IPFS
Bush Replays Iraq Games on Iran - by Ray McGovern
Written by Ray McGovern Subject: PropagandaBush Replays Iraq Games on Iran
Stop! Please. Get beneath the hype over former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. Don’t miss forest for trees.
Not since John Dean told the truth about
President Richard Nixon’s crimes have we had an account by a very close
aide to a sitting president charging him with crimes of the most
serious kind.
McClellan writes that George W. Bush
abandoned “candor and honesty” to wage a “political campaign” that led
the nation into an “unnecessary war.”
The chief U.S. prosecutor of senior Nazi
officials at the post-World War II Nuremberg Trials, U.S. Supreme Court
Justice Robert H. Jackson, labeled such action – more correctly termed
a war of aggression – the “supreme international crime.”
In other words, President Bush used
propaganda and deception to lead the United States into what an earlier
generation of American leaders judged not just a war crime, but the
“supreme” war crime.
And, in all this, Bush had an eager cast
aiding and abetting – from careerists in the U.S. intelligence
community to the fawning corporate media (FCM) whom McClellan referred
to as “deferential, complicit enablers.”
As for the role of intelligence, McClellan
tells of “shading the truth.” In the effort to convince the world that
Saddam had weapons of mass destruction, the president used “innuendo
and implication” and intentional ignoring of intelligence to the
contrary.”
Water over the dam, you say? No way.
White House spinners are at it again –
“fixing” the intelligence around the policy, this time on Iran. The
fixing is obvious, but don’t expect to hear about it from the FCM.
An exception is MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann.
His antiquated approach is to ask relevant questions – like, for
example, will the White House do an encore in preparing us for an
attack on Iran?
Interviewing McClellan Thursday evening,
Olbermann earmarked time to discuss Iran and asked, “So knowing what
you know, if [White House spokeswoman] Dana Perino starts making noises
similar to what you heard from Ari Fleischer in 2002…would you be
suspicious?”
“I would be,” McClellan said.
Wait. Before taking this with a blasé shrug, consider the source.
Fixing In Fits and Starts
The worst kept secret in Washington is
that Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney are looking for a pretext to
order air and missile attacks on Iran. But when and how will Dana
Perino and the rest of the propaganda machine market this one?
When to sell? If former White House Chief
of Staff Andrew Card’s dictum regarding “marketing” the war on Iraq
holds sway – i.e. “From a marketing point of view, you don’t introduce
new products in August” – the administration has only two months,
unless it opts for an “October Surprise” as a more effective way to
help achieve a Republican victory in November.
But a smooth rolling out of war on Iran
has proven more troublesome – no thanks, by the way, to the FCM, most
of them still claiming they did just fine before the war on Iraq.
Part of the problem has been the new
marketers. With Andy Card, Karl Rove, Dan Bartlett and Tony Snow gone,
it is amateur hour for White House spinners as they start-stop and
rotate rationales for striking Iran.
And how to sell? Less than a year ago the focus was two-fold:
(1) What President Bush on Aug. 28 called
“Tehran’s murderous activities” against our troops, including
“240-millimeter rockets that have been manufactured in Iran and that
had been provided to Iraqi extremist groups by Iranian agents;” and
(2) His ad-lib on Oct. 17: “We’ve got a
leader in Iran who has announced he wants to destroy Israel…I take the
threat of a nuclear Iran very seriously.”
Oops…
But where are those 240-millimeter rocket shells? For some reason, Gen. David Petraeus cannot deliver the goods.
As recently as April 25, his nominal boss,
Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Adm. Mike Mullen, invited the press to
what was supposed to be a well-oiled Show-and-Tell exercise “in a
couple of weeks,” to display a multitude of captured weapons from Iran.
But the show did not go on; it had to be cancelled when the weapons that had been found proved not to be of Iranian origin.
Ironically, one major hurdle would be
getting senior Iraqi officials to go along with a hyped-up
demonstration of weaponry from Iran.
Shortly after Mullen offered his
invitation, the Iraqis announced that Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
had formed his own Cabinet committee to investigate U.S. claims about
Iranian weapons, and to attempt to “find tangible information and not
information based on speculation.”
The other pretext is the hyped-up danger from Iran’s nuclear program.
Here, the administration suffered acute
embarrassment when a vestigial group of honest intelligence analysts
and supervisors had the temerity to serve up an un-fixed intelligence
National Intelligence Estimate last fall that showed that Bush had been
knowingly exaggerating the nuclear threat from Iran.
The declassified key findings of the NIE were released on Dec. 3. They included:
--“We judge with high confidence that in
the fall of 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program; we also
assess with moderate to high confidence that Tehran at a minimum is
keeping open the option to develop nuclear weapons.”
--“We assess with moderate confidence
Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007,
but we do not know whether it currently intends to develop nuclear
weapons.”
--“Tehran’s decision to halt its nuclear
weapons program suggests it is less determined to develop nuclear
weapons than we have been judging since 2005. Our assessment that the
program probably was halted primarily in response to international
pressure suggests Iran may be more vulnerable to influence on the issue
than we judged previously.”
To Bush and Cheney’s dismay, the findings had been shared with Congress and could not be suppressed.
What followed was the ineffably inept
performance one has come to expect from national security adviser
Stephen Hadley, who claimed the Estimate “confirms we were right to be
worried about Iran seeking to develop nuclear weapons [which] remains a
very serious problem.”
And before leaving for his early January
2008 trip to the Middle East, the president said part of his purpose
was to make it “abundantly clear…that we view Iran as a threat, and
that the NIE in no way lessens that threat, but in fact clarifies the
threat.”
Got that? Threat.
According to Newsweek’s well-connected reporter Michael Hirsh, Bush all but disowned the NIE in conversations with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
According to a senior U.S. official
accompanying the president, Bush told the Israelis that he couldn’t
control what the intelligence community says, but that the Estimate’s
key judgments do not reflect his own views.
Bush reportedly had briefed Olmert in November on the Estimate’s findings, and seemed almost apologetic about the findings.
After Bush departed Israel in January, a Newsweek reporter asked Olmert if he felt reassured; to which Olmert replied, “I am very happy.”
A Flexible Director of National Intelligence
Malleable Mike McConnell showed his true colors shortly after the president got back from Israel.
Unable to withstand withering criticism
from the likes of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, former
Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and the irrepressible former
U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, McConnell backpedaled.
In testimony to the Senate on Feb. 5 he
confessed to careless wording in the NIE due to time constraints, and
even indicated he “probably would have changed a thing or two.”
He would now say, for example, that “maybe
even the least significant portion [of the Iranian nuclear program] was
halted and there are other parts that continue.”
Next at bat was the president himself in
an interview on March 19 with the U.S. government-run Radio Farda
broadcasting to Iran in Farsi.
Bush asserted that Iran has “declared it
wants a nuclear weapon to destroy people” and that it could be hiding a
secret program. A White House clean-up team conceded that Bush’s
statement about what Iran has “declared” was inaccurate.
It was Defense Secretary Robert Gates’s
turn in April. Speaking at West Point, Gates said he believes Iran is
“hell bent” on acquiring nuclear weapons. (Does it strike anyone that
abandoning their weapons program in 2003 seems a strange way of going
about it?)
Gates added that he favored keeping the military option against Iran on the table.
The NY Times Jumps In
And on May 27, the New York Times misquoted one of the key judgments of the NIE. More than a subtle distinction, the Times indicated that the Estimate stated, “It was uncertain whether the weapons work had resumed.”
Speaking to the pro-Israel Washington
Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) two days later, McConnell’s
deputy, Donald Kerr, took the same line, emphasizing that “since the
halted activities were part of an unannounced secret program Iran
attempted to hide, we do not know if it has been restarted.” (Emphasis in original)
This is the spin that the president, senior officials – and the New York Times – have been putting on the NIE.
As noted above, the relevant NIE key judgment reads:
“We assess with moderate confidence Tehran has not restarted its nuclear weapons program as of mid-2007…”
(Incidentally, that Kerr, as deputy to
McConnell, would give a major address to WINEP moves the intelligence
community much too close to a partisanship with this group, at least
for this veteran intelligence officer’s taste. Martin Indyk, erstwhile
research director of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee,
America’s self-described “pro-Israel lobby,” founded the institute.
AIPAC is listed as its parent organization.)
Rather than shadowboxing, making
confessions when it seems opportune and introducing subtle changes of
emphasis aimed at making the Estimate’s judgments more politically
palatable, McConnell and Kerr should do their duty.
And that is to follow the long established
intelligence community procedure for updating an important NIE by
ordering preparation of what is called a “Memorandum to Holders” – in
this case, holders of last fall’s NIE on Iran.
This is an orderly, time-tested way to get
the 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that prepared the NIE on Iran to
revisit it in a deliberate and rigorous way and to indicate what, if
anything, they believe needs to be changed.
At the release of the unclassified version
of the NIE on Iran on Dec. 3, 2007, Kerr issued a written statement
explaining why the key judgments were being made public.
“Since our understanding of Iran’s
capabilities has changed, we felt it was important to release this
information to ensure that an accurate presentation is available,” he
said.
Exactly right. So if the NIE’s judgments
are being challenged and/or are in need of update, let Kerr or
McConnell give the task to the dedicated professionals responsible for
drafting the NIE late last year.
And if McConnell should decide – or be
told by the White House – not to, the congressional oversight
committees should awake from their stupor and require a Memorandum for
Holders.
It is certainly their prerogative, their duty, to do so.
Someone apparently needs to tell Director
McConnell that it is not required that the Israelis – or Kissinger, or
Schlesinger, or Bolton – agree with the Estimate’s conclusions, however
much the president would like all to be in sync with the preferred line.
And, given the stakes, the new findings should not be rushed or done on the cheap.
Learning Curve Still Steep
McConnell (and Kerr, for that matter) are
still new to substantive intelligence analysis, and McConnell has
admitted having difficulty with the rigorous demands of the job.
Frankly, I find it unsettling that one of them briefs the president six
mornings a week.
McConnell’s lack of experience on issues
other than technical intelligence collection showed through in an
especially troubling way on Feb. 27, 2007, as he briefed the Senate
Armed Services Committee.
Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-South Carolina,
asked McConnell why the Israelis sometimes have a different view on
Iran’s nuclear program.
McConnell appeared quite puzzled, noting
the closeness of the U.S.-Israeli intelligence relationship and how
U.S. intelligence officers discussed these things with the Israelis. As
I watched, I could not help feeling sorry for the Director of National
Intelligence – and for the rest of us, as well.
A pity that his predecessor, the more seasoned John Negroponte, did not take time to tell McConnell what he told NPR’s Robert Siegel before Negroponte quit to go back to the State Department.
Asked by Siegel to explain why the
Israelis have suggested a much shorter timeline for Iran to acquire a
nuclear weapon, Negroponte stated the obvious with bluntness uncommon
for a diplomat:
“I think that sometimes what the Israelis will do [is] give you the worst-case assessment.”
Really!
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27-year career in CIA’s analysis ranks, he chaired National Intelligence Estimates and briefed the President’s Daily Brief to the most senior national security officials. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).