Wall Street Journal April 1, 2005 REVIEW & OUTLOOK A Media Intelligence Failure
We'll need time to dig through the details in the 600-plus-page Robb-Silberman report on intelligence that was released yesterday. But one important conclusion worth noting, even on a quick reading, is that the report blows apart the myth that intelligence provided by Iraqi politician and former exile Ahmed Chalabi suckered the U.S. into going to war. That myth was a media and antiwar favorite last year, before the U.S. and Iraq elections, and when all of Washington thought President Bush was a one-termer. CIA and State Department sources peddled the idea that an Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball" had planted bad information about Saddam's WMD. "Curveball" was widely broadcast as an agent of Mr. Chalabi and the Iraqi National Congress, with the not-so-subtle implication that his intelligence was used by the Pentagon to deceive Mr. Bush into going to war. The promoters of some version of this theory included Senator Ted Kennedy and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee, as well as such prominent journalists as NBC's Tim Russert, reporters at the Los Angeles Times, Joe Klein of Time, and Evan Thomas and Mark Hosenball of Newsweek. "The ideologues at the Defense Department were warned by doubters at the State Department and CIA that Chalabi was peddling suspect goods," declared Newsweek. "Even so, the Bushies were bamboozled by a Machiavellian con man for the ages." Yesterday's bipartisan report shows that these writers were "bamboozled" by their own U.S. sources. "Post-war investigations concluded that Curveball's reporting was not influenced by, controlled by, or connected to, the INC," says the Robb-Silberman report. (INC refers to the Iraqi National Congress.) And: "Over all, CIA's post-war investigations revealed that INC-related sources had a minimal impact on pre-war assessments." The report's larger conclusion is that the CIA's intelligence on Iraq was faulty almost from start-to-finish, never mind "Curveball." The attempt to finger Mr. Chalabi and "the ideologues" in the Pentagon was an exercise in blame-shifting to deflect attention from that enormous failure. It was also intended to tarnish Mr. Bush as he attempted to win re-election while also trying to defeat an insurgency that the CIA had never predicted. Mr. Chalabi's vindication comes as he is playing a prominent role in negotiations to form a new Iraqi government. As for the media, we await their reports into how their own trusted, if usually anonymous, sources could have given them so much bad intelligence. ------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor --------------------~--> Give underprivileged students the materials they need to learn. Bring education to life by funding a specific classroom project. http://us.click.yahoo.com/FHLuJD/_WnJAA/cUmLAA/TySplB/TM --------------------------------------------------------------------~-> -------------------------- Want to discuss this topic? Head on over to our discussion list, [EMAIL PROTECTED] -------------------------- Brooks Isoldi, editor [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.intellnet.org Post message: [email protected] Subscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe: [EMAIL PROTECTED] *** FAIR USE NOTICE. This message contains copyrighted material whose use has not been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. OSINT, as a part of The Intelligence Network, is making it available without profit to OSINT YahooGroups members who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information in their efforts to advance the understanding of intelligence and law enforcement organizations, their activities, methods, techniques, human rights, civil liberties, social justice and other intelligence related issues, for non-profit research and educational purposes only. We believe that this constitutes a 'fair use' of the copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the U.S. Copyright Law. If you wish to use this copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/osint/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
