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April
23, 2003
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Gancarski
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Chris
Floyd
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April 26,
2003
Ex-CIA Analysts on
the Pretext for War
WMD: Where?
Find? Plant?
By DAVID MacMICHAEL and RAY McGOVERN
The Bush administration's refusal to allow UN
inspectors to join the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in
US-occupied Iraq has elicited high interest in foreign news media.
The most widely accepted interpretation is that the US is well
aware that evidence regarding the existence and location of such
weapons is "shaky" (the adjective now favored by UN
chief weapons inspector Hans Blix), and that the last thing the
Pentagon wants is to have Blix' inspectors looking over the shoulders
of US forces as they continue their daunting quest.
Administration leaders will not soon
forgive Blix or Mohamed ElBaradei, Director General of the International
Atomic Energy Agency, for exposing to ridicule the two main pieces
of "evidence" adduced by Washington late last year
to support its contention that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear
weapons development program: (1) the forged documents purporting
to show that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Niger, and
(2) the high strength aluminum rods sought by Iraq that the US
insisted were to be used in a nuclear application. That contention
was roundly debunked not only by IAEA scientists but also by
the international engineering community.
The normally taciturn Blix now finds
it "conspicuous" that a month after the invasion of
Iraq, the US search for weapons of mass destruction had turned
up nothing. He expressed eagerness to send UN inspectors back
into Iraq, but also served notice that he would not allow them
to be led "like dogs on a leash" by US forces there.
The media have raised the possibility
that the US might "plant" weapons of mass destruction
in Iraq, and that this may be another reason to keep UN inspectors
out. This is a charge of such seriousness that we Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity have been conducting an informal colloquium
on the issue. As one might expect, there is no unanimity among
us on the likelihood of such planting, but most believe that
Washington would consider it far too risky. Those holding this
view add that recent polls suggest most Americans will not be
very critical of the Bush administration even if no weapons of
mass destruction are found.
Others, taken aback by the in the in-your-face
attitude with which Secretary of State Colin Powell reacted both
to the exposure of the Niger forgery and to the requiem for the
argument from aluminum rods, see in that attitude a sign that
the Bush administration would not necessarily let the risk of
disclosure deter it from planting weapons. They also point to
the predicament facing the Blair government in Great Britain
and other coalition partners, if no such weapons are found in
Iraq. They note that the press in the UK has been more independent
and vigilant than its US counterpart, and thus the British people
are generally better informed and more skeptical of their government
than US citizens tend to be.
While the odds of such planting seem
less than even, speculation on the possibility drove us down
memory lane. Likely or not in present circumstances, there is
ample precedent for such covert action operations. VIPS member
David MacMichael authored this short case-study paper to throw
light on this little known subject. What leaps out of his review
is a reminder that, were the Bush administration to decide in
favor of a planting or similar operation, it would not have to
start from scratch as far as experience is concerned. Moreover,
many of the historical examples that follow bear an uncanny resemblance
to factors and circumstances in play today.
* * *
1. Faked evidence was a hallmark of post-World
War II US covert operations in Latin America. In 1954, for example,
it was instrumental in overthrowing the Arbenz government in
Guatemala. Arbenz, who was suspected of having Communist leanings,
had tried to make the United Fruit Company comply with Guatemalan
law. At President Dwight D. Eisenhower's direction, the CIA organized
and armed a force of malcontent Guatemalans living in Nicaragua
to invade their home country.
The invasion was explained and "justified"
when a cache of Soviet-made weapons planted by the CIA was "discovered"
on Nicaragua's Atlantic coast. Washington alleged that the weapons
were intended to support an attempt by Arbenz to overthrow the
Nicaraguan government.
2. One of the more egregious and embarrassing
uses of fake material evidence occurred on the eve of the Bay
of Pigs fiasco in 1961, when Alabama National Guard B-26 bombers
attacked a Cuban Air Force base in Havana. When Cuba's UN ambassador
protested, US Ambassador Adlai Stevenson (himself misinformed
by the White House) insisted that the attacking planes were those
of defecting Cuban Air Force pilots.
Two of the aircraft were shot down in
Cuba, however, and others were forced to land in Miami where
they could be examined. When it became clear that the planes
were not Cuban, Washington's hand was shown and Stevenson was
in high dudgeon.
Legends, however, seem to die more slowly
than dudgeon. The US government clung unconscionably long to
"plausible denial" regarding the B-26s. Four Alabama
National Guardsmen had been killed in the incident and Cuba kept
trying to get the US to accept their bodies. Not until 1978 did
Washington agree to receive the remains and give them to the
families of the deceased.
3. The war in Vietnam is replete with
examples of fabrication and/or misrepresentation of intelligence
to justify US government policies and actions. The best-known
case, of course, is the infamous Tonkin Gulf incident_the one
that did not happen but was used by President Lyndon Johnson
to strong-arm Congress into giving him carte blanche for the
war. Adding insult to injury, CIA current intelligence analysts
were forbidden to report accurately on what had happened (and
not happened) in the Tonkin Gulf in their daily publication the
next morning, on grounds that the President had already decided
to use the non-incident to justify launching the air war that
very day. The analysts were aghast when their seniors explained
that they had decided that they did not want to "wear out
their welcome at the White House."
More directly relevant to the current
search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq is the following
incident, which was related to the author at the time by one
of the main participants. US officials running the war in Vietnam
believed that North Vietnamese Communist troops operating in
South Vietnam were supported by large, secret supply dumps across
the border in Cambodia. In 1968, the US military in Saigon drew
up plans to raid one of those suspected supply bases.
The colonel in charge of logistics for
the raid surprised other members of the raiding party by loading
up large amounts of North Vietnamese uniforms, weapons, communications
equipment, and so forth. He clearly had supplementary orders.
He explained to the members of his team that, since it would
be necessary to discover North Vietnamese supplies to justify
the incursion into neutral Cambodia, it behooved them to be prepared
to carry some back.
4. With William Casey at the helm of
the CIA during the Reagan presidency, the planting of evidence
to demonstrate that opponents of governments in Central America
were sponsored by the USSR reached new heights_or depths. The
following are representative examples:
(a) In January 1981 four dugout canoes
were "discovered" on a Salvadoran beach. The US claimed
that the boats had carried 100 armed Sandinista guerrillas from
Nicaragua to support leftist insurgents in El Salvador. Neither
weapons nor Nicaraguans traceable to the boats were ever found,
but Washington drew attention to the fact that the wood from
which the boats were made was not native to El Salvador.
This kind of "proof" might
at first seem laughable but this was no trivial matter. The Reagan
administration successfully used the incident to justify lifting
the embargo on US arms to El Salvador that President Carter had
imposed after members of the Salvadoran National Guard raped
and murdered three US nuns and their lay assistant. The names
of those four women now sit atop a long list of Americans and
Salvadorans subsequently murdered by US weapons in the hands
of the National Guard in El Salvador.
(b) In February 1981, the State Department
issued a sensational "White Paper" based on alleged
Salvadoran rebel documents. Authored by a young, eager-to-please
Foreign Service officer named John Glassman, the paper depicted
damning links between the insurgents, Nicaragua, Cuba, and the
Soviet Union. A smoking gun.
Unfortunately for Glassman and the Reagan
administration, Wall Street Journal reporter Jonathan Kwitny
got access to the same documents and found little resemblance
to what was contained in Glassman's paper. Glassman admitted
to Kwitny that he had made up quotes and guessed at figures for
the Soviet weapons supposedly coming to the Salvadoran insurgents.
(c) Certainly among the most extraordinary
attempts to plant evidence was the Barry Seal affair_a complicated
operation designed to incriminate the Nicaraguan Sandinista government
for international drug trafficking. The operation began in 1982,
when CIA Director Casey created the position of National Intelligence
Officer for Narcotics. Casey's handpicked NIO wasted no time
telling representatives of other agencies that high priority
was to be given to finding evidence linking both Castro and the
Sandinistas to the burgeoning cocaine trade.
Coast Guard and Drug Enforcement Agency
officers protested that this might be counterproductive since
Cuba was the most cooperative government in the Caribbean in
the fight against drugs and there was no evidence showing that
the Nicaraguan government played any significant role. Never
mind, said the NIO, the task was to put black hats on our enemies.
In 1986 Barry Seal, a former TWA pilot
who had trained Nicaraguan Contra pilots in the early eighties,
was facing a long sentence after a federal drug conviction in
Florida. Seal made his way to the White House's National Security
Council to make the following proposition to officials there.
He would fly his own plane to Colombia and take delivery of cocaine.
He would then make an "emergency landing" in Nicaragua
and make it appear that Sandinista officials were aiding him
in drug trafficking.
Seal made it clear that he would expect
help with his legal problems.
The Reagan White House jumped at the
offer. Seal's plane was flown to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base,
where it was fitted with secret cameras to enable Seal to photograph
Nicaraguan officials in the act of assisting him with the boxes
of cocaine.
The operation went as planned. Seal flew
to Colombia and then to Nicaragua where he landed at a commercial
airfield. There he was met by a Nicaraguan named Federico Vaughan,
who helped with the offloading and reloading of boxes of cocaine
and was duly photographed_not very well, it turned out, because
the special cameras malfunctioned. Though blurred and grainy,
the photos were delivered to the White House, and a triumphant
Ronald Reagan went on national TV to show that the Sandinistas
were not only Communists but also criminals intent on addicting
America's youth. What more justification was needed for the Contra
war against the Sandinistas!
Again, the Wall Street Journal's Jonathan
Kwitny played the role of skunk at the picnic, pointing out substantial
flaws in the concocted story. Vaughan, who according to the script
was an assistant to Nicaraguan Interior Minister Tomas Borge,
was shown not to be what he claimed. Indeed, congressional investigators
found that the telephone number called by Seal to contact Vaughn
belonged to the US embassy in Managua.
It was yet another fiasco, and Seal paid
for it with his life. His Colombian drug suppliers were not amused
when the Reagan administration identified him publicly as a US
undercover agent. As he awaited trial on other narcotics charges
in Louisiana, Seal was ambushed and killed by four gunmen who
left his body riddled with 140 bullets.
5. Fabricated evidence also played an
important role in the first President Bush's attempt to secure
congressional and UN approval for the 1991 Gulf War.
(a) Few will forget the heart-rending
testimony before a congressional committee by the sobbing 15
year-old Kuwaiti girl called Nayirah on October 10, 1990:
"I saw the Iraqi soldiers come into
the hospital with guns, and go into the room where 15 babies
were in incubators. They took the babies out of the incubators,
took the incubators, and left the babies on the cold floor to
die."
No congressperson, no journalist took
the trouble to probe the identity of "Nayirah," who
was said to be an escapee from Kuwait but was later revealed
to be the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington. With
consummate skill, the story had been manufactured out of whole
cloth and the 15 year-old coached by the PR firm Hill & Knowlton,
which has a rich history of being "imbedded" in Republican
administrations. Similar unsubstantiated yarns made their debut
several weeks later at the UN, where a team of seven "witnesses,"
also coached by Hill & Knowlton, testified about atrocities
in Iraq. (It was later learned that the seven had used false
names.) And in an unprecedented move, the UN Security Council
allowed the US to show a video created by Hill & Knowlton.
All to good effect. The PR campaign had
the desired impact, and Congress voted to authorize the use of
force against Iraq on January 12, 1991. (The UN did so on November
29, 1990.) "Nayirah's" true identity did not become
known until two years later. And Hill & Knowlton's coffers
bulged when the proceeds arrived from its billing of Kuwait.
Interestingly, the General Manager of
Hill & Knowlton's Washington, DC office at the time was a
woman named Victoria Clarke. She turned out to be less successful
in her next job, as Press Secretary for the re-election campaign
of President George Bush in 1992. But she is now back in her
element as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs.
(b) There was a corollary fabrication
that proved equally effective in garnering support in Congress
for the war resolution in 1991. The White House claimed there
were satellite photos showing Iraqi tanks and troops massing
on the borders of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, threatening to invade
Saudi Arabia. This fueled the campaign for war and frightened
the Saudis into agreeing to cooperate fully with US military
forces.
On September 11, 1990, President George
H. W. Bush, addressing a joint session of Congress, claimed "120,000
Iraqi troops with 850 tanks have poured into Kuwait and moved
south to threaten Saudi Arabia." But an enterprising journalist,
Jean Heller, reported in the St. Petersburg Times on January
6, 1991 (a bare ten days before the Gulf War began) that commercial
satellite photos taken on September 11, the day the president
spoke, showed no sign of a massive buildup of Iraqi forces in
Kuwait. When the Pentagon was asked to provide evidence to support
the president's claim, it refused to do so_and continues to refuse
to this day.
Interestingly, the national media in
the US chose to ignore Heller's story. Heller's explanation:
"I think part of the reason the
story was ignored was that it was published too close to the
start of the war. Second, and more importantly, I do not think
that people wanted to hear that we might have been deceived.
A lot of the reporters who have seen the story think it is dynamite,
but the editors seem to have the attitude, 'At this point, who
cares?'"
Does some of this have a familiar ring?
Ray McGovern worked as a CIA analyst
for 27 years. He co-authored this article with David MacMichael.
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) is a coast-to-coast
enterprise; mostly intelligence officers from analysis side of
CIA. McGovern can be reached at: rmcgovern@slschool.org
Today's
Features
Anthony
Gancarski
When Young Mothers Die in Combat
Chris
Floyd
Desolation Row: Bush's Barbarians Teach
by Example
Marjorie
Cohn
Tax the War Profiteers
William
Lind
The Fourth Generation of Modern War
Dave Marsh
Nina Simone: Freedom Singer
Binoy
Kampmark
Malayasia's America: the War on Iraq
David Vest
Who's Looting Whom?
Standard
Shaefer
Super Imperialism: an Interview with Michael Hudson
Andrew
Rodman
Lawn Poem
Steve
Perry
Bush's War Web Log 4/23
Website
of the Day
Weapons of Mass Destruction in the Middle East
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