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More testimonies of pre-war pressure on US intelligence analysts, from the archives. This Jonathan Landay and Warren Strobel piece for Knight Ridder, from October 8, 2002, describes intense pressure on analysts. [Thanks to reader SM again for the clip.]
While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.
These officials charge that administration hawks have exaggerated evidence of the threat that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein poses -- including distorting his links to the al-Qaida terrorist network -- have overstated the amount of international support for attacking Iraq and have downplayed the potential repercussions of a new war in the Middle East.
They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary.
"Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews.
No one who was interviewed disagreed.
They cited recent suggestions by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that Saddam and Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida network are working together.
Rumsfeld said on Sept. 26 that the U.S. government has "bulletproof" confirmation of links between Iraq and al-Qaida members, including "solid evidence" that members of the terrorist network maintain a presence in Iraq.
Read the whole thing.
I listened to Sen. Pat Roberts on the Sunday talk shows today saying the committee asked the 200 some intelligence community officials it interviewed if they had felt under pressure, and if so, if that pressure had caused them to change their analysis. He said, and I believe he is sincere on this point, that no one said that. It's hard to understand how to reconcile the seeming discrepancy between the many news reports such as this one interviewing analysts off record describing the pressure they felt they were under, with the committee's findings. But one obvious potential reason could be concern that the wrong answer could cost one one's job. There's no protecting one's identity before the committee, as there is with a trusted reporter agreeing to protect a source's anonymity. And it wouldn't be inconceivable to someone being asked to testify before such a committee that one's answers might get back to higher ups.
For evidence of vindictiveness by high level Bush officials against staff who gave "the wrong answers," check out the section of the report on administration pressure around pages 280, where John Bolton tries to get a State Department intel analyst fired from his position because he tries to take out language from a Bolton speech that would have accused Cuba of having active offensive biological weapons program. Check out page 280 where Doug Feith pressures a NESA analyst to stop using the word "assassination" in regard to Israel's policy of targeted assassinations.
UPDATE: As a journalist who has been covering the national security beat for a few years, I have intelligence sources who told me in the past couple years about pressure to find a link between al Qaeda and Iraq, and more than pressure, an environment where this was a certain obsession, the holy grail. I called up Pat Roberts' office many months ago and spoke with a staffer there about it, and the staffer said sincerely, tell those people, call us from a payphone, we don't have to know their names, but we want to know. But when I told this to various intel sources, their response was, are you crazy? This is a culture of people who are uniquely willing to submit to authority, uniquely subject to crimping of their private lives, their very ability to conduct their daily lives with a degree of forthrightness. They are subject to regular polygraphs, etc. They knowingly subject themselves to that kind of life. That takes a certain type of person, a person who is more willing than many of the rest of us to sacrifice a high degree of autonomy, privacy, freedom, honesty, for something they think is more important. I mean, I know people in the intel world who have gone through breakdowns in their marriages who would sooner have died than gone for counseling, because being seen as mentally unstable they believed could have ruined their careers. So I am not surprised there is a discrepancy between what intel people say "anonymously" and what the committee heard on the record.
UPDATE: Tim Dunlop of the excellent Road to Surfdom has some strong analysis of the report and pressure issue.