Key Revisions Were Made to CIA Document - Iraq

[NNN0LHI]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/latimests/20040710/ts_latimes/keyrevisionsweremadetociadocument&cid=2026&ncid=1473

WASHINGTON — In a classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared before the Iraq (news - web sites) war, the CIA (news - web sites) hedged its judgments about Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) and weapons of mass destruction, pointing up the limits of its knowledge.


But in the unclassified version of the NIE — the so-called white paper cited by the Bush administration in making its case for war — those carefully qualified conclusions were turned into blunt assertions of fact, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee's report on prewar intelligence.


The repeated elimination of qualifying language and dissenting assessments of some of the government's most knowledgeable experts gave the public an inaccurate impression of what the U.S. intelligence community believed about the threat Hussein posed to the United States, the committee said. snip


For example, the panel cited changes made in the section of the NIE dealing with chemical weapons:


"Although we have little specific information on Iraq's CW stockpile," the classified NIE read, "Saddam Hussein probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons" of such poisons.


In the unclassified version of the report, the phrase "although we have little specific information" was deleted. Instead, the public report said, "Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents."

more

[mhr]

1. I'm Confused, Please Pardon This Simple, Slow Texas Mind

If the original classified CIA report contained the qualifying language and the new Senate report says this was changed by the White House then how can the Senate report blame the CIA for Bush Administration failures?

In other words, how can this be spun in favor of Bush.

I am a bit perplexed by earlier reports saying that the Senate has exonerated Bush by blaming the CIA.

[lazarus]

2. here you go

The CIA has perfected mind control rays, and they're responsible for everything bad Bush has done, which isn't anything, because he doesn't make mistakes, but the CIA forced him to incorrectly go to war, although the war is justified.

:silly:

[shraby]

4. This last paragraph is

pretty telling. Their "stylistic" reasons changed the meaning of a lot of the document.

They were told that, because officials believed the white paper would be made public as representing the view of the entire U.S. government, not simply an intelligence community product, it was more appropriate to take references to "we" out of the document. This was done, committee staffers were told, "purely for stylistic reasons."

[Catt03]

5. CIA - Master of Mind Control

Great line. They should be able to find bin Laden and Algarabawi with such powers.

[Gman]

3. Rember that this report has purposely avoided saying any pressure

was brought by Cheney to say what he wanted.

[DemonFighterLives]

Also completely overlooks

The office of Special Plans, Rummy's stovepiping device.
The Neocons are in complete agreement, WMD's have been found and Saddam and Osama are connected at the hip and if anything was wrong it was the CIA's fault. Of course whatever doesn't stick to CIA and Tenet can easily be blamed on Clinton.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

22. Criticising CIA now delays the later report on the WH's abuse of intel

until after the Nov. election they're trying to steal again.

Jay Rockefeller (D) said at the press conference releasing this report that the real crimes not yet fully reported are the ones committeed in the White House manipulating the data.

Pat Roberts (R) just said 'uh, we'll get to that stuff eventually.'

Rockefeller responded by saying 'we don't have to go on vacation after the next 20 legislative days. We can instead choose to stay here and get this next report critical to national security done.

That illustrated perfectly the partisan divide on how to handle national security. We're screwed.

[wurzel]

6. None of this will get down to the American people.

Can you imagine any of the major "news" networks explaining this in their ten second "soundbites"?

[Dr Fate]

26. No, that type of scrutiny is reserved for Mike Moore & Whoope Goldberg

They are too busy dissecting every word from "Angry Liberals" to report this "boring" stuff.

[nodictators]

7. Remember, BushCo was hot to invade Iraq before 9/11

Rummy and Wolfowitz as well as a gaggle of PNACers wrote to Clinton in 1998, asking him to go after Saddam.

Bush used the phrase "weapons of mass destruction" in his Inaugural address.

Cheney had his maps of Iraqi oil leases before Bush took the presidency.

Wolfowitz wanted to invade Iraq, not Afghanistan, on 9/12.

Bush wanted to see only intellegence that said Saddam had WMD. Cheney went to the CIA at least 10 times before the invasion, reportedly to push for reports that said Saddam had WMD.

Bush stopped the UN inspections by Blix and ElBaradi (sp?) that were underway.

The Senate report is a Repub WHITEWASH for Bush.

[TacticalPeek]

8. "F**K Saddam! We're taking him out!" - GWB, March 2002

He don't need no stinking CIA.

[wishlist]

9. On NBC this morning former CIA head Adm. Stansfield Turner rocked-

Admiral Stansfield Turner nailed the administration over the way they misused the intelligence and pointed out how unusual it was for a VP to visit the CIA as Cheney did 10 during the course of Iraq intelligence gathering. I am sure MSNBC will repeat and maybe elaborate on this interview over the weekend.

[warrior1]

10. Are they saying it came out of Condi's office?

During a briefing before the report was released, one committee aide said the Senate panel had asked Tenet and Stu Cohen — who, as acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council, oversaw production of the NIE — who was responsible for inserting those words into the unclassified document.

"They did not know and could not explain," said the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A similar degree of mystery surrounds the larger question of exactly how the classified NIE morphed into its unclassified version.

According to the committee report, the intelligence community began preparing an unclassified white paper on Iraq's banned weapons in May 2002, at the request of the National Security Council.

[jackofhearts]

11. How is this report considered complete...

"Yet committee staffers said Friday that, after a year of investigating, they were still trying to get to the bottom of how the key differences between the classified and unclassified versions came about."


Funny how this was not brought up in any interviews of the chairman I have heard (NPR and PBS) This IS the issue...who was responsible for this mysterious unclassified version where all the caveats are left out? Maybe the Office Of Special Plans? How can this report be considered complete if they have not provided and answer to this fundamental question?

How did Rockefeller allow this to happen? He is being quite forceful in his views that the fascists have a hand in this somewhere but why is he not speaking out on THIS issue?

More Republican distortions, lies and crimes.

Oh and hello DU...1st post...jackofhearts

[classof56]

24. Welcome to DU, jackofhearts!

Glad you're here--we need you! You're right on this issue and many, many more, I suspect. Republican distortions, lies and crimes do indeed abound. Spread the word and let's stay strong!

Tired Old Cynic

[Spazito]

12. The question I have is: Which report did Congress receive?

Did they receive the unclassified one? If so, why? Did they receive the classified one? If so, why would they not be alarmed at all the qualifying language and demand more solid intelligence before voting for the IWR?

The other question I have is: Given this excuse, "it was more appropriate to take references to "we" out of the document. This was done, committee staffers were told, "purely for stylistic reasons."
Why did they not just use neutral language such as "It has been judged that..." if the word "we" was the problem, why take out the qualifying language as well if the intent was not to deceive?

[maddezmom]

18. pretty sure it was the the white paper, the unclassified one

Some of Rockefeller's comments from the press briefing:
~snip~
Of the first two administration points, the case for invasion, the committee details, as Chairman Roberts has indicated, how these key pillars were not supported and should not have been there. The national intelligence estimate was given to us, at our request -- at the request of the Senate Intelligence Committee, about 10 days before the vote came. It was done in three weeks. It was thrown together. It was based upon fragmentary intelligence, ancient intelligence.

And then there was this enormous difference between the classified version, where all kinds of doubts and caveats were included, and then the white paper, which was the unclassified version, which all of a sudden everything moved in one direction toward, "They've got them, they're ready to use them, and watch out."

I don't think that was an accident.
~snip~
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,125188,00.html

[Gyre]

20. It doesn't matter

Republican majority in Congress and the national media guarantees that this whitewash will be swallowed whole regardless of the stupidity of it's conclusions because it provides cover for der fuehrer.

Gyre

[drscm]

13. It's all very clear to me.

Phrases like "although we have little specific information" are national security risks and must be deleted.

At least, that's what I think they think I should think.

[HysteryDiagnosis]

14. Rummy on going into Afghanistan

Phrases like "although we have little specific information" are national security risks and must be deleted.

At least, that's what I think they think I should think.<<

"Afghanistan? But there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan... there are lots of good targets in Iraq"

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml
>>"Rumsfeld was saying that we needed to bomb Iraq," Clarke said to Stahl. "And we all said ... no, no. Al-Qaeda is in Afghanistan. We need to bomb Afghanistan. And Rumsfeld said there aren't any good targets in Afghanistan. And there are lots of good targets in Iraq. I said, 'Well, there are lots of good targets in lots of places, but Iraq had nothing to do with it.<<

Clark stated:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/19/60minutes/main607356.shtml
>>Clarke continued, "It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'<<

[hedda_foil]

15. Much ado about nothing. The Intel Committee saw the classified version.

The unclassified version was released to the public and the press, but the committee saw the classified version well before the vote. Remember, most of the Democratic members of the Intel Committee (as well as Armed Services) voted AGAINST the resolution. The DLC Dems assumed the war would be run far more efficiently and multilaterally, but they had no problem at all with the whole regime change nonsense.

[w4rma]

16. It is my understanding that Bush's Office of Special Plans wrote this

Bush 'skewed facts to justify attack on Iraq'

A growing number of US national security professionals are accusing the Bush Administration of slanting the facts and hijacking the intelligence apparatus to justify its rush to war in Iraq.

A key target is a four-person Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terror groups.

This team, self-mockingly called the cabal, “cherry-picked the intelligence stream” in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick Lang, a former head of worldwide human intelligence gathering for the Defence Intelligence Agency, which coordinates military intelligence.
…
The INC, which brought together groups opposed to Saddam, worked closely with the Pentagon to build a case against Iraq. “There are current intelligence officials who believe it is a scandal,” Mr Cannistraro said.
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/05/31/1054177765483.html

Cheney Investigated Forged Niger Uranuium Document

As though this were normal! I mean the repeated visits Vice President Dick Cheney made to the CIA before the war in Iraq. The visits were, in fact, unprecedented. During my 27-year career at the Central Intelligence Agency, no vice president ever came to us for a working visit.

During the '80s, it was my privilege to brief Vice President George H.W. Bush, and other very senior policy makers every other morning. I went either to the vice president's office or (on weekends) to his home. I am sure it never occurred to him to come to CIA headquarters.

The morning briefings gave us an excellent window on what was uppermost in the minds of those senior officials and helped us refine our tasks of collection and analysis. Thus, there was never any need for policy makers to visit us. And the very thought of a vice president dropping by to help us with our analysis is extraordinary. We preferred to do that work without the pressure that inevitably comes from policy makers at the table.

Cheney got into the operational side of intelligence as well. Reports in late 2001 that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger stirred such intense interest that his office let it be known he wanted them checked out. So, with the CIA as facilitator, a retired U.S. ambassador was dispatched to Niger in February 2002 to investigate. He found nothing to substantiate the report and lots to call it into question. There the matter rested – until last summer, after the Bush administration made the decision for war in Iraq.
…
http://feeds.bignewsnetwork.com/?sid=6e9d5502599dc6a2
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=5858&mesg_id=5858&page=

Plans For Iraq Attack Began On 9/11

(CBS) CBS News has learned that barely five hours after American Airlines Flight 77 plowed into the Pentagon, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld was telling his aides to come up with plans for striking Iraq — even though there was no evidence linking Saddam Hussein to the attacks.

That's according to notes taken by aides who were with Rumsfeld in the National Military Command Center on Sept. 11 – notes that show exactly where the road toward war with Iraq began, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.
…
Now, nearly one year later, there is still very little evidence Iraq was involved in the Sept. 11 attacks. But if these notes are accurate, that didn't matter to Rumsfeld.

“Go massive,” the notes quote him as saying. “Sweep it all up. Things related and not.” (Sec. of Defense Donald Rumsfeld hours after 9/11 attack)
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/09/04/september11/main520830.shtml
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=53315&mesg_id=53315&page=

A call to maintain CIA independence.

As the White House searches for every possible excuse to go to war with Iraq, pressure has been building on the intelligence agencies to deliberately slant estimates to fit a political agenda. In this case, the agencies are being pressed to find a casus belli for war, whether or not one exists.

“Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level pronouncements, and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA,” Vince Cannistraro, the agency's former head of counterterrorism, told The Guardian, a London newspaper.

This confirms what Knight-Ridder reporters found: “A growing number of military officers, intelligence professionals and diplomats privately have deep misgivings about the administration's double-time march toward war,” the news service reported recently. “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.”
…
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/2002-10-24-oped-bamford_x.htm

U.S. Insiders Say Iraq Intel Deliberately Skewed
…
The DIA was “exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD,” or weapons of mass destruction, he added in a phone interview. He said the CIA had “no guts at all” to resist the allegedly deliberate skewing of intelligence by a Pentagon that he said was now dominating U.S. foreign policy.

Vince Cannistraro, a former chief of Central Intelligence Agency counterterrorist operations, said he knew of serving intelligence officers who blame the Pentagon for playing up “fraudulent” intelligence, “a lot of it sourced from the Iraqi National Congress of Ahmad Chalabi.”
…
They believe the administration, before going to war, had a “moral obligation to use the best information available, not just information that fits your preconceived ideas.”

CHEMICAL WEAPONS REPORT 'SIMPLY WRONG'

The top Marine Corps officer in Iraq, Lt. Gen. James Conway, said on Friday U.S. intelligence was “simply wrong” in leading military commanders to fear troops were likely to be attacked with chemical weapons in the March invasion of Iraq that ousted Saddam.

Richard Perle, a Chalabi backer and member of the Defense Policy Board that advises Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, defended the four-person unit in a television interview.
…
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&ncid=578&e=2&u=/nm/20030530/ts_nm/iraq_intelligence_dc

CIA had doubts on Iraq link to al-Qaida

The debunking of the Bush administration's pre-war certainties on Iraq gathered pace yesterday when it emerged that the CIA knew for months that a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida was highly unlikely.

As President George Bush was forced for the second time in days to defend the decision to go to war, a new set of leaks from CIA officials suggested a tendency in the White House to suppress or ignore intelligence findings which did not shore up the case for war.
…
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,974182,00.html

Ex-CIA Officers Questioning Iraq Data

A small group composed mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq.

Members of the group contend the Bush administration has released information on Iraq that meets only its ends -- while ignoring or withholding contrary reporting.

They also say the administration's public evidence about the immediacy of Iraq's threat to the United States and its alleged ties to al-Qaida is unconvincing, and accuse policy-makers of pushing out some information that does not meet an intelligence professional's standards of proof.

“It's been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy,” said Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who briefed top Reagan administration security officials before retiring in 1990. “That's why a lot of my former colleagues are holding their noses these days.” ---
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030314/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_iraq_intelligence_4
http://www.democraticunderground.com/duforum/DCForumID61/18413.html

Public was misled, claim ex-CIA men

A GROUP of former US intelligence officials has written to President Bush claiming that the US Congress and the American public were misled about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war.

The group’s members, most of them former CIA analysts, say that they have close contacts withsenior officials working inside the US intelligence agencies, who have told them that intelligence was“cooked” to persuade Congress to authorise the war.

The manipulation of intelligence has, they say, produced “a policy and intelligence fiasco of monumental proportions”. They write in the letter to Mr Bush: “While there have been occasions in the past when intelligence has been deliberately warped for political purposes, never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorise launching a war.

“You may not realise the extent of the current ferment within the intelligence community and particularly the CIA. In intelligence, there is one unpardonable sin — cooking intelligence to the recipe of high policy. There is ample indication that this has been done in Iraq.”
…
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,5944-698028,00.html

MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0207-04.htm

U.S. diplomats also tried to stop this invasion:

U.S. Diplomat's Letter of Resignation
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/02/27/international/27WEB-TNAT.html

Letter of Resignation (Mary Wright)
http://www.snopes.com/politics/soapbox/marywright.asp

U.S. Mongolian Diplomat Resigns Over Iraq (Fourth U.S. Diplomat)
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&cid=542&e=84&u=/ap/20030327/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/war_diplomat_resigns_2

Third U.S. Diplomat Resigns Over Iraq Policy
http://truthout.org/docs_03/032303G.shtml

Second US Diplomat Resigns in Protest
http://www.wagingpeace.org/articles/03.03/0314krieger_diplo_resign.htm
U.S. diplomat resigns over Iraq war plans
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/N10105063.htm

Niger-Uranium Timeline
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=niger_timeline

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION AND WMDs: THEN AND NOW
http://www.deanforamerica.com/site/PageServer?pagename=bush_wmd_summary

[Media_Lies_Daily]

17. Excellent collection of articles....thanks!

[salin]

19. IMO - the biggest info in this article:

During a briefing before the report was released, one committee aide said the Senate panel had asked Tenet and Stu Cohen — who, as acting chairman of the National Intelligence Council, oversaw production of the NIE — who was responsible for inserting those words into the unclassified document.

"They did not know and could not explain," said the aide, speaking on condition of anonymity.

A similar degree of mystery surrounds the larger question of exactly how the classified NIE morphed into its unclassified version.



Will the press keep pressing on this point? It is interesting that it is included - given that the report carefully tries to point fingers at the CIA and not discuss the administration.

The inclusion of these dangling questions is almost a dare to the media and opposition to do the work the committee politically could/would not do - point the finger at.... somewhere in the administraiton. Why do I say the finger is implied at the administration - because the inclusion of the item that the CIA top folks said they could not identify (and do not have responsibility for) who/where the changes were made (that is: the changes were not made at the CIA).

Will the NYT or others respond to the charge and make the dangling question the center of media attention? Or will the question/dare made by the senate panel ... go unanswered.

Or am I reading this incorrectly?

[AlGore-08.com]

21. The unclassified version still uses qualified language

The quote in the article from the unclassified version reads:

"Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents."

Unqualified language would be something like:
"Saddam has between four and six hundred metric tons of CW agents stocked. Foreign intellegence reports that around 30% of Iraq's CW agents are being transfered to long range missle factories in Basra and Fallujah."

The language in the unclassified version still should have made folks vote "no" until they knew whether Saddam really posed a threat, or whether the white paper "probably" overstated the threat posed by Saddam.

[TacticalPeek]

23. Graham knew the score, and forced Tenet to put it in a letter to him.

October 07, 2002

Baghdad for now appears to be drawing a line short of conducting terrorist attacks with conventional or CBW against the United States.

Should Saddam conclude that a US-led attack could no longer be deterred, he probably would become much less constrained in adopting terrorist actions. Such terrorism might involve conventional means, as with Iraq's unsuccessful attempt at a terrorist offensive in 1991, or CBW.

Saddam might decide that the extreme step of assisting Islamist terrorists in conducting a WMD attack against the United States would be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of victims ith him.

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2002/10/dci100702.html

http://www.fas.org/irp/new.htm



Bottom line: Saddam was contained. Now, thanks to President Stupid, we are contained.

[Dr Fate]

25. Well, at least the media was there to point out F9/11 "flaws" n/t

n/t

[NNN0LHI]

27. That is the least theycould do n/t