- WASHINGTON, D.C. -- For the
Bush administration, which has wrapped itself in faux patriotism, accusations
that it revealed the identity of a serving CIA agent are a huge political
embarrassment and another blow to its sinking credibility.
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- Last July, former ambassador Joseph Wilson IV contradicted
President George Bush's assertions that Iraq had imported uranium ore from
Niger.
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- Wilson said his investigations in Niger found the whole
story was a fake, based on forged documents.
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- Bush nevertheless suggested Iraq was importing uranium
in his keynote state of the union address.
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- Wilson's patriotic act ruined his career and made him
the target of a vicious smear campaign.
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- At least six journalists were told by administration
sources that Wilson's wife was an active CIA officer. Journalist Robert
Novak cited her name in his column.
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- Revealing names of CIA agents is a federal crime. There
is speculation that the source of the story came from within the office
of Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney's powerful chief of staff.
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- (Bush's press secretary has said "absolutely nothing
brought to our attention suggests any White House involvement and that
includes the vice-president's office." Scott McClellan added that
if it turns out any administration officials were involved in the leak,
they'll be fired.)
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- In any event, Libby and Pentagon civilian allies, Deputy
Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith and Richard Perle, all
played key roles in the buildup to the war with Iraq. They brought intensive
pressure on the CIA to produce proof of hidden weapons and links between
Iraq and al-Qaida.
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- Behind the scandal over identifying Wilson's wife as
a CIA agent, a far more important battle is raging.
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- The Bush administration plans to spend $1 billion in
the fruitless search for unconventional weapons in Iraq.
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- The non-existence of these weapons, which were the main
excuse for the invasion, has badly damaged the White House; eroded the
power of Cheney's men Wolfowitz, Feith and Perle -- who jestingly called
themselves "the cabal" -- and humiliated the hapless Secretary
of State Colin Powell.
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- Now "the cabal" and some politicians blame
the CIA for the failure to find Iraq's non-existent weapons and alleged
links to al-Qaida.
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- But the CIA is fighting back through leaks, accusing
the administration of distorting, corrupting and politicizing the conduct
of national security.
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- The CIA does deserve sharp criticism over Iraq. It had
a shocking lack of reliable human intelligence there, forcing the agency
to rely heavily on dubious defectors and foreign intelligence, rather than
its own resources.
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- Ironically, France had excellent intelligence in Iraq
and rightly warned Bush his war would lead to disaster. Bush was too busy
listening to the neo-conservatives' hyped intelligence to heed France's
excellent and reliable advice.
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- So far, CIA chief George Tenet has refused public comment
over the attacks, but agency sources report him furious with the White
House and its neo-conservative Pentagon allies. CIA staffers are waiting
for Tenet to go public and take on the neo-cons who are trying to blame
the agency for the fiasco they created.
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- When White House hawks such as Defence Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld, Cheney and the Pentagon cabal found the CIA was not providing
damning evidence on Iraq they needed to promote war, they created a special
intelligence unit.
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- It cherry-picked bits and pieces of negative data about
Iraq, trumpeted lurid claims by Iraqi defectors, then passed them on to
the White House.
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- Iraqi exiles were used as a primary conduit for the disinformation,
and were provided with funding and political support. The New York Times
repeatedly parroted the Iraqi defectors' distortions.
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- This special intelligence office reportedly sought to
link with Israel's Mossad intelligence agency in the anti-Iraq campaign.
But the Mossad was too professional to have anything to do with this ad
hoc operation. However, members of Israeli PM Ariel Sharon's government
reportedly provided the neo-cons' special intel unit with a stream of negative
stories about Iraq.
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- The CIA's professionals were enraged by this end-run,
and appalled that defectors' wild tales and self-serving material were
being used to formulate U.S. national security policy.
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- Before the war on Iraq, CIA director Tenet took the unprecedented
step of publicly warning many of the claims about Iraq were not justified
by facts.
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- But he was ignored in Bush's rush to war and did not
repeat his caution. Warnings by ranking CIA officers that their country
was being stampeded into war by neo-cons with a hidden agenda were also
ignored.
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- The Wilson affair has exploded at a time when the extent
that America's professional intelligence cadre was circumvented, or bullied
and intimidated into silence by the Bush administration has become a major
public issue.
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- Such politically motivated pressure on the nation's intelligence
establishment by men with little American flags on their lapels is totally
unacceptable and gravely endangers U.S. national security.
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- Real patriots do not start wars to win elections while
diverting attention from financial scandals.
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- CIA chief Tenet ought to come out and denounce those
who led the U.S. into an unnecessary war that has become a bloody and unimaginably
expensive mess.
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- But CIA officers are trained to remain silent and obey
the chain of command.
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- So it's up to Congress to demand a full investigation
of the corruption of national security, and of the extremist ideologists
who misled America into a war that should never have been waged.
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- Eric can be reached by e-mail at margolis@foreigncorrespondent.com.
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