Read between the lines The current 'intelligence war' between the CIA and the Bush administration highlights the selective use of classified information in the US, writes Julian Borger
The Guardian
October 16, 2002
By Julian BorgerThe determination of the current US administration to seek an urgent confrontation with Baghdad has convinced many Americans that it must know something the rest of us are not aware of. But over the past few days it has become clear the Bush team has access to the same ambiguous mix of information and speculation as the rest of the world. It simply requires a lower standard of proof.
The past week has witnessed a behind-the-scenes revolt by US intelligence and other government employees in sensitive positions, against the White House and Pentagon over the use of classified information about Saddam Hussein's activities.
Piece by piece, the evidence against Baghdad laid out by President Bush and his senior aides has been called into question. It has become clear that the administration's case has been built on a reading of intelligence that has been selective to say the least.
The debate has revealed an "intelligence war" inside the administration, in which the CIA is struggling to maintain its primacy in the face of a challenge to its credibility from Pentagon hawks seeking to build a "bulletproof" argument for invasion.
The rivalry threatens to politicise the role of intelligence to an extent that it becomes less of a decision-making tool than a political weapon. That in itself is a dangerous development for any administration. In the absence of objective, credible information, executive decisions about war and peace risk being made in the dark.
There have of course been battles over intelligence before. Most notably, CIA assessments of Soviet strength were constantly second-guessed by conservatives who insisted the spies were under-estimating the Red threat. These critics gathered together in groups to promote their own, more pessimistic analyses. The groups took on a variety of sinister-sounding names like Committee on the Present Danger and Team B, and included such familiar names as Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle.
This time, however the situation is a good deal more serious. Despite having been comprehensively wrong about the Soviet army, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and Perle are now in positions of power in and around the Pentagon. They have the ear of the White House, where they have an important, often decisive, ally in Dick Cheney.
So while the CIA prevailed as the last word in intelligence assessments during the Cold War, that is no longer the case in the current debate over Iraq. Information gathered by the Pentagon through other channels, including informal contacts with Iraqi exiles, is pouring into the intelligence pool, muddying the water.
Meanwhile, in its major pronouncements on Iraq, the president and his top officials have taken a highly one-sided interpretation of the raw material the CIA has offered.
For example, in its 'white paper' on Iraq's arsenal of weapons of mass destruction the agency said there were differences of opinion over the purpose of aluminium tubes that Iraq had tried to buy on the international market. Some in the agency believe they were intended for gas centrifuges to enrich uranium. Others in the CIA, together with experts from the energy department, pointed out that the tubes were too thick for use in a centrifuge and had a special "anodysed" coating that would be useless for enriching uranium, but that is ideal for conventional rockets or missiles.
However, the tubes have surfaced in speeches by both Bush and Cheney as a key exhibit in the case against Saddam.
In his address to the nation last week, President Bush also drew attention to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) that Iraq are allegedly developing from trainer jets as a means of dispersing chemical or biological weapons. Bush said the UAV's could thus threaten "the United States". As these aircraft only have a range of a few hundred miles, he presumably meant they could be used against US forces in the region, but the wording used gave the misleading impression they could be reach American territory.
Moreover, there is considerable disagreement within the US intelligence community over the nature of the links between Baghdad and al-Qaida.
In a declassified letter to Congress, the CIA director, George Tenet, appeared to give credence to the administration's case, going further than earlier, more cautious assessments by saying that there had been "high-level" contacts for "a decade" and that there were reports that Iraq had provided al-Qaida members with training in the use of poisonous gases.
Beneath these apparently straightforward assertions, however, there are many shades of grey. US intelligence sources can confirm meetings between al-Qaida leaders and Iraqi agents in Sudan ten years ago and then again in Afghanistan in 1998, when Baghdad's ambassador in Turkey, a high-level intelligence agent called Farouk Hijazi, paid a visit to Osama Bin Laden. However, they say there is no evidence any significant cooperation grew from these sporadic meetings, and dismiss Czech reports that the lead September 11 hijacker, Mohamed Atta, met an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague only months before the attack.
The source of the claim that Iraq had been giving Bin Laden's men lessons in chemical weapons is apparently Abu Zubeidah, al-Qaida's chief recruiter who is now helping US investigators with their enquiries in a secret location. But his interrogators are aware he may be playing games with them, mixing accurate tidbits with disinformation.
It is in al-Qaida's interest to foment a conflict with Iraq. Such a conflict could easily contribute towards their goal of triggering a war between Islam and the West. It is a point made in the taped address by Bin Laden's deputy and mentor, Ayman al-Zawahiri, broadcast by al-Jazeera last week, which portrayed any future military action on Iraq as an anti-Islamic crusade.
Bin Laden once boasted the September 11 attacks would be the spark to ignite a world war between Islam and the rest of the world, and from that point of view al-Qaida's endeavour has been a colossal failure. Its leader's calls for jihad have had little resonance on the Arab street. But Washington, pumped up by sketchy and ambivalent intelligence, is on the point of opening a second front, which could do more to turn the Saudi fugitive's dreams into reality than any atrocity al-Qaida could possibly devise.