Not the war in Iraq -- the war between the White House and the CIA. I asked earlier how good George Tenet's backhand is, and now we see it's pretty good indeed. Plenty of top spin:
CIA Did Not OK White House Claim
The White House, in the run-up to war in Iraq, did not seek CIA approval before charging that Saddam Hussein could launch a biological or chemical attack within 45 minutes, administration officials now say.The claim, which has since been discredited, was made twice by President Bush, in a September Rose Garden appearance after meeting with lawmakers and in a Saturday radio address the same week ...
The 45-minute claim is at the center of a scandal in Britain that led to the apparent suicide on Friday of a British weapons scientist who had questioned the government's use of the allegation. The scientist, David Kelly, was being investigated by the British parliament as the suspected source of a BBC report that the 45-minute claim was added to Britain's public "dossier" on Iraq in September at the insistence of an aide to Prime Minister Tony Blair -- and against the wishes of British intelligence, which said the charge was from a single source and was considered unreliable.
The White House embraced the claim, from a British dossier on Iraq, at the same time it began to promote the dossier's disputed claim that Iraq sought uranium in Africa.
Bush administration officials last week said the CIA was not consulted about the claim.
You get one guess as to where those "Bush administration officials" hang their hats. I'm pretty sure it ain't the Federal Highway Administration.
(That's an inside joke btw. When I was growing up in Washington, back in '60s, CIA headquarters wasn't on any road sign. Instead, the agency's campus in the Virginia suburbs was marked "Federal Highway Administration." Later somebody realized this wasn't fooling the Soviets or anybody else, so they changed the signs.)
Anyway, if this story was engineered by Tenet, it's a very cunning move. When the White House last week released its "selected" extracts from the National Intelligence Estimate dealing with the Niger uranium fraud, maybe Tenet realized he couldn't handle the serve: Presidents can ignore secrecy classifications at will; CIA directors can't. So he couldn't respond in kind.
So maybe Tenet (or his bureaucratic surrogates) decided to open up an entirely different can of worms: the "45-minute allegation" contained in the infamous British dossier.
Needless to say, following the Kelly murder (slap) suicide, that could generate some very ugly stories indeed -- for Mr. Bush as well as for Mr. Blair. It also starts to unravel the "it was only 16 words" defense, by showing, shall we say, a pattern and practice of reckless, if not deceptive, statements by the White House.
Which just goes to show the truth of something I said earlier: It usually doesn't pay to try to make the CIA the fall guy.
You have to wonder, though, when (and where) this is going to end. At some point, it seems to me, Tenet either has to shut up and accept the frame job, or resign.
If he wants to do the latter, and go public with what he knows, I'd be the first to applaud. But this covert sniping seems counterproductive, to say the least. However much I despise the administration (and I certainly do) and however much the intelligence process has been corrupted (and it certainly has) there are still terrorists out there trying to kill people in large numbers. That being the case, it would be probably be a good thing if the president's National Security Advisor and his Director of Central Intelligence were working together, instead of hurling brickbats at each other.
Is this what the Republicans meant when they talked about putting the "adults" back in charge?
You can't keep a good spook down. Pit a former baseball team owner against the Director of the CIA, who do you think is gonna come out on top?
Is this what the Republicans meant when they talked about putting the "adults" back in charge?
I'm pretty sure it's not what they meant when they said Watch what you say and what you do. See, they meant that we should watch it, but never them. We know that now.
It must suck to have, like, a totally free pass, and then have it taken away.
There are those in the ranks of the various intelligence agencies who actually do care about disrupting those who would inflict terrorist attacks, but I firmly believe that there are none at the top level. Why just one look at superstar FBI agent Johnny O'Niell who was rebuffed at the highest levels illuminates this.
The guys at the top? - Grand ideology and re-election. Those are the primary concerns.
There will be no fact-checking by this pResident.
Vicki's right. Most of the guy's at the top don't care that much about catching terrorists, as Billmon's previous post makes clear.
BTW, Seymour Hersh has as an excellent follow-up on the UPI article:
[Flynt Leverett, a former C.I.A. analyst who served until early this year on the National Security Council] told me that "the quality and quantity of information from Syria exceeded the Agency’s expectations." But, he said, "from the Syrians’ perspective they got little in return for it."
Billmon,
Good piece, as usual. I agree it's usually unwise to tangle with the CIA bureaucracy but that BushCo's chosen to do so might suggest they think they must. Bush is never wrong, or in doubt. All his larger "family" is also perfect. They always must have an enemy (the good/evil thing), and always be on offense. Given the public's longtime skepticism of the CIA, and Tenet as Bubba's boy (at least as of last week), isn't this Karl's obvious, albeit somewhat risky, course? And if you can keep the focus on the mushy area of "intelligence" and the spooks and DC, as opposed to facts and lies, you keep the media busy in less dangerous areas, and maybe the public tires of the mush and it goes away. A friend last night asked if this is really an important story yet on the banks of the Mississippi; seems that might be Karl's thinking, too.
This brings to mind the joke from the runup to the Iraq War, when Bush couldn't drum up enough UN support for a vote: "How bad do you have to be to lose a popularity contest with Saddam Hussein?"
Well, Rove, now that George is losing a credibility contest with the frickin' CIA, how bad is it?
Bush can keep releasing spun intelligence that supports him. Each time he does, Tenet will leak another contradiction. It didn't take long for the press to get the picture. "Duh, MAYBE...just maybe....Bush is releasing something that isn't entirely accurate? It's possible, strange as this is, that Bush would lie and spin furiously to get out of this mess...."
"Federal Highway Administration." :-)
Reminds me of living in DC in the '80s, when an unmarked highway exit in Maryland led to a blue cube of a building in the distance, whose rooftop bristled with antennae denser than a porcupine's back.
Home, of course, to the NSA (No Such Agency).
JFK pissed off the CIA and look what happened to him.
Is this what the Republicans meant when they talked about putting the "adults" back in charge?
But, but ... You mean the Republikaners *actually* suggested that?! Isn't that, like, inherently self-defeating for them?? ;-)
Good post, Billmon, as usual.