Coming
Soon!
From Common Courage Press
Recent
Stories
July
29, 2003
Ray
McGovern
Cheney Chicanery
Website
of the Day
Julie Hilden Caught on Tape
July
26 / 28, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
July
25, 2003
Francis
A. Boyle
Impeaching Bush
David
Krieger
15 Questions
Harvey
Wasserman
Pat Robertson's Supreme Fatwah
Steve Dunifer
Seize the Airwaves!
Dan
Bacher
Federal Judge Throws Out Bush Salmon Plan for Klamath River
Kurt Nimmo
Bread, Circuses, Uday and Qusay
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Stop the Wall!
July
24, 2003
Elaine
Cassel
Ashcroft Loses...Again
Robert
Fisk
The Ugly Story of Camp Cropper: The
US Torture Camp in Iraq
David
Lindorff
Dumb and Dumber in Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
Ashcroft Demands Death Penalty in
Puerto Rico
David
Vest
Dylan in Bend
Tom Turnipseed
Killing Saddam & His Family Won't Stop Killing of US Troops
Douglas
Valentine
A Nation of Assassins
Stew Albert
Contract Killing
Steve
Perry
Bush's Wars Weblog
Website
of the Day
Report on Palestinian Child Prisoners
July
23, 2003
Uri
Avnery
Caesar's Favor
David
Lindorff
Lynne Stewart's Big Win: Ashcroft
Rebuked
Mano
Singham
Iraq's Missing WMD Scientists
Steve
Perry
Better Late Than Never: the Press, the Dems, and Bush's Lies
John Stanton
Avoiding Plato's Republic in America: Is Anarchy the Only Hope?
Patrick
Bond
Bush and South Africa: a Petro-Military-Commerce Mission
Harry Browne
A Victory for a Disarming Irishwoman
Paul
Beaulieu
When the WTO Comes to Montreal
Robert
Fisk
The Sons are Dead, But the Resistance
Will Grow
William
Witherup
Georgie Porgie
Website
of the Day
Lieberman & Falwell:
True Love at Last
July
22, 2003
Diane
Christian
Bad Guy / Good Guy: War Forces;
Peace Frees
Jeremy
Brecher
Solidarity and Student Protests in Iran
Steve
Kretzmann
and Jim Vallette
Plugging Iraq into Globalization
Sam
Smith
Greening the Golden Triangle
James
Plummer
Smile, You're on Federal Camera
Lucretia
Stewart
This Day Shall Not Define My Life:
January 18, 2003
Website
of the Day
Iraq Coalition Casualties
July
21, 2003
Edward
Said
Imperial Arrogance and the Vile Stereotyping
of Arabs
Ron
Jacobs
Shut Up and Shoot
Allan J.
Lichtman
Why is George Bush President?
Elaine
Cassel
How's the Occupation Going? Ask the People of Iraq
Christopher
Brauchli
History Recapitulates: Guantanamo and the Japanese Internment
Camps
Bruce
Jackson
Third and Arizona, Santa Monica
Website
of the Day
John Dean: Taking Apart Bush's State of the Union Speech, Claim
by Claim
July
19 / 20, 2003
Arthur
Mitzman
Will the Pax Americana be More Sustainable
Than the Dot.com Bubble?
Julian
Bond
We Shall be Heard
Cynthia
McKinney
Bush's Racial Politics at Home and Abroad
Mel
Goodman
What is to be Done with the CIA?
Jason Leopold
Tenet Blames Wolfowitz
Mickey
Z.
History Forgave Churchill
Doug Giebel
Impeachment as the Message
Jon
Brown
Whipping the Post
Mano Singham
Cheney's Oil Maps
Steven
Sherman
Nickle, Dimed and Slimed at UNC
Robin Philpot
Liberia: History Doesn't Repeat Itself, It Stutters
Khaldoun
Khelil
Capturing Friedman
Jeffrey
St. Clair
You Must Leave Home, Again: Gilad Atzmon's A Guide to the Perplexed
Lenni
Brenner
Sitting in with Mingus
Vanessa
Jones
Three Dog Night
Adam
Engel
Video Judas Video
Poets'
Basement
Foley, Smith and Curtis
Website
of the Weekend
Illegal Art
July
18, 2003
David
Vest
Drowning in Deep Doo-Doo
Rahul
Mahajan
Deceit Runs Deep
John Chuckman
Enron-style Management in a Dangerous World
Harold
A. Gould
The Bush-Musharraf Conclave
Alvaro
Angarita
In the Eye of the Storm: Colombia's War on Journalists
David
Grenier
Sovereignty and Solidarity in Indian Country...Rhode Island
Dave Lindorff
Bush and Hitler: a Response to the Wall Street Journal
Website
of the Day
Murder of a Whistleblower? Timeline in David Kelly Affair
Hot Stories
Wendell
Berry
Small Destructions Add Up
CounterPunch
Wire
WMD: Who Said What When
Cindy
Corrie
A Mother's Day Talk: the Daughter
I Can't Hear From
Elaine
Cassel
Civil Liberties
Watch
Michel
Guerrin
Embedded Photographer Says: "I
Saw Marines Kill Civilians"
Uzma
Aslam Khan
The Unbearably Grim Aftermath of War:
What America Says Does Not Go
Paul de Rooij
Arrogant
Propaganda
Gore Vidal
The
Erosion of the American Dream
Francis Boyle
Impeach
Bush: A Draft Resolution
Click Here
for More Stories.
|
July
29, 2003
The Buck Never
Stops
Cheney Chicanery
By RAY McGOVERN
Former CIA analyst
When Vice President Dick Cheney comes out of seclusion
to brand critics "irresponsible," you know the administration
is in trouble.
Cheney was enlisted to do so in the spring
of 2002 amid reports that warning given to President Bush before
9/11 should have prompted preventive action. Cheney branded
such commentary "irresponsible," and critics in the
press and elsewhere were duly intimidated. It will be interesting
to see what happens this time.
Sifting through the congressional report
on 9/11, I was reminded of the President's Daily Brief item
of August 6, 2001 titled "Bin Laden Determined to Strike
in US." Dana Priest of the Washington Post has learned
that this PDB article stated "bin Laden had wanted to conduct
attacks in the United States for years and that (his) group
apparently maintained a support base here."
According to Priest, the PDB went on
to cite "FBI judgments about patterns of activity consistent
with preparations for hijackings or other types of attacks."
The president has cited executive privilege in refusing to
declassify the PDB item.
With the administration under fire once
again, the vice president came off the bench with a major statement
on July 24 in which he tried to hit two birds with one speech:
(1) distract attention from the highly embarrassing 9/11 report
released that same day, and (2) arrest the plunge in administration
credibility caused by the absence of "weapons of mass destruction"
in Iraq and the use of spurious reporting alleging that Iraq
had been seeking uranium in Africa. In the words of one Cheney
aide, "We had to get out of the hole we were in."
But, alas, they have dug themselves in
deeper by pushing disingenuousness to new heights--or depths.
Cheney made the centerpiece of his speech a series of quotes
from the key National Intelligence Estimate, "Iraq's Continuing
Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction" published on
October 1. 2002. The NIE judgments he selected were adduced
to prove that Iraq posed such an urgent threat to the US that
it would have been "irresponsible" to shy away from
making war.
Inconveniently, experience on the ground
in Iraq for more than four months now has cast great doubt on
the validity of those judgments. Worse still, as Cheney knows
better than anyone, it was largely the unrelenting pressure
he put on intelligence analysts--for example, by his unprecedented
"multiple visits" to CIA headquarters "that rendered
those judgments so dubious.
Giving new meaning to chutzpah, Cheney
quoted four statements from the NIE:
1. "Baghdad has chemical and biological
weapons if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon
during this decade." Where are the chemical and biological
weapons?
2. "All key aspects--the R&D,
production, and weaponization--of Iraq's offensive (biological
weapons) program are active and most elements are larger and
more advanced than they were before the Gulf War." Where
are they?
3. "Since inspections ended in 1998,
Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its
missile program, and invested more heavily in biological weapons;
in the view of most agencies, Baghdad is reconstituting its
nuclear weapons program." Where is the evidence of this
in Iraq?
4. The Intelligence Community has "high
confidence" in the conclusion that "Iraq is continuing,
and in some areas expanding, its chemical, biological, nuclear
and missile programs contrary to UN Resolutions ."
The last four months have shown that
such judgments--though stated to be marked by "high confidence"--were
far off the mark. I know from my own experience that this is
frequently the case when analysts are put under pressure from
policymakers who have already publicly asserted, a priori, the
"correct" answers to key questions.
Cheney did so in the administration's
rollout of its marketing strategy for war, when he charged in
a major address on August 26, 2002 "Saddam has resumed
his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." The intelligence
community spent the subsequent weeks in a desperate search
evidence to prove Cheney right. If he is looking for something
to label "irresponsible in the extreme," the extreme
pressure he put on intelligence analysts last September certainly
qualifies.
Cheney did not mention in his speech
that analysts in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence
and Research (INR) insisted on recording in the NIE their strong
dissent on the key nuclear issue. All signs point to their having
chosen the wiser approach. Their diplomatically stated--but
nonetheless biting--dissent is worth a careful read:
"The activities we have detected
do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently
pursuing an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire
nuclear weapons INR considers available evidence inadequate
to support such a judgment. Lacking persuasive evidence that
Baghdad has launched a coherent effort to reconstitute its
nuclear weapons program, INR is unwilling to project a time
line for completion of activities it does not now see happening."
It was also INR analysts who branded
the infamous Iraq-seeking-uranium-from-Niger story (widely recognized
as bogus but included in the estimate anyway) "highly
dubious." One of the ironies here is that the intelligence
analysts at State, a department steeped in politics, felt more
secure in speaking truth to power than their counterparts in
the CIA. In my day, CIA analysts were generally given the necessary
insulation from pressure from policymakers and career protection
when it was necessary to face them down.
Here the buck stops with CIA Director
George Tenet. And fresh light was thrown on his remarkable malleability
when Newt Gingrich (also a frequent visitor to CIA over recent
months) made this gratuitous comment to ABC on July 27: "Tenet
is so grateful and loyal that he will do anything he can to
help President Bush."
Ray McGovern
chaired NIEs and prepared/briefed the President's Daily Brief
during his 27-year career at CIA. He is co-founder of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and co-director of the
Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach ministry in
Washington, DC. rmcgovern@slschool.org
Weekend Edition Features for July 19 / 20, 2003
Alexander
Cockburn
NYT's Screws Up Again; Uday and
Qusay Deaths Bad for Bush; Gen. Hitchens at the Front
Gary
Leupp
Faith-Based Intelligence
Saul Landau
A Report from Syria
Stan
Goff
Bring 'Em On Home, Now!
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Book Cooking at Boeing
Andrew
Cockburn
The Sons Are Dead; Now the Blood Feud
Begins
Jason Leopold
CIA Points the Finger at the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans
Robert
Fisk
The Power of Death
Joanne
Mariner
Monsieur Moussaoui
Standard
Schaefer
Joblessness and the Invisible Hand
M. Shahid
Alam
The Global Economy Since 1800: a Short History
Harry
Browne
Northern Ireland: the Other Faltering Peace Process
Fidel Castro
Moncada, 50 Years Later
Lula
Democracy Requires Social Justice
Edward
S. Herman
Refuting Brad DeLong's Smear Job on Noam Chomsky
Ron Jacobs
Guided by a Great Feeling of Love: a Review of Gordon's The Company
You Keep
Julie
Hilden
A Photographer, an Offer and Cameron Diaz's Topless Photos
Adam Engel
Man Talk
Poets'
Basement
Keeney, Witherup, Short, Nimba, Guthrie and Albert
Keep CounterPunch
Alive:
Make
a Tax-Deductible Donation Today Online!
home / subscribe
/ about us / books
/ archives / search
/ links /
|