- Sixty-four summers ago, when Hitler fabricated Polish
provocations in his attempt to justify Germany's invasion of Poland, there
was not a peep out of senior German officials. Happily, in today's Germany
the imperative of truth telling no longer takes a back seat to ingrained
docility and knee-jerk deference to the perceived dictates of "homeland
security." The most telling recent sign of this comes in today's
edition of Die Zeit, Germany's highly respected weekly. The story, by
Jochen Bittner holds lessons for us all.
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- Die Zeit's report leaves in tatters the "evidence"
cited by Secretary of State Colin Powell and other administration spokesmen
as the strongest proof that Iraq was using mobile trailers as laboratories
to produce material for biological weapons.
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- German Intelligence on Powell's "Solid" Sources
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- Bittner notes that, like their American counterparts,
German intelligence officials had to hold their noses as Powell on February
5 at the UN played fast and loose with intelligence he insisted came from
"solid sources." Powell's specific claims concerning the mobile
laboratories, it turns out, depended heavily-perhaps entirely-on a source
of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany's equivalent to the CIA.
But the BND, it turns out, considered the source in no way "solid."
A "senior German security official" told Die Zeit that, in passing
the report to US officials, the Germans made a point of noting "various
problems with the source." In more diplomatic language, Die Zeit's
informant indicated that the BND's "evaluation of the source was not
altogether positive."
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- German officials remain in some confusion regarding the
"four different sources" cited by Powell in presenting his case
regarding the "biological laboratories." Berlin has not been
told who the other three sources are. In this context, a German intelligence
officer mentioned that there is always the danger of false confirmation,
suggesting it is possible that the various reports can be traced back to
the same original source, theirs-that is, the one with which the Germans
had "various problems."
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- Even if there are in fact multiple sources, the Germans
wonder what reason there is to believe that the others are more "solid"
than their own. Powell indicated that some of the sources he cited were
Iraqi émigrés. While the BND would not give Die Zeit an official
comment, Bittner notes pointedly that German intelligence "proceeds
on the assumption that émigrés do not always tell the truth
and that the picture they draw can be colored by political motives."
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- Plausible?
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- Despite all that, in an apparent bid to avoid taking
the heat for appearing the constant naysayer on an issue of such neuralgic
import in Washington, German intelligence officials say that, the dubious
sourcing notwithstanding, they considered the information on the mobile
biological laboratories "plausible."
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- In recent weeks, any "plausibility" has all
but evaporated. Many biological warfare specialists in the US and elsewhere
were skeptical from the start. Now Defense Intelligence Agency specialists
have joined their counterparts at the State Department and elsewhere in
concluding that the two trailer/laboratories discovered in Iraq in early
May are hydrogen-producing facilities for weather balloons to calibrate
Iraqi artillery, as the Iraqis have said.
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- Perhaps it was this DIA report that emboldened the BND
official to go public about the misgivings the BND had about the source.
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- Insult to Intelligence
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- What do intelligence analysts do when their professional
ethic-to tell the truth without fear or favor-is prostituted for political
expedience? Usually, they hold their peace, as we've already noted was
the case in Germany in 1939 before the invasion of Poland. The good news
is that some intelligence officials are now able to recognize a higher
duty-particularly when the issue involves war and peace. Clearly, some
BND officials are fed up with the abuse of intelligence they have witnessed-and
especially the trifling with the intelligence that they have shared with
the US from their own sources. At least one such official appears to have
seen it as a patriotic duty to expose what appears to be a deliberate distortion.
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- This is a hopeful sign. There are indications that British
intelligence officials, too, are beginning to see more distinctly their
obligation to speak truth to power, especially in light of the treatment
their government accorded Ministry of Defense biologist Dr. David Kelly,
who became despondent to the point of suicide.
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- Even more commendable was the courageous move by senior
Australian intelligence analyst Andrew Wilkie when it became clear to him
that the government he was serving had decided to take part in launching
an unprovoked war based on "intelligence" information he knew
to be specious. Wilkie resigned and promptly spoke his piece-not only to
his fellow citizens but, after the war, at Parliament in London and Congress
in Washington. Andrew Wilkie was not naïve enough to believe he could
stop the war when he resigned in early March. What was clear to him, however,
was that he had a moral duty to expose the deliberate deception in which
his government, in cooperation with the US and UK, had become engaged.
And he knew instinctively that, in so doing, he could with much clearer
conscience look at himself in the mirror each morning.
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- What About Us?
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- Do you not find it ironic that State Department foreign
service officers, whom we intelligence professionals have (quite unfairly)
tended to write off as highly articulate but unthinking apologists for
whatever administration happens to be in power, are the only ones so far
to resign on principle over the war on Iraq? Three of them have-all three
with very moving explanations that their consciences would no longer allow
them to promote "intelligence" and policies tinged with deceit.
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- What about you? It is clear that you have been battered,
buffeted, besmirched. And you are painfully aware that you can expect
no help at this point from Director George Tenet. Recall the painful morning
when you watched him at the UN sitting squarely behind Powell, as if to
say the Intelligence Community endorses the deceitful tapestry he wove.
No need to remind you that his speech boasted not only the bogus biological
trailers but also assertions of a "sinister nexus" between Iraq
and al-Qaeda, despite the fact that your intense, year-and-a-half analytical
effort had turned up no credible evidence to support that claim. To make
matters worse, Tenet is himself under fire for acquiescing in a key National
Intelligence Estimate on "weapons of mass destruction" in Iraq
that included several paragraphs based on a known forgery. That is the
same estimate from which the infamous 16 words were drawn for the president's
state-of-the-union address on January 28.
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- And not only that. In a dramatic departure from customary
practice, Tenet has let the moneychangers into the temple-welcoming the
most senior policymakers into the inner sanctum where all-source analysis
is performed at CIA headquarters, wining and dining Vice President Dick
Cheney, Secretary of State Colin Powell, National Security Assistant Condoleezza
Rice, and even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich (now representing the
Pentagon) on their various visits to make sure you didn't miss anything!
You have every right to expect to be protected from that kind of indignity.
Small wonder that Gingrich, in a recent unguarded moment on TV, conceded
that Tenet "is so grateful to President Bush that he will do anything
for him." CIA directors have no business being so integral a "part
of the team."
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- Powell, who points proudly to his four day-and-night
cram course at the CIA in the days immediately prior to his February 5
UN speech, seems oblivious to the fact that personal visitations of that
frequency and duration-and for that purpose-are unprecedented in the history
of the CIA. Equally unprecedented are Cheney's "multiple visits."
When George H. W. Bush was vice president, not once did he go out to CIA
headquarters for a working visit. We brought our analysis to him. As
you are well aware, once the subjects uppermost in policymakers' minds
are clear to analysts, the analysis itself must be conducted in an unfettered,
sequestered way-and certainly without the direct involvement of officials
with policy axes to grind. Until now, that is the way it has been done;
the analysis and estimates were brought downtown to the policymakers-not
the other way around.
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- What Happens When You Remain Silent?
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- There is no more telling example than Vietnam. CIA analysts
were prohibited from reporting accurately on the non-incident in the Tonkin
Gulf on August 4, 1964 until the White House had time to use the "furious
fire-fight" to win the Tonkin Gulf resolution from Congress-and eleven
more years of war for the rest of us.
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- And we kept quiet.
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- In November 1967 as the war gathered steam, CIA management
gave President Lyndon Johnson a very important National Intelligence Estimate
known to be fraudulent. Painstaking research by a CIA analyst, the late
Sam Adams, had revealed that the Vietnamese Communists under arms numbered
500,000. But Gen. William Westmoreland in Saigon, eager to project an
image of progress in the US "war of attrition," had imposed a
very low artificial ceiling on estimates of enemy strength.
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- Analysts were aghast when management caved in and signed
an NIE enshrining Westmoreland's count of between 188,000 and 208,000.
The Tet offensive just two months later exploded that myth-at great human
cost. And the war dragged on for seven more years.
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- Then, as now, morale among analysts plummeted. A senior
CIA official made the mistake of jocularly asking Adams if he thought the
Agency had "gone beyond the bounds of reasonable dishonesty."
Sam, who had not only a keen sense of integrity but first-hand experience
of what our troops were experiencing in the jungles of Vietnam, had to
be restrained. He would be equally outraged at the casualties being taken
now by US forces fighting another unnecessary war, this time in the desert.
Kipling's verse applies equally well to jungle or desert:
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- If they question why we died, tell them because our fathers
lied.
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- Adams himself became, in a very real sense, a casualty
of Vietnam. He died of a heart attack at 55, with remorse he was unable
to shake. You see, he decided to "go through channels," pursuing
redress by seeking help from imbedded CIA and the Defense Department Inspectors
General. Thus, he allowed himself to be diddled for so many years that
by the time he went public the war was mostly over-and the damage done.
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- Sam had lived painfully with the thought that, had he
gone public when the CIA's leaders caved in to the military in 1967, the
entire left half of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial would not have had to
be built. There would have been 25-30,000 fewer names for the granite
to accommodate.
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- So, too, with Daniel Ellsberg, who made the courageous
decision to give the Pentagon Papers on Vietnam to the New York Times and
Washington Post for publication in 1971. Dan has been asked whether he
has any regrets. Yes, one big one, he says. If he had made the papers
available in 1964 or 65, this tragically unnecessary war might have been
stopped in its tracks. Why did he not? Dan's response is quite telling;
he says the thought never occurred to him at the time.
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- Let the thought occur to you, now.
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- But Isn't It Too Late?
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- No. While it is too late to prevent the misadventure
in Iraq, the war is hardly over, and analogous "evidence" is
being assembled against Iran, Syria, and North Korea. Yes, US forces will
have their hands full for a long time in Iraq, but this hardly rules out
further adventures based on "intelligence" as spurious as that
used to argue the case for attacking Iraq.
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- The best deterrent is the truth. Telling the truth about
the abuse of intelligence on Iraq could conceivably give pause to those
about to do a reprise. It is, in any case, essential that the American
people acquire a more accurate understanding of the use and abuse of intelligence.
Only then can there be any hope that they can experience enough healing
from the trauma of 9/11 to be able to make informed judgments regarding
the policies pursued by this administration-thus far with the timid acquiescence
of their elected representatives.
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- History is littered with the guilty consciences of those
who chose to remain silent. It is time to speak out.
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- http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article4518.htm
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