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Stephen

We always solve yesterday’s problems. We were very good at the cipher intelligence abd that helped us put the communists in the dust heap. The Brits were good a code-breaking that helped them defeat the Nazis.

The problem with human intelligence is that someone has to do it. It is like the old story of belling the cat. Great idea.

These Muslim groups are tight. They are often village or family based. They are hard to infiltrate. They are also hard to predict because they are decentralized and even disorganized. We will probably get better as we have more home grown Arabs-Americans. We depended heavily on Eastern Europeans against the Soviets and German Americans against the Nazis. Right now the only people really good at infiltrating Arab groups are the Israelis. They are our friends, but they sometimes have their own agenda.

One more thing. We beat back the communists and the Nazis. Despite all the carnage, Osama bin Laden is just an inconsequential little shit compared to the Hitler or Stalin.

Posted by: Jack at November 25, 2005 10:59 PM

Stephen, I agree with your point of view here in general.

The main problem is that CIA has become a total disgrace on every level. It’s not just that they don’t succeed when they attempt bold proactive moves—they can’t even carry out the most basic functions which would suggest a minimally acceptable level of competency.

The WMD debacle, when Tenet told Bush that Hussein’s weapons were a “slam dunk” has been much publicized, but remember what happened after 9-11?

The CIA was in possession of an enormous amount of intercepted intelligence but had virtually no Arabic speakers and was not able to get the stuff translated. Had they intercepted a message containing a detailed plot to set off a nuclear bomb in an American city, they would literally not have been able to read it.

I was shocked to learn this. For the past thirty years (since Islamic terrorism first became a huge international problem during the Carter administratiion), the CIA made literally no effort to recruit people who could speak or read Arabic. What the hell were they thinking?

If recruitment proved too much for them, then for goodness sake they had the RESPONSIBILITY to train people in Arabic, but over 30 years they failed to do this simple thing that even a child could tell you was absolutely essential.

The hard truth is that the CIA is incompetent to this day. It’s little more than yet another Washington bureaucracy where people concentrate on covering their own behinds as they mark the days until they can start collecting their fat taxpayer-funded pensions.

Posted by: sanger at November 26, 2005 12:12 AM

Sanger

It takes more than two years of full time study to train someone in Arabic and only about 10% of the population actually has the ability to learn it decently. Then they don’t speak whatever dialect the local bad guys speak. And of course they don’t have the famly network. Besides they rarely look the part. I have a couple friends who speak really good Arabic but one looks like Opy Taylor from the Andy Griffith Show the other is a pretty blond woman who gets a lot of attention from the Arabs, but probably couldn’t gain their confidence.

As we get more Arab-Americans we can rely on, we will be able to do more with terrorists.

Think of the Cold War. It was really different in the spy needs. But most of our human based knowledge came from our ethnic populations. MOST of our intelligence about the Warsaw Pact plans in the 1970s and early 1980s came from ONE man. Sometimes you have to be lucky, but you can’t count on it.

Posted by: jack at November 26, 2005 12:34 AM

There’s an old bromide that says when the CIA get’s something wrong everyone hears about it but when they get something right you will never hear a word.

Who knows about Tenet? Who knows whether he was the leak in the Libby case? The information he gave to Bush/Cheney was to get us in there that’s it. Bush/Cheney used it that was their bad. The CIA came out publicly denying that Saddam had these weapons or Nuclear capabilities. The Bush White House said wrong answer. The case to go to war was about fitting together odd jigsaw pieces and building a case upon it to get into Iraq.

Nobody bought it but CNN reported that we all believed it. The dems in congress bought that we supposedly bought it, which I do make claim that they were doing no less than pandering when they voted for the war.

they didn’t protect us against 9/11 but Condaleeza Rice who was security advisor got a promotion to Secretary of State. How do Republicans defend that? It’s a mystery to me.

The Bush/Cheney cabal didn’t care about 9/11 they cared about whether or not it would get them the war they wanted with lots of spoils and a seat at OPEC. How can I say that they didn’t care about 9/11? Simple we went from plan A to Plan Q in our efforts to fight terrorism. Okay they do have forces on either side of Iran right now but the truth is that Saudi Arabia has alot more to do with terror funding than Iraq. But they are our buddies. Pakistan has more to do with proliferation of nuclear materials in the mid-east but they are our buddies. WE did one third the job in Afghanistan and then they suggested this as the answer, let’s run off to Iraq!

How can republicans say that that has anything to do with fighting terror, us going to the wrong location? the wrong country? Sure he’s a villain (Saddam) but the abandonment of your mission?

The terrorists were pretty much all Saudi’s and Saudi funded and the Saudi Bin Laden family was allowed to leave the US on 9/11? They make the claim they disown him, riiiiight and there’s some beachfront property in Arizona I’d like to sell you. He was a jihadist hero to the Islamic world even before 9/11, their answer is a political one for U.S. ears.

Crappy intel is one thing but a crappy administration can be far worse.

Now we hear that Bush had plans or made statements to the effect of wanting to blow up or bomb Qatar based Al Jazeera? And made them in a transcripted meeting to Tony Blair? He makes those kinds of statements? Is this a regular thing? Are there other false-flag bombings we should know about? There is contention that he had something to do with other bombings although completely unfounded as of yet. Does this fuel that sentiment with him making such statements about Al Jazeera? Especially when we are trying to win Islam over which is why he put Karen Hughes on it essentially. Now there will be claims that he had something to do with the recent bombing of the hotel in Jordan. What about the Disco in Micronesia? or a handful of other places maybe Spain. Do you see how that doesn’t help us?

Posted by: Novenge at November 26, 2005 01:00 AM

Jack, I don’t disagree with you.

Arabic is a branch on the linguistic family tree very isolated from the germanic and romance languages that westerners are familar with. I can speak, read, and write a little Mamdarin Chinese and learning even the little I know was hard as hell. But I managed pretty well, and my motivation was to be able to read Chinese literature—nothing as important as saving my fellow citizens from terrorist attacks.

It’s far from impossible to learn new languages, especially if you have the time and resources to do it right. And if the US can split the atom and put men on the moon, then we can damn well train a large cadre of professional Arabic translators when doing so in necessary for our national security. Hell, there are millions of eight year olds in this world who can speak Arabic, and they learned to do so without the resources of the richest and most advanced nation in human history backing them up.

It’s nothing short of a huge national disgrace that after the multiple terrorist attacks of the seventies and eighties the CIA never bothered to recruit, train and employ more than a tiny handful of Arabic translators. It takes more than two years? They had THIRTY years, and they did next to nothing. It makes you wonder what they think their job is.

Posted by: sanger at November 26, 2005 01:12 AM

For once I agree with you completely Stephen.

We should be recruiting arabic speakers and encouraging our college students to be learning arabic as much as possible. The CIA should be all over this by now, but who knows?

As a consequence of the cold war we have many, many political science students who learned Russian, case in point is Condi Rice, who is fluent. A political science teacher I once had also specialized in Soviet Relations and was fluent in Russian, had visited Russia etc.

I see two problems to be overcome. One is that the CIA is made up almost entirely of white males who fall into the same category of the last fifty years (Cold War).

Essentially, I think the CIA is broken and needs to be fixed. Most likely it needs to be quietly bled dry as a whole different agency is built from the ground up. After all, threats change why not institutions?

Two: Arabic is highly differentiated into dialects, each distinct and each recognizable by native arabic speakers. My wife’s uncle is Iraqi and has worked for AT&T as an operator. He said he can tell where a speaker is from, whether they are Egyptian, Palestinian, Morrocan, etc. after just a little conversation.

Two and a half… recruiting native speakers is difficult, even here in the US. I wouldn’t underestimate the reluctance and the ‘snitch’ factor.

There is a Mosque near where I live. Many mosques teach Arabic to anyone willing to learn, and I was thinking about going there and trying to learn myself. I have a few books but… it’s difficult to say the least. So I mentioned that to my wife’s uncle. He got very serious and warned me not to do that under any circumstances. Go to a university, he said. Without knowing the congregation he was afraid that I might get hurt. (!) He assumed that they would assume I was spying on them, like from the CIA. What me? Blonde, Blue eyes? In his accented english he said if you know someone it is different. But if you walk in off the street… you never know. He feared for my safety.

I feel he was being more than a little paranoid. I certainly had no fear, but after he told me that, well I haven’t ‘dropped by’.

Posted by: esimonson at November 26, 2005 01:27 AM

Novenge,

I’d like some clarification on whether or not the nationality of the 9/11 highjackers means that we shouldn’t have invaded Afghanistan, because after all, none of the hijackers was Afghani.

Or from your nonsensical assertion that since no Iraqi’s were involved in 9/11 that Iraq has nothing to do with the war on terror, we should have instead invaded the countries of Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Lebanon. As the hijackers came from these various countries.

I’ve got to admit though, you may have a point. Invading a longer list of countries sounds much more impressive than just Afghanistan and Iraq.

Posted by: esimonson at November 26, 2005 01:44 AM

Eric, I tend to second the idea that you—of all people—might not want to spend a lot of time in your local mosque. The very idea makes me shudder.

Posted by: sanger at November 26, 2005 01:54 AM

The way I read it, what we’re talking about here is not merely recruitment of operatives, OC or NOC, but also the recruitment of sources.

We talk about the intercepts, but the problem with that is that even if you get the intercepts, you may not have the context to know what they are referring to. Exchanges between people who know each other can be as simple as that between Victor Hugo and his Publisher regarding his sales on Les Miserables: “?” from Hugo, “!” from his Publishers.

The problem isn’t merely in not having people in al Qaeda, but in many of the countries of the world, including ones we might call friendly. The joke in Goldeneye, about 1995, was that the CIA was getting its news from CNN, and unfortunately that wasn’t far from the truth.

This is where the whole Plame affair becomes a problem. How do we recruit new operatives to go out and run agents in foreign governments and like, if the Administration doesn’t take a hard line against those who reveal them? Agents need to know that those who call on them to risk their lives won’t put them in unnecessary danger because they don’t tell them what they want to hear.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at November 26, 2005 02:03 AM

The Al Qaida base WAS in Afghanistan, very simple. Not in Iraq. The majority of the monies for terrorist actions of this kind including this attack on September 11 were coming out of Saudi Arabia and Iran. Saudi Arabia is the largest monetary supporter of terrorism the world over, bar none. Including terrorism in Israel, they are the supporters. Almost all of the 9/11 highjackers were Saudis and had been living in Saudi Arabia for a good while then some went on to Germany and also into the United States. The majority of them were Saudis and from Wahabist schools. Saudi Arabia also supports Wahabist Schools that teach extreme anti-westernism as well as violent Jihadism.

If they (Saudis) are the main monetary supporters of terrorism the world over and the highjackers were from there as well as the head of Al Qaida was from there and was being monetarily supported by Saudi Arabia and even their government supports it regularly with monies Al Aqsa, Hammas, Hizb’allah and others. Then it is Saudi Arabia that is the lynchpin in all of this.

That is my meaning.

Posted by: Novenge at November 26, 2005 02:25 AM

Stephen

You can thank your Senator Church(A Democrat by the way)who gutted the CIA years ago and what we have today is a straight-line decendent of that botched Congressionial decision.

Recall that the CIA was prohibited from doing virtually anything assassination -wise and also in developing on the ground assets.

Throw on top of that the linguistic problem that Jack alluded to.

Our colleges and universities had done a pathetic job in Arabic studies(now it is all the rage…a scant 5 years ago less that 10 American universities offered an Arabic study concentration.

Double throw on to that the fact that the Arabic
language is tribal in origin…there are over 100 dialects…most using local slang and intonnance..and any American translator ,I don’t care what color,sticks out like a sore thumb.

Thiple throw on to that the fact that our Judeo-Christian population knows virtually nothing abiut the Islamic religion,its culture and ways of life and you now have an enormous obstacle facing you.

Today,millions of intercepts go untranslated…many perhaps containing perhaps valuable information …that by the time someone translates it has grown cold and well…you can see where I am going on this.

Months ago I posted repeatedly on this problem here and I am glad that you wrote on it again.

Quarduple- throw on the pile the fact that the CIA has become a beauratic scieve and currently has a war going on inside it among entrenched cold-war era career professionials and there doesn’t seem to be any light at the end of the tunnel.

This is the primary reason all along that I have screamed that Bush didn’t intentionially lie or exaggerate intelligence from them.

It appears that this problem finally manifested itself when Tenent used the slam dunk anology and the CIA was completely and utterly wrong about what was really happenning on the Arabian pennunsula.

A country like Jordan now becomes crucially important…not militarilary..rather Jordan does have the ability to gather profound amounts of intelligence and also has the capabilities to understand virtually all the dialects,mores and cultures of the area.

Prior to that America had the Mossad which fed them info…but we know that any intel they feed us is ultimately used for their benefit

Posted by: sicilianeagle at November 26, 2005 06:26 AM

The only war you’re going to get intel from inside the terrorists networks, is to recruit natives who are either in those networks, or who would be “eligible” to join those networks. This, while difficult and would take a little time, is far from impossible. With tailored inducements to the right people, a sufficient cadre of informants could be built within months. You will of course get people loyal to the terrorists coming on board and it will take time to sift them, but they can be used too. If the networks know that they are being targeted for infiltration, it should not take a great deal of imagination to spread disinformation and paranoia in their ranks. Seek and you shall find. If you set out to do it in a flexible and creative way, it can be done.

Posted by: Paul in Euroland at November 26, 2005 07:32 AM

Paul
You are absolutely correct.

The Europeans also must do their best too.The English are doing an excellent job right now,as are the Italians(Believe it or not,Italy now has the finest anti-terror intelligence network in Europe).

Berlisconi has been crucified in Europe,but when the dust settles in a few year,I think that his administration reallly will be recognized as being a true friend in this war.Italy’s contribution has been understated.

The Germans ,however,hold the key.They have a huge Muslim population that is mostly secular(They have the usual 10% lunitic fringe but by and large these Muslims are educated and sophisticated and are loyal Germans.)

The Dutch intelligence service,although small,is extremely rich and sophisticated.Their contribution also cannot be understated.

Spain has killed us.This country probably of all the European counrties,has the deepest understanding of the Muslim culture.Muslims have lived in Spain since the end of the first century and their are deeply ingrained in the Spanish psyche and fabric.Their pulling out of Iraq really was a strategic set back.

Posted by: sicilianeagle at November 26, 2005 09:42 AM

S.E., The Muslim hegemony in Spain coincided with the pinnacle of Muslim civilisation. At that time, they were far in advance of the West. Since the demise of “Al Andalus”, muslim influence was mostly dispersed and forgotten, apart from the Architectural legacy. Further, the culture of the extremists today is very far removed from the culture of al Andalus.

Secondly, the majority of Spanish people did not support Spanish military involvement in Iraq. Therefore, it follows that the Spanish pullout from Iraq was a textbook operation of democracy. To speak of a Global War on Terror and then to deploy massive military resources against a country such as Iraq, is very cleary oxymoronic. Terrorists are a poor target for such large military forces. The amount of “collateral damage” ( for which read innocent bystanders ) caused in the pursuit of terrorists is likely to generate many times more terrorists than such operations can even hope to eliminate. And whatever the neo cons say, Iraq was not a centre of terrorists before the invasion. Clearly, it is now. And they are achieving the very same benefits that they achieved in Afghanistan against the Russians, a battle hardened core who can go out into the wider world and create even greater havoc. You cannot wage war on terrorists. It is clearly an intelligence and policing function.

Posted by: Paul in Euroland at November 26, 2005 10:22 AM

I’d like to know the answer to just one question.

What were we (US) doing in the 10 years prior to 9/11?

Posted by: Cliff at November 26, 2005 11:53 AM

Stephen

Plame doesn’t play here. She was one of those people who get the information from CNN. Do you think she could blend in at a local coffee shop in Niger? Nothing wrong with open sources, BTW. Most of our intelligence comes form them. If she was really deep under cover, nobody would have sent her high profile husband on a high profile trip to Niger. Talk about asking for trouble.

Sanger, Eagle et al

I don’t want to sound defeatist about languages, but I have some experience here. Most people when they say they speak a language really don’t. It is nearly impossible for an adult to learn a language to the extent that he is not easily identifiable as a foreigner. We should train more people as analysts in Arabic. But we will never be able to train enough people to a high enough level to be undercover in any Arab nations. It is not a matter of money or incentive.

In languages you can rate from zero to five. (BTW a person who majors in a language in college probaly will NOT get above a 3 in actually speaking unless he lived overseas.)Zero you speak nothing. Five is an educated native speaker. It is easy to get to the lower numbers. It gets exponentially harder as you get higher. It takes a whole year of full time (doing nothing else) study of Arabic to reach a 2 level of a better than average learner. Give him another year in an Arab country and he might be able to make it to three. After spending a career in the Arab world he might make 4 or 4+, but probably not. There are exceptions, but they are rare. Think about intelligent foreigner you know who have lived in the U.S. for decades. Could they pass for natives in a small community in Iowa?

Let me tell you a little about the number in real life.

1 = the Japanese fighter pilot on the old movies
2 = his commander
3 = A James Bond foreign henchman
3 + = Ricky Riccardo from I Love Lucy
4 = Sergeant Shultz on Hogan’s Heroes
4+ = Ricardo Moneban or Arnold Schwarzenegger
5 = You can pass as a native most of the time

And even if they speak like a native, most Americans don’t look like Arabs. John Johnson speaking great Arabic is just a curiosity. Our only hope it to recruit native speaking Arab-American, which is becoming more of an option all the time, but has its drawbacks.

Posted by: jack at November 26, 2005 11:57 AM

Paul in Euroland

I agree in part,disagree in part.

Terror campaings,except for a very few throughtout 20th century history(Algeria come to mind)have been extremely effective against organized military.

Our very own “minutemen” here in America during the Revolutionary I am sure were viewed as terrorists by the Tory government in England.

However that was then.

These past several years,American forces have gotten up to speed in this fight and have adapted their tactics.They are now the best urban guerilla fighters in the world.Several hundred thousand are now veterans of this type of warfare and shortly we can actually anticipate the enemy with technology.

For example,IED technology is light years ahead of where it was even 12 months ago.
There are only so many ways you can explode a bomb and we are closing in on shutting that down.

I disagree with you on the Spanish decision,of course.

Trying not to use a talking point here,since September 11th 2001..a period of over 4 years now,there has been ZERO attacks in America.

If putting the pressure in Iraq on these has in a small part prevented this,do be it.

The problem has never been Iraq though as much as many here want to believe.The problem has always been the underlying Palestinian problem.That issue,singularily,is the biggest issue of out time.

Americans have a hard time seeing the link there but really,eliminate that problem and the insurrgency deflates dramiticially.

Posted by: sicilianeagle at November 26, 2005 12:37 PM

I think there’s a great deal of misunderstanding out there about how CIA agents work, Jack.

For example, you talk about Valerie Wilson doing open source and TV watching work. That’s analyst’s work. She was an operative, a case officer. Her job was basically to recruit, manage and protect her agents, who were basically foreigners recruited to betray their country’s secrets to us.

As such, she didn’t need to blend in, necessarily. She just needed to have a decent excuse to be wherever she was. An Energy company worker, like she was supposed to, could hang around with and meet people associated with nuclear materials and the like and not automatically raise red flags.

She was NOC essentially because there are sources somebody who isn’t known to be in the employ of the US government couldn’t reach. Official cover agents, though enjoying the benefits of diplomatic immunity if caught, also walk around with a sign on them saying “possible intelligence asset”

As for having her husband do a job, it’s not a security risk as long as she’s not walking around with him, or shooting off his big mouth about who his wife works for.

Now, seen in this context, it’s not necessary for everybody to speak a language like a native, but instead with enough proficiency so they can read and speak the language with fluency.

It also helps for a person to know enough about the situation so they can tell the difference between fake and real stuff. If you know enough information prior to recruiting an agent, a few strategically asked questions can reveal if you have a liar or an ignorant fool in front of you.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at November 26, 2005 12:39 PM

Jack

Best post of the week.Insightful.

Posted by: sicilianeagle at November 26, 2005 12:41 PM

Stephen

Plame was a Washington based desk officer. We don’t know who first revealed her identity to Bob Woodward. It doesn’t look like it was Libby or Rove. In any case, it does not seem to have been a significant compromise of security. I don’t think anyone is NOT going to join the CIA because of the Plame case. In fact the publicity might actually draw more in.

It is a risk to have your husband in a high profile job. When Wilson went public, he invited scrutiny. That is not the action of a man who hopes to keep secrets. And it is not the action of a woman who wants to keep secrets to recommend her husband for a high profile job in a place she and he once served.

But all this is another story.

I suppose we are gaining valuable intelligence from all those detainees everyone talks about. In addition, after we are successful in Iraq, we will have a pool of Arabic talent to help with the greater war on terror. Actually, I sure we have some already.

Posted by: Jack at November 26, 2005 01:27 PM

Jack I think you still are missing the big picture with the Plame case. The point that she held a desk job is not at the heart of the matter. The problem is that anybody she has ever worked with who is or was undercover doing any sort of intelligence gathering work over the last 20 years became vulnerable. And as far as Joe Wilson he went public with his wife’s identity after Bob Novak’s piece had already been published. I too did hear the Faux News talking point that we would go around town and introduce her as “his CIA operative wife” but that was never coroberated and sounds suspect at best to me.

As far as Scooter Libby it doesn’t sound like he was ultimatly responsible for outting her because he wasnt charged with that crime. He was charged becasue he repeatedly lied to Fitzpatrick in an attepmt to stall and side track his investagation. Lying to a grand jury is a crime and a serious one.

Many on the right claim that this entire issue is no big deal and to much attention has been paid to it but to them I ask this question.

What if back in the 90’s if Al Gore and James Carville had been accused of doing the same? I can hear Rush (high on pills) screaming about it daily for the rest of the Clinton Adminstration calling them all tratiors.

Stephen great post one of the best I have read in a while. It does make me think about just how hard it will ever be to land an operative anywhere inside al queda given all the obstacles.

Posted by: Gannon at November 26, 2005 03:06 PM

Gannon

The charge is serious. It has been and is being investigated. If someone is found to have violated the law, I would like to see them punished.

that said, I doubt if people who was doing any kind of intelligence work is in danger because of this. Some of these secrets are not really so secret. She was not under deep cover working at Langley.

As I say, if someone committed a crime, let them be punished. But don’t get going way ahead of yourself. So far all we know is Libby is accussed of lying and that he is not the original source. Small beer that.

Posted by: jack at November 26, 2005 04:28 PM

Stephen:

One of the great divides between the left and the right has a common interest. The left says that the Bush administration misled the country into war. The right (I for one) believe it was poor intelligence that led us into war.

The common interest we have is making future decisions on correct information. I know we have been through all of this with the 9/11 commission etc. But I wonder if we need to step it up even further.

If the left is wrong, and Bush made no attempt to mislead Congress and the rest of the country, but was given poor intelligence, the I am actually a bit more concerned that if it were simply Bush. Just to broaden your thinking a bit, our intelligence missed the fall of the Soviet Union as well. Connect three dots: The fall of the Soviet Union, 9/11 and prewar intelligence. Now move to the future, and I am not feeling very secure.

One the other hand, listening to some on the left, they are absolutely convinced that Bush lied. The common thread is finding out what went wrong and fixing it. Sometimes that is hard with intelligence, since it is suppose to be secretive.

Since we usually try to fight the last war, (we can like the Iraqi’s easily like in Desert Storm), the next time when we should go to war, if we have no confidence in our intelligence, or the office of the presidency, we may not go forward in time, and many innocent citizens could be killed because we don’t believe the treat is real.

I am for a full blown big news event of congressional hearings to get to the bottom of this either way. (much like the hearings from Watergate ). The common interest we have is accurate information in time of national crisis.

Craig

Posted by: Craig Holmes at November 26, 2005 06:19 PM

Sanger,

Eric, I tend to second the idea that you—of all people—might not want to spend a lot of time in your local mosque. The very idea makes me shudder.

You might be surprised at my intercultural skills. I am.

As an aside, I think that conservative Christians have much in common with Muslims. Religiously, culturally there are a lot of similarities. There are differences as well, in fact, significant differences that make each diametrically opposed.

But I’ve found that being genuinely interested in Muslim/Arab culture is received positively and gains a great deal of trust when you show trust.

I don’t fear Muslims. While I’m sure that some somewhere are potential terrorists, most are just like me. In the US I think it is important that there is significant cultural exchange.

Part of it has to do with my relationship with my wife’s uncle, but I would defend Muslim Americans with my life if they were being attacked in my neighborhood.

Posted by: esimonson at November 26, 2005 06:28 PM

Stephen,

This is where the whole Plame affair becomes a problem. How do we recruit new operatives to go out and run agents in foreign governments and like, if the Administration doesn’t take a hard line against those who reveal them? Agents need to know that those who call on them to risk their lives won’t put them in unnecessary danger because they don’t tell them what they want to hear.

I see the Plame affair as a different problem. The CIA has obviously engaged in a domestic ruse with Wilson and Plame— and got caught.

First of all Stephen, Plame was not a covert agent. Plame was known to have worked at the CIA. Wilson himself is alleged to have casually told people his wife worked at the agency. The agency itself has all but admitted that there was no impact to her being ‘named’ as working at the CIA.

Has the CIA performed a review on the impact of here ‘outing’? What are the results?

Posted by: esimonson at November 26, 2005 06:31 PM

Novenge,

Should we or should we not invade Saudi Arabia?

Posted by: esimonson at November 26, 2005 06:35 PM

Paul in Euroland,

Remember John Walker Lindh? It would be possible for a white american to infiltrate al Qaeda, not easy, and not without risk… but possible.

Posted by: esimonson at November 26, 2005 06:48 PM

esimonson,

Actually we should have been a bit more afrontive with them about it to some degree or maybe that would have hurt the purpose (I’ll explain this in a minute). Also I’m not sure whether we have stopped or slowed the hawallah banking out of the middle east and stopped or slowed their monetary support of terror. Perhaps we have.

*Now this is going to sound strange coming from the left. WHAT BUSH DID IN SOME WAYS WERE ACTUALLY VERY VERY SMART CHESS MOVES. There now when you wake up from fainting I’ll tell you why.

What Bush did in this respect was to do a crab-like maneuver without causing to much of a ripple to either Iran or Saudi Arabia. What I mean is we positioned ourselves NOT ONLY ON EITHER SIDE OF IRAN (could be used for a later embargo of Iran) but we did something even more important:

>>WE WENT FOR THE 2ND LARGEST SUPPLY OF OIL IN THE WORLD. Comin’ around yet?

What this means is by getting those oil mules a pumpin’ we can limit the excesses of the Saudis. Now my opposition to Iraq is basically in lieu of world perceptions and what we need to play the long term democracy dominoes in the general region.

But if managed correctly we could defeat terror by utilizing that Iraqi oil in world markets hence thwarting the fuel of radical islam’s fire. the money coming out of Saudi Arabia and Iran.

SO in some ways we did already invade just without boots. See it served The United Arab Emirates to have Iraq in the containment situation doghouse they were in from 1991 onward as it made them the top in the region with way too much power. But now that we have privatized the Iraqi oil (albeit by nobid contracts that could slow things a little in terms of project milking)we make it possible for an embargo of Saudi Arabia/United Arab Emerates should we need to, by having another major supplier in that region. Again the second largest supplier of oil is/will be Iraq.

Again my complaints on this war have to do with needed democracy dominoes in the future and what it does to future diplomacy in that area.

In other words we have begun the attack on Saudi Arabia and Iran just by positioning and have ready a second major supplier of oil. WE could embargo either one this way should the need arise.

And reversely too it’s a move that could and very well might erode us from the ability to have windfall democracies develop through diplomatic means should we ever need to return to that exercize.

They also need to leave Hugo Chavez alone in Venezuela, while we are on the topic of oil.

Posted by: Novenge at November 26, 2005 07:39 PM

esimonson wrote

“Plame was not a covert agent. Plame was known to have worked at the CIA. Wilson himself is alleged to have casually told people his wife worked at the agency. The agency itself has all but admitted that there was no impact to her being ‘named’ as working at the CIA.”

How do you know she was not a covert agent? Thats not the kind of information the CIA likes to publish, it falls under the subject of the protection of the Intelligence Identities Protection Act. If that was the case why did close famliy friends and her neighbors think she worked as an energy consultant?

Also nobody has any evidence that Wilson introduced her as “my CIA wife” that was a claim by Andrew Napolitano from Faux News Channel, but has never named a source. If he did have a source why not name him/her the cat is already out of the bag, what further damage can it do? That is just one more example how that network puts out a bs talking point runs it into the ground for a few days untill somebody challanges it when it suddenly disappers. (other examples Terry Shivo wasn’t in a perment vegitative state and could be rehabilated, New Orleans had 2,000 empty schools buses which was more like 350, 240 which were running at the time, they had zero licensed drivers to use them)

http://mediamatters.org/items/200511040014

Yet still the biggest thing about this whole mess is just why Wilson and his wife got smeared, becasue Wilson came back from Africa and told the TRUTH about yellow cake that Iraq never inquired about. Yes he reported the truth and the administration set out to destroy them, a said state indeed, imagine if this was the Clinton adminstration what scrutiny they would be under.

Posted by: Gannon at November 26, 2005 08:08 PM

Jack-
The notion that the Plame Case would be encouraging to recruits is naive. The message this sends is that politics matters more than the safety and security of this country.

Who revealed this first is irrelevant. The fact is, though, at least three members of this administration simultaneously leaked classified information revealing the identity of an agent to the public and to all those who could exploit that information. How does this benefit recruitment? It benefits those who want to make it clear that those who don’t play the politics, don’t get ahead, don’t get protected.

In time where multiple intelligence failures have come from institutional group think, this kind of chilling effect on dissent, on the distribution of accurate information is at cross purposes to America’s security.

The risk from using Wilson’s husband only came about because some people in Bush’s White House failed to honor their commitment to keep and preserve the secrets of this country. Because Wilson was not accompanied by his wife, and nobody referred to her involvement beyond the company (including her husband, which is why he didn’t discuss who recruited him for this), there wasn’t much to connect her to his mission.

He did not talk about the covert side of the mission, only the nature of the conclusions drawn. What you are doing here is rationalizing the intentional release of the more sensitive information here, which was not a necessary part of the debate. In only became part of it as an ad hominem attack on Wilson.

This is the problem here: we’ve allowed intelligence to become a matter of politics, rather than facts and analysis. It’s becoming more important not to offend countries by putting agents in them who might be found out than to actually go in and get information for ourselves. If we had has somebody on the inside of the Italian Secret Service feed us those documents, Wilson would never had have to have gone into Niger.

We are the most powerful country in the world, and yet we have one of the most shallow intelligence pictures of the world. This is part of the reason why: Our operatives can’t count on the CIA to take up for them. They can’t count on the White House officials to let them do their jobs without political interference. You guys are moaning about a CIA plot to embarrass the president, and not even considering that the only thing that was embarrassing the president here was that his information was wrong. The American people and their representatives have the right to be given the right information, whether it embarrasses somebody politically or not.

Preserving the president’s political popularity only rates as a higher priority in relation to reliable intelligence, if you consider it more important who leads rather than that they lead wisely. I find that to be a position better suited for communist and fascist regimes than a Democracy.

Craig-
I think what we had was a bad situation that Bush and Cheney’s attitudes and actions aggravated. The system was broken. Bush’s actions simply made an already bad break catastrophic.

Part of the point of all this debate is to send a strong, clear signal that better is expected of Bush and any of his successors when they go to war. My feeling is, if we accept such failure now, we will be living with it far longer than is healthy for our national security.

That’s why I’m hard on Bush: the failure he was a part of was intolerable to me. I will not have my country going on military wild-goose chases when we have a real enemy out there, one whose actually set to strike at us.

What you say about the connection between our confidence in going to war, and the quality of our intelligence is right on. This is the point I would make to those who rationalize our intelligence failure here. Americans, to back a war with confidence, must believe they fight for the right reasons in the right places at the right times on the right evidence. If the ducks aren’t in a row, then the war will seem more a child of politics or radicalism within the government, and less a common cause. Good intelligence gives Americans the stake they need to fight the wars their leaders get them into whole-heartedly.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at November 26, 2005 08:26 PM

Gannon - check out factcheck.org.
Bush’s “16 Words” on Iraq & Uranium: He May Have Been Wrong But He Wasn’t Lying

They say, “Ironically, former Ambassador Joseph Wilson, who later called Bush’s 16 words a “lie”, supplied information that the Central Intelligence Agency took as confirmation that Iraq may indeed have been seeking uranium from Niger.”

There is more and lots of reasons to question Wilson’s credibility.

Also recall your chronology. Wilson made a big public statement before his wife was “outed” (by persons still unknown) and he accepted the job based on his wife’s recommendation. He wasn’t worried about the secret.

Wilson change his mind only later after he becamee part of the Kerry campaign.

Posted by: Jack at November 26, 2005 08:41 PM

Stephen:

Craig- I think what we had was a bad situation that Bush and Cheney’s attitudes and actions aggravated. The system was broken. Bush’s actions simply made an already bad break catastrophic.

I understand that we have to know why we are fighting. “The reason your son/daughter died in action is because.”

I am not convinced that democracy in Iraq is in our vital interest. I believe it is in our strategic interest to have the oil fields protected. In so doing I believe it is important to have a government in Iraq that doesn’t threaten it’s neighbors.

It would have been great after the WMD were not found to say, “Now we know there are no WMD, and we have toppled Saddaam, now we will leave”. “The reason your son/daughter dies, is that in light of 9/11 we HAD TO KNOW whether Iraq had WMD. Your son/daughter played a vital role in the over all war on terror.” Changing policy after the “discovery”. I think would have played better.

Part of the point of all this debate is to send a strong, clear signal that better is expected of Bush and any of his successors when they go to war. My feeling is, if we accept such failure now, we will be living with it far longer than is healthy for our national security.

We part on this, but actually maybe are together on process. I am afraid of the opposite. I am afraid that a future congress will be reluctant to give a President authorization, when we need it, and that could be catastrophic.

As an example, look at Russia’s war with Finland when they did poorly. Russia lost I believe 250,000 troops or nearly what we lost in WWII. Hitler had to see this, and it had to play into his invasion plans.

Nothing has happened that is “catastrophic” by my definition. What message China gets, or North Korea could be catastrophic, in that our handling of this “tiny” war, could send a message we do not want to our potential enemies. “The world’s only superpower is a paper tiger.”

I am not using this argument at this point to say we should bomb the hell out of Iraq as an example. The point I am making is that are national security is at stake in finding out exactly what went wrong with our entry into this war. Where ever the problem was, (bush as the left sees it, or intelligence as the right sees it), BOTH need to be addressed so that we as Americans feel confident in our Governments ability to defend us.

That’s why I’m hard on Bush: the failure he was a part of was intolerable to me. I will not have my country going on military wild-goose chases when we have a real enemy out there, one whose actually set to strike at us.

I guess I have moved on my thoughts on the battle between the left and the right on this thing. “Bush haters” (my term) need exactly the same thing that I do; Answers!! There is common ground. What we hold in common, is the need for confidence in our our decision making going forward. I believe what I am worried about is even more serious that the lefts concern. If I am correct, removing Bush, makes us no more safe.

If you and I were in charge of the world, we could unite on “getting to the bottom of this”, and just let the chips fall where they may. Both sides are probably partially right and partially wrong.

I’ve been meaning to discus with you at somepoint, how all of this plays out with the Chinese. I believe they fear us far less now than before.

Craig

Posted by: Craig Holmes at November 26, 2005 10:16 PM

Novenge: one problem with your scenario. Oil is puchased on a world market, not really from individual countries. Moreover, it would be incredibly difficult to enforce an embargo. There is very little excess capacity in global oil production so taking one or two suppliers offline would a)increase the price of oil signigicantly, b)hurt our economy and the global economy,c)probably cause countries desperate for oil (eg, China) to obviate our embargo (which is essentially what happened in the Oil for Food scandal).

Nevertheless, I do agree with your larger point that the Iraq was was just as much about initiating regional transformation as it was about WMD fears.

On the Plame thing…Virtually no intelligence agents are truly undercover. It is generally the rule,rather than the exception, that intel agents are well known to their hosts. I’d be happy to go into more detail on that one.

That said, they should not be outed publicly out of political motivations. But, as acouple of you have mentioned, Joe Wilson certainly knew that writing a high-profile op-ed challenging the administration would only draw attention to him and his wife. And, as it turns out, it was Wilson who was proffering innaccurate information.

Posted by: boojum at November 26, 2005 10:30 PM

Stephen:

That’s why I’m hard on Bush: the failure he was a part of was intolerable to me. I will not have my country going on military wild-goose chases when we have a real enemy out there, one whose actually set to strike at us.

Putting Bush to the side for a second. He is a lame duck. I think it is important to define victory for America in Iraq. Not victory for the left or right, but victory for America, so that we can move on and not have the “stigma” of a Vietnam.

Here is a very rough draft of a measurment of victory in Iraq for America.

1. WE know there are no WMD in Iraq, thanks to our troops.

2. Iraq does not have Sadaam as a dictator.

3. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are not threatened by Iraqi tanks and infantry anymore.

4. I think we need to write Iraq an additional big check in terms of education, health care, infrastructure,etc to send them on their way, for being wrong about WMD.

Personally I don’t think it is wise or necessary to demand a liberal democacy in place in Iraq for America to call Iraq a victory. I think we should demand leaving Iraq a better place to define victory. Iraqi’s may move away from democracy when we leave. If they don’t threaten their neighbors then that isn’t in our strategic interest.

My hope would be that those that have served, would not have to refight this war the resto of their lives the way Vietnam vets have had to.

I guess what I am really saying is that the left and the right need to move past the hard left and the Bush administration, and work out terms of reconciliation for the good of the country. People like you and I on a national level need to be having discussions like what we are having, so the country can move on after the troops come home.

When the war is done and a few years have passed, both the anti war folks, and the Bush administration will be gone, but we will all still be here. (fighting about something else )

Craig

Posted by: Craig Holmes at November 26, 2005 10:38 PM

I probably have a minority view among conservatives regarding China in that I think it would be GOOD from a global strategic perspective if they fear us less. The main reason for anti-Americanism in the world is that too many see us as supremely powerful, even thought we’re not, and nobody likes number one even if his intentions are benevolent.

Once the world becomes aware of another major world economic and military power, they’ll have a moment of truth. Out of enlightened self-interest, they’ll pick the side which shares their own values and goals and be a bit more careful about needlessy sticking their thumbs in the eye of their benefactors.

Along these same lines, the biggest mistake the Bush administration has made in my view is one we never hear discussed. After the terrorist attack on the Indian parliament in 2001, we stood between Pakistan and India as they very nearly went to war over Pakistan’s sponsorship of terrorism. Without our intense diplomatic intervention, the war would have taken place. Had that war taken place, the world’s two largest democracies would now be engaged in a two front battle against Islamic radicals. India would likely be occupying Pakistan while we were occupying Iraq. And more importantly, Pakistan would never had the opportunity to give nuclear technology to Iran and North Korea.

The main objection to this is that Pakistan and India might have fought with nuclear weapons. But it would removed the possibility of our potentially getting into a nuclear conflict with Iran and/or North Korea, something, sadly, that may only be a matter of time.

Posted by: sanger at November 26, 2005 10:48 PM

Stephen:

I messed up. These ideas (above) are exactly what is being discused at a national level.

Look at what Senator Biden said this week:

Biden said President George W. Bush has to be realistic and forget his “grandiose goals” in Iraq, which “will not become a model democracy any time soon.”

“Instead, we need to refocus our mission on preserving America’s fundamental interests in Iraq,”

This is what I have wanted for some time, Democratic leadership with real doable ideas.

Notice the Whitehouse response:

“Today, Senator Biden described a plan remarkably similar to the administration’s plan to fight and win the war on terror,” the spokesman said.

He said that as Iraqi security forces gain strength and experience, “we can lessen our troop presence in the country without losing our capability to effectively defeat the terrorists”.

McClellan said the White House now saw “a strong consensus” building in Washington in favour of Bush’s strategy in Iraq.

The last sentence is political crap, but the idea of a political consensus on the future in Iraq is great. To have Biden and Bush that close, is amazing.

Biden called for Bush to act now. I think he might because of Biden’s tone. Biden sounds like he has his statesmanship voice.

Craig

Posted by: Craig Holmes at November 27, 2005 12:58 AM

Boojum,

Here’s some food for thought we could quite easily put Iran in a containment situation and watchdog them if we had to, once the oil is being regularly pumped. The plans to privatize the oil fascilitates both democratic reform in the region but also supply to the world. It is sold on the world market and we have stopped countries from selling it as well to a good extent. Such as with Iraq. Who knows what our future needs are going to be in that region, this may be a tool.

But I would lay contention that we could embargo Iran should the need arise once we get the oil production to a steady rate while subsequently leaving Arabia open market. I see that there’s more to this liberation business/nation building than meets the eye or we wouldn’t be there.

Posted by: Novenge at November 27, 2005 02:28 AM

1. WE know there are no WMD in Iraq, thanks to our troops.

we KNEW that before the first American troop set foot in Iraq, didn’t we, if we’d only listened to the guys we DEMANDED Saddam let in to look for the WMDs?

2. Iraq does not have Sadaam as a dictator.

Instead Iraq has an insurgency killing and mutilating Iraqis by the thousands every month

3. Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are not threatened by Iraqi tanks and infantry anymore.

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had not been threatened by Iraqi tanks and infantry since the end of the gulf war when prohibitive restrictions were put on them and maintained.

4. I think we need to write Iraq an additional big check in terms of education, health care, infrastructure,etc to send them on their way, for being wrong about WMD.

If we hadn’t broken their nation, this would be unneccessary. For cryin’ out loud, aren’t you peoople listening to what the terrorists are saying. LEAVE ARAB BUSINESS TO THE ARABS!!! Get out of Iraq now and let them decide their own future. Posted by: Thom Houts at November 27, 2005 04:49 AM

Paul in Euroland,

Remember John Walker Lindh? It would be possible for a white american to infiltrate al Qaeda, not easy, and not without risk… but possible.
Posted by: esimonson at November 26, 2005 06:48 PM

In actual fact, I beleive that Lindh was a member of the Taliban, not Al Qaeda. But even if I’m wrong about that, it doesn’t change anything. Even if he was a member of Al Qaeda, it would still be a lot easier to infiltrate someone who “fits”, over a white American, no?

Posted by: Paul in Euroland at November 27, 2005 09:19 AM

Thom Houts:

we KNEW that before the first American troop set foot in Iraq, didn’t we, if we’d only listened to the guys we DEMANDED Saddam let in to look for the WMDs?

No I don’t think we did. I don’t think the Bush administration is that stupid as to lie about something they certainly would have been found out about. I think if they had lied, we would of “found” WMD because they would have been planted.

Instead Iraq has an insurgency killing and mutilating Iraqis by the thousands every month

That is true. And many of the same people (Sunni’s) are in the insurgency. What is positive however is that they are not powerless as before. They have an iraqi army to defend themselves with.

Kuwait and Saudi Arabia had not been threatened by Iraqi tanks and infantry since the end of the gulf war when prohibitive restrictions were put on them and maintained.

Those restrictions were put in place with American troops on the ground. OBL says those troops on the ground were the reasons for his holy war against us.

If we hadn’t broken their nation, this would be unneccessary. For cryin’ out loud, aren’t you peoople listening to what the terrorists are saying. LEAVE ARAB BUSINESS TO THE ARABS!!! Get out of Iraq now and let them decide their own future.

I think Senator Biden is correct, immediate withdrawal would be a disaster.

I think a consensus is developing in Washington DC, that looks like one of the first practical well thoughtout approaches since 9/11. It looks like we are there through 2007 in decreasing numbers. I think the President is going to announce these plans Wednesday. (We will see)

Craig

Posted by: Craig Holmes at November 27, 2005 10:25 AM

Tom

Saying that we should leave Arab to the Arabs is one of those slogans that sounds good, but is so wrong.

First, a technicality: Kurds make up 20% of the Iraqi population. Their problem for the last millennium has been that Arabs have been oppressing them and sometimes trying to wipe them out. You remember Saddam’s most famous crime against humanity is his Kurdish genocide.

You may also recall that the reason Saddam’s tanks were not a threat is because the U.S. boxed him in and the U.S. and UK patrolled Iraqi skies every day with Saddam shooting at them. And remember that this required U.S. troops stationed in the region and that U.S. troops stationed in Saudi was Osama bin Laden’s biggest complaint against us. So if we take the old goat lover at his word, necessity of maintaining sanctions in Iraq was the leading cause of 9/11.

But most important is that it is essentially a racist proposition hidden in a tolerant package. What is an Arab? Arabs represent a very diverse group that include members of various religions and races broken up into different countries. The only thing they really have in common is a language and even in that case an ordinary guy speaking his local dialect probably can’t understand a guy in a different region speaking his. So you could leave it to the Arab Saddam Hussein to conquer Arabs in Kuwait or Saudi and murder Arabs in Iraq and that would be okay because it was all in the dysfunctional family?

It is your business if you want to be an isolationist. It is a very attractive ideology. It allows us to feel pure and protected. It is difficult to argue against isolationism expect to point to its disastrous historical results.

Posted by: Jack at November 27, 2005 10:34 AM

Jack-
Factcheck is trying to be fair to a fault, and by doing that is committing an error. Some in the CIA took it as confirmation, but three things are true:

1)Wilson’s information indicated it would be next to impossible for Iraq to buy Yellowcake. The Ore was already presold, and smuggling would be problematic because the industrial process required to refine the bulky ore to the Yellowcake itself. This information is as important to gauging Iraq’s threat to us as anything else. All the article has to go on is reporting about hints and allegations, which any analyst would probably tell you don’t carry the strength of actual technical information about capabilities.

2)The Bush administration, at the time of the speech, was informed by the CIA that the 16 words should not be included. They were in fact taken out of a draft at one point, only to be put back in by White House staff.

3)Subsequent to Wilson’s claims in the media, what was the response of the Administration to this person, sorely lacking in credibility? Their response was to coordinate with George Tenet a complete retraction on the 16 words.

I’m sure given any human being on the face of this planet, you can find reasons not to consider them credible. But there is one abiding reason to trust someone’s words: They are right. A person’s memory for sources can be a little wonky, especially in middle age, but when they get the information correct, they are far worthier of trust than those who merely snipe at their character after being proven wrong.

Wilson didn’t lie, and he didn’t say what his wife did for a living. He left her out of it. It’s funny that conservatives jump on that. Her involvement was the big secret. The trip itself was not secret, since the officials involved could report it to their government. Valerie’s involvement, though, was secret, and I can’t seem to recall any accounts that place her at her husband’s side during the public portion of her trip, nor any mention of her role by Wilson to anybody prior to the release of that information.

Additionally, your assertion that his wife was outed by person’s unknown is unfounded. We already know of at least two administration officials who revealed this information before it was public knowledge: Rove and Libby. That they weren’t the first was irrelevant. They knew the information was secret, and they failed to keep it that way. They outed her. They just didn’t do it alone. Woodward’s revelation only means that Libby wasn’t the first.

As for your claim that Wilson wasn’t worried about the secret, I would like you to back up your claim with dates. I believe that Wilson can be demonstrated to have joined the Kerry campaign only in the aftermath of his wife’s outing.

It just boggles my mind the lengths to which people go to discredit somebody whose information is correct.

Craig-
It’s not merely about explaining to people why their children, spouses, and parents die in the war. It’s about having one overriding purpose as a country.

I don’t agree that we had to invade to discover the truth on this. In fact, that’s the very point of my entry. The biggest intelligence failure here is that we didn’t discern the truth of this matter through a well established, trustable source, before we ever stepped a foot on Iraqi soil. We had that lack of intelligence on that matter beforehand. The Bush administration only made it worse by pushing for the conclusion that there were weapons in the absence of any real evidence or dependable accounts regarding that.

This is why I think reform at the CIA is useless without reform of its management and of the way people in our government deal with that intelligence. There are too many people out there who use intelligence selectively to bolster their agenda, rather than using the intelligence to give themselves a picture of the world, then creating and adjusting agendas to fit that. Never underestimate the damage that can be done by a person looking to bend the facts to suit the politics.

I don’t think we should tolerate risk averseness in gathering intelligence, but we shouldn’t tolerate sloppiness either. the ignorance from both leaves us with false impressions in the place of good information. Worse, with sloppy work, politics and pride get involved, further muddying the clarity of our intelligence. We need both the intelligence capacity to find out what we need to know, and the discipline among our intelligence gathers and readers so Americans in office and out of office can trust what the CIA and other agencies claim to know.

I think, in the end, we should do our best to recover from our mistakes. We shouldn’t hide them, but use them as examples of what happens when our human intelligence capability is lacking, or improperly managed. We should have the stomach to do our intelligence work right, and the guts not to let politics steer the ship that knowledge and wisdom should be at the helm of.

boojum-
Go into detail, as you please.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at November 27, 2005 11:10 AM

SOrry if factcheck.org is trying to be fair and that is a fault. I think they do a good job in this case. Funny how neutral is not fair and balanced when it doesn’t confirm.

I enjoyed the same debate when factcheck found that Bush didn’t lie in general.

I don’t understand why it is so important to you guys to believe that the president not only was mistaken, but also lied. And even when sources you normally tout disagree, you can’t accept them as reasonable.

Posted by: Jack at November 27, 2005 12:43 PM

Jack-
Lets not dance around this point here. I don’t discredit sources that disagree with me. They concluded he was misinformed, which I believe is charitable considere that the White House received word from the CIA about the dubious nature of the information.

I think the key mistake here is their buying of the British government report on the matter. As Josh Marshall reported, The British investigation neglected to say that the other information that supported the conclusions drawn off the documents, was based on the documents themselves.

The second bullet is a problem because the many additional reports mentioned there were likely the product of the source shopping around the documents to willing buyers.

The third bullet which you quoted must be qualified two ways: first, whether folks take something as confirmation often depends on their attitudes.

I could go on. The fact of the matter is, there was more to the claim than just the literal interpretation. It was part of a pattern of other evidence which not only turned out to be wrong, but which the people putting it forward also knew it was wrong, or at least unreliable.

The Chronology on how the 16 words got in tells the tale. The White House, having been told that the information should not be put in a presidential speech of that nature, having seen it taken out by the people who have the expertise on those matters, put it back in.

That’s what leads me to believe they lied, and that Factcheck is wrong, ultimately. If the president knew that something this big was that unreliable, and he said it in a speech anyways, then it’s settled: He lied. It’s one thing to say somebody is misinformed, but that defense, to be most effective and meaningful, requires that the person in question not be exposed to the correct information in the correct manner.

It also works best only if it’s clear, and it’s been made clear to others, that if the people look at the intelligence and come to contradictory conclusions, the person in question will accept that. From all the reports I’m hearing, Bush is not that sort of person, and this wasn’t that kind of an administration. They wanted a conclusion that fit a certain interpretation.

Having learned these things, it galls us to hear folks like you repeating stuff we know isn’t true. I disagree with Factcheck, because I have access to facts and evidence which contradicts some of their key points. That is the same reason I disagree with you, here.

You could have asked why I disagreed with Factcheck, instead of jumping to the conclusion you did, just like I asked you about the dates during which Wilson joined the Kerry Campaign.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at November 27, 2005 03:40 PM

Stephen

You disagree with factcheck. It goes to show that reasonable and intelligent people can look at the similar information and come to different conclusion. (Much like the prewar intelligence itself) But it is not unreasonable if others don’t follow your lead.

As for Wilson, his behavior goes against him. His supporters hail him as a whistle blower. Why didn’t he blow the whistle when it could have made more than a mere political difference? If he was so certain before the invasion, why didn’t he go public at that time? The time to warn that the water is deep is BEFORE someone wades in. I knew before but didn’t say so is not a useful statement. By the time he came out, it was too late too influence the decision to go to war or not.

His actions look like those of an opportunist, not a patriot.

One more question. IF Bush lied - Why? If he really believed Saddam was such a threat that he was willing to do anything to get rid of him, that is no different than Franklin Roosevelt’s lying about helping the Brits. I believe he didn’t lie, but if he did he did it for good (if flawed) motivation. In either case, he did what he thought was best for America.

Posted by: Jack at November 27, 2005 04:18 PM

I guess there’s some explanation required here, as to why I’m willing to go off on this tangent.

It’s all good and wonderful to talk about the universal assent that we need better intelligence, but in essence this is a practical matter, and we need to look at it that way. The valuing of careers and politician’s interests (both corporate and otherwise) over our security, is not an issue that can be dealt with without somebody looking bad.

The unfortunate fact is that both parties have stopped short of real reform for that reason. Bluntly, I would say that we should stop making excuses for this kind of crap, because in the end, the excuse will not help our diplomats, our military, or our elected officials protect us and make wise decisions.

We should not be so arrogant, as the world’s last remaining superpower, to believe ourselves invulnerable to the rest of the world, and the sole arbiter of other nation’s interests. We should not be so naive as to mistake the long time it’s taking our robust economy, intelligence capabilities, and military effectiveness to wear down, for an indefinite period. Sooner or later, we will lose our prominence, and join the sad ranks of has-been great powers, a number of whom we even now count as allies.

These things don’t get themselves done, and the politicians, if they are allowed to settle into their dream worlds won’t do it. Only if they are convinced that we are vigilantly watching over their shoulders for corruption, negligence, and a failure to support the intelligence community will they get off their butts and actually do something. Only when we make it clear that simply sweeping it under the rug will not do the job will they commit themselves to the difficult task of repairing our intelligence capability.

As such, we Americans must return to the kinds of principles that do not observe party lines. Whether it’s a former White House NSA allegedly stuffing his socks with documents to take home, or current White House officials revealing the Operative status of a NOC agent to punish and discredit a whistleblower, it’s got to stop. This rot has gone on during both Republican and Democrat administration, and it has gone on long enough. We got to stop making excuses, and start putting the pressure on these people to end these security violations, and rebuild the independence, strength, expanse and reliability of our intelligence resources.

Anything else, any other kind of rationalization is just one more step on the road to the end of the United States as a relevant world power.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at November 27, 2005 04:27 PM

Jack-
You and I can disagree reasonably and intelligently, but that does not have bearing as to the right or wrong of our arguments. You, as you claim your president to be, could easily be misinformed and misled. As can I, if I don’t watch myself.

I take steps, therefore, to ensure the reliability of my information.

Wilson’s problem was not with the war, at least not at first. His problem was with the way the matter he investigated was handled in the press. He made his report in February of 2002, after his meetings in Niger. He basically put forward the information about the mindes and the minister. That was what he was responsible for. He believe that his information and other information put the matter to rest. It should have. But like with so many things, it didn’t. The administration was not so fair-minded. It might have been, had it been interested in finding out what to do about Iraq, rather than merely confirming that a war was needed, but then, so many in the administration believed long before that this was the course of action we needed.

He came out even more aggressively as it became clear to him and others that the administration wasn’t going to tell the American people just how bad it really was on that piece of evidence.

The question of why Bush lied, if he did, is one that can be answered with one simple question: how would you get people to forget about Bin Laden, and start concentrating on Saddam Hussein?

The answer is, you create another possible 9/11. Why else did the president and others use the apocalyptic terminology of the next smoking gun being a mushroom cloud over one of our cities? Why else judge the merits of the intelligence used based on how scary of a case it would make? The only way to get America to attack Iraq at that point, was to convince the American people that Iraq was a big threat. Otherwise, people would have expected Bush to continue after Bin Laden and al-Qaeda in the expected fashion.

The next question would be this: how does it help us to have a president who manipulates public opinion like this?

FDR didn’t make a threat out of someone who was not. I really doubt that a good intelligence read on Hitler would have revealed benign motives and actions. Hitler was reforming the Armies, retaking old territory, annexing like crazy. The situation could not be more different, ultimately.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at November 27, 2005 05:11 PM

You’re leaving out a few important things. Bill Clinton reduced intelligence spending and drastically cute the numer of intelligence operatives on the ground in hostile countrys. He decided that the technology could do the job and wouldn’t risky making the terrorist angry. He also made it more dificult for U.S. intelligence agencies to share information. The result was what you talked about, a lot of information without context and without anyone to go threw it looking for connections. Liberals like to forget that Clinton ignored the threat of al-Quada for 8 years. Instead they blame Bush for not fixing the problem in the few months between his taking office and 9/11. I guess Clinton was busy cutting military spending so he may have missed the 1st World Trade Center attack, the attack on the USS Cole and the attacks on US embasies and 8 years of Sadam violation UN sanction that happened on his watch.
You also conveniently left out that Bill Clinton repeatedly said Sadam had WMD’s. Liberals say Bush
pressured the CIA and State Dept. into saying there were WMD’s in Iraq, then why did Clinton’s State Dept and CIA say the same thing. Bill, Hillary, Bush, John Kerry, and John Edwards all said that Sadam had WMD’s during the presedintial campeihn(how is Bush the only one that lied?). John Kerry said that Sadam has nuclear weapons.
Of course the belief that Sadam had WMD’s might have been influenced by the FACT that he had used chemical and biological weapons on the Kurds a/o the fact that Sadam kept playing a shell game with the UN weapons inspecters. I mention the latter because if you keep hiding something people will naturally think you have something to hide.

Posted by: kelly at November 27, 2005 05:26 PM

Paul in Euroland,

In actual fact, I beleive that Lindh was a member of the Taliban, not Al Qaeda. But even if I’m wrong about that, it doesn’t change anything. Even if he was a member of Al Qaeda, it would still be a lot easier to infiltrate someone who “fitsâ€, over a white American, no?

The Talibanis is in essense the form of government Al Qaeda is fighting to establish. Islamofascism.

My point is that it would be possible. I don’t think it’s likely. One would have to literally convert to their form of Islam and become one of them completely. Like deep cover to infiltrate the mafia. This probably includes slitting throats of kidnapped civilians.

Stephen,

Wilson lied about his entire trip. He lied about why he was sent. He lied about who sent him. He lied about the conclusions he came to.

1) Wilson was not sent to confirm or deny that a transaction had taken place. He was sent to find out if Iraq had ATTEMPTED to purchase uranium. He in fact confirmed that they did! Yet he slyly attempts to shifts this to, “I proved there was never a sale of Uranium.”

2) Wilson clearly attempted to tell journalists that Cheney knew what Wilson’s trip was about. That Cheney ‘sent him’ in essense. He had to back off that when it was clear he was lying. I watched Wilson say that Cheney knew about his trip and had to know of the conclusions in a documentary on the Sundance channel. This was his effort to setup the administration to say they lied.

3) Wilson lied about his conclusions when he said that he checked the fake documents signatures. He never saw the documents and couldn’t have.

Why did Wilson need to lie about virtually every part of this if his intention wasn’t a political hit job? Wilson planned his ‘outrage’ from the beginning. His report proved nothing except that Iraq actually did attempt to purchase uranium.

On intelligence: Intelligence is not like a news story where they purport to tell you all the facts and the whole story as it happened. Intelligence is gathered from numerous sources and pieced together. Pro and con, credible, semi-credible, and not so credible but information that may turn out to be true. You can no doubt go through intelligence sources and say there are doubts about every subject ever considered by intelligence sources. It is not enough to want to score political points by saying Bush lied when he plainly didn’t. Moreover to say he did is itself a lie.

Hell, you even argued here that Bush knew about 9/11 did nothing, such is his incompetence. In essence you say that one isolated slip of paper whose details were all incorrect should have prompted Bush to shut down air traffic or keep every Mulsim male from boarding plane to prevent 9/11 and yet when every democrat and every intelligence agency around the world including weapons inspectors said Saddam still had WMD and would be willing to use them Bush should have ignored it? Should have been more sceptical?

Posted by: esimonson at November 27, 2005 05:43 PM

Stephen,
The CIA had tried to build networks of foreign national spies in Iraq for years and had even sponsored one or two nascent coup attempts. In each case,the plots and plotters were discovered and executed (along with members of their families, if I’m not mistaken).

Attempts to build human intel networks in Iraq before 2002 were hampered by at least 3 things: 1)We had no embassy in Iraq out of which to operate; 2)UN weapons inspectors were kicked out in 1998,further diminishing human intel and identification of key players in the Iraqi govt; 3) for years prior to 9/11, the intel community had placed increasing emphasis on electronic intel (satellites, eavesdropping, etc.) at the expense of building human networks. Add to all this the institutional incompetence of the CIA (still a problem) and elements at the CIA sympathetic to the status quo ante bellum (and Baathists in particular) and there are a lot of problems.

As promised, here’s a little more detail on why covert operatives rarely are truly covert. Having worked in an embassy,I can tell you that most of them use native workers extensively, and some of these people inevitably feed info to their home countries’ intel agencies. CIA officers are processed into embassies much differently than Foreign Service Officers and other Americans sent to serve abroad. And, frankly, the CIA does not go to great lengths to protect the affiliation of their operatives. Domestically,as in the case with Plame, is another issue. I’m sure she didn’t advertise her employer, nor should she have been outed for political motivation.

Posted by: boojum at November 27, 2005 07:07 PM

Kelly-
You’re playing politics with this. The Clinton Administration is one of a number of administrations that have something to answer for in terms of this generations diminishment of our intelligence capability. That includes Reagan and both Bush’s.

Everybody thought that the end of the Cold War meant then end of the need to keep our army’s at their vast size. Everyone. Dick Cheney was side by side with John Kerry in cutting much of the Cold War budget items.

John Kerry, by the way, cut billions from the CIA budget, but it wasn’t from their operational budget, but instead an illegal slush fund. The rest of the cuts were supported on a bipartisan basis.

As for Clinton and al-Qaeda, I would hardly say he ignored them. After all, the culprits behind the first WTC bombing were all caught. the Counterterrorism Security group was a cabinet level position with the authority to ask reports from the intelligence community. What we knew on 9/11, we learned from the Clinton administration. Where Clinton went wrong, was in not getting the intelligence capability out there to monitor these places first hand.

Clinton did respond to the terrorists, lobbing cruise missiles their way. Now lets not talk about this as if he were hitting tents. Bin Laden and these other people were living in absolute fortresses. The thing to keep in mind here, though, was that Clinton could not move an inch against the terrorists without getting accused of trying to distract from that previous constitutional crisis, the Oral in the Oval Office. Hate to be that blunt about it, but as I recall it, the Republicans took the side of the Bin Laden-affiliated factory manager before they took the side of their own president.

As for the whole thing about the WMDs, I think there is a crucial difference between suspicions of Saddam’s continued WMD production and possession, which were warranted, and the certainty that the Bush administration telegraphed, especially in light of his push for pre-emptive warfare. I would say it would be nice to know ahead of time, if we ever consider a pre-emptive war again, that we can count on what we say is true being true.

America is a society that thrives on consensus. However, when people take shortcuts like using unreliable but scary intelligence in gaining that consensus, it does this country a disservice. I don’t blame the people who got caught up in Bush’s allegations, because I was one of them. Hearing them from Colin Powell, who I considered an honest broker at that point, I thought to myself, there could be something to this. But does that mean I’m to blame for all this? I guess it does to some extent, but I didn’t know enough to know better.

Most members of Congress and the Senate, unfortunately, were in no better of a position. The Bush administration limited the information that they were getting to the declassified material, which had significant differences from the classified material. Those legislators still capable of accessing that information could not tell their colleagues without violating the security restrictions.

This was the body leading us to war. Bush couldn’t have moved an inch and expect the American people to fund it, without the president getting the Authorization for it. That authorization was based on our receiving intelligence from the administration confirming that the UN regime of weapons inspections weren’t helping to enforce the UN Security council resolutions. It was dependent on the president presenting the case that it was necessary to our national security and our prosecution of the war on terror at that time, that we go in and strike first.

So it’s important what Bush knew, because that indicates whether he began this war in good faith. A great number of us think he fixed the game, and misrepresented things. This is the ultimate warning I would give: The best intelligence in the world will do little for us, if it the Commander In Chief, Republican or Democrat, is not willing to make prudent actions based upon it, and not merely their preconceived ideas of how the world works.

Eric-
Why retract in the face of a lie? The information Wilson conveyed was true, even if his recall of where and when he learned it from was flawed. That happens to people: it’s called source amnesia. I’m more inclined to believe that this is the case than an outright lie, because an intentionally cooked up source would result in data to suit, typically.

The sources in intelligence cannot just go any random way, at least not if they are reliable. You can check the validity of sources, and by extension, the validity of the theories based on them. I’m not saying reliability here is 100%, but there are ways to improve things. Just saying intelligence is imprecise is a cop-out, especially in the light of such a systematic, across the board intelligence failure.

Now my memory may not be perfect, but I do recall that my talk about a slip of paper was a hypothetical, the notion being that one source on the inside could save us a hell of a lot of trouble in the war on al-Qaeda.

Boojum-
I understand the problems with sources in Iraq. That said, I have two points: One, who watches the watchers? (a subtle suggestion of who we could corrupt to ensure a flow of information in such cases. Two: according to Robert Baer, author of See No Evil, our problem wasn’t just in Iraq, but in the surrounding countries as well (though for different reasons). We might have been able to maintain an indirect but usefull watch on Saddam, had we gone that route.

As for your promised explanation, it sounds like it makes sense. It also sounds like a security leak we might look into fixing. It reminds me of the talk in the John Le Carre books about people leaving agents in place so they could read their mail and feed their sources B.S. information.

That said, I agree that we shouldn’t make it that easy for them.

We need more of an overhaul in our national security apparatus than a wire-box shuffle.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at November 27, 2005 10:13 PM

Stephen:

The biggest intelligence failure here is that we didn’t discern the truth of this matter through a well established, trustable source, before we ever stepped a foot on Iraqi soil. We had that lack of intelligence on that matter beforehand. The Bush administration only made it worse by pushing for the conclusion that there were weapons in the absence of any real evidence or dependable accounts regarding that.

This is so hard, because of what we don’t know. This argument must be what it was like for the Bush administration. I have heard many say for instance “If we had just let the UN inspectors continue their work”. I didn’t have any trust in the weapons inspectors.

In terms of intelligence, we still don’t know what happened to the WMD that we knew was there prior to 1998. (Or do we really know that they had it then?)

Still it was widely believed my many on the security counsel that the weapons were there. They had been involved with Iraq for the whole 15 years (and more) of Iraq and WMD. They had to believe (judging by their behavior) that the weapons were there. This is tough.

Craig

Posted by: Craig Holmes at November 27, 2005 10:33 PM

Stephen,
I couldn’t agree more with your and Robert Baer’s point. We made great headway in Afghanistan and Pakistan during the Soviets’ presence there and then walked away when the Soviets withdrew.

Another point I want to throw out there: our lack of investment in human intelligence is part of a larger pattern of bi-partisan neglect of investing in foreign affairs before 9/11. The American people in general traditionally pay little attention to what happens overseas, and that, prior to 9/11,was reflected in our fiscal policy.

During the 1990’s, for instance, funding for embassy operations and staffing around the world were cut drastically. In short, a Republican Congress joined w/ a Democratic president to weaken the primary institutions that present our face abroad and help us stay attuned to international events and currents.

Posted by: boojum at November 27, 2005 10:48 PM

Stephen,

The information Wilson conveyed was true, even if his recall of where and when he learned it from was flawed. That happens to people: it’s called source amnesia. I’m more inclined to believe that this is the case than an outright lie, because an intentionally cooked up source would result in data to suit, typically.

Amazing! In other words, another liberal allegation against Bush which is Fake but Accurate? But Bush is a liar?

Posted by: esimonson at November 28, 2005 03:37 AM

Going back to the original post.

I’m an intelligence professional in the corporate world. From the intelligence failures of 9/11 to the intelligence failures of the Iraq war, it has been a textbook exercise.

These intelligence failures aren’t some complex “gosh nobody ever thought about that particular alternative” set of once in a lifetime anomalies. The intelligence failures are well-documented features of any INTELLIGENCE FOR DUMMIES handbook.

All the warning signals ahead of 9/11 were there and were communicated to Bush and co on August 6th. BUT his inner circle of Condi, Rummie, and Cheney didn’t consider it “actionable”. The Aug 6 PDB laid out WHO, MOTIVE, OPPORTUNITY, MEANS and target…at least indicating NEW YORK. But the decision-makers were not disposed to decide…the key breakdown.

The second instance, failures of intelligence before the Iraq War, were of a different sort. All the disclaimers were stripped from the intelligence before it was used. They wanted no indecision. So when the intelligence said 10% chance of precipitation, the White House used it to forecast a hurricane of Saddam’s making. The intelligence was cherry-picked … not for the right answer, but for the answer they wanted.

It’s the difference between “do the research so we can decide what is the right thing to do” and “we want to do A, so get the research for us so we can prove it”. The same approach is being used in the environmental and global warming debate.

“Most people use statistics the way a drunk uses a lamp post. More for support than illumination.” -Mark Twain

Posted by: Mark at November 28, 2005 06:31 AM

Craig-
Why don’t you trust the weapons inspectors? It turns out they did their job right. It’s only Saddam’s trickery that made it difficult for them to find out the truth, not any incompetence or agenda on their part.

What’s tough here, is that we all were attached to a single theory. The role of the CIA was not to prove that theory, but to do their best to disprove that theory and figure out how the pieces actually fit together. The difficulty is in ignorant (or dishonest|) politicians making absolute statements about what is and isn’t the case, and then posing what a bunch of non-experts or ivory tower intellectuals recommend as the solution, instead of taking at least some time to talk with the people who do this stuff for a living.

Boojum-
I would like to hear some additional thoughts on the subject if you have them.

Eric-
Not fake but accurate- accurate, but missattributed. His information squared exactly with the IAEA findings on the documents, which the CIA concurred with. From there, the CIA tried to stop the president from delivering the 16 words.

Let’s say a guy reads a coffee table book on Mount Rushmore. Big, glossy, hi-def photos from all over the place. Later, on a vacation, he takes a stop at the park, but doesn’t hang around. A couple years later, he start talking about all these details of his visits, and he talks about something he saw in the book as if it were part of his experience. People like hearing about it, so he repeats the story. Soon, he’s convinced that’s how it actually occured. His wife, though, has a different recollection.

Is he a liar? It’s not clear. Memory is reconstructive, so nothing we remember is presented in holistic digital detail. When reconstructing something like that trip, it’s not odd for people to recall details related to it, and perhaps having forgotten where they first heard or saw it, attribute it to a different source. Once he reconstructs it as part of that other memory, the die is cast. He’ll believe the attribution as if it were the original memory.

That’s why it’s important that his information be that accurate, which it was: The documents were forgeries, with the wrong dates, among other problems. If it weren’t accurate, we’d have reason to believe he was making it up, which would point to an outright lie.

Case in point, Libby testified that he learned the details of Valerie Wilson’s employment from a reporter. In fact, he heard it from four different government officials before them, and is known to use it on several occasions before them. All that indicates that it’s not a memory problem, because memory problems usually result from a lack of refreshment of that information, or its improper refreshment. If Libby is known to have been told four times, is known to have researched that subject, and then repeatedly relates the information to others in the administration, his memory is hardly likely to be that faulty on this point.

Posted by: Stephen Daugherty at November 28, 2005 08:22 AM

First, Jacob Weisberg has a good piece on Slate.com today called “The Misleaders” which does a good job of summarizing the exaggeration and overselling of some pieces of intelligence by members of the admin. Worth a read, but like most pieces on this topic, it only tells half the story.

We have to remember that evaluation of Iraq happened in the context of 10+ years of bad, aggressive, illegal behavior. Recall some of the following: attempted assassination of Bush I; frequent firing on US/UK planes in the no-fly zone; constant harrassment and manipulation of weapons inspectors; discovery of illegal programs by same weapons inspectors; inspectors kicked out in 1998; oil for food profits for Saddam; France and Russia moving to end UN sanctions in 1998; international adherence to sanctions crumbling in late 90’s and early 2000’s; unwillingness of Iraqis to account for missing chemical weapons. In short, there were years of behavior and willful deception by Iraq that made trusting Saddam imprudent at best, and extremely dangerous in the post 9/11 context.

The best piece I have seen written on all of this was by Kenneth Pollack in the Atlantic Monthly. It’s available on the Brookings web site here: http://brookings.edu/views/articles/pollack/20040108.htm
I think it’s a must-read.

Intelligence, good or bad, is only one element in making policy decisions. Had Bush received totally accurate intel, it would have said something to this effect: Iraq does not currently have significant WMDs, but they have maintained capabilities for making them. International will for maintaining sanctions is waning and there is a strong possibility that, if sanctions are ended or wither away,Saddam will resume WMD programs. This is especially likely given nuclear activity in Iran, a traditionally hostile neighbor, the availability of nuclear know-how from Pakistan and North Korea, the availablity of missiles from North Korea, existing missile research in Iraq today (2003),and existing chemical and biological know how in Iraq.

Sorry for the uber long post, but I want to encourage people to realize that intel has limits—it is mostly a snapshot of current conditions. Plicy makers, especially in an age of WMDs, have to take into account past behavior and future possibilities/probablities and assess risks. The debate on all this has focused too much on minutae like aluminum tubes.

Posted by: boojum at November 28, 2005 12:07 PM

Karl Rove’s White House ” Murder Inc. “.

Ariel Sharon’s & Karl Rove’s White House ” Assassinations Inc. ” !!!
Neocon’s IPO.

“The significance of this masterpiece is not only the divulsion of facts,
but the focus it’s made on the covert cooperation between the parties who
are playing enemies…. “

http://www.abcnorio.org/pcgi-bin/boards/housing/robboard.cgi?action=display&num=71

Special Investigation.

DEC., 2005- On September 15, 2001, just four days after the 9-11 attacks,
CIA Director George Tenet provided President [sic] Bush with a Top Secret
“Worldwide Attack Matrix”-a virtual license to kill targets deemed to be a
threat to the United States in some 80 countries around the world. The Tenet
plan, which was subsequently approved by Bush, essentially reversed the
executive orders of four previous U.S. administrations that expressly
prohibited political assassinations.

According to high level European intelligence officials, Bush’s counselor,
Karl Rove, used the new presidential authority to silence a popular Lebanese
Christian politician who was planning to offer irrefutable evidence that
Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon authorized the massacre of hundreds of
Palestinian men, women, and children in the Beirut refugee camps of Sabra
and Shatilla in 1982. In addition, Sharon provided the Lebanese forces who
carried out the grisly task. At the time of the massacres, Elie Hobeika was
intelligence chief of Lebanese Christian forces in Lebanon who were battling
Palestinians and other Muslim groups in a bloody civil war. He was also the
chief liaison to Israeli Defense Force (IDF) personnel in Lebanon. An
official Israeli inquiry into the massacre at the camps, the Kahan
Commission, merely found Sharon “indirectly” responsible for the slaughter
and fingered Hobeika as the chief instigator.

The Kahan Commission never called on Hobeika to offer testimony in his
defense. However, in response to charges brought against Sharon before a
special war crimes court in Belgium, Hobeika was urged to testify against
Sharon, according to well-informed Lebanese sources. Hobeika was prepared to
offer a different version of events than what was contained in the Kahan
report. A 1993 Belgian law permitting human rights prosecutions was unusual
in that non-Belgians could be tried for violations against other
non-Belgians in a Belgian court. Under pressure from the Bush
administration, the law was severely amended and the extra territoriality
provisions were curtailed.

Hobeika headed the Lebanese forces intelligence agency since the mid- 1970s
and he soon developed close ties to the CIA. He was a frequent visitor to
the CIA’s headquarters at Langley, Virginia. After the Syrian invasion of
Lebanon in 1990, Hobeika held a number of cabinet positions in the Lebanese
government, a proxy for the Syrian occupation authorities. He also served in
the parliament. In July 2001, Hobeika called a press conference and
announced he was prepared to testify against Sharon in Belgium and revealed
that he had evidence of what actually occurred in Sabra and Shatilla.
Hobeika also indicated that Israel had flown members of the South Lebanon
Army (SLA) into Beirut International Airport in an Israeli Air Force C130
transport plane, in full view of dozens of witnesses, including members of
the Lebanese army and others. SLA troops under the command of Major Saad
Haddad were slipped into the camps to commit the massacres. The SLA troops
were under the direct command of Ariel Sharon and an Israeli Mossad agent
provocateur named Rafi Eitan. Hobeika offered evidence that a former U.S.
ambassador to Lebanon was aware of the Israeli plot. In addition, the IDF
had placed a camera in a strategic position to film the Sabra and Shatilla
massacres. Hobeika was going to ask that the footage be released as part of
the investigation of Sharon.

After announcing he was willing to testify against Sharon, Hobeika became
fearful for his safety and began moves to leave Lebanon. Hobeika was not
aware that his threats to testify against Sharon had triggered a series of
fateful events that reached well into the White House and Sharon’s office.

On January 24, 2002, Hobeika’s car was blown up by a remote controlled bomb
placed in a parked Mercedes along a street in the Hazmieh section of Beirut.
The bomb exploded when Hobeika and his three associates, Fares Souweidan,
Mitri Ajram, and Waleed Zein, were driving their Range Rover past the
TNT-laden Mercedes at 9:40 am Beirut time. The Range Rover’s four passengers
were killed in the explosion. In case Hobeika’s car had taken another route

through the neighborhood, two additional parked cars, located at two other
choke points, were also rigged with TNT. The powerful bomb wounded a number
of other people on the street. Other parked cars were destroyed and
buildings and homes were damaged. The Lebanese president, prime minister,
and interior minister all claimed that Israeli agents were behind the
attack.

It is noteworthy that the State Department’s list of global terrorist
incidents for 2002 worldwide failed to list the car bombing attack on
Hobeika and his party. The White House wanted to ensure the attack was
censored from the report. The reason was simple: the attack ultimately had
Washington’s fingerprints on it.

High level European intelligence sources now report that Karl Rove
personally coordinated Hobeika’s assassination. The hit on Hobeika employed
Syrian intelligence agents. Syrian President Bashar Assad was trying to
curry favor with the Bush administration in the aftermath of 9-11 and was
more than willing to help the White House. In addition, Assad’s father,
Hafez Assad, had been an ally of Bush’s father during Desert Storm, a period
that saw Washington give a “wink and a nod” to Syria’s occupation of
Lebanon. Rove wanted to help Sharon avoid any political embarrassment from
an in absentia trial in Brussels where Hobeika would be a star witness. Rove
and Sharon agreed on the plan to use Syrian Military Intelligence agents to
assassinate Hobeika. Rove saw Sharon as an indispensable ally of Bush in
ensuring the loyalty of the Christian evangelical and Jewish voting blocs in
the United States. Sharon saw the plan to have the United States coordinate
the hit as a way to mask all connections to Jerusalem.

The Syrian hit team was ordered by Assef Shawkat, the number two man in
Syrian military intelligence and a good friend and brother in law of Syrian
President Bashar Assad. Assad’s intelligence services had already cooperated
with U.S. intelligence in resorting to unconventional methods to extract
information from al Qaeda detainees deported to Syria from the United States
and other countries in the wake of 9-11. The order to take out Hobeika was
transmitted by Shawkat to Roustom Ghazali, the head of Syrian military
intelligence in Beirut. Ghazali arranged for the three remote controlled
cars to be parked along Hobeika’s route in Hazmieh; only few hundred yards
from the Barracks of Syrian Special Forces which are stationed in the area
near the Presidential palace , the ministry of Defense and various
Government and officers quarters . This particular area is covered 24/7 by a
very sophisticated USA multi-agency surveillance system to monitor Syrian
and Lebanese security activities and is a ” Choice ” area to live in for its
perceived high security, [Courtesy of the Special Collections Services.]
SCS…; CIA & NSA & DIA….etc.

The plan to kill Hobeika had all the necessary caveats and built-in denial
mechanisms. If the Syrians were discovered beforehand or afterwards, Karl
Rove and his associates in the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans would be
ensured plausible deniability.

Hobeika’s CIA intermediary in Beirut, a man only referred to as “Jason” by
Hobeika, was a frequent companion of the Lebanese politician during official
and off-duty hours. During Hobeika’s election campaigns for his
parliamentary seat, Jason was often in Hobeika’s office offering support and
advice. After Hobeika’s assassination, Jason became despondent over the
death of his colleague. Eventually, Jason disappeared abruptly from Lebanon
and reportedly later emerged in Pakistan.

Karl Rove’s involvement in the assassination of Hobeika may not have been
the last “hit” he ordered to help out Sharon. In March 2002, a few months
after Hobeika’s assassination, another Lebanese Christian with knowledge of
Sharon’s involvement in the Sabra and Shatilla massacres was gunned down
along with his wife in Sao Paulo, Brazil. A bullet fired at Michael Nassar’s
car flattened one of his tires. Nassar pulled into a gasoline station for
repairs. A professional assassin, firing a gun with a silencer, shot Nassar
and his wife in the head, killing them both instantly. The assailant fled
and was never captured. Nassar was also involved with the Phalange militia
at Sabra and Shatilla. Nassar was also reportedly willing to testify against
Sharon in Belgium and, as a nephew of SLA Commander General Antoine Lahd,
may have had important evidence to bolster Hobeika’s charge that Sharon
ordered SLA forces into the camps to wipe out the Palestinians.

Based on what European intelligence claims is concrete intelligence on
Rove’s involvement in the assassination of Hobeika, the Bush administration
can now add political assassination to its laundry list of other misdeeds,
from lying about the reasons to go to war to the torture tactics in
violation of the Geneva Conventions that have been employed by the Pentagon
and “third country” nationals at prisons in Iraq and Guantanamo Bay.

Tensions in the Middle East have prompted public expressions of anti-U.S.
rhetoric and public sentiment. Events in past years in Lebanon, such as
bombings directed at U.S. franchises and the November 2002 murder of a U.S.
citizen in Sidon, underscore the need for caution and sound personal
security precautions. Anti-American demonstrations have occurred in the last
12 months in refugee camps, in the southern suburbs of Beirut and in Beirut
proper to protest U.S. foreign policy. In May 2004, an anti-government
demonstration in the southern suburbs of Beirut turned violent resulting in
the deaths of five demonstrators.

It is noteworthy that the State Department’s list of global terrorist
incidents for 2002 worldwide failed to list the car bombing attack on
Hobeika and his party…. But Listed a small Hand Grenade thrown at
a U.S. franchise….? The White House wanted to ensure the attack was
censored from the report. The reason was simple: the attack ultimately had
Washington’s fingerprints on it….

This is some of the evidence for you and for the World ….
*******************************************************************************
~encrypted/logs/access ====>> INTELLIGENCE Agencies Servers footprints.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Not to mention hundreds of private companies and governments……..!
…See Below :
*******************************************************************************

Lines 10-36 of my logfiles show a lot of intere