Recognising politicization: The CIA and the path to the 2003 war in Iraq

Intelligence and National Security

Volumn 26, Issue 2-3, 2011, Pages 203-227

  Lucas, Scott ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 79957571367     PISSN: 02684527     EISSN: 17439019     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/02684527.2011.559141     Document Type: Article

References (145)

1. Transmittal Letter to the President, Report of The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction [henceforth Robb-Silberman Report], 31 March 2005, http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wmd/pdf/full_wmd_report.pdf (accessed 18 August 2009).
2. Amidst former Bush administration officials, see, for example, Greg Thielmann in Rebecca Leung, 'The Man Who Knew', CBS News, 4 February 2004, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/10/14/60II/main577975.shtml (accessed 18 November 2009)
3. Paul Pillar, 'Intelligence, Foreign Policy, and the War in Iraq', Foreign Affairs 85/2 (2006), http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/61503/paul-r-pillar/intelligence-policyand-the-war-in-iraq (accessed 10 August 2008)
4. Tyler Drumheller in Gary Thomas, 'Debate Over Prewar Intelligence on Iraq Heats Up Again', GlobalSecurity.org, 21 May 2007, http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/news/2007/intell-070521-voa01.htm (accessed 18 August 2009).
5. Scholarship includes: John Prados, Hoodwinked: The Documents That Reveal How the Bush Administration Sold Us a War (New York: New Press 2004)
6. James Risen, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration (New York: Free Press 2006)
7. James Bamford, A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq, and the Abuse of America's Intelligence Agencies (New York: Doubleday 2004).
8. Interview: Douglas Feith Defends Bush Policies', Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 26 November 2010, http://www.rferl.org/content/Interview_Douglas_Feith_Defends_Bush_Policies/2220476.html (accessed 17 December 2010).
9. Richard Betts, Enemies of Intelligence: Knowledge and Power in American National Security (New York: Columbia University Press 2007) p.74.
10. Robert Jervis, 'Reports, Politics, and Intelligence Failures: The Case of Iraq', Journal of Strategic Studies 29/1 (February 2006) pp.3-52.
11. Paul Pillar, who was the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, exposes Jervis's artificial distinction: 'The Bush administration deviated from the professional standard not only in using policy to drive intelligence, but also in aggressively using intelligence to win public support for its decision to go to war. This meant selectively adducing data - ''cherry-picking'' - rather than using the intelligence community's own analytic judgments.' Pillar, 'Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq'.
12. John Prados, 'PR Push for Iraq War Preceded Intelligence Findings', 22 August 2008, The National Security Archive, http://www.gwu.edu/&z.ast;nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB254/index.htm (accessed 19 March 2010).
13. Jervis rests upon the assertion, 'My confidential interviews with CIA officials at several levels of the hierarchy did not find anyone excusing his or her errors as resulting from political pressure', a tenuous base of evidence given his wink in the previous paragraph that 'maybe [intelligence professionals] are wiser than to come talk to' investigating committees or academics writing articles.
14. Jervis, 'Reports, Politics, and Intelligence Failures', pp.34-35.
15. Robert Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails: Lessons from the Iranian Revolution to the Iraq War (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 2010) pp.132-33.
16. To make his case, Jervis takes on the July 2002 statement of the head of Britain's MI6.
17. Richard Dearlove, 'Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.'
18. Jervis claims Dearlove's statement 'refers to intelligence on the links to al Qaeda, not to WMD programs'. This is incorrect: there is no such distinction made in the 'Downing Street Memo' that cites.
19. Dearlove's opinion. ['The Secret Downing Street Memo', The Times, 1 July 2005, http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article387374.ece (accessed 17 December 2010).]
20. Jervis also fails to note the earlier British doubts over the presentation of intelligence by the Bush administration: 'The Iraqi regime plainly poses a most serious threat to its neighbours, and therefore to international security. However, in the documents so far presented it has been hard to glean whether the threat from Iraq is so significantly different from that of Iran and North Korea as to justify military action'. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, 'Crawford/Iraq', 25 March 2002, http://downingstreetmemo.com/strawtext.html (accessed 17 December 2010).
21. Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails, pp.131-32.
22. Jervis introduces the inaccurate statements by policymakers and notes the cherry-picking and stove-piping, but he immediately sets them aside for his restricted definition of politicization: 'Pressure on the IC to provide analysis that supports decisions'. An example of how this skews his analysis is offered by John Diamond, who recounts how from February 2002 US intelligence was wary of the claims of Al Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh Al-Libi that Iraq had provided weapons training to his organization: 'Concern about the possibility that al-Libi was a fabricator did not prevent the Bush administration from seizing on his information and, without describing the source or the method of obtaining the information, including it in major speeches by President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and others making the case for war against Iraq'.
23. John Diamond, The CIA and the Culture of Failure (Stanford: Stanford University Press 2008) p.407.
24. Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails, p.174.
25. Gregory Treverton, Intelligence for an Age of Terror (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2009).
26. Jason Vest, 'The Recent Past and Future of Intelligence Politicization', World Politics Review, 2 February 2009, http://www.worldpoliticsreview.com/article.aspx?id=3237 (accessed 19 March 2010).
27. Maria Ryan, 'Filling in the ''Unknowns'': Hypothesis-Based Intelligence and the Rumsfeld Commission', Intelligence and National Security 21/2 (June 2006) pp.286-315.
28. This is the key point that Richard Immerman, in his excellent consideration of 'Intelligence and Strategy: Historicizing Psychology, Politics, and Policy', Diplomatic History 32/1 (2008) pp.1-23, approaches but never fully assimilates. On the central place of the demonstration case of Iraqi regime change in the Bush administration's pursuit of the unipolar.
29. see Scott Lucas and Maria Ryan, 'Against Everyone and No-one: The Failure of the Unipolar in Iraq and Beyond', in D. Ryan and P. Kiely (eds.) America and Iraq: Policy-Making, Intervention and Regional Politics (London: Routledge 2008) pp.154-80.
30. Pillar, 'Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq'.
31. Robert Gates presentation, 'Guarding Against Politicization', 16 March 1992, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/kent-csi/volume-36-number-1/pdf/v36i1a01p.pdf (accessed 18 August 2009).
32. See Michael Warner, 'The CIA's Internal Probe of the Bay of Pigs Affairs', 1996, Central Intelligence Agency Freedom of Information Act, https://www.cia.gov/library/center-forthe-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/csi-studies/studies/winter98_99/art08.html (accessed 26 March 2010).
33. ORE 91-49, 'Estimate of the Effects of the Soviet Possession of the Atomic Bomb Upon the Security of the United States and Upon the Probabilities of Direct Soviet Action. Appendix A: Dissent by the Intelligence Organization, Department of State', 6 April 1950, p.29, http://www.faqs.org/cia/docs/129/0000258849/ESTIMATE-OF-THE-EFFECTS-OF-THE-SOVIETPOSSESSION-OF-THE-ATOMIC-BOMB-UPON-THE-SE.html (accessed 18 August 2009).
34. For a historical summary of these cases, see Melvin A. Goodman, 'The CIA and the Perils of Politicization', International Policy Report (March 2008), http://ciponline.org/nationalsecurity/publications/ipr/CIAPerils.pdf (accessed 26 March 2010).
35. Stephen Marrin, 'The 9/11 Terrorist Attacks: A Failure of Policy Not Strategic Intelligence Analysis', Intelligence and National Security 26/2-3.
36. The final report of the Commission, submitted in July 1998, can be found at http://www.fas.org/irp/threat/bm-threat.htm (accessed 24 July 2009).
37. See also Ryan, 'Filling in the ''Unknowns''.
38. James Risen, 'Keeping C.I.A. Chief Puts Pressure on Relationship', New York Times, 20 January 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/01/20/us/political-memo-keeping-cia-chiefputs-pressure-on-relationship.html (accessed 18 August 2009).
39. Robb-Silberman Report, p.55.
40. Lucas and Ryan, 'Against Everyone and No-one'.
41. Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Failure of the War on Terror and a Strategy for Getting it Right (New York: Times Books 2005) pp.144-46.
42. Ibid., p.167.
43. Quoted in CBS News, 'Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11', 4 September 2002, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml (accessed 1 July 2009).
44. Douglas Feith, War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism (New York: Harper 2008) pp.10-11.
45. John Judis and Spencer Ackerman, 'The Selling of the Iraq War: The First Casualty', The New Republic, 30 June 2003, http://www.globalpolicy.org/security/issues/iraq/unmovic/2003/0630selling.htm (accessed 20 November 2009).
46. Richard Clarke, Against All Enemies: Inside America's War on Terror (New York: Free Press 2004) p.24.
47. See the description of the meetings in Bob Woodward, Bush at War (New York: Simon and Schuster 2002) pp.65-91.
48. Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States ('9/11 Commission'), Chapter 10, 'Wartime', http://govinfo.library.unt.edu/911/report/911Report_Ch10.htm (accessed 18 August 2009).
49. Bush speech to US Congress, 20 September 2001, http://archives.cnn.com/2001/US/09/20/gen.bush.transcript/ (accessed 18 August 2009).
50. Peter Boyer, 'The Believer', The New Yorker, 1 November 2004, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2004/11/01/041101fa_fact (accessed 18 August 2009).
51. Ron Suskind, The One Percent Doctrine: Deep Inside America's Pursuit of Its Enemies Since 9/11 (Waterville, ME: Thorndike Press 2006) p.124
52. Benjamin and Simon, The Failure of the War on Terror, p.167.
53. The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000, 'A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm' (1996), http://www.iasps.org/strat1.htm (accessed 20 August 2009).
54. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, 'Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq', 7 July 2004, Chapter 3, http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter3-b.htm (accessed 18 August 2009) (henceforth Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2004).
55. Robb-Silberman Report, p.83.
56. Mark Bowden, 'Wolfowitz: The Exit Interviews', The Atlantic (July/August 2005), http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200507/bowden (accessed 18 August 2009).
57. Barton Gellman and Jo Becker, 'A Different Understanding with The President', Washington Post, 24 June 2007, http://pqasb.pqarchiver.com/washingtonpost/access/1293768441.html (accessed 19 March 2010).
58. NBC News, Meet the Press, 9 December 2001, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/vicepresident/news-speeches/speeches/vp20011209.html (accessed 1 June 2009).
59. Judith Miller, 'An Iraqi Defector Tells of Work on at Least 20 Hidden Weapon Sites', New York Times, 20 December 2001, http://www.nytimes.com/2001/12/20/international/middleeast/20DEFE.html?pagewanted=1 (accessed 20 November 2001)
60. James Bamford, 'The Man Who Sold The War', Rolling Stone, 17 November 2005, http://ics.leeds.ac.uk/papers/vpol.cfm?outfit=pmt&folder=2053&paper=2539 (accessed 20 November 2009).
61. Tom Engelhardt, 'Jim Lobe on Timing the Cheney Nuclear Drumbeat', TomDispatch.com, 1 August 2005, http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?pid=9301(accessed 18 August 2009).
62. Robert Dreyfuss and Jason Vest, ''The Lie Factory', Mother Jones (January/February 2004), http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2004/01/12_405.html (accessed 10 June 2009).
63. Feith later denied that the Office of Special Plans (OSP) was a significant unit, noting that he had only two permanent staff members.
64. Feith remarks to Council on Foreign Relations, 13 November 2003, http://www.defenselink.mil/transcripts/transcript.aspx?transcriptid=2932 (accessed 18 August 2009).
65. Judis and Ackerman, 'The Selling of the Iraq War'.
66. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2004.
67. Scott Shane, 'Ex-Diplomat's Surprise Volley on Iraq Drove White House Into Political Warfare Mode', New York Times, 24 July 2005, http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/24/politics/politicsspecial1/24leak.html (accessed 23 August 2009).
68. Ricketts to Straw memorandum, 22 March 2002, http://downingstreetmemo.com/rickettstext.html (accessed 18 August 2009).
69. Engelhardt, 'Jim Lobe'.
70. Risen, State of War, pp.77-78.
71. Judis and Ackerman, 'The Selling of the War'
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73. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2004
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75. Robb-Silberman Report, p.190.
76. David Corn and Michael Isikoff, Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War (New York: Crown 2006) pp.104-5
77. Daniel Schorn, 'A Spy Speaks Out', CBS News: 60 Minutes, 23 April 2006
78. Dreyfuss and Vest, 'The Lie Factory'
79. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2004.
80. Robb-Silberman Report, pp.69-70.
81. Judis and Ackerman, 'The Selling of the Iraq War'.
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85. Cheney speech, 26 August 2002, transcript at http://www.newamericancentury.org/iraq-082602.htm (accessed 23 November 2009).
86. Jeffrey Goldberg, 'The Unknown', The New Yorker, 10 February 2003, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/02/10/030210fa_fact (accessed 18 August 2009)
87. Robb-Silberman Report, p.84.
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89. NBC News, Meet the Press, 8 September 2002, transcript at http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bush/meet.htm (accessed 18 August 2009)
90. US Public Broadcasting Service, News Hour with Jim Lehrer, 25 September 2002, http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/july-dec02/rice_9-25.html (accessed 18 August 2009)
91. Rumsfeld briefing, 26 vSeptember 2002, transcript at http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/Pentagon/dod-rumsfeldpace-092602.htm (accessed 18 August 2009).
92. John Cassidy, 'The David Kelly Affair', The New Yorker, 8 December 2003, http://www.newyorker.com/archive/2003/12/08/031208fa_fact2 (accessed 23 November 2009)
93. David Leigh and Richard Norton-Taylor, 'Iraqi who gave MI6 45-minute claim says it was untrue', The Guardian, 27 January 2004, http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2004/jan/27/uk.iraq (accessed 1 July 2009).
94. Bush speech, 26 September 2002, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/09/20020926-7.html (accessed 20 November 2009).
95. Bush speech, 7 October 2002, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2002/10/20021007-8.html (accessed 20 November 2009).
96. Judis and Ackerman, 'The Selling of the Iraq War'
97. Central Intelligence Agency, 'Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction', 1 October 2002, http://www.fas.org/irp/cia/product/iraq-wmd-nie.pdf (accessed 20 November 2009).
98. Judis and Ackerman, 'The Selling the Iraq War'.
99. Prados, 'PR Push for Iraq War Preceded Intelligence Findings'.
100. Robb-Silberman Report, p.79
101. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2004.
102. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2004.
103. Robb-Silberman Report, p.95.
104. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2004.
105. Bush's speechwriters dealt with the objections by attributing the Niger intelligence to 'the British intelligence' and basing the claims of 'mobile labs' for WMDs to 'three defectors'. Bush speech, 28 January 2003, http://georgewbush-whitehouse.archives.gov/news/releases/2003/01/20030128-19.html (accessed 20 November 2009)
106. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2004.
107. Burrough et al., 'The Path to War'
108. Corn and Isikoff, Hubris, pp.176-79
109. Feith, War and Decision, pp.350-53
110. Craig Unger, The Fall of the House of Bush (New York: Simon and Schuster 2007) pp 274-76
111. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2004
112. CNN, Dead Wrong, 21 August 2005, http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0508/21/cp.01.html (accessed 20 November 2009).
113. Unger, The Fall of the House of Bush, p.262.
114. Powell speech, 5 February 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/02/05/sprj.irq.powell.transcript/ (accessed 23 July 2009).
115. The Iraq-Al Qaeda nexus was based on supposed ties between Baghdad and the Jordanian insurgent, Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, who had allegedly received medical treatment in Baghdad and who supposedly operated a training camp in Iraq specializing in poisons. The camp was in a Kurdish-controlled area, however, rather than in Saddam's heartland. Urged by his staff to remove the allegations, given the unreliable source, Tenet replied, 'I'm exhausted. Don't worry about it'.
116. Judis and Ackerman, 'The Selling of the Iraq War'
117. Corn and Isikoff, Hubris, p.184.
118. Judis and Ackerman, 'The Selling of the Iraq War'.
119. El Baradei statement, 7 March 2003, http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/03/07/sprj.irq.un.transcript.elbaradei/ (accessed 20 November 2009).
120. Richard Norton-Taylor, 'Iraq War Inquiry: Britain Heard US Drumbeat for Invasion Before 9/11', The Guardian, 25 November 2009, http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2009/nov/24/iraq-war-chilcot-inquiry (accessed 18 August 2009).
121. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2004.
122. Unger, The Fall of the House of Bush, p.299.
123. Robert Dreyfuss, 'Vice Squad', American Prospect (May 2006), http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=11423 (accessed 20 November 2009).
124. Bob Woodward, State of Denial: Bush at War, Part III (New York: Simon and Schuster 2006) p.90.
125. Goldberg, 'The Unknown'
126. Walter Pincus, 'Intelligence Analysts Foresaw Terror Activity', The Washington Post, 26 May 2007, reprinted at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2003722971_intel26.html (accessed 20 November 2009).
127. Benjamin and Simon, The Failure of the War on Terror, p.173.
128. Jervis, Why Intelligence Fails, p.6.
129. Jack Davis, 'Paul Wolfowitz on Intelligence-Policy Relations', Studies in Intelligence 39/5 (1996), reprinted at http://www.au.af.mil/au/awc/awcgate/cia/intel_and_policy.htm (accessed 18 August 2009).
130. Pillar, 'Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq'.
131. Eric Schmitt, 'A CIA Rival: Pentagon Sets Up Intelligence Unit', New York Times, 24 October 2002, http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/24/world/threats-and-responses-a-ciarival-pentagon-sets-up-intelligence-unit.html (accessed 18 August 2009).
132. Michael Handel, War, Strategy and Intelligence (London: Routledge 1989) p.196.
133. Stephen Marrin, cited in Vest, 'The Recent Past and Future of Intelligence Politicization'.
134. Robert Dreyfuss, ''The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA', The American Prospect, 16 December 2002, http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?articleId=6636 (accessed 20 November 2009).
135. Joseph Cirincione, ''Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction: Reassessing the Prewar Assessments', 9 July 2003, http://www.armscontrol.org/events/iraq_july03 (accessed 1 June 2009).
136. Goldberg, ''The Unknown'.
137. Lawrence Freedman, US Intelligence and the Soviet Strategic Threat (London: Macmillan 1986) pp.187-189.
138. Goss memorandum, 19 November 2004, reprinted at http://stevegilliard.blogspot.com/2004/11/cia-memo-leaked.html (accessed 18 August 2009).
139. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence 2008, Report on Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by US Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information, June 2008, http://intelligence.senate.gov/080605/phase2a.pdf (accessed 26 March 2010).
140. To his credit, the committee chairman, Jay Rockefeller, did take up the issue, with harsh criticism of the Department of Defense, in his additional remarks.
141. There is also a legacy of more than marginal 'side issues' from the conduct of operations in the Bush years. Consider, for example, the tensions of 'privatised war and intelligence operations' raised by the revelation that a senior Defense Department official, Michael D. Furlong, hired contractors to run a $24 million intelligence-gathering programme to track down and allegedly kill suspected insurgent leaders in Afghanistan.
142. Craig Whitlock, ''Defense Secretary Orders Review of Military Information Programs', Washington Post, 24 March 2010, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/23/AR2010032302787.html (accessed 26 March 2010).
143. Josh Gerstein, ''Leon Panetta Warns Against Politicization of CIA', Politico, 18 May 2009, http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0509/22676.html (accessed 20 November 2009).
144. Gates presentation, ''Guarding Against Politicization'.
145. [emphasis added] Rockefeller statement, Congressional Record, 5 June 2008, reprinted at http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2008_cr/rock060508.html (accessed 19 March 2010).