Cheney, Security and the CIA

I'm glad some people can keep up with most of Cheney's lies in real time, because I just can't keep up with his prodigious rate of bullshit. Meanwhile, there's plenty of other torture and security news, especially on some new Bush era e-mails on torture (with the obligatory really crappy NYT coverage on them). I can't go into depth on these at the moment, but here's a short roundup:

Dan Froomkin: "How Cheney Bent DOJ to His Will" and "Too Embarrassing to Disclose?"

Scott Horton: "Cheney, the DOJ, and Torture: Two Takes" and "Counterfeiting Washington."

Eric Martin: "Another in the Blame America First Crowd" (dissecting some careful lying by Cheney) and "Moral Victories."

Emptywheel: Start with "Pre-Emptive Strike on OPR Report: NYT Misrepresents Comey Emails, Claims He Approved Torture" and read the next four or so posts. Then check out "Leon Panetta Kisses His Credibility Goodbye" and read the next five or so posts.

(Cross-posted at Blue Herald)

Where's bin Laden?

It's a better question for George Bush, actually. But where's bin Laden in Charlie Wilson's War?

I read a draft of the script last year, and while most of it hasn't changed much, there were a few notable, disappointing omissions.

Let me be clear: Charlie Wilson's War is an excellent film, one of the best I've seen all year. Overall, the cast is superb. The film combines substance with wit to spare. Aaron Sorkin is a master of exposition, using it as ammunition and often off-setting it with comedy and other activities: sitting in a hot tub, a belly dance, the old West Wing walk and talk, a dance of dueling meetings reminiscent of the Marx Brothers. Director Mike Nichols knows the medium well, but he's also an actor's director, well beloved by them. Hanks is quite good as Wilson. I still think Julia Roberts is miscast, but I understand why she was cast (huge box office draw). I was ecstatic to see Phillip Seymour Hoffman cast as Gust; it's a perfect fit and one of his most enjoyable performances, and that's saying a lot. His first scene alone is worth the price of admission, and he and Hanks have great chemistry. Ned Beatty plays a small, key role. The film even has Amy Adams, splendid as always (see Junebug if you haven't), although a friend of mine noted, she should have been sporting big hair for the era (as most American women in the cast are).

As the film notes at the start, it's based on the true story (chronicled in the book of the same name) about our funding of a covert war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, largely spurred by an unlikely figure, inveterate boozer and womanizer Charlie Wilson, Democratic Congressman of the Texas 2nd. The film's gripping and entertaining, and sometimes quite moving. There's a brief scene where Wilson speaks with some child victims of bombing in Afghanistan, and it's tastefully done, but it certainly hit me in the gut. (Sorkin and Nichols even humanize the Russians a bit.) Charlie Wilson's War's impressive because it's pretty damn ambitious, covering a vital but largely unknown chapter of our recent history, being extremely informative while avoiding what Sorkin once called the "eat your broccoli" feel. It's a very enjoyable watch.

(I've got some slight spoilers of a sort here, although if you're familiar with the basic history, they shouldn't be.)

About three-quarters into the script in the version I read, the CIA tells Wilson about new developments with the Mujahideen, and they mention Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden. It's a striking moment, because the names have massive significance for us, but it's really just one more piece of interesting information for them at the time. I thought it was well handled, but it's not in the released film.

The film as released does touch on the surge of religious extremists. A late scene between Charlie Wilson and Gust uses a parable to consider the unpredictability of outcomes. A couple of other scenes on denying reconstruction funding and a ending quotation also suggest what was to come.

Still, it feels like a copout to axe the mention of Al Qaeda and bin Laden. After all, the film still mentions Jack Murtha and Rudy Giuliani by name, both prominent figures today, but much less central to both the subject matter and the theme. Cutting a few scenes of Wilson performing a drunken hit and run made some sense — besides Hollywood's aversion to making its protagonists unlikable, that sequence was about the mess of Wilson's personal life, which is interesting but not crucial. In contrast, the rise of bin Laden and Al Qaeda during the war with the Soviets, and the role of the Mujahideen in world events since, is pretty damn important. You would not know any of that by watching the film alone. It deserved at least a nod.

(A spoiler of sorts I suppose) In the version I read, the script actually ended on 9/11, with Charlie Wilson in his apartment, which has a view of the Pentagon. He has another woman over, and hears the explosion, sees the smoke, and the script ends on the look on his face — alarmed, and suspecting the truth even if he's not sure. I was wondering if that would survive to film, because it was powerful but might wrench the rest of the story. That cut seems more justified. It might even have been filmed, but didn't make the final version.

I'm just wondering to what degree those changes were aesthetically versus politically motivated. I'll be interested to check out the various interviews and the eventual DVD extras for more information. Did the studio fear some bizarre uproar? Did Nichols feel it knocked the film off-kilter? I don't know. But considering how daring the film is in many ways, and how willing it is to show the warts of war, ethnic divisions and backroom deals — not to even say the names just felt both irresponsible and, well, gutless.

I find myself thinking of Bush claiming back in 2002 or so that Saddam Hussein was dangerous because he had 'gassed his own people,' never mind that he did so in the late 80s during the Iraq-Iran war, when the Unites States was still doing business with Iraq. That gassing also occurred before Rumsfeld went to meet with Hussein to reassure him (as famously photographed, and as Rumsfeld claimed to only dimly remember). And it was before the first Gulf War. Whether one supported the invasion of Iraq or not, Bush did not speak of our previous alliance with Hussein and Iraq. I suspect his administration thought it would implicate us and introduce a level of complexity they didn't want with their cartoonish "Axis of Evil." It's one of many reasons I'd argue Bush made the case for war dishonestly, and one of the clearest early signs he simply wasn't to be trusted. Similarly, none of the crowd saber-rattling for war with Iran mentions the role of the U.S. and U.K. in covertly supporting a coup of Iran's democratically-elected government in 1953. Our current relationships with foreign powers often have important history attached. They don't exist a vacuum.

The reason I bring all this up is, like it or not, pop culture is where a great number of Americans get their history. While entertaining, Charlie Wilson's War is so much more than a popcorn flick. It's a very good film, and I intend to buy a copy when available. But I feel it could have been better still. And I really do want to hear what the decision-making process was for those elements.

Here's a cinematic example. All the President's Men is a great film, but it ends a bit oddly, with a news ticker summing up Nixon's resignation. Since the film came out in 1976, the thinking was that the audience was familiar with everything that happened, so why not just end quickly. William Goldman, the screenwriter, has since said it was a mistake. The speed wasn't a bad thing per se, but they should have been more cinematic, perhaps used some footage or something, because nowadays the ending doesn't play as well.

Interestingly enough, The History Channel special, The True Story of Charlie Wilson's War, is much more direct about bin Laden than the film is. The show is one of those joint movie studio-cable ventures, fairly fluffy, intended to promote the film. No one, for example, bothers to ask whether it's really a good idea for a lone congressman and a rogue CIA agent to set foreign policy and wage a covert war. Still, it's interesting to hear from Wilson himself, several of the other players, screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, and to learn which of the details in the film are true. The bin Laden section comes in the last five to ten minutes. (For background, Carol Shannon is a Texas belly-dancer and a friend of Charlie's who features in the story, and Azizullah Din Muhammed was an Afghan rebel who met Charlie a few times during the covert war.) I transcribed the section in question:

[Footage of the smoking twin towers.]

Narrator: Today, Charlie Wilson's war must be seen in the context of September 11, 2001.

Aaron Sorkin: The two biggest threats ever, to our security, were the spread of Soviet Communism and the rise of Islamic fanaticism. Charlie is a guy who had a hand in stopping one, and accidentally starting the other.

Narrator: Though all of the 9/11 hijackers were Arabs, the operation was planned by a terrorist organization sheltered in Afghanistan.

[Footage of bin Laden.]

Charlie Wilson: We bear responsibility, because we didn't try to rebuild Afghanistan.

Azizullah Din Muhammed (Afghan Rebel): European countries and the U.S., they thought that once the Soviet Union was defeated, the job was over. They did not think about setting up a government in Afghanistan.

Wilson: We left a vacuum, and the vacuum was filled by the Taliban and by Al Qaeda.

Sorkin: There's no question that the Afghan victory and 9/11 are holding hands with each other. Is it Charlie Wilson's fault? No, don't be ridiculous. No one's responsible for 9/11, except for a bunch of twisted [bleep]suckers.

Narrator: CIA officers maintain that they never trained or armed the foreign volunteer fighters that would one day form Al Qaeda. During the 1980s, it was the Soviet Union that represented the gravest threat to U.S. national security. Like many Americans, Charlie Wilson lived much of his life with the omnipresent threat of a Soviet nuclear attack.

Carol Shannon: He had a lot of nightmares. And I hope they're over now.

Narrator: History will show that the evil empire was brought down by a colorful cast of characters, led by a hard-drinking, skirt-chasing Texas congressman.

Sorkin: President Zia-ul-Haq of Pakistan, when asked how in the world did the Afghans beat the most powerful army on the face of the world, President Zia responded:

President Zia: Charlie did it.

They don't even mention bin Laden or Al Qaeda by name, but do show video footage of him. Still, apart from that, and the narrator's hype (especially saying "the evil empire"), they offer a reasonably accurate, fair account (if severely truncated). While Wikipedia is far from definitive, its article on "Allegations of CIA assistance to Osama bin Laden" ain't bad, and offers more information on the subject. A key passage relays that:

Robin Cook, former leader of the British House of Commons and Foreign Secretary from 1997-2001, wrote in The Guardian on Friday, July 8, 2005,

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. [8]

Meanwhile, the same article notes, as did the History Channel narrator, that the CIA have denied that they directly funded or trained bin Laden. Reporter Peter Bergen, among others, believes this, and the article lists several reasons for it. I can buy that there wasn't direct funding or training, since bin Laden had his own sources, but the U.S. or its proxy Pakistan were funding and training plenty of those fighting the Soviets. Meanwhile, it's undeniable that the U.S. and Al Qaeda were fighting on the same side back then. Simply mentioning that doesn't endorse a theory of "blowback" for 9/11, and even a theory of blowback doesn't excuse those who perpetrated 9/11.

The book The Kite Runner, also a film now, deals with some of the same period in Afghanistan. As one character notes in the book, at first many in Afghanistan cheered the Taliban, because they were replacing the Russians and took care of some criminals and scoundrels. But then, the edicts started, and the Taliban were feared and despised by many that first welcomed them. Politics and foreign affairs are seldom black and white.

Portraying that reality is what makes Charlie Wilson's War a good film, and also the reason I feel it falls short on this one matter. Perhaps I'm being uncharitable, and I'll look forward to learning more about the decisions behind the scenes. Overall, Charlie Wilson's War presents a pretty complex, sophisticated view of the world, where small decisions can snowball, and policies that seem wise at the time can lead to other complications, some predictable, some unseen. But see the film, and decide for yourself.

Update: Thanks to Mike of Mike's Blog Roundup for the link at C&L, most of all for also linking "Tom Hanks Tells Hollywood Whopper in 'Charlie Wilson's War'" by Melissa Roddy at AlterNet. Roddy apparently read an earlier version of the script too, and has much more detail on a few of the specific changes. I find it interesting that, apparently, the real Wilson was willing to be more candid with the History Channel special promoting the film than he was with the studio on the film itself. Of course, one's going to be seen by many more people (although I expect that a special edition DVD of Charlie Wilson's War will include the History Channel special, will probably include deleted scenes and might well discuss the script changes). I continue to be interested in more information about this.

Update 2: I have a follow-up post with more information about the actual history omitted from the film.

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

Bogus Letter Became a Case for War

(Cross-posted at The Blue Herald)

The Washington Post's Peter Eisner reports on the front page today (4/3/07):

It was 3 a.m. in Italy on Jan. 29, 2003, when President Bush in Washington began reading his State of the Union address that included the now famous -- later retracted -- 16 words: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

Like most Europeans, Elisabetta Burba, an investigative reporter for the Italian newsweekly Panorama, waited until the next day to read the newspaper accounts of Bush's remarks. But when she came to the 16 words, she recalled, she got a sudden sinking feeling in her stomach. She wondered: How could the American president have mentioned a uranium sale from Africa?

Burba felt uneasy because more than three months earlier, she had turned over to the U.S. Embassy in Rome documents about an alleged uranium sale by the central African nation of Niger. And she knew now that the documents were fraudulent and the 16 words wrong.

Nonetheless, the uranium claim would become a crucial justification for the invasion of Iraq that began less than two months later. When occupying troops found no nuclear program, the 16 words and how they came to be in the speech became a focus for critics in Washington and foreign capitals to press the case that the White House manipulated facts to take the United States to war.

Dozens of interviews with current and former intelligence officials and policymakers in the United States, Britain, France and Italy show that the Bush administration disregarded key information available at the time showing that the Iraq-Niger claim was highly questionable.

Some of the information in the article is not new, but the piece does fill in many details. Seymour Hersh reported some of the core information in his 10/27/03 article "The Stovepipe," one of the first major post-invasion pieces on the Bush's administration's cherry-picking of intelligence. Blogger Josh Marshall also covered several aspects of this story over at Talking Points Memo (here's parts one, two and three). In a previous post we mentioned some of Slate's coverage on then DCI George Tenet being asked to fall on his sword for false tales the CIA had debunked (here's Jack Shafer, here's William Saletan, and here's John Dickerson). Then there's this section from Ron Suskind's The One Percent Doctine, occurring after the CIA had debunked several pieces of "evidence":

Relentless pressure is a strategy. Usually quite successful. It was employed both in the "war on terror" against al Qaeda, and by the White House against the CIA.

[...]

Libby and Hadley, meanwhile, continued to push, and push hard, on the analysts, asking the same question Tenet was often asked in high-level meetings. Aren't these potential threats precisely why an invasion is necessary? Is there even the slimmest possibility—a one percent chance—that uranium was bought in Niger, that the aluminum tubes were usable in uranium centrifuges, or that Mohammed Atta managed to meet with an Iraqi, any Iraqi, in Prague?

The thing to watch out for with a program of relentless pressure is the blowback.

On Friday afternoon, January 10, Jami Miscik, the head of the DI walked down the hall on the seventh floor shaking with rage.

Josh Moseman, Tenet's chief of staff, saw her as she passed his office.

"You okay?"

"No, I'm not okay. I'm definitely not okay!"

A moment later, she'd made it to Tenet's suite.

She barely could get out the words. Stephen Hadley, Condi's second, has called from the office of "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff.

They wanted her down at Libby's office in the White House by 5 p.m. At issue was the last in an endless series of draft reports about the connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. How many drafts? Miscik couldn't remember. The pressure for the White House—and from the various intelligence divisions under the Vice President and the Secretary of Defense—had started a week after 9/11.

Cheney's office claimed to have sources. And Rumsfeld's, too. They kept throwing them at Miscik and CIA. The same information, five different ways. They'd omit that a key piece had been discounted, that the source had recanted. Sorry, our mistake. Then it would reappear, again, in a memo the next week. The CIA held firm; the meeting in Prague between Atta and the Iraqi agent didn't occur.

Miscek was no fool. She understood what was going on. It wasn't about what was true, or verifiable. It was about a defensible position, or at least one that would hold up until the troops were marching through Baghdad, welcomed as liberators.

A few days before, when she had sent the final draft over to Libby and Hadley, she told them, emphatically, This is it. There would be no more drafts, no more meetings where her analysts sat across from Hadley, or Feith, or the guys in Feith's office, while the opposing team tried to slip something by them. The report was not what they wanted. She knew that. No evidence meant no evidence.

"I'm not going back there, again, George," Miscek said. "If I have to go back to hear their crap and rewrite this goddamn report... I'm resigning, right now."

She fought back tears of rage.

Tenet picked up the phone to call Hadley.

"She is not coming over," he shouted into the phone. "We are not rewriting this fucking report one more time. It is fucking over. Do you hear me! And don't you ever fucking treat my people this way again. Ever!"

They did not rewrite the report.

And that's why, three weeks later, in making the case for war in his State of the Union address, George W. Bush was not able to say what he'd long hoped to say at such a moment: that there was a pre-9/11 connection between al Qaeda and Saddam.

One down. But two salient points—wobbly, but still standing—on the heart-stopping issue of nuclear weapons remained in the text: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production."

Both statements were crafted to carry the clarion ring of proof, and both were known, by people inside the CIA and the White House, to fall short of that standard.
(pp.189-191, hardcover edition)

Then there's all of Plamegate. This was not some innocent, bureaucratic snafu, and that's the one aspect of this article I don't trust — not that bureaucratic gaffes might not have complicated matters. There are dozens of stories and incidents like the one Suskind relates, but the key element never changes: the Bush administration acted in bad faith. They never sought an objective threat analysis on Iraq. They wanted to go to war, and dug and scrounged for justification, not proof. They didn't care if Iraq was an imminent threat or not (or, for some, they were so certain it didn't matter). They were interested in what would sell. Iraq was never a challenge of national security for the Bush administration. It was a challenge of PR.

There are folks out there that know this material backwards and forwards, and I'll be interested to see what they make of this new article. Yet to my mind, its main value is that this is The Washington Post, front page, confirming earlier reports and filling in some details. Even more importantly, more people seem willing to speak out now. This is nothing for the Bush administration to celebrate. These sort of issues tend to build up a critical mass (witness all the peripheral scandals the Attorney scandal has started to flush out). As the saying goes, sunshine is the best disinfectant, and with this administration, there can't be enough of it.

Update: It's no surprise that TPM weighed in on the Eisner article, and they offer a valuable perspective.

Also today, Eisner discussed the article online with readers, and clarified several points. Apparently, he's got a book coming out on this whole deal.

The Gutting of the CIA?

Even as George Tenet's failings and merits as CIA head continue to be evaluated in books and articles, the recently ousted Porter Goss remains a polarizing figure, as does the man President Bush has tapped to take over this important job, General Michael Hayden. What state has Goss left things in?

Steve Benen of The Carpetbagger Report did a guest post at Crooks and Liars on 4/25/06 detailing how recently ousted CIA head Porter Goss was given instructions to purge Democrats from the CIA.
Washington Post columnist David Ignatius provides further insight into the dynamics of the CIA under Goss in a great 5/11/06 piece entitled How the CIA Came Unglued. A new Newsweek article by Mark Hosenball on "Dusty" Foggo supports Ignatius' piece and touches briefly on what many bloggers are calling "Hookergate."

Before delving into the Ignatius and Hosenball pieces, for a broader perspective I wanted to visit a conservative who champions both Goss and Hayden. In a Washington Post online chat, Peter Brookes, "a former intelligence officer with the CIA's Directorate of Operations and now a senior fellow in National Security Affairs at the Heritage Foundation," provided some interesting responses:

Washington, D.C.: What sort of job has Porter Goss done and why would Hayden be any better or worse?

Peter Brookes: Porter Goss did a good job under very difficult circumstances. The agency was in disarray after 9/11 and the failure to find WMD in Iraq. In my view, he shook things up and set the agency off in a new direction. It's a good time for someone else to step in and take the helm.

Note that Brookes blames the CIA for the failure to find WMD in Iraq. Hmm, shouldn't someone that works in a think tank be aware of the 11,000th whistleblower article on how the Bush administration misused prewar intelligence? They ignored not only significant internal dissent in the CIA as to whether Iraq possessed WMD or posed any serious threat, but also actively ignored or suppressed evidence that Iraq did not posses nuclear material and was not building a centrifuge.

Brookes pleads ignorance on the witch hunt charges, which is fine, I suppose, but it raises questions about how tapped in he really is:

San Diego, Calif.: Do you have a comment about the recent reports that Director Goss was conducting a review of the political party affiliations of CIA personnel? If that's true, did it play a part, one way or the other, in Goss's departure?

Peter Brookes: Haven't heard anything like that...

Brookes does take at least one polite but fairly pointed question on Goss:

Richmond, Va.: Thanks for taking questions. The Bush administration has blamed the CIA for bad intel about WMD in Iraq (and I don't believe them). This administration has outed an operative as a means of discrediting her husband, and claimed that they can declassify information at will. This administration has chosen to place a greater value on the DOD intelligence group. Putting Porter Goss in as Director served to purge a lot of valuable talent out of the agency. It seems to me Gen. Hayden could be just the fellow to finish the CIA off, or get pretty close to it. Your thoughts?

Peter Brookes: There is another school of thought that says that many of those that left the CIA since Goss came in were responsible for many of the failures in recent years. So should Goss have kept them? I don't think Hayden is being sent to Langley to close the place down.

Brookes essentially offers a "there are two sides to every story" defense of Goss while completely ducking the most troubling points made by the questioner. I find it hard to believe that any intellectually honest person following the news could believe that the Bush administration did not misuse and cherry-pick intelligence. While the CIA had its problems, it's clear that the Bush administration scapegoated the CIA (Tenet's role taking the undeserved blame regarding the uranium claims in the SOTU is well-documented at this point; for just a taste, see a Slate piece by Saletan from 2003 and a 2005 piece by Dickerson).

To be fair to Brookes, an online discussion necessitates expediency, and you can read his opinions in more depth here, including an enthusiastically pro-Hayden piece. Regarding Hayden, he takes a supremely relevant question:

Louisville, Ky.: Gen. Hayden seems to have a shocking misunderstanding of the Fourth Amendment, pleading ignorance of probable cause in recent interviews.
Please calm my fears that Hayden disagrees with the President, and does not think it acceptable to spy on average Americans without a warrant.

Peter Brookes: My belief is that the NSA wiretapping program should be legal and focused on the bad guys. That said, I think we'll see a lot more discussion of this during Hayden's confirmation hearings.

Brookes' answer is cursory and somewhat unclear here. Does he then acknowledge that both revealed NSA programs are currently illegal? Does he acknowledge that the call-tracking program currently targets innocent Americans by collecting everyone's phone records versus only the "bad guys?" I can credit Brookes for taking a good question, but he immediately loses all credit by completely ignoring it! Here he ducks the glaring issue of the 4th Amendment and also glosses over Hayden's apparent ignorance of, or disregard for, the essential law that governs his very important job! At this point, I have to put Brookes in the polite cheerleader camp. He trusts the guys in charge and will not address any of the glaring, serious concerns about their conduct. I'm using Brookes as an example because he purports to be a serious thinker and is much more civil than many another Bush administration backer (and his responses have been much on my mind).

As to evaluating the job Goss did, on 5/11/06 Dana Priest provided some insight in her weekly WaPo online chat:

Pittsburgh, Pa.: How do you read the move to reinstate Stephen Kappes at the CIA? This seems very unusual does it not? Do you know him?

Dana Priest: I certainly know of him, so to speak. It was truly a stunner, given the direct political slap it was to Goss' judgment. Kappes was the first senior officer to leave in protest when Goss took over. I read it as a way for the White House, through Negroponte, to ask for forgiveness and to get them back into business. I would also think he would actually be running the place much like George Tenet did and maybe Hayden would do more of the interagency work and vision thing.

Meanwhile, Ignatius' column reports on the deadly trio at the CIA, Porter Goss, his staff director Patrick Murray, and Goss' #3, "Dusty" Foggo, whose house was recently raided by FBI agents with the cooperation of the CIA. Ignatius posits that Foggo's "rise illustrates the conservative cronyism, leak paranoia and political vendettas that undermined Goss's tenure." He elaborates by describing the dangerous agency culture created by Goss:

When Goss and Murray arrived at the CIA in the fall of 2004, their first choice for the agency's No. 3 job of executive director was a former CIA officer named Michael Kostiw, who had many friends in conservative political circles. But Kostiw's nomination was sabotaged when a CIA insider leaked the fact that he had once been accused of shoplifting. The charges were dropped after Kostiw resigned and agreed to seek counseling. Kostiw's past made him an inappropriate choice for such a senior position, in the view of many career CIA officers, but to Murray the leak was evidence of a liberal cabal at the CIA that was determined to obstruct the Bush administration's agenda.

Goss's second choice for executive director was the ingratiating logistical officer. As is standard procedure with such senior appointments, Murray and other senior aides were briefed on Foggo's file, which included what one former CIA official describes as instances of "dumb personal behavior." The briefers included Mary Margaret Graham, then chief of counterintelligence, and Jeanette Moore, then head of the Office of Security, who, according to ABC News, had once reprimanded Foggo about alleged insubordination, though the CIA says a formal letter was never filed. Murray rejected the material about Foggo as petty and is said to have warned Graham, "If this leaks, you're dead."

Foggo was duly installed on the seventh floor and, to the amusement of his colleagues, began placing pictures of himself prominently around headquarters. Meanwhile, a period of internal bloodletting ensued that was worthy of the Soviet NKVD under Joseph Stalin. The associate deputy chief of the CIA's Directorate of Operations, Michael Sulick, complained angrily to Murray about his tongue-lashing of Graham, arguing that he was treating CIA officers as if they were Democratic congressional staffers. An indignant Murray thereupon demanded that Sulick be fired for insubordination. His boss, Operations Deputy Director Stephen Kappes, refused Murray's demand, and both he and Sulick resigned.

The aforemention Newsweek article by Mark Hosenball supports the views of Priest and Ignatius (Newsweek is owned by The Post, which also owns Slate):

May 22, 2006 issue - Until a few days ago, Kyle (Dusty) Foggo was one of the most feared men at the CIA. A hot-tempered former cop, Foggo was chosen by CIA Director Porter Goss to be the powerful No. 3 man at the agency, in charge of hiring and firing. Foggo seemed to put a lot of effort into firing. With Goss's blessing, he carried out what amounted to a purge of the agency, forcing out most of the CIA's top management, as well as spies and analysts who were thought to be too close to former director George Tenet, or too close to the Democrats. When Foggo walked down the corridor, people worried he was coming for them.
_________________________
It's now up to Goss's replacement—presumably Gen. Michael Hayden, if he survives the confirmation process—to clean up the mess the Goss crew left behind. Last week Negroponte said he wants to appoint Stephen Kappes to fill the job of deputy director. The announcement was a very public slap at Goss. A former Marine and veteran case officer with a storied career, Kappes was head of the CIA's clandestine service when Goss took over the agency. Years earlier, when Bill Clinton was president, Goss's Capitol Hill aides had feuded with Kappes over an incident at the CIA station in Belgrade. CIA officers, informed they were about to be attacked, fled the building without first burning all of the secret papers. Goss's aides demanded that the station chief be fired, even though an investigation, led by Kappes, showed no secrets had been compromised. Kappes refused to fire the official. Goss and his aides never forgot it, and when Goss became director Kappes was one of the first to be shoved out. Kappes, who now lives overseas, has been back to Washington for talks and is believed to be interested in returning to Langley. Thanks to the previous tenants, there will be plenty of work for him to do—and undo.

But what sort of mandate will exist to fix the CIA? And according to whose idea of "fixing?" Ignatius concludes his column:

The chronic mismanagement of the CIA under Goss and Murray has been an open secret for many months, and the real question is why it took the Bush White House so long to fix it. When I posed this question a few weeks ago to a senior administration official, he repeated the line that the agency was full of leakers and obstructionists. The political vendetta against the CIA went to the top, in other words. It did real damage to the country before President Bush finally called a halt.

Goss apparently still has fierce champions in the Bush administration, even though Brookes is apparently unaware of the party line on this, pleaded ignorance, or tried to adopt a disinterested stance. Who really made the call on Goss stepping down, or pushed for it, and why? While tensions did exist at the agency, the firing criteria for Bush has almost exclusively been perceived disloyalty and never horrible mismanagement. Goss was rooting out Bush's perceived enemies, and it's hard to see him objecting to that. Despite the official denials, the most credible narrative right now remains that Goss' resignation was primarily (but not necessarily exclusively) to minimize the erupting scandal centered on the activities of Dusty Foggo.

Moving forward, Kappes appears to be highly regarded by just about everybody. Meanwhile, some reporters and pundits posit that Negroponte wants Hayden to serve as a bulwark against the highly influential Donald Rumsfeld (Dana Priest discusses this view here). How partisan is Negroponte, and how much is Hayden? Hayden has critics and supporters of every political stripe. He deserves intense scrutiny as the head of the NSA during its highly controversial and unconstitutional warrantless spying programs. While it seems Kappes' return to the CIA would surely make the agency better, Hayden's stated ignorance of, or disdain for, the 4th Amendment does not give great comfort. I'll be watching Specter's NSA and CIA hearings with great interest.

Curveball

The Los Angeles Times has presented the best, most in-depth tale yet of Curveball, the Iraqi defector who provided most of the false intelligence that justifed the push to war. In its own way, this article gives Stephen King a run for his money.

Many maddening elements emerge. One is the persistent, ridiculous and needless turf battles between groups that are supposed to be on the same side. On 9/11 it was policeman and firemen tragically not communicating; before 9/11 it was the FBI and CIA, among others, who did not share information; here, it was Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (the BND) preventing the American CIA any access to their prize informant, Curveball. The lack of access was exacerbated by mistranslations... LA Times journalists Bob Drogin and John Goetz report:

It got worse, like a children's game of "telephone," in which information gets increasingly distorted. The BND sent German summaries of their English and Arabic interview reports to Munich House and to British intelligence. The DIA team translated the German back to English and prepared its own summaries. Those went to DIA's directorate for human intelligence, at a high-rise office in Clarendon, Va.

Still, for any mistranslations that contributed to the false belief that Saddam Hussein had reconstituted his WMD programs, at several points the CIA was told that Curveball was not reliable at best, and a liar at worst. George Tenet claims he never received this information. However, as Director of Central Intelligence at the time, and considering Curveball's accounts played a crucial role in the public case for war, it is inconceivable Tenet did not know the intelligence was suspect.

Hanlon's Razor states that one should "never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by stupidity." One could easily add in ignorance and incompetence. If DCI Tenet really did not know that Curveball was unreliable, then the CIA was even more poorly managed than previously reported.

Turf battles apparently occured within the CIA as well. Several sources in the article comment on the CIA's stubborn unwillingness to admit its own mistakes and learn from them. Apparently, those agents who questioned Curveball's veracity were punished for making waves. David Kay, who searched for WMD after the war, observes that the CIA is "very, very vindictive." While the article shows that there were (and no doubt still are) very capable, professional CIA agents, their efforts appear to have been stymied. Something in the culture or the management prevented the accurate view on Curveball to emerge, let alone dominate.

Psychologists have long known that typically, human beings tend to look for evidence to support their views, not for evidence to contradict them. This dynamic makes the thorough vetting of critical intelligence all the more crucial. Consider the following incident:

Soon after U.S. troops entered Baghdad, the discovery of two trucks loaded with lab equipment in northern Iraq brought cheers to the CIA weapons center.

Curveball examined photos relayed to Germany and said that while he hadn't worked on the two trucks, equipment in the pictures looked like components he had installed at Djerf al Nadaf.

Days later, the CIA and DIA rushed to publish a White Paper declaring the trucks part of Hussein's biological warfare program. The report dismissed Iraq's explanation that the equipment generated hydrogen as a "cover story." A day later, Bush told a Polish TV reporter: "We found the weapons of mass destruction."

But bio-weapons experts in the intelligence community were sharply critical. A former senior official of the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research called the unclassified report an unprecedented "rush to judgment."

The DIA then ordered a classified review of the evidence. One of 15 analysts held to the initial finding that the trucks were built for germ warfare. The sole believer was the CIA analyst who helped draft the original White Paper.

Hamish Killip, a former British army officer and biological weapons expert, flew to Baghdad in July 2003 as part of the Iraq Survey Group, the CIA-led Iraqi weapons hunt. He inspected the truck trailers and was immediately skeptical.

"The equipment was singularly inappropriate" for biological weapons, he said. "We were in hysterics over this. You'd have better luck putting a couple of dust bins on the back of the truck and brewing it in there."

The trucks were built to generate hydrogen, not germs, he said. But the CIA refused to back down. In March 2004, Killip quit, protesting that the CIA was covering up the truth.

Rod Barton, an Australian intelligence officer and another bio-weapons expert, also quit over what he said was the CIA's refusal to admit error. "Of course the trailers had nothing to do with Curveball," Barton wrote in a recent e-mail.

The Iraq Survey Group ultimately agreed. An "exhaustive investigation" showed the trailers could not "be part of any BW program," it reported in October 2004.

Why the intial rushed and erroneous assessment? Were the CIA and DIA too eager to please? Were they biased toward the idea that Iraq just must have WMD? Why is it that, with sober analysis, 14 of 15 analysts said the trucks couldn't have been used for WMD, but that the wrong view initially prevailed? The Bush administration must take a large share of the blame. Many people forget, as mentioned above, that Bush claimed weapons of mass destruction had in fact been found, and he repeated this claim several times. He later went on to deliberately substitute the argument that "Hussein had WMD" to "Hussein wanted WMD."

On Jan. 20, 2004, Bush lauded Kay and the Iraq Survey Group in his State of the Union Speech for finding "weapons of mass destruction-related program activities…. Had we failed to act, the dictator's weapons of mass destruction program would continue to this day."

I still find this deeply insulting. While some media outlets pointed out Bush's craven slight-of-hand, this sort of deceptive skullduggery requires loud trumpets. ("The President is trying to pull a fast one!") No one doubted Hussein wanted WMD. The question was whether he had them, and whether he could actually get them.

Other articles have explored how Bush's White House Iraq Group (WHIG), Feith's special plans group, and related parties "stovepiped" intelligence from the CIA, bypassing the normal (or perhaps not so normal) vetting process. The CIA author of the White Paper mentioned above, whose view was that Hussein had WMD, had his views elevated and hocked while more measured, professional and experienced views were ignored. What does it say that, consistently, the more knowledgeable intelligence experts were shunted aside while Bush excitedly crows publically, 'we found the WMD!'...? This is not good leadership, management, or empiricism. Later on, was Bush ever given the "fourteen out of fifteen" figure? I would love to know exactly when their assessment was known, because I believe Bush repeated that the WMD were found several times... Just as Cheney repeatedly claimed an Iraq-Al Qaedea link, Rice claimed huclear weapons, ans so on. This abuse of intelligence is what still needs to be investigated fully, and what Pat Roberts is still fighting to impede.

Paul O'Neill's greatest lament was that Bush lacked honest brokers, advisors who would tell him the truth even if unpleasant, and who were not pushing their own agenda. Granted, Cheney and Rumsfeld are forceful personalities, but ultimately, it's Bush who chose to value their views over others.

Normally, while politicians may lie to the public, behind closed doors on matters of genuine importance, they don't lie to each other... or at least, career civil servants don't. However, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq was only generated at Congress' insistence, and was deeply flawed and misleading. However, not only Congress, but Colin Powell, a key figure in the Bush administration, appears to have been misled:

More problematic were the three sources the CIA said had corroborated Curveball's story. Two had ties to Chalabi. All three turned out to be frauds.

The most important, a former major in the Iraqi intelligence service, was deemed a liar by the CIA and DIA. In May 2002, a fabricator warning was posted in U.S. intelligence databases.

Powell said he was never warned, during three days of intense briefings at CIA headquarters before his U.N. speech, that he was using material that both the DIA and CIA had determined was false. "As you can imagine, I was not pleased," Powell said. "What really made me not pleased was they had put out a burn notice on this guy, and people who were even present at my briefings knew it."

But BND officials said their U.S. colleagues repeatedly assured them Curveball's story had been corroborated.

"They kept on telling us there were three or four sources," said the senior German intelligence official. "They said it many times."

Powell also claims he really pushed his CIA briefers on Curveball's veracity, but was constantly and consistently told the man was reliable. If Powell's account is accurate, someone in the room knew better and was either lying or gutless.

Whatever Powell is, he's no idiot. And if he was being so misled, as he claims, was Bush getting anything close to an accurate picture? Did he put a premium on demanding one?

When I studied World War I in college, one of the most striking elements was learning that so many countries wanted war. In Germany in particular, the votes to go to war were overwhelming. Not only did many countries possess a nationalistic fervor, war had previously been profitable to some in power, and no modern war had ever devastated the home front before. They simply had no idea what they were in for.

If only folks like Dick "they will greet us as liberators" Cheney has studied history, or reality, rather than their own neocon fantasies. As soon as Bush and his gang started speaking about the threat of Hussein, it was rather obvious he wanted to go to war. Of course the intelligence was cherry-picked. Of course the Bush administration had more information than Congress. Of course, as the Downing Street memo states, intelligence was "being fixed" around the need to go to war. At best the administration was incompetent, but at worse they were liars. Some of them are far too smart not to know they were being deceptive. While I'm sure some of them believed they were lying to achieve a greater good (the liberation of Iraq... and to their minds, the re-election of George Bush), they were still willfully deceptive. To finish:

Other warnings poured in. The CIA Berlin station chief wrote that the BND had "not been able to verify" Curveball's claims. The CIA doctor who met Curveball wrote to his supervisor shortly before Powell's speech questioning "the validity" of the Iraqi's information.

"Keep in mind that this war is going to happen regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say and the Powers That Be probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking about," his supervisor wrote back, Senate investigators found. The supervisor later told them he was only voicing his opinion that war appeared inevitable.

(REVISED somewhat 12/15)