WASHINGTON, March 2 (UPI) -- The CIA's former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia has accused the Bush administration of misusing intelligence reports in the months leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Paul Pillar, who served in the post from 2000 to 2005, said "the proper relationship between intelligence and policy was turned on its head" when the administration attempted to prove that Saddam Hussein had links with al-Qaida and was manufacturing weapons of mass destruction.
Speaking at Georgetown University, where he is now a Professor of Security Studies, Pillar lectured on the broken relationship between intelligence gathering and Bush administration foreign policy in Iraq. His article on the subject appears in the current issue of Foreign Affairs and has already generated a great deal of debate in the media. The White House has refused comment on the article.
Calling the links between al-Qaida and Hussein "a manufactured issue," Pillar said that among the intelligence community, "opportunities for bias were numerous and fine-spun." Pillar believes that the administration invaded Iraq with a genuine desire to trigger economic and political changes in the Middle East.
The problem with pre-war intelligence gathering lay in the fact that the administration was "looking for materials to justify decisions already made." Pillar said that there was no need for the administration to strong-arm analysts into producing favorable results. "Through a matter of sheer effort," he said, "you can achieve a politicized result."
Pillar writes that while the entire body of intelligence pointed towards avoidance of war or, "if war was going to be launched, to prepare for a messy aftermath," no such preparations were made. He says that these consequences were ignored through a combination of factors, including the deliberate omission or exaggeration of intelligence according to where it fit in the Bush administration's viewpoint, and the executive branch's hostile attitude towards analysts at the CIA and FBI.
"If you have an unhealthy relationship with Langley," Pillar noted, "than you are not getting your $40 billion worth."
In particular, the Bush administration's desire for war created an atmosphere in which matters of "word choice, emphasis and nuance" in intelligence analyses could help a certain viewpoint or piece of information make it through "the gauntlet of coordination, approval and review" and up to top policymakers. The nature of the bureaucratic process enabled a system in which there were no incentives to challenge accepted thinking.
"There is a strong inclination to avoid delivering an unpleasant assessment," said Pillar, "when you already know what the beliefs are."
Critics have accused Pillar of hypocrisy, noting that it was more than likely that he, or someone under his supervision, drafted some of the major papers making the case for the war. Considering the pre-invasion days when the case for war was being made before the American public, Pillar resisted the idea that the resignation of any lower-level intelligence community officials would have made any significant impact on policy makers.
After briefly speculating that he should have held "a sit-in or a protest," Pillar admitted that it was one of his "great regrets" that he contributed to reports linking Hussein with al-Qaida. He added, "The only one who could have made an impact, had he resigned, would have been Colin Powell."
Pillar admits he had little to offer in the way of constructive suggestions for avoiding another dysfunctional intelligence gathering situation. After propounding the benefits of the old favorite "further debate and discussion," Pillar said that the United States could learn a great deal from the Butler Report, in which a commission determined that British foreign policy and intelligence gathering were "improperly co-mingled." Prime Minister Tony Blair acknowledged the findings in the report, Pillar said, and "I'm still waiting on a similar admission on this side of the Atlantic."
A CIA employee for 28 years, Pillar almost sounded as though he was defending his former employer when asked how he felt on the day the United States invaded Iraq, knowing that the intelligence was faulty.
"You have to sit back," he answered. "That's the job of the intelligence officer. The President was elected. I was not. That's how you deal with it."
