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Wednesday, December 5, 2007 |
Former CIA Officials: Bush Iran Claims "Preposterous". Four former CIA officials who provided intelligence information to past presidents described as preposterous President Bush's claim that he was unaware until very recently that Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
"It's unbelievable," said Melvin Goodman, who worked for the CIA from 1966 to 1990 and now is a senior fellow at the Center for International Policy.
Goodman's assessment of Bush's assertions were very similar to those of Larry C. Johnson, who worked at the CIA from 1985 to 1989 and from 1989 to 1993 served a Deputy Director in the U.S. State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism, Ray McGovern, a former CIA official who gave daily intelligence briefings to George H. W. Bush while he was vice president and Bruce Riedel, who spent over two decades at both the CIA and National Security Council and is the former National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asian Affairs
At a December 4 (Tuesday) press conference, Bush asserted:
I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it was Mike McConnell [Director of National Intelligence] came in and said, 'we have some new information.' He didn't tell me what the information was; he did tell me it was going to take a while to analyze.
Why would you take time to analyze new information? One, you want to make sure it's not disinformation. You want to make sure the piece of intelligence you have is real. And secondly, they want to make sure they understand the intelligence they gathered: If they think it's real, then what does it mean? And it wasn't until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public.
McGovern was totally incredulous: "The notion that the head of National Intelligence whispered in Bush's ear 'I've got a surprise for you and it's really important, but I'm not going to tell you about it until we check it out' -- The whole thing is preposterous"
Riedel agreed, saying "the president either chose to ignore what he heard or his director of national intelligence is not doing his job." Riedel said he doubted McConnell failed to "do his part of the bargain."
"To me it is almost mind boggling that the President is told by the DNI that we have new important information on Iran and he doesn't ask 'what is that information?'" said Riedel, who is now a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center For Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institution.
He said it wasn't the DNI's responsibility to tell the President to "stop hyperventilating about the Iranian threat."
"The President and his policy advisers - National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in particular - have the responsibility of keeping their eye on the intelligence and to take into account new information as it comes along," Riedel said.
Bush and Cheney have repeatedly warned of the dangers of Iran obtaining nuclear weapons, with no mention of the intelligence findings that Iraq had stopped its program in 2003. On October 17, Bush was asked at a press conference, "But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?" He replied
I think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that they -- that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it's in the world's interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace. But this -- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously.
White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto declined Wednesday to discuss what McConnell told Bush at their August meeting.
Q ...Was there any indication from McConnell of the nature of the intelligence in the meeting in August?
MR. FRATTO: I can't give you more detail on what Director McConnell said to the President.
Johnson pointed out that the National Intelligence Estimate is actually the result of an analysis of information from all intelligence agencies. The material on which the NIE report was based had been acquired well before the report itself was issued to the public.
When that information first became available to the CIA and other agencies, it would automatically been included in the Daily Presidential Briefing (DPB) months before the NIE report, Johnson said. The President, Vice President, Defense Secretary and Secretary of State all given daily accounts of the DPB, Johnson said. McGovern and Goodman agreed.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
4:04:48 PM 
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White House Still Won’t Answer When Bush First Learned Iran Halted Its Nuclear Weapons Program.
On Monday, the Bush administration released the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, which revealed that “in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.” The revelation contradicted public statements from Bush administration officials over recent months warning that Iran was quickly developing a nuclear weapons program.
National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley said Bush was briefed last Wednesday on the NIE report, but had learned there was new information on Iran’s program sometime “in the last few months.” Bush claimed yesterday that he was told “in August” by DNI Mike McConnell that “we have some new information.” But Bush claimed McConnell didn’t tell him what the information was.
It has now been two days since the NIE was released, and the White House is still unable to answer the most basic question about when Bush first learned that Iran halted its nuclear weapons program. This morning, in a press briefing with reporters, White House spokesman Tony Fratto waffled on three direct questions about whether Bush knew that Iran had halted its nuclear weapons program months ago:
QUESTION: Just to clarify one point from the press conference yesterday, the President was — said that he was told by Mr. McConnell, just generally, that there had been some new intelligence and that people were taking another look at it. Did the President at that point ask any follow-up? Did Mr. McConnell offer any comments that, in fact, there might have to be a serious reevaluation of the whole intelligence?
FRATTO: What Director McConnell said is that we’re going to go back and do rigorous analysis of this intelligence, and when we can be certain of it, we’re going to come back and talk to you — and that’s what they did. […]
QUESTION: In that conversation did McConnell tell him that our previous intelligence could be all wrong? How — (inaudible) — was he about that?
FRATTO: I don’t have anything on that. […]
QUESTION: I just want to follow up on Mike’s question. Was there any indication from McConnell of the nature of the intelligence in the meeting in August?
FRATTO: I can’t give you more detail on what Director McConnell said to the President.
In an interview with CNN’s Rick Sanchez yesterday, former Bush administration official Flynt Leverett suggested the White House is being dishonest about what it knew. “I can’t imagine that McConnell…would tell the President about this and not tell him what the information actually said,” Leverett said.
On PBS’ Newshour with Jim Lehrer last night, Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) said, “I was really struck when the president said that he only got the final judgments on Tuesday,” adding that he “can’t believe” that McConnell’s indication of new information didn’t prevent the President from “talking about a nuclear holocaust.”
Transcript: (more…)
[Think Progress]
12:25:05 PM
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Bob Franken: Spy Gamesmanship.
We are. In trouble. No doubt about it. The same intelligence apparatus that concluded Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the same cabal that warned Iran was feverishly developing nuclear weapons, now says Iran stopped that program in 2003.
There is only one conclusion to draw: Iran is probably just days away from testing its own fully developed nuke.
By now, any sensible person would have concluded that the US clandestine services should be known as "The Gang that Couldn't Spy Straight"
Oh sure, we are told that this time the analysts learned from their mistakes that led to the "Slam Dunk" about Iraq's WMDs. That turned out, to be "Slam Bunk", but we didn't find that out until we had gone to a war that has cost thousands of lives. Why should we have faith this time?
In fact, one can only wonder what kind of sinister game the administration is playing by releasing these results. What kind of sidestep are the President, Vice President and the other neo cons taking on their march to the Persian battlegrounds?
This all begs another question: What is it about war that these guys love so much? Don't suggest that the only way diplomacy can work if it's backed by the threat of military action. Thanks to the Iraq miscalculation, the armed forces are weakened to the point that the United States, contrary to the Teddy Roosevelt tradition, can now only "Speak Loudly and Carry a Small Stick". It's hard to saber rattle when all you're holding is a small butter knife.
Nevertheless, American representatives are still fanning out to try and get other nations to follow their lead in taking action against Iran. What lead? The United States has been frittering that way for years. Now we are struggling to not be overrun. Besides, how can the other players on the world stage know what's real and what's not from this administration. It's the same problem we have here at home.
When we discuss sensitive national security we are told there is much we can't see. One can only hope that's the case, because based on what we do know, it sure looks like we lurch from one disaster to another.
 [The Full Feed from HuffingtonPost.com]
9:11:24 AM
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Tribunal Rejected Intelligence on Detainee. Carol D. Leonnig, of The Washington Post, writes: "Just months after US Army troops whisked a German man from Pakistan to the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, in 2002, his American captors concluded that he was not a terrorist. 'USA considers Murat Kurnaz's innocence to be proven,' a German intelligence officer wrote that year in a memo to his colleagues. 'He is to be released in approximately six to eight weeks.' But the 19-year-old student was not freed." [t r u t h o u t]
7:20:45 AM
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© Copyright 2008 Patricia Thurston.
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