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Article Archives (11-18-2004)
Porter Goss and the Nazification of the CIA
The Nazis strategy after seizing power in 1933 was to stamp out dissent. All dissenters were labeled enemies of the state and quieted or exterminated. Porter Goss, a former Republican Congressman and newly appointed CIA director, issued the following directive to all CIA employees in a memo dated November 17, 2004:
[CIA employees are expected to] support the administration and its policies in our work. * * * As agency employees we do not identify with, support or champion opposition to the administration or its policies.
This comes on top of the departure of three top career CIA officials who have had disagreements with the staff of new director Goss. "Michael Scheuer, a former head of the CIA's 'Bin Laden station', who denounced the Iraq war, said: 'I've never experienced this much anxiety and controversy. Suddenly political affiliation matters to some degree. The talk is that they're out to clean out Democrats and liberals [of the CIA]." Link.
The Bush White House has relentlessly strove to be on message from December 12, 2000 (date the Supreme Court declared W. Bush to be the 43rd president of the United States) forward. Karl Rove, a 21st century Joseph Goebbels, determines the message and sends the Bushie minions out into the streets to regurgitate Rove Speak. It seems that running the entire White House staff by remote control is just not enough for Rove. The Defense Department is pretty well locked down by the neocon triumvirate of Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith but the war party has always felt that the State Department and CIA have not shown proper deference to the master. Problem solved. Colin Powell, the reluctant hawk who actually had the gall to admit that he regretted making the case for the Iraq war to the UN with information that later turned out to be false, is out at State along with Tenent, the Clinton holdover at CIA. In at State is Condi Rice, a female Clarence Thomas, someone without an independent, honest bone in her body. Condi can be counted on to spout Rove Speak from the State Department. Who cares if she is totally lacking in an ability to repair the damage done to our relationship with the vast majority of the world's nations during W's first term. Loyalty trumps competence every time for the Bushies. The beauty of the move from a political standpoint is that the democrats will never summon up the gonads to challenge the competence of Condi for State given that she is a black female. (Note: Ditto for Alberto Gonzales, of Mexican ancestry, at Justice--the guy who signed off on the legal opinion that the Geneva Convention did not apply to individuals captured in our so-called war on terrorism, thus, the Army and CIA are free to torture these individuals to their heart's content. The democrats in the senate are going to roll over and confirm this incompetent without so much as a whisper.)
Back to the CIA--the intelligence failure
The Bush Administration loudly declared September 11, 2001 forward that Saddam Hussein clearly possessed WMD (which included an advanced nuclear program) and that Hussein had links to al Qaeda. (Excellent summary of the facts on this issue.) This produced widespread fear in the hearts of Americans and allowed the Bush Administration to steam roll Congress into authorizing war with Iraq (note: the Congressional steamrollees included none other than the erstwhile Democratic presidential candidate, Sen. John Kerry).
On March 19, 2003, the US invasion of Iraq began and led to the fall of Baghdad on April 9, 2003. In June 2003, David Kay was appointed the Bush Administration's chief WMD hunter in Iraq. Kay's team included 1,200 weapons inspectors who spent 90 days in Iraq with the exercise costing an estimated $300 million. What did Kay's army of inspectors find in Iraq? They didn't find jack, no stinking chemical weapons, no biological warfare agents, no nuclear weapons program. Quoting a BBC article on the subject dated June 5, 2004:
"Weapons of mass destruction do not exist in Iraq and it is "delusional" to think they will be found, says former chief US weapons inspector David Kay. * * * Mr Kay told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that British and American leaders should simply apologize and admit that they were wrong. Link.
To put the final nail in the coffin containing the Bush rational for invading Iraq, the independent 9-11 Commission concluded that there were no substantial links between Saddam Hussein's regime and al Qaeda.
As of this writing (11-18-2004), 1212 American military persons have died in Iraq since start of Gulf War II. As many as 15,000 Iraqis are estimated to have been killed in early 2003 alone. Approximately, $145 billion US taxpayer dollars has been spent upon this war (and counting).
Wow, what a colossal fuckup, eh?!?! Plenty of heads must have rolled. Who did Bush fire for that one? Answer: no one. Well, then surely there was collective self-flagellation within the administration with a chorus of "woe is me for I have sinned"? Again, nada on admission of guilt from the Bushies. Recall the infamous April 2004 press conference wherein W was asked to name mistakes his administration had made in office and he drew a blank.
Blame it on Georgie
The time line of our story now brings us to the most perplexing character in the drama--George Tenet, then CIA director (who was initially appointed by Bill Clinton). Bob Woodward states in his book (based upon unnamed White House sources) that George Tenent told Bush that the case for Saddam possessing WMD pre-Iraq War II was a "slam dunk".
Tenet tried valiantly to defend the Iraq intelligence he gave to the president as late as February of 2004.
David Kay pointed a finger at where he thought the blame should lie for the WMD fiasco (quote from CNN): "Kay blamed the intelligence agencies, telling NPR he thinks 'the intelligence community owes the president (an explanation) rather than the president owing the American people.'" There it was, Kay was telling the Administration to sick the dogs on Tenet. The Bushies were slow to take the bait. The first response was just to deny the obvious and then deny some more. But those darn facts just wouldn't go away. It was finally time to take Kay's suggestion and spread blame in the direction of the CIA as the Senate Intelligence Committee was then investigating the pre-war intelligence and preparing a report harshly critical of Tenet and the CIA. Knowing what's coming, Tenet falls on his sword and resigns June 4, effective July 11. At that point, the whole pre-war intelligence thing is looking quite manageable for the Bushies. A digression is in order. The neocon dominated Department of Defense (run up by Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Feith) created its own intelligence unit immediately after 9-11 called the Office of Special Plans run by Feith. It's main job appears to have been to create propaganda masquerading as intelligence that would be turned into talking points for the war party. The Senate Intelligence Report on Iraq War intelligence exonerated the DOD Office of Special Plans and excoriated the CIA; however, the minority report from the same committee fingered VP Cheney as the guy who promoted the Feith OSP garbage as true intelligence throughout the administration. Based on testimony Tenet gave to the Senate Committee, he appears to have been clueless that the DOD Office of Special Plans had direct access to the President plus Vice-President and was directly feeding them intelligence data that had not first been vetted by the CIA. Link. Since leaving office, Tenent has kept his mouth shut through the election; however, word on the street is that Tenent is shopping a book about his time at the CIA and that it spills blood (some of it belonging to Secretary of State Designate Rice).
But how do we fix the problem?
The 9-11 Commission came up a novel approach--let's get ourselves an intelligence czar planted at the White House rather than Langley thereby adding another layer to the already f'ed up table of organization for the US intelligence community. It passes the buck to say we have a problem but the answer is to appoint someone else whom shall be given the power to fix the problem. This solution is only as good as the as the individual given the position of problem fixer and, as we have seen, presidents (not just W) are fond of giving powerful executive branch positions to political flunkies. A political hack just looks at everything through the prism of how the politics of the situation may or may not help his party. Screw actually trying to help the country. Also, creating a new layer of bureaucracy, in many ways, actually makes getting to the root cause of the problem and solving it that much harder. The proposed National Intelligence Director would be based at the White House but, also, be expected to reach into the bowels of the operations and intelligence directorates of the CIA and fix these admittedly dysfunctional entities. Doesn't placing the power for making changes at a level removed from the problem make it harder to fix? Here is a good article on the issue.
Goss, the political hack
Here is what Slate had to say about Goss and his association with W's Administration:
This directive [i.e., the one telling all CIA employees to bow to the power of W] reinforces a general uneasiness about Goss, who after all auditioned for his current job by doing political hackwork for the president. In June 2003, when Sen. Kerry—who was clearly running for president already—gave "a major speech" on national-security issues, the Bush-Cheney campaign tapped Goss to write the official critique. And he wrote a blazer, denouncing the speech as "political 'me-tooism' " and complaining that Kerry "neglected the president's historic achievements" and "remarkable progress" at combating terrorism.
Goss also helped Bush during the early days of the Joseph Wilson-Valerie Plame scandal. As chairman of a House oversight committee and as a former CIA case officer himself, Goss should have been dismayed that a White House aide might have exposed the identity of an undercover agent as an act of political retaliation against the agent's spouse. But, although the Justice Department took the reports seriously enough to mount a grand-jury probe, Goss dismissed them as "wild and unsubstantiated" and added, as a jab at the Democrats, "Somebody sends me a blue dress and some DNA, I'll have an investigation." Link.
Here is another take on Goss's appointment to CIA:
Stansfield Turner, the CIA director under former President Jimmy Carter (1977-1981) described the nomination as the "worst in the history of the post," while Mel Goodman, a former top CIA analyst, currently at the Center for International Policy (CIP), said the Florida congressman "has all the wrong credentials," including a nine-year stint in the 1960s as a covert CIA operative in Latin America and Europe.
Still others described Goss as a "cat's paw" for Vice President Dick Cheney, whose office, according to a number of retired intelligence officials, played a key role in corrupting the intelligence process in the run-up to Washington's attack on Iraq in March 2003. Link.
I agree with these assessments of Goss.
Bottom Line
My take on the whole situation is that the Bush Administration could care less whether or not the CIA is capable at accurately analyzing intelligence. They really don't care. What the Bushies want is a tame CIA that will spit out reports at will conforming to their preconceived notion of what risks face America in the world. Thus, Goss's job is not to crack the whip on the CIA to make its estimates more accurate but, rather, to ensure fidelity to the cult of W.
Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower stated: "Here in America we are descended in blood and in spirit from revolutionists and rebels - men and women who dare to dissent from accepted doctrine. As their heirs, may we never confuse honest dissent with disloyal subversion." In the same vein but touching deeper, Henry Commager wrote, "If our democracy is to flourish, it must have criticism; if our government is to function it must have dissent." Our democracy is not florishing under the cult of W. It has regressed and we are poorer as a nation materially and spiritually for it.
JJR
11-18-2004
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