“The old adage that “the first casualty of war is truth” is one to which the Pentagon has stuck to with unheard of will, strength, and consistency. Thanks to the Benedictine work a journalist from The New York Times - and there is no better word to describe it- we now know that the U.S. executive has applied itself to building a propaganda machine so powerful, that it highlights the disdain that Bush and company feed on with respect Read the rest of this entry »
Has the CIA infiltrated the Ecuadorian intelligence services - and is Ecuadorian intelligence feeding information to the Colombian government? These charges have been leveled by Ecuador’s President Correa against his own intelligence services - and there are some in Ecuador who are demanding he provide evidence.
Carlos Freile writes for Ecuador’s La Hora, “We Ecuadorians also have the right to demand, respectfully but with vigor, that President Correa clarify his accusations that our own intelligence services have been working at the behest of the CIA.”
“If he does not provide evidence of this elephantine accusation, Ecuadorians will have every justification to think that it was an impetuous charge made without sufficient proof, demonstrating either a lack of prudence and moderation, or that the tale of a link was invented to provoke turmoil in the military high command. In both cases, his conduct and honor will have been badly compromised.”
By Carlos Freile
Translated By Miguel Guttierez
April 19, 2008
Ecuador - La Hora - Home Page (Spanish)
We have every reason to ask President [Rafael Correa] to demand that Colombia provide evidence of the alleged links between our national government and the FARC. We Ecuadorians await that evidence, although critics have aired some well-founded doubts: Why such eagerness to impede the investigation into the alleged financing of the FARC by the PAIS Alliance? [The ruling party]. What were the most recent statements by [Hugo] Chavez on this subject? Why not meticulously question the Mexican student [Andrea Lucía Morret] about his contacts in Ecuador and how he got to the [FARC] guerrilla camp - and other critical issues?
[Editor’s Note: President Correa on April 5, accused the CIA of controlling many of his country’s spy agencies and said it had shared Ecuadorian intelligence with Colombia during last month’s regional crisis . On March 1, there was a Colombian bombing raid of a FARC camp in Ecuadorian territory. The raid killed 25 people including FARC commander Raul Reyes and the four Mexican students . One of them, Andrea Lucía Morret, survived. The author would like to know why Morret isn’t being questioned about Colombian allegations of a link between Ecuador and the FARC. The FARC, shorthand for the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia-People’s Army, is a left-wing guerilla group that now controls about 40 percent of Colombian territory [see map on right].
We Ecuadorians also have the right to demand, respectfully but with vigor, that President Correa clarify his accusations that our own intelligence services have been working at the behest of the CIA. As he made this accusation in public, it is his moral obligation to provide us with details about this tremendous charge that, if shown to be true, would demonstrate ruinous conduct, to say the least.
If he does not provide evidence of this elephantine accusation, Ecuadorians will have every justification to think that it was an impetuous charge made without sufficient proof, demonstrating either a lack of prudence and moderation, or that the tale of a link was invented to provoke turmoil in the military high command. In both cases, his conduct and honor will have been badly compromised.
READ ON AT WORLDMEETS.US, along with continuing translated foreign press coverage of U.S. toes to Latin America.
Is there a hidden hand behind the anti-China protesting of recent weeks, other than of course the much maligned ‘Dalai Clique?’ Indeed there is, according to Venezuela’s Foreign Ministry. According to a statement, in part published in Venezuela’s El Universal, “The manipulation of the media in regard to the protest of violent groups in the Tibet Autonomous Region is an ingredient of a formula from the psychological warfare laboratories of the United States, that is applied to permanently destabilize countries that refuse to meekly submit to the mandates of imperial rule.”
Translated by Miguel Guttierez
April 8, 2008
Venezuela - El Universal - Original Article (Spanish)
Caracas: Today, the National Government has denounced a campaign of “infamies” launched from the United States against China over the Tibet incident and said that it anticipates the success of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Venezuela will give its absolute support to realizing the event in Beijing, and will be sending its largest delegation ever to an Olympic Games.
“Consistent with the principle of brotherhood among peoples in their battle against all forms of imperialism, the government expresses its full and unreserved solidarity with the government and people of the People’s Republic of China as they confront the relentless and systematic campaign of infamies they have been victimized by during the past few weeks through the major mass media companies,” it said.
The “manipulation of the media in regard to the protest of violent groups in the Tibet Autonomous Region is an ingredient of a formula from the psychological warfare laboratories of the United States that is applied to permanently destabilize countries that refuse to meekly submit to the mandates of imperial rule,” it added.
Bending the truth in the service of intelligence gathering is as old as spycraft itself, and the history of the CIA right into the new millennium is littered with such instances. But it is worth noting on the 95th anniversary of William J. Casey’s birth that some of this deeply troubled agency’s most intractable problems can be traced to this man who was so addicted to lying that he rarely told the truth to anyone, especially the people who needed to know it like the president of the United States.
Casey was a piece of work, an old-time Wall Street operator who had gotten rich selling tax-shelter strategies by “by bending the rules to the breaking point,” as Tim Weiner put it in Legacy of Ashes, his definitive history of the CIA.
As it was, Casey was to break all the rules as CIA director after Ronald Reagan took office in 1981.
He had a massive ego, but no experience in intelligence, and insiders from Gerald Ford to George H.W. Bush, who was CIA director under Ford, were appalled at the choice of a man whose only qualification was that he had raised heaps of cash for the president.
In an act of abject cowardice, President Bush has vetoed a bipartisan bill prohibiting waterboarding and other Al Qaeda-esque interrogation techniques not in a public appearance surrouded by aides and supporters, but behind closed doors. The action was announced in his weekly radio address this morning, a favorite of sycophantic shut-ins.
Beyond being yet another power grab, the veto allowing the CIA broad latitude in how it treats terror suspects — something prohibited by the U.S. military and law enforcement agencies — sends a loud and unambiguous message to America’s enemies that they should feel free to respond in kind.
The veto was the ninth of Bush’s presidency but the eighth in the last 10 months as Democrats have moved, albeit tentatively, to act on their mid-term election mandate.
Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama have been running dueling commercials about who is better suited to be President when the phone rings at 3 A.M. with news of a terror attack.
Wrong question. While it’s important to have a White House occupant who will respond, rather than keep reading “My Pet Goat” to school children, that moment will call for coordinating a response based on intelligence, military and diplomatic information and advice rather than pulling an answer from a backlog of experience in his or her head.
Good judgment, intelligence and emotional balance are the qualities that will be needed. (Read Robert Kennedy’s account of the Cuban Missile Crisis for an idea of how it’s done.)
What’s crucial is what happens before the red phone rings. Whoever takes office next January will have to overhaul a politically decimated, dysfunctional Homeland Security apparatus headed by a Director who uses physiological metaphors about possible threats and keeps putting his foot in his mouth as he does.
In the White House, the new President will need a staff with brains and expertise rather than cunning on how to win the next election.
Any candidate who claims to be a savior when the phone rings in the middle of the night is selling snake oil.
This is just one of the allegations in Roger Faligot’s book, The Chinese Secret Services: From Mao to the Olympic Games. This specialist in intelligence retraces the history of the ties between the Middle Kingdom and al-Qaeda. According to this review of the book from Le Matin of Switzerland, the author writes, ‘The first negotiations with Osama bin Laden’s entourage are alleged to have been held in 2006 in Pakistan’s Baluchistan Province … What has China promised to prevent a suicide bomber from blowing himself up during the finals for the 100-meter dash? And most importantly, what confidence can we give any commitment undertaken by Osama bin Laden? The answer will come next August in Beijing.’
By Ian Hamel
Translated By James Jacobson
February 23, 2008
Switzerland - Le Matin - Original Article (French)
Tomorrow, the word “Guoanbu ” will be as familiar as CIA, KGB or General Intelligence . China has not only become a great world power, it has also erected the most important secret services in the world. They comprise two million spies who scrutinize your acts and gestures, especially if you’re an athlete, a sports journalist or an opponent of the upcoming Olympic Games in Beijing. For the latter, China has also established a center for special intelligence equipped with a budget of $1.3 billion.
Security has become a national priority in the Middle Kingdom, which dreads nothing more than dramas like the one that occurred in Tiananmen Square in 1989 ; demonstrations by Beijing’s Uyghur opponents (a Muslim minority from West China ); or protests by the Tibetans, during the global festival of sport next August. In The Chinese Secret Services. from Mao to the Olympic Games, China expert Roger Faligot reveals that General Chen Xiaogong, the new coordinator of military intelligence, negotiated with al-Qaeda to prevent terrorist attacks during the Olympics.
MAO’S GRANDSON
There relationship between China and the Islamist movement are long-standing. At the end of 1979 beginning with the invasion of Afghanistan by the Soviet Union, the Chinese decided to help the Mujahideen. Beijing provided Simonov sub-machine guns and Kalashnikov assault rifles, which have the advantage of using the same ammunition as Russian weapons. Within the Chinese Embassy in Islamabad, there is a military attaché named Kong Jining. This commander, who supplied the Islamists with weapons of war, was none other than Mao Zedong’s grandson.
“The choice of such an agent shows the importance that the Chinese placed on operations in Afghanistan. These good relations have continued with the Taliban. At the end of 2001 …
February 28th, 2008 by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
If the next president is a Democrat (and that is by no means a foregone conclusion) what if any investigations of Bush administration criminality and other misdeeds should be persued?
Or, should the Democratic president and Congress, in the spirit of a new era and an appeal to bipartisanship, wipe the slate clean?
The criminality and misdeeds include:
* The refusal of Alberto Gonzalez, Harriet Miers and other key adminstration officials to answer subpoenas in connection with the politically motivated firings of U.S. attorneys.
* The refusal to hand over to congressional investigators certain testimony from Vice President Cheney and other key administration officials in connection with the Wilson-Plame leak scandal.
* The official embrace of torture in contravention of the Constitution, treaties and conventions and common decency.
* The Abu Ghraib prison scandal.
* Pre-9/11 CIA and other intelligence failures.
* The willful destruction of millions of White House emails sought by congressional investigators.
* Voter supression efforts directed by the Justice Department.
* A full accounting of the costs of the Iraq war.
* No-bid contracts given Halliburton and other firms working in Iraq and Afghanistan with close administration ties.
* The consequences of the multiple Bush signing statements.
* Government and government-funded scientific research and studies skewed for political reasons.
* Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia’s legal conflicts of interest.
The National Religious Campaign Against Torture is an interfaith effort “committed to ending U.S.-sponsored torture, and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment.” Its motto: ‘Torture is a moral issue.’
Today I received the following email calling for support in protesting Bush’s intended veto of the intelligence bill. If you wish to make your voice heard—and they’ve made it quite easy—please read the following:
Earlier this month Congress passed H.R. 2082, a bill that would prohibit all U.S. intelligence agencies, including the CIA, from subjecting detainees to waterboarding, stress positions, hypothermia, and other forms of torture. The President’s signature is all this bill needs to become law.
Unfortunately, President Bush has said he plans to veto the bill. If he does not change his mind, this important anti-torture legislation will not become law.
Please contact the White House and tell President Bush’s staff that you support H.R. 2082 (the Intelligence Authorization bill), and that you think it is essential that the anti-torture provision in the bill becomes law. You can use a sample email that we have prepared to contact the President, or you can call the White House at 202-456-1111. Click here for the sample email. Please feel free to personalize the email.
Even if you think it won’t do any good, taking a stand will definitely make you feel heard. And it’s so easy. A couple of clicks is all it takes (and you’ll get back a message instantly from the White House thanking for you input and telling you not to count on hearing back.)
February 19th, 2008 by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
Five perilous days have now passed since those treasonous House Democrats decided to hold the U.S. hostage by refusing to cave in to President Bush by questioning the telecom immunity provision in the FISA renewal bill.
Unless there is yet another vast mainstream media cover-up, there have been no terrorist attacks on our fair homeland although the president, his minions and a host of fearmongers in the right-of-center blogosphere warned that the Duplicitous Dems were leaving Uncle Sam with his hands tied without the Protect America Act provision of the FISA bill being renewed.
This, of course, was complete rubbish since:
* The Republicans could have voted to extend the PAA provision instead of running off for a 12-day recess and whining to their constituents about Nancy Pelosi’s calumny.
* Existing warrantless domestic surveillance can continue for up to a year without extending the PAA provision.
* And if that isn’t good enough fer ya, domestic wiretapping rules would in any case revert to the original FISA, which requires the government to obtain a warrant from a special court.
As the Week of Living Dangerously is tick ticking on with nary a national hangnail, some pundits have begun changing their tune.
That’s how the Rand Corporation is describing the large-scale intervention we’ve gotten ourselves into in their most recent study. This is from the Rand Corp., which, I am pretty sure, is supposed to skew conservative.
Recognizing that the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan will not be the last of their kind, a new RAND Corporation study issued today finds that U.S. capabilities to meet the threat of Islamist insurgencies are seriously deficient and out of balance.
The report finds that large-scale U.S. military intervention and occupation in the Muslim world is at best inadequate, at worst counter-productive, and, on the whole, infeasible. The United States should shift its priorities and funding to improve civil governance, build local security forces, and exploit information — capabilities that have been lacking in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“Violent extremism in the Muslim world is the gravest national security threat the United States faces,” said David C. Gompert, the report’s lead author and a senior fellow at RAND, a nonprofit research organization. “Because this threat is likely to persist and could grow, it is important to understand the United States is currently not capable of adequately addressing the challenge.”
The findings are from a major review of strategies to combat insurgencies RAND initiated at the request of the Department of Defense.
What is so absolutely, positively, bottomlessly aggravating about these conclusions is that people could have and would have and were telling us this certainly before we entered Iraq and perhaps before we entered Afghanistan (I recall the former, I do not recall the latter). And if you don’t believe me, well, here’s the Rand again:
The authors cite data from some 90 conflicts since World War II that show the surest way to defeat insurgencies is to foster local governments that are seen by their citizens as representative, competent and honest. “Foreign forces cannot substitute for effective local governments, and they can even weaken their legitimacy,” said co-author John Gordon.
Historically, large-scale military intervention against insurgencies — e.g., France in Indochina and Algeria and the Soviet Union in Afghanistan — more often fails than succeeds.
The study finds that because it can take time for a local insurgency to acquire strength and turn jihadist, the chances of defusing an insurgency are better than 90 percent when caught early. But those chances drop to less than 50 percent if the insurgency has the chance to become a full-blown uprising. Thus, the United States needs the ability to interpret “indicators and warnings” so it can act in the early stages of the insurgency.
Sickening. What and who was President Bush and his advisors listening to when making their decisions to begin military incursions into Afghanistan and Iraq? Feh. Don’t bother answering.
If this is the first time you are hearing this news, you aren’t alone - no one seems to have reported it. You know where I heard it, of all places?
February 15th, 2008 by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
WHY ARE THESE MEN NOT SMILING?
President Bush claimed today that the failure of House Democrats to approve an extension of a controversial domestic surveillance wiretapping program means “our country is more in danger of an attack.” Vice President Cheney said he also is very concerned.
Since Bush’s unprecedented powers as president are not compromised, Cheney is above any law and Republicans could have voted an extension of the wiretap law beyond its already extended February 16 expiration date before they toodled off for a 12-day recess, how can the U.S. be more in danger? Please be specific.
On Monday, fliers asked the TSA’s [Transportation Security Administration] new blog Evolution of Security why some airports were requiring passengers to remove all electronics - MP3 players, cell phones and even power cords - from their carry-on bags. So the first name-only bloggers at TSA looked into it, figured out it was local rogue offices and shut down the policy.
These practices were stopped on Monday afternoon and blackberrys, cords and iPods began to flow through checkpoints like the booze was flowing on Bourbon Street Tuesday night. (Fat Tuesday of course).
So thanks to everyone for asking about this and for giving us a chance to make it right. Our hope is that examples like this validate our forum….
Though less than a week old, the TSA blog has gotten thousands of comments, ranging from diatribes about the liquid ban to calls for government-provided booties for travelers to wear when their shoes are being x-rayed.
This action by the TSA means that someone who cared read the blog, checked out what was behind the comments and then got enough or had enough authority to get the policy changed.
That’s pretty cool. Now, if only those TSA bloggers could learn to spell “blogosphere.” Seriously, though - check out the TSA blog. I kind of like it.
While you were busy with Super Tuesday, CIA Director Michael Hayden was acknowledging to Congress that the CIA actually has used waterboarding on three “high value” detainees.
Until Hayden’s comments before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence today, no senior U.S. intelligence official had publicly acknowledged the technique.
Hayden, who prohibited the practice of waterboarding by CIA agents in 2006, confirmed that his agency waterboarded Khalid Sheik Mohammed, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim Nashiri, in efforts to compel the men to talk. He told senators the agency believed at the time “that additional catastrophic attacks were imminent.” The men told CIA interrogators things that “led to reliable information,” Hayden told reporters after the hearing…
The CIA chief asserted to reporters later that Mohammed and Zubaydah had provided roughly 25 percent of the information the CIA had on al Qaeda from human sources….Some intelligence officials who reviewed reports based on those interrogations have challenged the idea they provided useful information.
Did it take a thousand untruths to get us into Iraq? Not quite.
According to a new study by two non-profit journalism organizations, “President George W. Bush and seven of his administration’s top officials…made at least 935 false statements in the two years following September 11, 2001, about the national security threat posed by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.”
The orchestrated campaign has been documented by the staffs of the Fund for Independence in Journalism and the Center for Public Integrity to create a data base of deception.
Some of the highlights:
.On August 26, 2002, Dick Cheney made a speech saying “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.” The CIA had no idea of the basis for that claim…
When the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence met yesterday afternoon behind closed doors to continue its investigation of the destruction of those CIA torture tapes, its star witness was nowhere to be seen.
Jose Rodriguez Jr., who as CIA director of operations in 2005 ordered the destruction of two videotapes recording the harsh interrogation of two terrorism suspects, including the use of waterboarding, had refused to testify without a grant of immunity.
I noted here that would be akin to a murderer facing no repercussions for testifying about his own crime.
Committee chairman Representative Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat, is holding off on calling for a vote on the crucial immunity issue for the time being, but the smart money says that Rodriguez will be immunized sooner or later.
“We’re pleased that the committee is considering our request for immunity,” said Robert S. Bennett, Rodriguez’ attorney. “It’s only fair in light of the fact that he has not been given access to the documents he needs to defend himself with.”
Bennett is one of the most sly legal foxes in the Washington henhouse and his comment can be translated thusly: The documents thing is, of course, a ruse and the best way to assure that my client gets off the hook is through a congressional cover-up. We’re pleased that seems to be where we’re headed.
The CIA line has been that the tapes were destroyed out of concern for the safety of agency operatives who could be identified if the tapes were to be made public. No such concern, of course, was expressed over the identity of another operative by the name of Valerie Plame, who was outted in a concerted effort by Vice President Cheney and his henchmen.
Congress holds the key to unlocking the darker secrets of the tape destruction. This is because neither the Justice Department nor federal judiciary seem particularly curious.
During his nomination hearings, Attorney General Michael Mukasey’s responses regarding torture generally and waterboarding specifically were . . . well, tortured and he said he’d review the whole issue if he was confirmed stat. If he’s doing so it has escaped my notice.
You can bet the ranch that the executive branch is working hard behind the scenes to protect its own bunch of lawbreakers. The Justice Department is creating the appearance of playing softball when this scandal calls for hardball. And the judiciary is not asserting its powers for the moment, ceding the floor to Mukasey.
Congressional Democrats have again asked the attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor with broad powers like Patrick Fitzgerald in the Wilson-Plame leak investigation. Mukasey instead named veteran federal prosecutor John H. Durham as a so-called outside counsel and it is likely that he will stay with him.
Meanwhile, Laura Rozen reports at Mother Jones that Rodriguez alleges he was advised by lawyers in the CIA’s Directorate of Operations that he had the legal authority to order the destruction of the tapes, which reportedly record the 2002 interrogations of Abu Zubayda, an Al Qaeda suspect captured in Pakistan, and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, a suspect in the bombing of the USS Cole.
But Pete Hoekstra, a Michigan Republican and committee member, said yesterday that information gathered by the committee indicated that Rodriguez had ordered the destruction even though he was directed not to do so:
“It appears he hadn’t gotten authority from anyone. It appears that he got direction to make sure the tapes were not destroyed.”
Bennett, of course, begged to disagree, saying:
“He’s wrong.”
Rozen writes that some Washington observers question Congress’ commitment to getting to the bottom of the decision and note that once again, all the attention is focused on the proverbial cover up, not the crime.
She quotes Jonathan Turley, the George Washington University law professor, as saying:
“There is a concerted effort in Washington to keep the focus of the investigation away from torture. Both Democrats and Republicans are struggling to do that, as if there is nothing on the tapes.”
The reason is obvious, says Rozen: Committee members knew about the torture program. It’s the only explanation for their confirming Mukasey even though he refused to answer the question of whether waterboarding is torture.
CIA learned of Berlin Wall fall, Soviet collapse on CNN
Although it may not be the best metaphor, if the Central Intelligence Agency had been a baseball team over the last 60 years, its record would be something like 5 wins and 95 loses in really big games.
Yes, the CIA has been that bad.
That is abundantly clear – and made abundantly clear in shocking detail based on impressively exhaustive research – in Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA by Tim Weiner, who covered intelligence and security issues for The New York Times.
An agency with a mandate like the CIA sometimes has to engage in illegal and immoral behavior for the greater good. That uncomfortable reality certainly is in play in the CIA torture tape destruction scandal. But while the CIA did plenty of rotten things, Weiner’s inescapable conclusion is that the agency has been extraordinarily incompetent in practically everything it has done since its creation in 1947 from the remnants of the comparatively praiseworthy Office of Strategic Services, and very seldom has been held accountable.
And saves plenty of blame for presidents and congressional overseers who have been bootlicked while they were fed a steady diet of lies and misinformation but made only half-hearted efforts to crack down, on let alone reform, the CIA.
As it is, the CIA is a considerably diminished agency both in size and mandate in its 60th year and that is not a bad thing considering how it has continuously compromised national security while failing to anticipate:
Now that Bush Administration is drawing to a close, is American influence irretrievably on the wane? According to this editorial from the NRC Handelsblad of The Netherlands, ‘Across the globe, America has lost its popularity and authority … the American century is coming to an end. Aspiring superpowers are hot on America’s heels.’
EDITORIAL
Translated By Jan de Nijs
December 27, 2007
The Netherlands - NRC Handlesblad - Original Article (Dutch)
The United States has hit a rough patch. Economically, the party is over. It confronts a crisis in the mortgage markets. The federal deficit continues to grow. The dollar has lost its leading position. London has overtaken New York as the world’s leading financial center. And European anti-trust laws are rapidly becoming the global standard, replacing American rules and regulations. In the meantime, the Iraq War is costing $275 million a day. The total estimated cost for the Iraq War at the end of 2008: $611 billion. And at the same time, the war in Afghanistan continues to grind on.
These are a few examples of “imperial overstretch”: America’s military might is being stretched beyond the limit. As a result, George W. Bush’s last year in office has been one of a “shrinking presidency.” In his home country, he has lost his authority. Officials from his government are being prosecuted and punished for abuses of power. On top of that, a judicial inquiry into the destruction of evidence of illegal interrogation procedures by the CIA has been launched. Read the rest of this entry »
Does the most recent U.S. intelligence report on Iran’s nuclear program demonstrate once again the politicization of American espionage? According to this op-ed article from Le Figaro by the director and research director of the French Research Center on Intelligence, ‘The new NIE is a fake. Iran continues to pursue its nuclear weapons program, but the Americans have decided to backtrack to save face. Confronted with catastrophic consequences for the balance of power in the Middle East, Washington abandoned the military option. This [NIE] is deliberate American disinformation.’
By Éric Denécé and Alain Rodier, director and research director, respectively, of the Research Center on intelligence Matters (a Paris-based research institute).
Translated By James Jacobson
December 20, 2007
France - Le Figaro - Original Article (French)
On December 3, the Directorate of National Intelligence (DNI), a body attached to the White House that centralizes information provided by all American intelligence agencies, issued a report (a National Intelligence Estimate or NIE ) which guessed that Iran had suspended its nuclear weapons program in the autumn of 2003. This document, drafted in mid-2007, says that for the immediate future, Iran in not a nuclear threat, and that the Iranian regime is less determined to develop nuclear weapons than the U.S. had thought back in 2005. But the report stressed that Teheran continues to enrich uranium for civilian purposes, and it estimates that if the Iranian military effort were launched again, the country could produce nuclear warheads between 2010 and 2015.
This is a radical about-face. Released in 2005, the previous NIE on the Iranian nuclear program emphasized Teheran’s determination to acquire nuclear weapons. It was on the basis of this report that President Bush called for more sanctions and was contemplating the use of force against Teheran.
The NIE is a summary of what the various U.S. intelligence agencies forecast on topics of major interest. It is drafted at the request of the political authorities or members of Congress and is not the result of a jointly-executed analysis. The report is prepared by DNI analysts. The text is then circulated to the agencies concerned to collect their input. This is a process that necessarily takes several months. Sometimes the services that supply intelligence on the subject don’t even recognize their contributions to the final report.
The intelligence at the heart of this NIE comes mainly from intercepted telephone conversations between Iranian military officials, in which they complain about the decision to halt weapons development. These wiretappings were allegedly collected by the Government Communications Headquarters , the British eavesdropping service.
In the world of intelligence, it is customary to attribute to the interception services, information obtained from human sources that one wants to protect. Along these lines, it is legitimate for one to consider the case of Ali Reza Asghari, the Revolutionary Guard general who defected at the beginning of the year .
SEVERAL ASSUMPTIONS CAN BE FORMULATED
It is important to treat the content of this report with great caution. Indeed since the end of 2002, the politicization of American intelligence, which has been under constant pressure from the authorities, has prompted the presentation of the facts based on points of view that favor the political objectives of the White House or the Pentagon. A few examples: the creation of the Office of Special Plans in order to justify the war in Iraq; the masquerade February 2003 session at the United Nations, where despite the presence of director George Tenet beside Colin Powell, members of the CIA were shocked by the assertions of the Secretary of State WATCH ; the revelation of the real position [outing] of CIA officer Valérie Plame in order to undermine her husband, a diplomat whose report pointed out that Iraq didn’t acquire uranium from Nigeria, and so on. Examples of the manipulation of the facts by American authorities are legion. As a result, several assumptions can be made about the effect sought by releasing this latest NIE.
December 13th, 2007 by SHAUN MULLEN, TMV Columnist
It’s time to take a deep breath and a step back and ask what the heck is going on with the Central Intelligence Agency.
This is prompted by the CIA scandal of the moment – the destruction of terrorist interrogation tapes that the spy agency had been explicitly told to hang on to. That, of course, is an outgrowth of the larger issue of the Bush administration’s embrace of torture.
Make no mistake about it: The CIA in theory is every bit a necessity in the era of global terrorism as it was during the Cold War. I think.
As Herbert Meyer, a former CIA intelligence big and Reagan administration official puts it, “the CIA is to the president what radar is to the captain of a 747 — it’s the management tool that enables him to see things up ahead before they otherwise would be visible; to see looming dangers early enough to avoid them and thus to set a safe course toward his destination.”
By that token, George Bush and presidents before him have been flying blind much of the time:
* The CIA dawdled in the period between the Cold War and the 9/11 attacks. Some CIA officers correctly assessed the threat of Al Qaeda and radical Islam, a small unit was created to monitor Osama bin Laden and there was credible intelligence that at least two of the 9/11 hijackers were in country and learning to fly passenger jets. But this intelligence was marginalized, most notably in the case of Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 19th hijacker, and the officers who actually knew what was afoot were ridiculed for their zealotry.
* Those failings are substantially the fault of the Clinton administration, but President Bush is complicitous. He never fulfilled his promise to reform the CIA, having never intended to do so anyway. He kept CIA Director George Tenet, who was best at fighting the same turf wars that the president’s own father had fought as CIA director 30 years ago. He later appointed Porter Goss, a partisan Republican who was fiercely protective of the agency’s old-boy network and installed the corrupt Kyle “Dusty” Foggo to supervise the agency’s day-to-day operations because of his connections to GOP campaign donors with deep pockets.
* When the CIA did get Bin Laden in its crosshairs, which it did at least once during the Clinton years following the West Africa embassy bombings and USS Cole attack, as well as several times since, the White House refused to give its blessing.
* A scathing 2004 Senate Intelligence Committee report found that the CIA and other intelligence agencies fell victim to false “group think” when assessing Iraq’s weapons capabilities and produced overstated or incorrect conclusions that played perfectly into the Bush administration’s predetermination to take out neocon bugaboo Saddam Hussein no matter what. The result is a war without end.
What to do?
Meyer argues that the biggest problem is that the people running the CIA just aren’t good enough. To which I add that the people running the White House haven’t been so hot, either.
Lo these many years later, I still shudder to think that then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice was, by her own admission, still fighting the Cold War when Tenet and J. Cofer Black, the State Department’s counterterrorism guru, stopped by in July 2001 to warn her that Al Qaeda posed a threat to the homeland. Rice has said she can’t remember the meeting.
Conservatives in particular like to say that there were strong CIA directors in the good old days, notably Allen Dulles and William Casey. But Tim Weiner argues persuasively in his terrific Legacy of Ashes (2007) that both had more than their share of ignominious failures, including missing the building of the Berlin Wall, the invasion of Korea by China, the rise of the Iranian ayatollahs and the Mother of All Intelligence Failures prior to 9/11 — the CIA’s failure to anticipate that the economic decline of the Soviet Union would lead to its collapse.
There is one signal CIA success of the last quarter century – the defeat of the Soviet Union in Afghanistan – but that of course led to the emergence of the Taliban and provided a comfy base for Al Qaeda.
Veteran columnist Andrew Greeley calls the CIA a dysfunctional bureaucracy that “produces $40 billion worth of crap every year” and therefore should be abolished.
I’m not ready to go that far, but with every new scandal and every new round of excuse making by and for the CIA, the idea has greater appeal.
![[The Times, U.K.]](http://www.timesonline.co.uk/multimedia/archive/00261/car385_261741a.jpg)
