CIA Politics


Two commissions have found that there wasn't external pressure to pick intelligence. But what about internal pressure?
Danielle Pletka has a pretty good piece at the Los Angeles Times.

Prevailing CIA views shine through in briefings to the U.S. government, in backgrounders to reporters and in the selective leaking of classified information. The agency recruits (and rejects) outside assets based on its own political priorities. And why not? In a town where even first-graders hold passionate political views, it seems hardly surprising that a player so integral to sensitive policymaking would too. The only shock about the politicization of the agency is that officials bother to deny it.

Since the creation of the CIA in 1947, there have been complaints from the outside about analysts playing politics and complaints from within about political pressure to skew intelligence. Aged Washington insiders recall pitched battles over alleged Soviet support for terror groups in the 1980s and the size of the Soviet nuclear arsenal in the 1960s. But in the case of Iraq, at least two bipartisan commissions have concluded that there was no such pressure to change conclusions on Saddam Hussein's ties to terrorists or his WMD program. In this case at least, much of the politics was inside the CIA.

The warning signs came in the early 1990s as the U.S. was ramping up relations with Hussein's internal opposition. CIA officials did not want to overthrow the dictator, based not on hard-nosed analytical assessment but on the geopolitical theories of the agency's Arabists. A surprising amount of the intelligence community's prewar energy, whether in private briefings or in leaks by "intelligence officials" critical of the administration, went toward trying to prevent Hussein's overthrow.

Although Pillar and other self-proclaimed apolitical ex-spooks and bureaucrats now insist that the leakers were merely educating the public, it should be clear from the sheer volume of senior intelligence officials quoted regularly in the nation's newspapers that there was — and is — a specific agenda. (For those curious about the details, consult with the new group of ex-CIA types, Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity). As a result, agency officials regularly rejected Iraqi informants out of hand and refused to recruit operatives inside the country at all. That same antiwar agenda led to dire and incorrect postwar scenarios.

The publicly published reports from the State Department and the CIA prior to 9-11 were incorrect down to the very assumptions. That certainly makes me think that the "former experts" who are emerging now may have a bias or two.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Tue - February 21, 2006 at 06:21 AM  Tag


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