Faulty intelligence? No. Faulty political influence.

The new Pentagon papers

A high-ranking military officer reveals how Defense Department extremists suppressed information and twisted the truth to drive the country to war.

I saw a narrow and deeply flawed policy favored by some executive appointees in the Pentagon used to manipulate and pressurize the traditional relationship between policymakers in the Pentagon and U.S. intelligence agencies.

I witnessed neoconservative agenda bearers within OSP usurp measured and carefully considered assessments, and through suppression and distortion of intelligence analysis promulgate what were in fact falsehoods to both Congress and the executive office of the president.

While this commandeering of a narrow segment of both intelligence production and American foreign policy matched closely with the well-published desires of the neoconservative wing of the Republican Party, many of us in the Pentagon, conservatives and liberals alike, felt that this agenda, whatever its flaws or merits, had never been openly presented to the American people. Instead, the public story line was a fear-peddling and confusing set of messages, designed to take Congress and the country into a war of executive choice, a war based on false pretenses, and a war one year later Americans do not really understand. That is why I have gone public with my account.

Still Smoke And Mirrors

Ray McGovern chaired National Intelligence Estimates during his 27-year career and had high respect for the expertise and dedication of INR analysts. Ray is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, which includes alumni from CIA, INR, and other intelligence agencies. He is now co-director of the Servant Leadership School, an inner-city outreach ministry in Washington, DC.
*snip*
In other words, the purpose of the estimate was not to inform an (already reached) decision on whether war was necessary. Rather, it was to enlist intelligence in the campaign to deceive Congress into thinking that Iraq posed such a threat that the legislative branch’s prerogative must be surrendered to the president, and—not incidentally—to make so persuasive a case to the nation that those who dared vote against the president would be highly vulnerable in the mid-term election of 2002. That worked, too.

Thanks to inspector David Kay’s refreshing honesty, we now know that Cheney’s charges, and the cognate conclusions of the estimate, were bogus.