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From Consortium News
he New York Times Magazine on Friday posted "Colin Powell Still Wants Answers," a long article by Robert Draper to appear in Sunday's edition. The article is based on Draper's upcoming book, To Start a War: How the Bush Administration Took America Into Iraq.
Google Books calls it "the definitive, revelatory reckoning with arguably the most consequential decision in the history of American foreign policy." I can hardly wait.
Meanwhile, Draper's article focuses on then Secretary of State Powell and his UN speech of Feb. 5, 2003 and the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) upon which it is largely based. A lot of the detail will be new to most readers, not very much new to Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which had been established a month before. VIPS watched the speech, dissected it, and sent their verdict to President George W. Bush before close of business that same afternoon
We gave Powell a charitable grade of "C," faulting him for, inter alia, not providing needed context and perspective. We should have flunked him outright.
Draper describes how, despite CIA's strong effort to please, the "case" the agency made for war on Iraq, using such evidence as there was on weapons of mass destruction, was deemed not alarmist enough for Vice President Dick Cheney and other administration hawks.
Specifically, the hawks were dissatisfied with the evidence-light, but-alarmist (term of art used was "leaning forward") Pentagon and White House briefings by CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin in late Dec. 2002 on WMD in Iraq. The hawks started to look elsewhere, since not all senior officials (including Powell) appeared to be "with the program."
Draper reports that Powell ordered Carl Ford, director of the widely respected State Department Intelligence Unit (INR), to review the bidding regarding biological, chemical and nuclear weapons. Ford's analysts strongly disputed many of the key assertions from the usual suspects, particularly those coming from non-intelligence, war-friendly bureaucrats enlisted to support the war-lust proclivities of Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
Powell's chief of staff, Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, was also spending an inordinate amount of time batting away unsourced and dubious-sourced assertions from Cheney-ites, so Powell finally told Wilkerson to start drafting from scratch.
Here's where it gets interesting; here is where a little history and inside-baseball intelligence experience comes in handy. Draper quotes Powell: "It was George Tenet who came to the rescue."
CIA Director Tenet suggested basing a new draft on the National Intelligence Estimate of Oct. 1, 2002, "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction." That had immense appeal to Tenet and others who had been co-opted into "leaning forward" to facilitate a Bush/Cheney war on Iraq. Indeed, one can assume it had appeal to most of those involved in Powell's speech preparation, given that the Security Council briefing was but a handful of days away.
I have been referring to that NIE, advisedly, as The Whore of Babylon, wrong on every major accusation about WMD in Iraq. I speak from experience at the CIA as a former chair of National Intelligence Estimates. This one was prepared not to determine the truth, but rather to "justify" a preemptive war on Iraq where there was nothing to preempt.
To their credit, State/INR analysts had expressed formal dissent from some of its main conclusions back in September 2002.
No, it is not possible that Powell could have been unaware of that. And it is not difficult to explain why Powell chose to spurn his own intelligence analysts, despite their relatively solid reputation. I will resist the temptation to guess at Powell's motivation, even though I have had some considerable experience with him. Back in the day, we used to spend a few minutes comparing notes before my one-on-one morning briefings of his boss, Defense Secretary Casper Weinberger, with The President's Daily Brief.
I am not surprised, though, as Draper quotes Powell explaining his decision to stay in place as secretary of state and to do what he was told: "I knew I didn't have any choice. He's the President." Draper adds that, "although Powell would not admit it, Bush's request that he be the one to make the case against Hussein to the U.N. was enormously flattering. Cheney took a more direct approach: 'The Vice President said to me: "You're the most popular man in America. Do something with that popularity..."
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