

2001: WH Admits Iraq Contained; Creates Agency to Circumvent Intel Agencies

In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam Hussein was effectively contained after the Gulf War. In fact, former weapons inspector David Kay now admits that the previous policy of containment – including the 1998 bombing of Iraq – destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs.

OCTOBER 8, 1997 – IAEA SAYS IRAQ FREE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS: "As reported in detail in the progress report dated 8 October 1997…and based on all credible information available to date, the IAEA's verification activities in Iraq, have resulted in the evolution of a technically coherent picture of Iraq's clandestine nuclear programme. These verification activities have revealed no indications that Iraq had achieved its programme objective of producing nuclear weapons or that Iraq had produced more than a few grams of weapon-usable nuclear material or had clandestinely acquired such material. Furthermore, there are no indications that there remains in Iraq any physical capability for t he production of weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance." [Source: IAEA Report, 10/8/98]

FEBRUARY 23 & 24, 2001 – COLIN POWELL SAYS IRAQ IS CONTAINED: "I think we ought to declare [the containment policy] a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box." He added Saddam "is unable to project conventional power against his neighbors" and that "he threatens not the United States." [Source: State Department, 2/23/01 and 2/24/01]

SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 – CHENEY ACKNOWLEDGES IRAQ IS CONTAINED: Vice President Dick Cheney said that "Saddam Hussein is bottled up" – a confirmation of the intelligence he had received. [Source: Meet the Press, 9/16/2001]

SEPTEMBER 2001 – WHITE HOUSE CREATES OFFICE TO CIRCUMVENT INTEL AGENCIES: The Pentagon creates the Office of Special Plans "in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true-that Saddam Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States…The rising influence of the Office of Special Plans was accompanied by a decline in the influence of the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. bringing about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community." The office, hand-picked by the Administration, specifically "cherry-picked intelligence that supported its pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest" while officials deliberately "bypassed the government's customary procedures for vetting intelligence." [Sources: New Yorker, 5/12/03; Atlantic Monthly, 1/04; New Yorker, 10/20/03]

2002: Intel Agencies Repeatedly Warn White House of Its Weak WMD Case

Throughout 2002, the CIA, DIA, Department of Energy and United Nations all warned the Bush Administration that its selective use of intelligence was painting a weak WMD case. Those warnings were repeatedly ignored.

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." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03]

FEBRUARY 6, 2002 – CIA SAYS IRAQ HAS NOT PROVIDED WMD TO TERRORISTS: "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." [Source: NY Times, 2/6/02]

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." [Source: W. Post, 4/15/02]

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." [Source: The New Republic, 6/30/03]

SEPTEMBER, 2002 – DIA TELLS WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF CHEMICAL WEAPONS: "An unclassified excerpt of a 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency study on Iraq's chemical warfare program in which it stated that there is ‘no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.’" The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special Commission) actions." [Source: Carnegie Endowment for Peace, 6/13/03; DIA report, 2002]

SEPTEMBER 20, 2002 – DEPT. OF ENERGY TELLS WHITE HOUSE OF NUKE DOUBTS: "Doubts about the quality of some of the evidence that the United States is using to make its case that Iraq is trying to build a nuclear bomb emerged Thursday. While National Security Adviser Condi Rice stated on 9/8 that imported aluminum tubes ‘are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs’ a growing number of experts say that the administration has not presented convincing evidence that the tubes were intended for use in uranium enrichment rather than for artillery rocket tubes or other uses. Former U.N. weapons inspector David Albright said he found significant disagreement among scientists within the Department of Energy and other agencies about the certainty of the evidence." [Source: UPI, 9/20/02]

OCTOBER 2002 – CIA DIRECTLY WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear materials in Africa." [Source: Washington Post, 7/23/03]

OCTOBER 2002 — STATE DEPT. WARNS WHITE HOUSE ON NUKE CHARGES: The State Department’s Intelligence and Research Department dissented from the conclusion in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. "The activities we have detected do not ... add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons." INR accepted the judgment by Energy Department technical experts that aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking to acquire, which was the central basis for the conclusion that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, were ill-suited to build centrifuges for enriching uranium. [Source, Declassified Iraq NIE released 7/2003]

mesue
04-04-2005, 02:01 PM
cOCTOBER 2002 – AIR FORCE WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The government organization most knowledgeable about the United States' UAV program -- the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence Center -- had sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were being designed as attack weapons" – a WMD claim President Bush used in his October 7 speech on Iraqi WMD, just three days before the congressional vote authorizing the president to use force. [Source: Washington Post, 9/26/03]

2003: WH Pressures Intel Agencies to Conform; Ignores More Warnings

Instead of listening to the repeated warnings from the intelligence community, intelligence officials say the White House instead pressured them to conform their reports to fit a pre-determined policy. Meanwhile, more evidence from international institutions poured in that the White House’s claims were not well-grounded.

LATE 2002-EARLY 2003 – CHENEY PRESSURES CIA TO CHANGE INTELLIGENCE: "Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual, face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the administration's claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several other intelligence veterans interviewed." Additionally, CIA officials "charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department and vice president's office had 'pressured' agency analysts to paint a dire picture of Saddam's capabilities and intentions." [Sources: Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03]

JANUARY, 2003 – STATE DEPT. INTEL BUREAU REITERATE WARNING TO POWELL: "The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned Secretary of State Colin Powell during the preparation of his speech that the evidence was questionable. The Bureau reiterated to Mr. Powell during the preparation of his February speech that its analysts were not persuaded that the aluminum tubes the Administration was citing could be used in centrifuges to enrich uranium." [Source: Financial Times, 7/30/03]

FEBRUARY 14, 2003 – UN WARNS WHITE HOUSE THAT NO WMD HAVE BEEN FOUND: "In their third progress report since U.N. Security Council Resolution 1441 was passed in November, inspectors told the council they had not found any weapons of mass destruction." Weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security Council they had been unable to find any WMD in Iraq and that more time was needed for inspections. [Source: CNN, 2/14/03]

FEBRUARY 15, 2003 – IAEA WARNS WHITE HOUSE NO NUCLEAR EVIDENCE: The head of the IAEA told the U.N. in February that "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." The IAEA examined "2,000 pages of documents seized Jan. 16 from an Iraqi scientist's home -- evidence, the Americans said, that the Iraqi regime was hiding government documents in private homes. The documents, including some marked classified, appear to be the scientist's personal files." However, "the documents, which contained information about the use of laser technology to enrich uranium, refer to activities and sites known to the IAEA and do not change the agency's conclusions about Iraq's laser enrichment program." [Source: Wash. Post, 2/15/03]

FEBURARY 24, 2003 – CIA WARNS WHITE HOUSE ‘NO DIRECT EVIDENCE’ OF WMD: "A CIA report on proliferation released this week says the intelligence community has no ‘direct evidence’ that Iraq has succeeded in reconstituting its biological, chemical, nuclear or long-range missile programs in the two years since U.N. weapons inspectors left and U.S. planes bombed Iraqi facilities. ‘We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs,’ said the agency in its semi-annual report on proliferation activities." [NBC News, 2/24/03]

MARCH 7, 2003 – IAEA REITERATES TO WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF NUKES: IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said nuclear experts have found "no indication" that Iraq has tried to import high-strength aluminum tubes or specialized ring magnets for centrifuge enrichment of uranium. For months, American officials had "cited Iraq's importation of these tubes as evidence that Mr. Hussein's scientists have been seeking to develop a nuclear capability." ElBaradei also noted said "the IAEA has concluded, with the concurrence of outside experts, that documents which formed the basis for the [President Bush’s assertion] of recent uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic." When questioned about this on Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney simply said "Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong." [Source: NY Times, 3/7/03: Meet the Press, 3/16/03]

MAY 30, 2003 – INTEL PROFESSIONALS ADMIT THEY WERE PRESSURED: "A growing number of U.S. national security professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the facts and hijacking 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 official at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). 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 said. Greg Thielmann, an intelligence official in the State Department, said it appeared to him that intelligence had been shaped 'from the top down.'" [Reuters, 5/30/03 ]

JUNE 6, 2003 – INTELLIGENCE HISTORIAN SAYS INTEL WAS HYPED: "The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq , a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed study of the spy agency's public pronouncements." [Reuters, 6/6/03]

Jolie Rouge
04-04-2005, 07:56 PM
CIA'S SOURCE OF PREWAR INTELLIGENCE SAYS BRAD AND JEN ARE STAYING TOGETHER
New Statement From 'Curveball' Raises Eyebrows
Monday , April 4, 2005

The Central Intelligence Agency’s primary source of prewar intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction made headlines again today, telling People magazine that actors Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston are staying together. “I am telling you that Brad and Jennifer have never been happier with their marriage,” said the source, codenamed Curveball. “I would be willing to go to war over that.”


When asked about reports that Mr. Pitt and Ms. Aniston are heading for divorce court, he replied, “Who are you going to believe – ‘Entertainment Tonight,’ or Curveball?”

Mr. Curveball, who reportedly swigged from a bottle of Jack Daniels during his rambling, often incoherent interview, also predicted that the film “Guess Who” would sweep next year’s Academy Awards and that Mickey Rourke would be named People’s “Sexiest Man Alive.”

He refused to indicate how he had obtained any of this information, saying only, “My reception has improved greatly since I started wrapping my head in aluminum foil.”

The latest pronouncements from Mr. Curveball have fueled criticism of the CIA for relying on him as its sole source of prewar intelligence, prompting former CIA director George Tenet to hold a rare press conference outside his home on Sunday. “Contrary to the reports, Curveball was not our only source of intelligence,” Mr. Tenet said. “We also had two other sources, codenamed Whackjob and Nutcase.”



Elsewhere, a U.S. military spokesman said that an insurgent attack on Abu Ghraib prison on Saturday was “an isolated incident,” and that in the future all violence would be confined to inside the prison.


;)

http://www.borowitzreport.com/default.asp

mesue
04-05-2005, 07:03 PM
Applause!!! LOL

Jolie Rouge
07-29-2012, 10:47 PM
Applause!!! LOL

Happy Birthday, Old Friend... Watch over us all ... I am sure you're laughing at all the "contrversy"