White House Subverted CIA Iraq Intelligence

[Dardedar]

DAR
We are told how the White House cherry-picked data to make their case for war. That's bad. This is worse:

***
Tenet Battled With the Office of Special Plans
By Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t | Report

Wednesday 02 May 2007

In his book, "At the Center of the Storm," former Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet describes efforts by Pentagon and White House officials to subvert pre-Iraq war intelligence assessment by the CIA.

Tenet focuses on the actions of a group inside the Pentagon that sent the Bush administration bogus intelligence on Iraq's weapons program and ties to terrorist organizations that supported the administration's policy.

This group was recently criticized by a Department of Defense inspector general report from February 9, 2007, which found that a policy-shop known as "the Office of Special Plans," headed by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, acted "inappropriately" by cooking intelligence to reflect a "mature and symbiotic" relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida. This characterization was never supported by the CIA, but was presented as fact by Feith's office to White House policy makers in the run up to the Iraq war.

Former CIA intelligence officer Larry C. Johnson called the Office of Special Plans (OSP) "a hodgepodge put together by folks with an agenda." According to Johnson, "The administration started with a presumption of guilt, and the OSP was to hang the ornaments on the tree."

SNIP...

According to Tenet, White House officials tried to prevent the CIA from publishing their own analysis of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa'ida. A draft report of the CIA analysis of that relationship was sent to the White House in December 2002, resulting in "a series of calls from the White House" that asked the CIA to "revise or withdraw the paper." Tenet names the vice president's former Chief of Staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby and then-Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley as two of the White House officials who made these calls. Tenet claims that a previous draft of this report was given to the DOD for their feedback. Tenet says that Feith's office responded saying it had objections, "but would make their views known through other channels."

Documents pointing to a close relationship between Iraq and al Qa'ida were discovered in Baghdad after the invasion. After analysis by the CIA and the Secret Service, the documents were proven to be forgeries. According to Tenet, even after being discredited, "These raw, unevaluated documents continued to show up in the hands of senior administration officials without having gone through normal intelligence channels."

LINK

[Dardedar]

DAR
Then there is this fellow who is not impressed with how long Tenet has taken to come out with this information:

Robert Scheer | After Thousands Have Died, Tenet Comes Clean

Robert Scheer writes: "Tenet, knowing the administration was willfully
leading our nation into a horrific war in Iraq that would detract from
the real fight against terrorism, had an obligation to resign and go
public with his knowledge when the war could have been prevented. Tenet
knew that the Bush administration had sold the public a package of lies,
but he waited to reveal that truth until he could turn a hefty book
profit." link

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Part of the job of the "civil servants" throughout the executive branch is to supply the president with facts - no matter whether he wants to hear them or not. Withdrawing reports of facts because the president doesn't want to hear them is wrong, but not new. (That's how we got the Bay of Pigs fiasco - Kennedy trusted the "intelligence" from Eisenhower's men, who'd learned to tailor things for the president's prejudices. Kennedy had a fit about it and installed his brother to clean that up. It's why he was about to pull us out of Vietnam when he was assassinated.) There really is nothing so dangerous for a country than an executive who lives in fantasyland - except for a country whose fantasyland executive joins with neocon artists to take over the media.

[Dardedar]

nothing so dangerous for a country than an executive who lives in fantasyland...

DAR
Imagine how bad it would be if they had their own cable "news" channel.