'Politicization'
The plight of the CIA analysts in the 1980s also received little attention in Washington amid the triumphalism of the early 1990s. The story did surface briefly in 1991 during Gates's confirmation hearings to become President George H.W. Bush's CIA director. Then, a group of CIA analysts braved the administration's wrath by protesting the "politicization of intelligence."
Led by Soviet specialist Mel Goodman, the dissidents fingered Gates as the key "politicization" culprit. Their testimony added to doubts about Gates, who was under a cloud for his dubious testimony on the Iran-Contra scandal and allegations that he had played a role in another covert scheme to assist Saddam Hussein's Iraq. But the elder George Bush lined up solid Republican backing and enough accommodating Democrats - particularly Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David Boren - to push Gates through.
In the early 1990s. with the Cold War over, the need for objective intelligence also seemed less pressing. Political leaders apparently didn't grasp the potential danger of allowing a corrupted U.S. intelligence process to remain in place. There was a brief window for action with Bill Clinton's election in 1992, but the incoming Democrats lacked the political will to demand serious reform.
The "politicization" issue was put squarely before Clinton's incoming national security team by former CIA analyst Peter Dickson, who wrote a two-page memo on Dec. 10, 1992, to Samuel "Sandy" Berger, a top Clinton national security aide. Dickson was an analyst who suffered retaliation after refusing to rewrite a 1983 assessment that noted Soviet restraint on nuclear proliferation. His CIA superiors didn't want to give the Soviets any credit for demonstrating caution on the nuclear technology front. When Dickson stood by his evidence, he soon found himself facing accusations about his psychological fitness.
Dickson urged Clinton to appoint a new CIA director who understood "the deeper internal problems relating to the politicization of intelligence and the festering morale problem within the CIA." In urging a housecleaning, Dickson wrote, "This problem of intellectual corruption will not disappear overnight, even with vigorous remedial action. However, the new CIA director will be wise if he realizes from the start the dangers in relying on advice of senior CIA office managers who during the past 12 years advanced and prospered in their careers precisely because they had no qualms about suppressing intelligence or slanting analysis to suit the interest of Casey and Gates."
The appeals from Dickson and other CIA veterans were largely ignored by Clinton and his top aides, who were more interested in turning around the U.S. economy and enacting some modest social programs. Although Gates was removed as CIA director, Clinton appointed James Woolsey, a neo-conservative Democrat who had worked closely with the Reagan-Bush administrations. Under Woolsey and Clinton's subsequent CIA directors, the Gates team sans Gates consolidated its bureaucratic power.
The old ideal of intelligence analysis free from political taint was never restored. Clinton's final CIA director was George Tenet, who was kept on by George W. Bush in 2001. In violation of the CIA's long-standing tradition of avoiding even the appearance of partisanship, Tenet happily presided over the ceremony that renamed the CIA's Langley, Va., headquarters the George Bush Center for Intelligence, after George Bush senior.
The Iraq Debacle
Tenet also has proved himself a loyal bureaucrat to the second Bush administration. For instance, in February 2003 when Secretary of State Colin Powell addressed the United Nations Security Council about Iraq's alleged WMD program, Tenet was prominently seated behind Powell, giving the CIA's imprimatur to Powell's assertions that turned out to be a mixture of unproved assertions, exaggerations and outright lies. At one point in his speech, Powell even altered the text of intercepted conversations between Iraqi officials to make their comments appear incriminating. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com's "Bush's Alderaan."]
"If one goes back to that very long presentation [by Powell], point by point, one finds that this was not a very honest explanation," said Greg Thielmann, a former senior official in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, in an interview with PBS Frontline. "I have to conclude Secretary Powell was being a loyal secretary of state, a 'good soldier' as it were, building the administration's case before the international community." [For details, see Frontline's "Truth, War and Consequences."]
In the Foreign Affairs article, Pillar noted that Powell's U.N. speech also compromised the objectivity of the CIA on Iraq because "the intelligence community was pulled over the line into policy advocacy -- not so much by what it said as by its conspicuous role in the administration's public case for war. This was especially true when the intelligence community was made highly visible (with the director of central intelligence literally in the camera frame) in [Powell's] intelligence-laden presentation."
Pillar added that the CIA also was compromised "in the fall of 2002, when, at the administration's behest, the intelligence community published a white paper on Iraq's WMD programs -- but without including any of the community's judgments about the likelihood of those weapons' being used."
Though Tenet's primary responsibility should have been to the integrity of the intelligence product, he was helping Powell and the White House present a largely bogus case before the U.N.
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