Resource thread: White House cooked the books on Iraq intelligence

[ithacan]

This BS coming out now that it's all the CIA's fault is nothing but a CYA operation.

I'm sure we all remember here the reports from late last year and early this year coming out of the intelligence agencies that reported the White House pressuring analysts to "cook the books" on Iraq, to provide info to support the predetermined policy.

Let's start an archive of these articles. Here are two:

<http://www.prospect.org/print/V13/22/dreyfuss-r.html>
The American Prospect

The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA
Devising bad intelligence to promote bad policy

By Robert Dreyfuss
Issue Date: 12.16.02

Even as it prepares for war against Iraq, the Pentagon is already engaged on a second front: its war against the Central Intelligence Agency. The Pentagon is bringing relentless pressure to bear on the agency to produce intelligence reports more supportive of war with Iraq, according to former CIA officials. Key officials of the Department of Defense are also producing their own unverified intelligence reports to justify war. Much of the questionable information comes from Iraqi exiles long regarded with suspicion by CIA professionals. A parallel, ad hoc intelligence operation, in the office of Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas J. Feith, collects the information from the exiles and scours other raw intelligence for useful tidbits to make the case for preemptive war. These morsels sometimes go directly to the president.

The war over intelligence is a critical part of a broader offensive by the party of war within the Bush administration against virtually the entire expert Middle East establishment in the United States -- including State Department, Pentagon and CIA area specialists and leading military officers. Inside the foreign-policy, defense and intelligence agencies, nearly the whole rank and file, along with many senior officials, are opposed to invading Iraq. But because the less than two dozen neoconservatives leading the war party have the support of Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, they are able to marginalize that opposition.
<much much more...>
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And then there's this one:

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/story.hts/nation/1607676
Houston Chronicle
Oct. 8, 2002, 10:47AM

Some administration officials expressing misgivings on Iraq

By WARREN P. STROBEL and JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Knight-Ridder Tribune News

WASHINGTON -- While President Bush marshals congressional and international support for invading Iraq, a growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats in his own government privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war.

<snip>

They charge that the administration squelches dissenting views and that intelligence analysts are under intense pressure to produce reports supporting the White House's argument that Saddam poses such an immediate threat to the United States that pre-emptive military action is necessary.

"Analysts at the working level in the intelligence community are feeling very strong pressure from the Pentagon to cook the intelligence books," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A dozen other officials echoed his views in interviews.

No one who was interviewed disagreed.

<more>


Okay folks, let's add to this...

[DUreader]

1. kick for now

[ithacan]

2. come on, there must be more out there

I know I read tons of stuff in the runup to the war on how the Bushies were faking info and bullying analysts into lying about evidence to support the Iraq war...

[Liberal_Andy]

3. here's a good one

http://www.fourthfreedom.org/pdf/Unproven.pdf

[Liberal_Andy]

4. tell me when to stop!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39500-2003Aug9.html

http://www.editorandpublisher.com/editorandpublisher/headlines/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1971091

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/front/6496667.htm

[ithacan]

5. Excellent! Thanks

thanks andy for the additions! Don't stop!

[Liberal_Andy]

6. more

http://www.motherjones.com/news/update/2003/31/we_489_01.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A15019-2003Jun4.html

they think of us as rubes

[ithacan]

7. Cheney played the key role

from one of the articles Andy lists above:

<http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A15019-2003Jun4¬Found=true>
Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits

By Walter Pincus and Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 5, 2003; Page A01

Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.
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