This piece was reprinted by OpEd News with permission or license. It may not be reproduced in any form without permission or license from the source.
Answering a question on this last week, Secretary Powell conceded -- with neither apology nor apparent embarrassment -- that the documents in question, which the US and UK had provided to the UN to show that Iraq is still pursuing nuclear weapons, were forgeries. Powell was short: "If that information is inaccurate, fine."
But it is anything but fine. This kind of episode inflicts serious damage on US credibility abroad -- the more so, as it appears neither you nor your advisers and political supporters are in hot pursuit of those responsible. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts has shown little enthusiasm for finding out what went awry.
Committee Vice-Chairman, Jay Rockefeller, suggested that the FBI be enlisted to find the perpetrators of the forgeries, which US officials say contain "laughable and child-like errors," and to determine why the CIA did not recognize them as forgeries. But Roberts indicated through a committee spokeswoman that he believes it is "inappropriate for the FBI to investigate at this point." Foreign observers do not have to be paranoid to suspect some kind of cover-up.
Who Did It? Who Cares!
Last week Wisconsin Congressman Dave Obey cited a recent press report suggesting that a foreign government might be behind the forgeries as part of an effort to build support for military action against Iraq and asked Secretary Powell if he could identify that foreign government. Powell said he could not do so "with confidence." Nor did he appear in the slightest interested.
We think you should be. In the absence of hard evidence one looks for those with motive and capability. The fabrication of false documentation, particularly what purports to be official correspondence between the agencies of two governments, is a major undertaking requiring advanced technical skills normally available only in a sophisticated intelligence service. And yet the forgeries proved to be a sloppy piece of work.
Chalk it up to professional pride by (past) association, but unless the CIA's capabilities have drastically eroded over recent years, the legendary expertise of CIA technical specialists, combined with the crudeness of the forgeries, leave us persuaded that the CIA did not craft the bogus documents. Britain's MI-6 is equally adept at such things. Thus, except in the unlikely event that crafting forgery was left to second-stringers, it seems unlikely that the British were the original source.
We find ourselves wondering if amateur intelligence operatives in the Pentagon basement and/or at 10 Downing Street were involved and need to be called on the carpet. We would urge you strongly to determine the provenance. This is not trivial matter.
As our VIPS colleague (and former CIA Chief of Station) Ray Close has noted, "If anyone in Washington deliberately practiced disinformation in this way against another element of our own government or wittingly passed fabricated information to the UN, this could do permanent damage to the commitment to competence and integrity on which the whole American foreign policy process depends."
The lack of any strong reaction from the White House feeds the suspicion that the US was somehow involved in, or at least condones, the forgery. It is important for you to know that, although credibility-destroying stories like this rarely find their way into the largely cowed US media, they do grab headlines abroad among those less disposed to give the US the benefit of the doubt.
As you know better than anyone, a year and a half after 9/11 the still traumatized US public remains much more inclined toward unquestioning trust in the presidency. Over time that child-like trust can be expected to erode, if preventive maintenance is not performed -- and hyperbole shunned.
Hyperbole
The forgery aside, the administration's handling of the issue of whether Iraq is continuing to develop nuclear weapons has done particularly severe damage to US credibility. On October 7 your speechwriters had you claim that Iraq might be able to produce a nuclear weapon in less than a year. Formal US intelligence estimates, sanitized versions of which have been made public, hold that Iraq will be unable to produce a nuclear weapon until the end of the decade, if then.
In that same speech you claimed that "the evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program" -- a claim reiterated by Vice President Cheney on "Meet the Press" on March 16. Reporting to the UN Security Council in recent months, UN chief nuclear inspector Mohammed ElBaradei has asserted that the inspectors have found no evidence that Iraq has reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.
Some suspect that the US does have such evidence but has not shared it with the UN because Washington has been determined to avoid doing anything that could help the inspections process succeed. Others believe the "evidence" to be of a piece with the forgery -- in all likelihood crafted by Richard Perle's Pentagon Plumbers. Either way, the US takes a large black eye in public opinion abroad.
Then there are those controversial aluminum tubes which you have cited in major speeches as evidence of a continuing effort on Iraq's part to produce nuclear weapons. Aside from one analyst in the CIA and the people reporting to Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, there is virtually unanimous agreement within the intelligence, engineering, and scientific communities with ElBaradei's finding that "it was highly unlikely" that the tubes could have been used to produce nuclear material.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
4
4
3
