[Mb-civic] Ray McGovern on Bolton

[Mike Blaxill]

This guy is my hero.


    More at Stake in Bolton Nomination Than Meets
the Eye
    By Ray McGovern
    t r u t h o u t | Perspective

    Monday 25 April 2005

    President George W. Bush and Vice President
Dick Cheney are casting the trials of John
Bolton, their nominee for ambassador to the U.N.,
as a partisan political squabble. It is much more
than that. It is rather a matter of life and
death for the endangered species of intelligence
analysts determined to "tell it like it is," no
matter what the administration's policies may be.
For them the stakes are very high indeed.

    The Bush administration strongly resists the
notion that the intelligence on Iraq, for
example, was cooked to the White House recipe.
And with thepresident's party controlling both
houses of Congress and the president appointing
his own "independent" commission to investigate,
Bush and Cheney have until now been able to
prevent any meaningful look into the issue of
politicization of intelligence.

    But the Bolton nomination has brought it very
much to the fore, and there will be serious
repercussions in the intelligence community if,
despite his flagrant attempts to intimidate
intelligence analysts, Bolton is confirmed by the
Senate.

    For many, the term "politicization" is as
difficult to understand as it is to pronounce.
Indeed, it is impossible to understand, when one
assumes, as most do, that all institutions in
Washington, DC have a political agenda. Suffice
it to say here that, in order to do their job
properly, intelligence analysts must at one and
the same time be aware of what is going on at the
policy level but be insulated from political
pressure to conform intelligence to policy. That
way, intelligence anlysis can be based on fact
(as in "We have no good evidence that Iraq has
weapons of mass destruction"), rather than
fiction (as in, "Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction pose a grave threat requiring
immediate action"). Helpful insight into
politicization can be found in John Prados'
article of last Thursday, "Boltonized
Intelligence."

    L' Affaire Bolton

    For those who may have tuned in late, in
February 2002 then-Under Secretary of State John
Bolton sought intelligence community clearance
for his own home-grown analysis regarding Cuba's
pursuit of biological weapons and the possibility
it might share them with rogue states. (One can
only speculate on his purpose in exaggerating the
threat.)

    Small problem: Bolton's intended remarks went
far beyond what U.S. intelligence would support.
Christian Westermnn of the State Department's
Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) and
counterparts from other agencies refused to let
Bolton represent his views as those of the
intelligence community and proposed instead some
alternative, less alarming language. At this
Bolton became so dyspeptic that he summoned
Westermann to his office for a tongue-lashing and
then asked top INR officials to remove him.

    For those wondering if this constitutes
politicization, a recently declassified email
message made available to the Senate Foreign
Relations Committee and the New York Times should
dispel any doubt. On February 12, 2002, after a
run-in with Westermann, Bolton's principal aide
Frederick Fleitz, sent Bolton this email:

    "I explained to Christian that it was a
political judgment as to how to interpret this
data (emphasis added) and the I.C. [intelligence
community] should do as we asked."

    Fleitz added that Westermann "strongly
disagrees with us."

    Good for Westermann, we can say as we sit a
comfortable distance from Bolton. But more than
seven months later, Westermann was still paying
the price for his honesty and courage. In an
email of September 23, 2002 to Tom Fingar, deputy
to then-INR director Carl Ford, Westermann
complained that "personal attacks, harassment,
and impugning of my integrity [are] now affecting
my work, my health, and my dedication to public
service." Fingar replied that he was "dismayed
and disgusted" by the "unwarranted personal
attacks."

    Bolton and the Cheney/Rumsfeld School of
Intelligence

    Were it not for the numbing experience of the
past four years, we intelligence professionals,
practicing and retired, would be astonished at
the claim that how to interpret intelligence data
is a "political judgment." But this is also the
era of the Rumsfeld maxim: "Absence of evidence
is not evidence of absence," and the Cheney
corollary: "If you build it, they will
come"-meaning that intelligence analysts will
come around to any case that top administration
officials may build. All it takes is a few
personal visits to CIA headquarters and a little
arm-twisting, and the analysts will be happy to
conjure up whatever "evidence" may be needed to
support Cheneyesque warnings that "they"-the
Iraqis, the Iranians, it doesn't matter--have
"reconstituted" their nuclear weapons development
program. Cheney is Bolton's patron; Bolton is
well tutored.

    But how could Cheney, Rumsfeld, and other
senior aministration officials be assured of the
acquiescence of the intelligence community
(except for mavericks like analysts from INR) on
issues like weapons of mass destruction in Iraq?
True, former CIA director, "Slam-Dunk" George
Tenet, proved entirely malleable, but he could
not have managed it alone. Sadly, he found
willing collaborators in a generation of CIA
managers who put career above objectivity and
bubbled to the top under directors William Casey
and his protégé Robert Gates. In other words,
Tenet was the "beneficiary" of a generation of
malleable managers who benefited from the
promotion policies of Casey and Gates starting in
the early eighties.

    How the Corruption Began

    Casey, who saw a Russian under every rock and
could not be persuaded that Mikhail Gorbachev was
anything but a dirty Commie, started the trend by
advncing those-like Gates-who pretended to be of
like mind. (With a degree in Russian history and
experience as a Soviet analyst, Gates knew
better.) But as chief of analysis under Casey, he
towed the line and made sure that others did too.
Casey eventually made Gates his principal deputy,
but the young protégé's role in the Iran-Contra
affair prevented him from becoming director when
Casey died. Nonetheless, Gates' meteoric career
became an object lesson for those willing to make
the compromises necessary to make a swift ascent
up the career ladder.

    Why dwell on Gates? Because (1) he is the one
most responsible for institutionalizing political
corruption of intelligence analysis; and (2) John
Bolton's confirmation hearing provides an eerie
flashback to the ordeal Gates went through to get
confirmed as CIA director. The parallels are
striking.

    The dust from Iran-Contra had settled
sufficiently by 1991, when President George H. W.
Bush nominated Gate to head the CIA. Then all
hell broke loose. Playing the role discharged so
well earlier this month by former INR director
Carl Ford in critiquing Bolton, a former senior
Soviet analyst and CIA division chief, Mel
Goodman, stepped forward and gave the Senate
intelligence committee chapter and verse on how
Gates had shaped intelligence analysis to suit
his masters and his career. Goodman was joined at
once by several other analysts who put their own
careers at risk by testifying against Gates'
nomination. They were so many and so persuasive
that, for a time, it appeared they had won the
day. But the fix was in.

    With a powerful assist from George Tenet,
then staff director of the senate intelligence
committee, members approved the nomination. In
his memoir Gates makes a point of thanking Tenet
for greasing the skids. Even so, 31 Senators
found the evidence against Gates so persuasive
that, in an unprecedented move, they voted
against him when the nomination came tothe floor.

    The First Mass Exodus and Those Who Stayed

    The result? Many bright analysts quit rather
than take part in cooking intelligence-to-go. In
contrast, those inspired by Gates' example
followed suit and saw their careers flourish. So
much so that when in September 2002 Tenet asked
his senior managers to prepare a National
Intelligence Estimate parroting what Cheney had
been saying about the weapons-of-mass-destruction
threat from Iraq, they saluted and fell to the
task. Several of them traced their career
advancement to Robert Gates.

    Folks like John McLaughlin, who now "doesn't
remember" being told about the charlatan source
code-named "Curveball" in time enough to warn
Colin Powell before he made a fool of himself and
his country at the U.N., while the whole world
watched. Folks like National Inteligence Officer
Larry Gershwin, who gave a pass to Curveball's
drivel and similar nonsense; and Alan Foley, who
led the misbegotten analytical efforts on the
celebrated but non-nuclear-related aluminum tubes
headed for Iraq, and fictitious Iraqi efforts to
acquire uranium from Niger. Folks like the CIA
Inspector General, John Helgerson, who bowed to
pressure from the White House and from McLaughlin
to suppress the exhaustive IG report on 9/11,
which is a goldmine of names-of both intelligence
officials and policymakers-who bungled the many
warnings that such an attack was coming. Folks
like the senior intelligence official who told me
last month, "We were not politicized; we just
thought it appropriate to ‘lean forward,' given
White House concern over Iraq."

    The cancer of politicization spreads quickly,
runs deep, and-as we have seen on Iraq-can
bringcatastrophe.

    And that is precisely why the stakes are so
high in re Bolton. When Gates became CIA
director, the honest analysts who left were
replaced by more inexperienced, pliable ones. It
is no exaggeration to say that recent
intelligence fiascos can be traced directly to
the kinds of people Gates created in his image
and promoted to managerial positions.

    Redux before a Senate Committee

    And now? Never in the history of U.S.
intelligence has there been a more demoralized
corps of honest intelligence analysts. Leaders
with integrity are few and far between. So when a
Carl Ford throws down the gauntlet in defense of
a Christian Westermann, we need to sit up and
take notice. If "serial abuser" (Ford's words)
John Bolton wins confirmation, there will be an
inevitable hemorrhage of honest analysts at a
time whn they are sorely needed. It will be open
season for politicization.

    Does the White House care? Not at all. With
more docile intelligence analysts in place,
Bolton and others will be even freer to apply
"political judgment" to interpreting
intelligence, with no second-guessing by
recalcitrant experts. It will certainly be easier
to come up with the desired "evidence" on, say,
weapons of mass destruction in Iran.

    And Then There Was Voinovich

    Thankfully, integrity is a virtue not
altogether lost. The bright light of the past
week came when, to everyone's surprise, Senate
Foreign Relations Committee member George
Voinovich (R-Ohio) decided he simply could not
follow his Republican colleagues who had decided
to hold their noses and give Bolton a pass. That
blocked the nomination from going forwad to the
Senate until additional information on Bolton can
be assessed.

    Cheney reacted quickly and forcefully against
a suggestion by Senator Lincoln Chafee (R- R.I.)
that the Republican committee members might
consider whether to recommend that the nomination
be withdrawn, and it appears the White House will
use the coming weeks to pull out all the stops in
harnessing the faithful. Already, well-financed
hit squads are running radio spots in Ohio saying
Voinovich has "stabbed the president and the
Republicans right in the back."

    Asked why he wanted more time to weigh the
charges against Bolton, Voinovich answered with a
sentence not often heard in Washington political
circles, "My conscience got me."

    Can conscience prevail over politics?
Voinovich has proved it is still possible. Let us
hope that he and his committee colleagues will
approach the decision on Bolton with an open
mind. For integrity in intelligence is now on
life support. Approving th nomination of
quintessential politicizer Bolton would pull the
plug and ensure amateurish, cooked-to-taste
intelligence analysis for decades to come.

    -----------

    Ray McGovern spent 27 years as a CIA analyst,
during which he chaired National Intelligence
Estimates and prepared and briefed to senior
White House officials the President's Daily
Brief. He is a founding member of Veteran
Intelligence Professionals for Sanity and now
works at Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the
ecumenical Church of the Saviour in Washington,
DC.

     This article appeared first on TomPaine.com.