Murray Waas Opens the Administration’s Kimono
On September 21, 2002 President Bush was told in a classified briefing that the US intelligence committee had no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to 9/11 attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with al Qaeda.
On September 25, 2002, President Bush said, “You can’t distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.”
On September 26, 2002, Rumsfeld said, "We have what we consider to be credible evidence that Al Qaeda leaders have sought contacts with Iraq who could help them acquire … weapons-of-mass-destruction capabilities."
On December 9, 2001, Vice President Cheney said on NBC’s Meet the Press: "[I]t’s pretty well confirmed that [Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in [the Czech Republic] last April, several months before the attack."
All of the above are from an 11/22 article in the National Journal by Murray Waas. While the above is quite revealing, it is just an appetizer.
Murray is drilling to the core of the Bush administration’s claims that intelligence information supported Bush’s decision (more like Cheney’s decision) to invade Iraq. There is an important word missing from that sentence – credible information. It has been widely reported that the administration, especially Dick Cheney, manipulated information to validate their reasons for going to war; the weapons of mass destruction and the ties between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. The administration has continuously denied the allegations.
The administration is not lying when making those statements. They had information, but the credibility – well, let’s say it’s questionable at best. The CIA repeatedly provided reports to the administration that did not support the administration’s public claims against Saddam Hussein, which has since been used as the administration’s scapegoat - the CIA got it wrong. No they didn’t. It is just a matter of how the administration reacted to the information.
In the September 21, 2001 “President’s Daily Brief” (PDB),
President Bush was told in a highly classified briefing that the U.S. intelligence community had no evidence linking the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein to the attacks and that there was scant credible evidence that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with Al Qaeda.
Bush was told during the briefing was that the few credible reports of contacts between Iraq and Al Qaeda involved attempts by Saddam Hussein to monitor the terrorist group. Saddam viewed Al Qaeda as well as other theocratic radical Islamist organizations as a potential threat to his secular regime. At one point, analysts believed, Saddam considered infiltrating the ranks of Al Qaeda with Iraqi nationals or even Iraqi intelligence operatives to learn more about its inner workings.
The intelligence submitted in the September 21, 2001 PDB was incorporated with additional CIA intelligence, which further debunked the administration’s claims and was submitted to the President, the Vice President, Condoleza Rice (then the President’s National Security Advisor), Donald Rumsfeld and other senior administration officials. Congress has since requested this report and the administration refuses to honor their request.
[In] July 2004, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded in its review of the CIA’s prewar intelligence: "Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was little useful intelligence collected that helped analysts determine the Iraqi regime’s possible links to al-Qaeda."
Summarizing, the Bush administration has pointed to the CIA as being inept and providing them misinformation, but it was actually intelligence supplied from a secret intelligence operation the administration created. If the CIA doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, you find someone who will, right?
One reason that Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld made statements that contradicted what they were told in CIA briefings might have been that they were receiving information from another source that purported to have evidence of Al Qaeda-Iraq ties. The information came from a covert intelligence unit set up shortly after the September 11 attacks by then-Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith.
The secretive unit was set up because Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and Libby did not believe the CIA would be able to get to the bottom of the matter of Iraq-Al Qaeda ties.
At first, the Feith-directed unit primarily consisted of two men, former journalist Michael Maloof and David Wurmser, a veteran of neoconservative think tanks.
[N]either Maloof nor Wurmser had any experience or formal training in intelligence analysis. Maloof later lost his security clearance, for allegedly failing to disclose a relationship with a woman who is a foreigner, and after allegations that he leaked classified information to the press.
In January 2002, Maloof and Wurmser were succeeded at the intelligence unit by two Naval Reserve officers. Intelligence analysis from the covert unit later served as the basis for many of the erroneous public statements made by Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, and others regarding the alleged ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda…
Murray goes on to provide significant reporting that information from this tell-them-what-they-want-to-hear intelligence group was broadly disseminated and served as the basis for many of the administration’s claims, which have since proven to be incorrect.
So, when the Veep made the following statements, and others like them in the past, he was, on a literal basis, stating the administration did indeed have information to support their reasons for going to war. That is not a lie.
I believe it is critical that we continue to remind ourselves why this nation took action and why Iraq is the central front in the war on terror and why we have a duty to persevere.
What is not legitimate and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible is the suggestion by some U.S. senators that the president of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on prewar intelligence.
Some of the most irresponsible comments have come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein.
These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence materials. They are known to have a high opinion of their own analytical capabilities.
The Veep may want to reflect upon the attributes he indignantly employed: dishonest, reprehensible, and analytical capabilities.
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