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truthmatters
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Posted: Sun May 29th, 2005 01:13 am |
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Its more like rewarding those who got what Bush wanted done, fixing the facts around it.
Analysts Behind Iraq Intelligence Were Rewarded
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 28, 2005; A01
Two Army analysts whose work has been cited as part of a key intelligence failure on Iraq -- the claim that aluminum tubes sought by the Baghdad government were most likely meant for a nuclear weapons program rather than for rockets -- have received job performance awards in each of the past three years, officials said.
The civilian analysts, former military men considered experts on foreign and U.S. weaponry, work at the Army's National Ground Intelligence Center (NGIC), one of three U.S. agencies singled out for particular criticism by President Bush's commission that investigated U.S. intelligence.
The Army analysts concluded that it was highly unlikely that the tubes were for use in Iraq's rocket arsenal, a finding that bolstered a CIA contention that they were destined for nuclear centrifuges, which was in turn cited by the Bush administration as proof that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
The problem, according to the commission, which cited the two analysts' work, is that they did not seek or obtain information available from the Energy Department and elsewhere showing that the tubes were indeed the type used for years as rocket-motor cases by Iraq's military. The panel said the finding represented a "serious lapse in analytic tradecraft" because the center's personnel "could and should have conducted a more exhaustive examination of the question."
Pentagon spokesmen said the awards for the analysts were to recognize their overall contributions on the job over the course of each year. But some current and former officials, including those who called attention to the awards, said the episode shows how the administration has failed to hold people accountable for mistakes on prewar intelligence.
Despite sharp critiques from the president's commission and the Senate intelligence committee, no major reprimand or penalty has been announced publicly in connection with the intelligence failures, though investigations are still underway at the CIA. George J. Tenet resigned as CIA director but was later awarded the Medal of Freedom by Bush.
The president's commission urged the Bush administration to consider taking action against the agencies, and perhaps the individuals, responsible for the most serious errors in assessing Iraq's weapons program.
Washington lawyer Richard Ben-Veniste, who was a member of the Sept. 11 commission and whose government experience goes back to service as a Watergate prosecutor, said it is important for the administration to hold the intelligence community accountable for mistakes.
"It matters whether it was carelessness or tailoring [of intelligence], whether it was based on perceived wants of an administration or overt requests . . . It is time now to demonstrate the need for the integrity of the process," Ben-Veniste said.
In its report, the commission, chaired by former appellate judge Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.), said "reform requires more than changing the community's systems: it also requires accountability."
One step, the commission said, could be for the new director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, to "hold accountable the organizations that contributed to the flawed assessments of Iraq's WMD program."
With regard to the NGIC and two other agencies that committed errors -- the Defense Humint Service, which specializes in "human intelligence," and the CIA's Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center, or WINPAC -- the commission said Negroponte should give "serious consideration to whether each of these organizations should be reconstituted, substantially reorganized or made subject to detailed oversight."
Negroponte's office declined to comment for this article.
The NGIC assessment of the aluminum tubes was described by the president's intelligence commission as a "gross failure." The agency was "completely wrong," said the panel, when it judged in September 2002 that the tubes Iraq was purchasing were "highly unlikely" to be used for rocket-motor cases because of their "material and tolerances."
The commission found that aluminum tubes with similar tolerances were used in a previous Iraqi rocket, called the Nasser 81, and that the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) had published details about that system in 1996, as had the U.S. Department of Energy in 2001. The commission's report said "the two primary NGIC rocket analysts said they did not know the dimensions" of the older Nasser 81 rocket and were unaware of the IAEA and Energy Department reports. The report did not name the analysts, but officials confirmed that the panel was referring to George Norris and Robert Campos.
Contacted by telephone, Norris said that any questions would have to be answered by his superiors. A request for comment made by The Washington Post to Campos would get the same response, Norris said.
In a written statement, the Pentagon, speaking for the NGIC, confirmed that Norris and Campos had received awards, and it said that they were based "on their overall annual performance -- not on a single contribution -- and supervisors were encouraged to reward individuals on the basis of their annual contributions." The awards were given as part of a government-wide incentive program to recognize high-performing employees with cash or time off. An internal NGIC newsletter listed Norris and Campos as among those who received performance awards, lump-sum cash payments, in fiscal 2002, 2003 and 2004.
The Pentagon statement also said that the NGIC "has recognized errors in analytical judgment occurred and individuals involved with this situation have taken a specific lead within the organization to understand, address, and instruct lessons learned." The statement said that the Silberman-Robb commission report "had provided valuable input to our human intelligence reform efforts which were initiated in January 2004" as part of the Pentagon proposal to remodel the Defense Department's overall intelligence.
The commission faulted the Defense Humint Service for failing to withdraw reports that were based on input from "Curveball," an Iraqi exile working with the German intelligence service. Curveball provided questionable information -- later disproved -- about Iraq's alleged mobile facilities that could produce biological weapons. The Defense unit, the panel said, resisted the notion that "it had any real responsibility to vet his veracity."
The CIA's WINPAC also came in for specific criticisms. WINPAC "was at the heart of many of the errors . . . from the mobile BW [biological warfare] case to the aluminum tubes," the commission reported, saying it feared "a culture of enforced consensus has infected WINPAC as an organization."
The CIA, the panel said, contributed to misjudgments about the aluminum tubes. The commission found that some U.S. intelligence analysts believed the Iraqis had re-engineered an Italian rocket called the Medusa, which also used the type of aluminum tubes that Iraq was seeking. But neither the Pentagon agencies nor the CIA -- the most vociferous proponents of the idea that the tubes were destined for nuclear use -- obtained the specifications for the Italian-made Medusa until well after the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom in March 2003.
Seven months earlier, a CIA officer had suggested that the CIA track down data on Medusa, but CIA officials took no action on that idea "on the basis that such information was not needed because CIA judged the tubes to be destined for use in centrifuges," the commission wrote.
A senior CIA official said that the incident raised by the commission had been investigated and that it was found that the Medusa suggestion "did not get within the agency where it should have gotten." As a result, this official said, "We are putting more eyes on such subjects and the systematic sharing of such information is more extensive now."
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truthmatters
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Posted: Sun May 29th, 2005 01:27 am |
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| No reply cons?
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truthmatters
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Posted: Sun May 29th, 2005 02:47 am |
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| Just as I thought no Bush supporters will comment on the TRUTH!
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rufugnnutz
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Posted: Sun May 29th, 2005 06:38 am |
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It really has little to do with Bush. The CIA and all of the other US government agencies have career employees doing the work and an appointee on top, who issues memos that tell the workers to do. That means that little changes when the Commissioner, Director or whatever they call the boss, is replaced. Tenet was a Clinton appointment, but Clinton refused to speak to him and the Janet Reno Justice Department made rules that forbade the CIA and FBI from exchanging information.
The CIA has agents and sources that provide raw information which is scrutinized by analysts, who try to figure out what it means. They forward their best guess to the managers who decide what the impact of the information will be and how to address it in a political context.
In the case of the analysts and the tubes, they are supposed to offer what sounds reasonable, not what is absolute fact. If you punish them for not being correct, they will not offer an opinion unless they are sure, which gives the managers nothing to go on.
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LcdDrmr
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Posted: Sun Jul 10th, 2005 01:10 am |
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rufugnnutz wrote: It really has little to do with Bush. The CIA and all of the other US government agencies have career employees doing the work and an appointee on top, who issues memos that tell the workers to do. That means that little changes when the Commissioner, Director or whatever they call the boss, is replaced. Tenet was a Clinton appointment, but Clinton refused to speak to him and the Janet Reno Justice Department made rules that forbade the CIA and FBI from exchanging information.
The CIA has agents and sources that provide raw information which is scrutinized by analysts, who try to figure out what it means. They forward their best guess to the managers who decide what the impact of the information will be and how to address it in a political context.
In the case of the analysts and the tubes, they are supposed to offer what sounds reasonable, not what is absolute fact. If you punish them for not being correct, they will not offer an opinion unless they are sure, which gives the managers nothing to go on.
It has everything to do with Bush. The pretense that everything Bush's Administration claimed that turned out not to be true--which IS virtually everything--is an 'intelligence failure' is as disingenuous as that last paragraph. There was no mystery about what the tubes were for, and it was a conscious choice to portray them as nuclear-related and centrifuge-capable, which they weren't. Analysts are not paid and rewarded to do a poor job--unless you think that explains the Patriot missile's poor performance record, contrary to Bush 1's portrayal?
Everything this Administration presented about Iraq turned out to be erroneous, unfounded or forged. All the evidence they presented was wrong. This is not a 'failure.' It is not a 'failure' when you lie about having satellite pictures from a satellite that is out of operation, for instance, or when you show year-old (and therefor irrelevant) black and white photos to the UN that are supposed to come from a color-photo satellite, when an actual live stream in real-time was possible. What's more, the use of forgeries and misleading evidence in every case--evidence the Administration knew was not what they presented it to be--speaks to their prior knowledge that there were no WMD, that the things they wanted the world to believe did not exist and they already knew it, else the need to 'fake it' would have been unnecessary and uncontemplated, and certainly unacted upon. Nothing they claimed about the weapons in Iraq turned out to be true. This wasn't just 'misreading' of evidence, but whole cloth fabrication. Nothing they claimed was found, and many citations of theirs have no 'reported evidence' behind the claims. For instance, Bush claimed biological and/or nerve agents had been deployed to local commanders of Iraq's army in many areas. This would include at least dozens of locations, if not hundreds, in order to be used effectively against our troops. Yet, those wily Iraqis--even while they were being obliterated by our forces--somehow managed to a) not once use their 'ultimate weapon' against us, and b) hide every single one of those deployed weapons so that we never found any. Yet, we are supposed to believe this was true intelligence Bush was just parroting? Like all the other lies Powell presented to the UN, every one of which was found untrue once we invaded?
Where are: the 8,500 liters of Anthrax? or the four tons of VX nerve gas? (Oh, wait, but the UN had already destroyed that VX years before--so why was it brought up as 'evidence' when it no longer existed? Was that an 'intelligence failure' or an attempt to deceive? Duh.) And where are the total of up to 500 total tons of chemical and biological warfare agents Iraq was supposed to possess? Not found. Not there. What happened to Iraq's complement of illegal long-range Scud missiles? Pretty hard to hide those permanently--and why would you? Yet, they've vanished. Into thin air? Or perhaps the problem is they only existed in someone's ambitious imagination--someone who believes the end justifies the means, or might makes right, or some other proud, conservative, Republican American tradition?
Oh... they aren't? Then why defend them?
And what about the famous 'yellow cake' from Niger? Conservative Bush supporters don't seem to apply any logic whatsoever to this matter. There are two primary factors they routinely ignore: first, all of Niger's uranium mining and manufacture is controlled by a French corporate operation. Niger cannot 'negotiate' any yellow cake transfers with anyone, and no yellow cake is actually produced in Niger in any case but exported to France to Comurhex (Malvesi near Narbonne) for conversion; and second, Iraq had a nuclear reactor that Israel bombed and they needed to import no 'yellow cake' for it because Iraq has plenty of its own uranium. It wouldn't have been as dramatic or scary enough for Bush to point out this simple fact, so they made up the yellow cake business to lend Saddam that villainous cloak and dagger atmosphere. Most importantly, if Iraq 'needed' outside help, we could stop him, whereas if he already has the stuff inside his borders there's not much we can do. And of course the 'evidence' Bush had for this yellow cake fiasco consisted of forgeries so obvious no intelligence analyst could have recommended them to bolster the Administration's bogus case-building for the war to come.
Mis-labeling photos of hydrogen balloon-inflators as bioweapons labs is not due to ignorance, but wilful deceit--malice aforethought. It is all the manipulation of innocent objects into 'threats' that is the true evidence of guilt. Which nation, Iraq or the USA, was the true threat to others? Which was really bristling with weapons and determined to use them in defiance of world opinion and the UN? Which was lying about the danger to itself and the reasons behind its beligerance?
It doesn't matter how many presidents before lied or betrayed us in one way or another. This one is caught in blatant malfeasance (if not worse) and it should not be tolerated by the people. If we are lied to, we are not being represented by our government, but rather manipulated. That is not government by, for and of the people at all. Bondage through ignorance, or even through willful subservience, is still bondage, and un-American. What this Administration has done is not only shameful but unethical, immoral and illegal--yes, it is illegal to lie to us, which is why they try to pass it off as 'bad intelligence.' But the only really bad intelligence seems to be among the people who allow themselves to be mistreated and misrepresented in such criminal fashion.
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TommyPain
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Posted: Sun Jul 10th, 2005 01:24 am |
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| warChimp actually told the FBI and CIA that they did a "good job" after 9/11. He doesn't believe in accountability. Why would he...he's a CEO, not a president. CEO's get multi-million dollar severance packages when they screw up.
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swede
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Posted: Sun Jul 10th, 2005 01:34 am |
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truthmatters wrote: No reply cons?
I'm not surprised, really, just saddened. Assuming the veracity of your post, this is very much the same state of affairs as transpired under President Clinton by those who targeted American citizens for death in violation of the Constitution at Ruby Ridge and at Waco.
The problems seems to be more a broken system of civil servants who remain from administration to administration, than the specific President or administration. Insider talk used to be that the civil servant system, with strong tenure rules, had to be reworked before any administration could hope to fully implement its agenda without being at least partially frustrated by the system.
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LcdDrmr
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Posted: Sun Jul 10th, 2005 04:21 am |
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swede wrote: truthmatters wrote: No reply cons?
I'm not surprised, really, just saddened. Assuming the veracity of your post, this is very much the same state of affairs as transpired under President Clinton by those who targeted American citizens for death in violation of the Constitution at Ruby Ridge and at Waco.
The problems seems to be more a broken system of civil servants who remain from administration to administration, than the specific President or administration. Insider talk used to be that the civil servant system, with strong tenure rules, had to be reworked before any administration could hope to fully implement its agenda without being at least partially frustrated by the system.
Exactly. Clinton's Administration was very nearly as corrupt as the present one. In fact, the last few Administrations amount to carryovers from one to the next with little differentiation.
On the other hand, to lay the blame on the civil servant system is to deflect due accounting away from the policy makers. Perhaps the mistake people make in regards to politicians is to choose sides at all. That is what those politicians depend upon to convince us that one side is 'bad' and therefore to blame for the problems they are now going to 'fix' while in office.
It is far more productive for the general populace to regard them all--all leaders all around the world--as criminals, the kingpins of a worldwide criminal empire that divides up the labor and spoils of the world, always keeping the population under the illusory thrall of 'law' and 'government' that supposedly represents the people's interests.
Even if this state of affairs is not quite true, it is still the safest and most sensible view for the public to take, affording the politicians no implicit trust, no respect given merely because they are glib or appear 'patriotic.' We have little to judge them by, especially when an Administration, such as the present one, guards itself so zealously from public scrutiny. The more secretive that leaders are, the more the people should suspect their motives. Unfortunately, Americans are about the most mind-controlled people on the planet, the guinea pigs of decades of Madison Avenue experimentation, to the point where we've become one giant psy-op, molded and manipulated into accepting anything as long as our trusted 'leaders' offer some semblance of rationality, or at least a patriotic emotional appeal we dare not question--and failing that then some 'shock and awe' threat (or even the real thing) to inspire our fealty through fear.
The delusion that it means anything to say 'Republican' or 'Democrat' or 'Conservative' or 'Liberal' is precisely, and by intent, what will keep us all under the heel of the unscrupulous and unprincipled far into our collective future of disenfranchisement until it is probably too late to reclaim our own principles, let alone the birthright of freedom we once held in common.
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swede
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Posted: Sun Jul 10th, 2005 04:24 am |
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LcdDrmr wrote: swede wrote: truthmatters wrote: No reply cons?
I'm not surprised, really, just saddened. Assuming the veracity of your post, this is very much the same state of affairs as transpired under President Clinton by those who targeted American citizens for death in violation of the Constitution at Ruby Ridge and at Waco.
The problems seems to be more a broken system of civil servants who remain from administration to administration, than the specific President or administration. Insider talk used to be that the civil servant system, with strong tenure rules, had to be reworked before any administration could hope to fully implement its agenda without being at least partially frustrated by the system.
Exactly. Clinton's Administration was very nearly as corrupt as the present one. In fact, the last few Administrations amount to carryovers from one to the next with little differentiation.
On the other hand, to lay the blame on the civil servant system is to deflect due accounting away from the policy makers. Perhaps the mistake people make in regards to politicians is to choose sides at all. That is what those politicians depend upon to convince us that one side is 'bad' and therefore to blame for the problems they are now going to 'fix' while in office.
It is far more productive for the general populace to regard them all--all leaders all around the world--as criminals, the kingpins of a worldwide criminal empire that divides up the labor and spoils of the world, always keeping the population under the illusory thrall of 'law' and 'government' that supposedly represents the people's interests.
Even if this state of affairs is not quite true, it is still the safest and most sensible view for the public to take, affording the politicians no implicit trust, no respect given merely because they are glib or appear 'patriotic.' We have little to judge them by, especially when an Administration, such as the present one, guards itself so zealously from public scrutiny. The more secretive that leaders are, the more the people should suspect their motives. Unfortunately, Americans are about the most mind-controlled people on the planet, the guinea pigs of decades of Madison Avenue experimentation, to the point where we've become one giant psy-op, molded and manipulated into accepting anything as long as our trusted 'leaders' offer some semblance of rationality, or at least a patriotic emotional appeal we dare not question--and failing that then some 'shock and awe' threat (or even the real thing) to inspire our fealty through fear.
The delusion that it means anything to say 'Republican' or 'Democrat' or 'Conservative' or 'Liberal' is precisely, and by intent, what will keep us all under the heel of the unscrupulous and unprincipled far into our collective future of disenfranchisement until it is probably too late to reclaim our own principles, let alone the birthright of freedom we once held in common.
Well said, LcdDrmr! Thanks.
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