Proof Bush Fixed The Facts 

Ray McGovern May 04, 2005

Ray McGovern served 27 years as a CIA analyst and is now on the 

Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. He works for 

Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the 

Saviour. "Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."

Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words in 

black and white—and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less.  For three years 

now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) have been 

saying that the CIA and its British counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by 

their countries' leaders to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war 

on Iraq.  More often than not, we have been greeted with stares of 

incredulity.

It has been a hard learning—that folks tend to believe what they want 

to believe.  As long as our evidence, however abundant and persuasive, 

remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief.  It simply is much 

easier on the psyche to assent to the White House spin machine blaming 

the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than to entertain the notion that 

we were sold a bill of goods.

Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized 

disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps from official 

documents—this time authentic, not forged.  Whether prompted by the 

open appeal of the international Truth-Telling Coalition or not, some 

brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak" of the war by 

giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes of a briefing by Richard 

Dearlove, then head of Britain's CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in 

London from consultations in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister 

Blair and his top national security officials on July 23, 2002, on the 

Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.

Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document, which 

immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral.  Apparently no one felt 

free to ask the obvious questions.  Or, worse still, the obvious 

questions did not occur.

 
Juggernaut Before The Horse

In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others that 

President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein by launching a war that 

is to be "justified by the conjunction of terrorism and weapons of mass 

destruction."  Period.  What about the intelligence?  Dearlove adds 

matter-of-factly, "The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the 

policy."

At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush has 

decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification would be a 

challenge, since "the case was thin."  Straw noted that Saddam was not 

threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability was less than that of 

Libya, North Korea or Iran.

In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by a well-honed 

U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine.  The argument would 

be made "solid" enough to win endorsement from Congress and Parliament 

by conjuring up:

 Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related; Forgeries alleging Iraqi 

attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile 

biological weapons laboratories;Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped 

missiles within 45 minutes of an order to do so;Dodgy dossiers fabricated 

in London; and

 A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure.

All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was 

little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action." 

Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless comment that 

one of the U.S. military options under discussion involved "a continuous 

air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi casus belli"—the clear implication 

being that planners of the air campaign would also see to it that an 

appropriate casus belli was orchestrated.

The discussion at 10 Downing St.on July 23, 2002 calls to mind the 

first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security Council (NSC) on Jan. 

30, 2001, at which the president made it clear that toppling Saddam 

Hussein sat atop his to-do list, according to then-Treasury Secretary Paul 

O'Neil, who was there. O'Neil was taken aback that there was no 

discussion of why it was necessary to "take out" Saddam.  Rather, after CIA 

Director George Tenet showed a grainy photo of a building in Iraq

that he said might be involved in producing chemical or biological agents, the 

discussion proceeded immediately to which Iraqi targets might be best 

to bomb.  Again, neither O'Neil nor the other participants asked the 

obvious questions.  Another NSC meeting two days later included planning 

for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.

Obedience School

As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further grist for 

those who describe the U.K.prime minister as Bush's "poodle."  The tone 

of the conversation bespeaks a foregone conclusion that Blair will wag 

his tail cheerfully and obey the learned commands. At one point he 

ventures the thought that, "If the political context were right, people 

would support regime change."  This, after Attorney General Peter Goldsmith 

has already warned that the desire for regime change "was not a legal 

base for military action,"—a point Goldsmith made again just 12 days 

before the attack on Iraq until he was persuaded by a phalanx of Bush 

administration lawyers to change his mind 10 days later.

The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the assumption that 

the UK would take part in any military action."

I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting so 

jarring.  Surely it is what one might expect, given all else we know. Yet 

seeing it in bloodless black and white somehow gives it more impact.  And 

the implications are no less jarring.

One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington

 was his American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet.  (And there is no closer 

relationship between two intelligence services than the privileged one 

between the CIA and MI-6.)  Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as 

Dearlove, but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in serving up to Bush 

the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew would be welcome.  If 

there is one unpardonable sin in intelligence work, it is that kind of 

politicization.  But Tenet decided to be a "team player" and set the 

tone.

 

Politicization:  Big Time

Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what happened.  The 

intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured, with the 

president of the United States awarding foreman George Tenet the Medal of 

Freedom for his role in helping supervise the deceit.  The British 

documents make clear that this was not a mere case of "leaning forward" in 

analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception—an order of 

magnitude more serious.  No other conclusion is now possible.

Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former case officer 

Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers told their minions, 

"Let's face it. The president wants us to go to war, and our job is to give 

him a reason to do it."Small wonder that, when the only 

U.S. analyst who met with the alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately 

codenamed "Curveball" raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability 

before then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the fabrication about "mobile biological weapons trailers" 

before the United Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from his CIAsupervisor:

"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen regardless 

of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the powers that be probably 

aren't terribly interested in whether Curveball knows what he's talking 

about."

When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director late last 

year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees explaining the "rules 

of the road"—first and foremost, "We support the administration and its 

policies."  So much for objective intelligence insulated from policy 

pressure.

Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized environment of 

Congress, brought with them a radically new ethos—one much more akin to 

that of Blair's courtiers than to that of earlier CIA directors who had 

the courage to speak truth to power.

Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence chiefs 

chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up" (as the British 

press puts it) intelligence to justify a prior decision for war.  There is 

no word to describe the reaction of honest intelligence professionals 

to the corruption of our profession on a matter of such consequence.  

"Outrage" does not come close.

Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures

Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot who gave 

this latest British government document to The Sunday Times a debt of 

gratitude.  Unauthorized disclosures are gathering steam.  They need to 

increase quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well—the more so, 

inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's party-cannot be counted on 

to discharge its constitutional prerogative for oversight.

In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government 

officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:

We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers can 

obscure the higher allegiance all government officials owe the 

Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men and women put in harm's way.  

We urge you to act on those higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a 

patriotic and effective way to serve the nation.  The time for speaking out 

is now.

If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses bring 

them to light, the chances become less that a president could launch 

another unprovoked war—against, say, Iran

.

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