Click here to see the actual Secret Downing Street Memo that's described below.

http://www.commondreams.org/views05/0504-34.htm

Published on Wednesday, May 4, 2005 by TomPaine.com

Proof Bush Fixed The Facts
by Ray McGovern

"Intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."

Never in our wildest dreams did we think we would see those words
in black and white - and beneath a SECRET stamp, no less.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2087-1593607,00.html
For three years now, we in Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity (VIPS) have been saying that the CIA and its British
counterpart, MI-6, were ordered by their countries' leaders
to "fix facts" to "justify" an unprovoked war on Iraq.
More often than not, we have been greeted with stares
of incredulity.

It has been a hard learning - that folks tend to believe what
they want to believe. As long as our evidence, however abundant
and persuasive, remained circumstantial, it could not compel belief.
It simply is much easier on the psyche to assent to the White House
spin machine blaming the Iraq fiasco on bad intelligence than
to entertain the notion that we were sold a bill of goods.

Well, you can forget circumstantial. Thanks to an unauthorized
disclosure by a courageous whistleblower, the evidence now leaps
from official documents - this time authentic, not forged.
Whether prompted by the open appeal of the international
Truth-Telling Coalition or not,
http://www.tompaine.com/articles/appeal_for_truth_telling.php
some brave soul has made the most explosive "patriotic leak"
of the war by giving London's Sunday Times the official minutes
of a briefing by Richard Dearlove, then head of Britain's
CIA equivalent, MI-6. Fresh back in London from consultations
in Washington, Dearlove briefed Prime Minister Blair and
his top national security officials on July 23, 2002,
on the Bush administration's plans to make war on Iraq.

Blair does not dispute the authenticity of the document,
which immortalizes a discussion that is chillingly amoral.
Apparently no one felt free to ask the obvious questions.
Or, worse still, the obvious questions did not occur.

Juggernaut Before The Horse

In emotionless English, Dearlove tells Blair and the others
that President Bush has decided to remove Saddam Hussein
by launching a war that is to be "justified by the conjunction
of terrorism and weapons of mass destruction." Period.
What about the intelligence? Dearlove adds matter-of-factly,
"The intelligence and facts are being fixed around the policy."

At this point, Foreign Secretary Jack Straw confirms that Bush
has decided on war, but notes that stitching together justification
would be a challenge, since "the case was thin." Straw noted that
Saddam was not threatening his neighbors and his WMD capability
was less than that of Libya, North Korea or Iran.

In the following months, "the case" would be buttressed by
a well-honed U.S.-U.K. intelligence-turned-propaganda-machine.
The argument would be made "solid" enough to win endorsement
from Congress and Parliament by conjuring up:

- Aluminum artillery tubes misdiagnosed as nuclear related;
- Forgeries alleging Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa;
- Tall tales from a drunken defector about mobile biological weapons
laboratories;
- Bogus warnings that Iraqi forces could fire WMD-tipped missiles
within 45 minutes of an order to do so;
- Dodgy dossiers fabricated in London; and
- A U.S. National Intelligence Estimate thrown in for good measure.

All this, as Dearlove notes dryly, despite the fact that "there was
little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military
action." Another nugget from Dearlove's briefing is his bloodless
comment that one of the U.S. military options under discussion
involved "a continuous air campaign, initiated by an Iraqi
casus belli" - the clear implication being that planners
of the air campaign would also see to it that an appropriate
casus belli was orchestrated.

The discussion at 10 Downing St. on July 23, 2002 calls to mind
the first meeting of George W. Bush's National Security Council (NSC)
on Jan. 30, 2001, at which the president made it clear that toppling
Saddam Hussein sat atop his to-do list, according to then-Treasury
Secretary Paul O'Neil, who was there. O'Neil was taken aback that
there was no discussion of why it was necessary to "take out"
Saddam. Rather, after CIA Director George Tenet showed a
grainy photo of a building in Iraq that he said might be
involved in producing chemical or biological agents,
the discussion proceeded immediately to which Iraqi targets
might be best to bomb. Again, neither O'Neil nor the other
participants asked the obvious questions. Another NSC meeting
two days later included planning for dividing up Iraq's oil wealth.

Obedience School

As for the briefing of Blair, the minutes provide further grist
for those who describe the U.K. prime minister as Bush's "poodle."
The tone of the conversation bespeaks a foregone conclusion that
Blair will wag his tail cheerfully and obey the learned commands.
At one point he ventures the thought that, "If the political
context were right, people would support regime change."
This, after Attorney General Peter Goldsmith has already
warned that the desire for regime change "was not a legal
base for military action," - a point Goldsmith made again
just 12 days before the attack on Iraq until he was persuaded
by a phalanx of Bush administration lawyers to change his
mind 10 days later.

The meeting concludes with a directive to "work on the assumption
that the UK would take part in any military action."

I cannot quite fathom why I find the account of this meeting
so jarring. Surely it is what one might expect, given all
else we know. Yet seeing it in bloodless black and white
somehow gives it more impact. And the implications are
no less jarring.

One of Dearlove's primary interlocutors in Washington was
his American counterpart, CIA director George Tenet.
(And there is no closer relationship between two intelligence
services than the privileged one between the CIA and MI-6.)
Tenet, of course, knew at least as much as Dearlove,
but nonetheless played the role of accomplice in serving up
to Bush the kind of "slam-dunk intelligence" that he knew
would be welcome. If there is one unpardonable sin in
intelligence work, it is that kind of politicization.
But Tenet decided to be a "team player" and set the tone.

Politicization: Big Time

Actually, politicization is far too mild a word for what happened.
The intelligence was not simply mistaken; it was manufactured,
with the president of the United States awarding foreman
George Tenet the Medal of Freedom for his role in helping
supervise the deceit. The British documents make clear
that this was not a mere case of "leaning forward"
in analyzing the intelligence, but rather mass deception
- an order of magnitude more serious. No other conclusion
is now possible.

Small wonder, then, to learn from CIA insiders like former
case officer Lindsay Moran that Tenet's malleable managers
told their minions, "Let's face it. The president wants us
to go to war, and our job is to give him a reason to do it."

Small wonder that, when the only U.S. analyst who met with
the alcoholic Iraqi defector appropriately codenamed "Curveball"
raised strong doubt about Curveball's reliability before
then-Secretary of State Colin Powell used the fabrication
about "mobile biological weapons trailers" before the
United Nations, the analyst got this e-mail reply from
his CIA supervisor:

"Let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen
regardless of what Curveball said or didn't say, and the
powers that be probably aren't terribly interested in whether
Curveball knows what he's talking about."

When Tenet's successor, Porter Goss, took over as director
late last year, he immediately wrote a memo to all employees
explaining the "rules of the road" - first and foremost,
"We support the administration and its policies." So much
for objective intelligence insulated from policy pressure.

Tenet and Goss, creatures of the intensely politicized
environment of Congress, brought with them a radically
new ethos - one much more akin to that of Blair's courtiers
than to that of earlier CIA directors who had the courage
to speak truth to power.

Seldom does one have documentary evidence that intelligence
chiefs chose to cooperate in both fabricating and "sexing up"
(as the British press puts it) intelligence to justify
a prior decision for war. There is no word to describe
the reaction of honest intelligence professionals to the
corruption of our profession on a matter of such consequence.
"Outrage" does not come close.

Hope In Unauthorized Disclosures

Those of us who care about unprovoked wars owe the patriot
who gave this latest British government document to
The Sunday Times a debt of gratitude. Unauthorized
disclosures are gathering steam. They need to increase
quickly on this side of the Atlantic as well - the more so,
inasmuch as Congress-controlled by the president's
party-cannot be counted on to discharge its constitutional
prerogative for oversight.

In its formal appeal of Sept. 9, 2004 to current U.S. government
officials, the Truth-Telling Coalition said this:

We know how misplaced loyalty to bosses, agencies, and careers
can obscure the higher allegiance all government officials
owe the Constitution, the sovereign public, and the young men
and women put in harm's way. We urge you to act on those
higher loyalties...Truth-telling is a patriotic and effective
way to serve the nation. The time for speaking out is now.

If persons with access to wrongly concealed facts and analyses
bring them to light, the chances become less that a president
could launch another unprovoked war - against, say, Iran.

Ray McGovern served 27 years as a CIA analyst and is now on
the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals
for Sanity. He works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm
of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour.

© 2005 TomPaine.com

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