6 February 2004 article

Settling Accounts between Spies and Politicians

By Patrick Seale

Over the coming months, British and American intelligence agencies are going to come under intense and unwelcome scrutiny. The jobs of George Tenet, director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and of Sir Richard Dearlove, head of Britainís Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) are in danger. It is now obvious that the intelligence which led to war with Iraq was catastrophically wrong.

No weapons of mass destruction -- nuclear, chemical or biological -- have been found in Iraq, although the alleged existence and ëimminent threatí from these weapons were the prime arguments for going to war. And no link whatsoever has been found between Saddam Hussein and the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, even though such a link was trumpeted, especially in the United States, as the reason why ëregime changeí in Iraq was essential for American security.

These intelligence failures are a scandal of massive proportions which will reverberate for years through the British and American government machines. There are bound to be political casualties, but also casualties in the intelligence community, although most of the latter will be unpublicised. It may be years before the full picture emerges. So, who was to blame? Was it the spies or the politicians?

The battle to apportion responsibility for the fiasco is being waged not only between the agencies and their political masters, but also within and between the various agencies, particularly in the United States where the intelligence community costs the tax-payer the tidy sum of $40 billion a year. Many lucrative careers and many handsome budgets are at stake.

There are 15 agencies in the United States concerned with gathering and analysing intelligence, of which six are the most important. They are the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA); the National Security Agency (NSA), responsible for world-wide electronic eavesdropping and employing tens of thousands of people; the State Departmentís intelligence department (INR); the Department of Energyís intelligence department; and the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), which operates many spy satellites.

The National Intelligence Council assembles and boils down the vast output of these six agencies into so-called National Intelligence Estimates, which go to the President and other political leaders. In much the same way, Britainís Joint Intelligence Committee collects and collates material from the various British intelligence agencies for the Prime Minister and the Cabinet. In theory, the Director of the CIA presides over the entire American intelligence community. In practice, however, each agency enjoys very considerable autonomy and jealously guards its turf.

The Office of Special Plans

There is a further important complication on the American scene. The Washington hawks who pressed most insistently for war against Iraq ñ men such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, numbers 2 and 3 in the Pentagon hierarchy, and Richard Perle, then chairman of the Defence Policy Board, together with their political master, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld -- were not satisfied with the intelligence they were receiving from Americaís intelligence agencies. Desperate to make the case that Saddam was linked to Al-Qaíida and that he was on the verge of acquiring a nuclear capability, they created their own intelligence unit at the Pentagon, which produced sensational intelligence, more to their liking, about Saddam Husseinís WMDs.

Known as the Office of Special Plans, this intelligence unit was in close touch with Ahmad Chalabi and other Iraqi dissenters of doubtful reliability, as well as with Israelís Mossad. The American press has reported that Israeli agents would be allowed into the Pentagon without formality, simply waved in by Douglas Feith.

The Office of Special Plans did not play the consensus game of the more established US agencies. Instead, bypassing the usual bureaucratic channels in charge of analysis and collation, it fed raw intelligence ñ often from a single source -- direct to the President and other political leaders. The CIA thus appears to have lost control of the flow of intelligence underpinning political decisions. Americaís giant intelligence community was neutralised, while the decision to go to war was taken on the basis of highly ëpoliticisedí intelligence, much of it evidently bogus. No doubt the CIA will want to settle accounts with the men who set up the Office of Special Plans and who, by so doing, tarnished the reputation of Americaís entire intelligence community.

A crucial outcome of the US presidential campaign will indeed be the fate of the Washington hawks, many of them close to Israelís Likud, who took America into war. To the eternal regret of much of the British electorate, Tony Blair joined in the war, no doubt worried that if he stayed out, like France and Germany, he risked endangering Britainís ëspecial relationshipí with the United States.

John Kerry is now the Democratic front-runner in this yearís US presidential election. ëI have spent my whole life fighting against powerful interestsí he said recently, ëand Iíve only just begun to fight. I have a message for the influence peddlers, for the polluters, the drug companies, big oil and all the special interests who now call the White House home: Weíre coming. Youíre going. And donít let the door hit you on the way out.í The warning to the Washington hawks is very clear.

In the months before the US elections, political leaders on both sides of the Atlantic will seek to shuffle off on to the intelligence services responsibility for the mess in Iraq. It will be interesting to see whether the intelligence agencies ñ or defectors from them -- decide to fight back. The spies will not want to be the only scapegoats for a costly failure. They know better than anyone the extent to which intelligence was manipulated or ëpoliticisedí to make the case for war.

Two Commissions of Enquiry

Under intense pressure from public opinion, President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair have now reluctantly agreed to set up two commissions, one American and one British, to enquire into the intelligence which led to war. But both leaders have tailored the commissions to suit their own political needs.

The American commission, which is expected to be headed by Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser of George Bush senior, has been given eighteen months to conclude its work. This means that its report will not be published before next Novemberís presidential election. This will allow George W Bush to evade awkward questions about the war during the presidential campaign by saying that he must wait until the commission uncovers the truth. In any event, he has given the commission so wide a brief that investigations into the Iraq war are likely to be swamped by an examination of the whole range of American intelligence failures to do with terrorism, as well as with the nuclear programmes, not just of Iraq, but of India, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea, Libya, and much else besides.

In contrast, Blairís commission of enquiry has been given exceedingly narrow terms of reference. It is to enquire into the quality of the intelligence which led to the war in Iraq but not into the use politicians made of this intelligence. In other words, it will not investigate the reasons Blair decided to join Bushís war. This refusal to tackle the central political issue has been widely criticised and has caused Britainís Liberal Democrats ñ the third party in the country after Labour and the Conservatives -- to refuse to take part in the commission.

Blairís choice of Lord Butler, cabinet secretary when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister, to head the new commission resembles his earlier choice of Lord Hutton to head the enquiry into the death of the weapons scientist Dr David Kelly. Both Robert Butler and Brian Hutton are staunch establishment figures, who can be counted on not to rock the boat.

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