Official light not to be shed on Iraq intel

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence to bury ``Phase II'' investigation, super-secret Silberman-Robb Commission will release a whitewash to the public


Committee Chairman Senator Pat Roberts (R-KS) declares we no longer need an official Congressional report on how the Bush Administration abused intelligence.

Upon the release of a limited but nonetheless damning July 2004 report on bad pre-war intelligence, Senator Olympia Snowe along with Chairman Roberts and other Republicans promised, ``The second phase of the Report detailing how policy makers used the intelligence and the prewar assessments about post-war Iraq is expected to be released later this year.'' Now apparently nothing will come of this promise.

David Corn writes in The Nation about the half-hearted efforts of the Republican-controlled committee to probe the place the real intel cooking took place:

The committee also appears to be stymied by obstacles it encountered last year while pursuing a matter to be included in the Phase II inquiry: the actions of the Office of Special Plans. The OSP was a neocon-linked, maverick intelligence shop in the Pentagon set up to search for intelligence (good or bad) to support the case for war. Phase II was supposed to determine whether the OSP had operated appropriately. But when committee staff were probing the OSP last year, people connected to it began hiring lawyers and clamming up, and the committee had a hard time prying documents from the Pentagon.

Apparently some of the Democrats, including ranking member Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) wish to carry on, but in the post-election desire to back-fill the Iraq memory hole, Roberts now says, according to Corn, ``To go though that exercise, it seems to me, in a postelection environment--we didn't see how we could do that and achieve any possible progress. I think everybody pretty well gets it.''

Another body, the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, was hand-picked about a year ago by the president himself. The so-called Silberman-Robb Commission will soon issue a report offering according to David Sanger in the Times story, a ``searing critique of how the C.I.A. and other agencies never properly assessed Saddam Hussein's political maneuverings or the possibility that he no longer had weapon stockpiles.''

Sounds like the laughable story of how Saddam's people so brilliantly misled both Saddam himself and all the brains of US intelligence will figure big here. Of course, the upshot of the secret machinations underlying this document potentially will be more power for National Intelligence Director-designate John Negroponte to control ``sharing'' of intel across agencies. Furthermore, it will dump loads of criticism on departed DCI George Tenet. It's nice to have a punching bag that is long gone from government.

All of these exercises, including the Iraq Survey Group with its null findings, other investigations of ``what we might have done better'', or even whether official x, y, or z uttered the phrase ``imminent threat'' are nothing but fog surrounding memory about the central effect of the propaganda: The false story promoted ad nauseum by President Bush and other officials in late 2002 and early 2003 scared the begeezus out of--or pushed the angry button of 911 vengeance on--a good 70% of the woefully informed American public. The result was as desired. There arose an emotional, reactionary drumbeat for war.

For readers unable to hold breath waiting for official confirmation that the Bush Administration intentionally misused and outright falsified ``intelligence'' that was released to the public, here are some key pieces from Dreyfuss & Vest, and especially Sy Hersh, that lay the whole sordid tale bare.

THE LIE FACTORY
by ROBERT DREYFUSS & JASON VEST
Mother Jones, January/February 2004

THE STOVEPIPE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
How conflicts between the Bush Administration and the intelligence community marred the reporting on Iraq's weapons.
The New Yorker, October 27, 2003

SELECTIVE INTELLIGENCE
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Donald Rumsfeld has his own special sources. Are they reliable?
The New Yorker, May 12, 2003

WHO LIED TO WHOM?
by SEYMOUR M. HERSH
Why did the Administration endorse a forgery about Iraq's nuclear program?
The New Yorker, March 31, 2003