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Clearly, this first-hand intelligence from proven sources with excellent access did not suit the Cheney/Bush narrative for war on Iraq. The president's staff told CIA operatives not to forward additional reporting on this issue from these sources, explaining that Bush did not want more information about weapons of mass destruction; rather, it was now about "regime change."
Did Morell know about this when he was "coordinating" input into Powell's disastrous speech? It is a safe bet that Morell was fully aware of the con job he was "coordinating" as did other senior intelligence officials.
In his own memoir, former Director of National Intelligence (and, during Iraq, director of imagery analysis), James Clapper takes a share of the blame for the Iraq WMD fiasco. Clapper puts the blame for "the failure" to find the (non-existent) WMD "squarely on the shoulders of the administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn't really there." (emphasis added ) .
Regarding Morell's "I-confess-they-did-it" apology to Powell, the still-youngish Morell has not stopped lusting for an eventual seat at the table, so he apparently thought it a smart move politically. Typically, Powell did not react as far as is known. Nor has the conflict-averse Powell summoned the cohones to say clearly what he thinks of how Tenet, Morell, et al., sold him a bill of goods on Iraq.
In the "where-are-they-now?" department, Tenet quit in July 2004 and fled to Wall Street to be joined the following year by Jami Miscik, who was deputy director for intelligence during the Iraq fiasco. She "lucked into" a nice job at Lehman Brothers before it went bust.
Note to readers: If you know someone advising the Biden team on selecting a director for CIA, please pass this along.
Finally, those interested in suggestions from the experience of previous transition teams, please click on one or two of the links below. The key issues tend to remain the same. Above all, integrity counts.
Additional Readings
1 A Compromised Central Intelligence Agency: What Can Be Done?
By Ray McGovern, 2004
Chapter 4 in "Patriotism, Democracy, and Common Sense: Restoring America's Promise at Home and Abroad", Rowman & Littlefield, 2004
Ray's chapter follows chapters by Alan Curtis (editor), Gary Hart, and Jessica Mathews.
Link to Chapter 4 text:
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