As the director of central intelligence, Mr. Tenet
did not share the convictions of such hard-liners
in the administration as Vice President Dick Cheney
and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, but he
- along with senior CIA leaders - facilitated the
path to war by providing intelligence to the White
House and Congress that presented a false picture
of Iraq's intentions and capabilities.
Mr. Tenet's major obligations in the run-up to war
were making sure that assumptions on Iraqi weapons
of mass destruction and possible links to terrorism
were rigorously examined and that challenges to assumptions
were fully explored. By doing neither, Mr. Tenet
and the agency violated the intelligence community's
norms of ethical tradecraft.
The CIA used flawed intelligence in its belated
National Intelligence Estimate and unclassified
White Paper in October 2002. Mr. Tenet himself
wrote a letter to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence
Committee affirming the existence of ties between
Iraq and al-Qaida. In January 2003, the CIA failed
to stop President Bush from making a false statement
in his State of the Union speech, charging Saddam
Hussein with trying to obtain uranium from Africa
for a nuclear weapons program. Later in the month,
Mr. Tenet participated in the preparation of Secretary
of State Colin L. Powell's phony case for war to
the United Nations in February 2003.
In his book, Mr. Tenet argues that the estimate
on Iraqi WMD was flawed because his agency lacked
sufficient time to prepare a comprehensive document.
This claim is specious on two levels. First, Mr.
Tenet, knowing in summer 2002 that the administration
was marching toward war with Iraq, should have
demanded an estimate from his National Intelligence
Council. He shouldn't have waited until September,
when Sens. Richard J. Durbin of Illinois and Bob
Graham of Florida demanded an estimate. Second,
there is no reason to accept Mr. Tenet's claim
that lack of time was a factor. The flawed analysis
that appeared in the estimate was used to make
Secretary Powell's specious case to the United
Nations four months later. Furthermore, Mr. Tenet
and his managers publicly made the case for the
estimate after its flaws had been revealed.
It is particularly troubling that Mr. Tenet interpreted
his "slam dunk" remark to the president as an
assurance that the CIA could "strengthen the public
presentation" for war. As director of central intelligence,
Mr. Tenet's obligation was to make sure the administration
had the intelligence it required to debate a decision
to go to war. This obligation is particularly important
in the case of a pre-emptive war, which requires
strong intelligence if it is to be justified. Mr.
Tenet totally failed in his responsibility to scrutinize
all the intelligence used to make the case for
war. Furthermore, it is not the business of the
CIA director to help make a public case for war.
Because Mr. Tenet lacked a background in intelligence
analysis, he relied heavily on a deputy, John McLaughlin,
who was a career intelligence analyst. But instead
of giving Mr. Tenet proper guidance, Mr. McLaughlin
relied on single-source and poorly sourced intelligence
to make the case for war, and he ignored credible
intelligence that pointed to an absence of WMD
in Iraq.
The claim that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting
his nuclear capability was based upon a single
source - an intelligence fabrication. Similarly,
the sole source for claims about mobile biological
laboratories was unstable and untrustworthy. And
the sole source for links between Iraq and al-Qaida
had been tortured and abused in his interrogations
and eventually recanted.
Mr. Tenet and Mr. McLaughlin knew the United States
lacked the intelligence case to go to war, but
they were prepared to go along with the administration
and even to provide the public case to do so.
As various congressional committees and presidential
commissions have concluded, the CIA was egregiously
wrong on virtually every aspect of Iraqi WMD: nuclear,
chemical and biological. There was no credible
intelligence on links between Iraq and al-Qaida.
The congressional oversight process failed to do
its job of scrutinizing this intelligence, and
most of the media failed to permit contrarian voices
to be heard.
The pattern of illicit tradecraft points to a
larger problem within the intelligence community
that will not be fixed by recent developments such
as the creation of an office for the director of
national intelligence, greater centralization of
the intelligence process, and placing the management
of the intelligence community in the hands of the
military.
We are witnessing a terrible loss of life and
resources in Iraq. Until we create a CIA that is
willing to speak truth to power, we will continue
to suffer terrible losses.
Melvin A. Goodman, a senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy, was an analyst
at the CIA from 1966 to 1990. His e-mail is goody789@comcast.net.
Copyright © 2007, The
Baltimore Sun
