Six Years Hence

With some understandable difficulty, I went to work today and followed my other routines when the workday was over. The terrorists did not win, not on my watch. Thankfully, the sky was clear and the weather was pleasant... all as it was on that other Tuesday.

We are six years hence from that other Tuesday, and being Americans, we have accrued to ourselves several luxuries in the interim. Senators and Congressmen can now indulge themselves in debating whether fighting terrorists in Iraq is contributing to winning the War on Terror. We hardly allowed for such opulent sophisms in years past; our enemies were our enemies back then, and we did not attempt to compartmentalize them into those that we should fight to the death versus those that we should negotiate with as "regional partners." Organized cadres of cry-babies and bed-wetters can besmirch and smear our truest heroes, and do so under the auspices of patriotic "dissent." This is yet another extravagance denied to our forebears.

But if there is one lavishness yet denied us, it is that of blissful ignorance. Dates on calendars notwithstanding, there will never, ever be a September 10th again. 9/11 split the history of our present age as was time by the birth of Christ. We will always look over our shoulders and watch the skies. Everything now gets at least a second look.

Would that such were the case in Septembers past. The sordid record of the failures and missteps of our pre-9/11 C.I.A. were recently summarized for all to review.

The [Joint Inquiry] concluded that, before 9/11, neither the US Government nor the [intelligence community] had a comprehensive strategy for combating al-Qa'ida. It charged that the Director of Central Intellignce (DCI) was either unwilling or unable to marshall the full range of IC resources necessary to combat the growing threat to the United States. The [C.I.A. Office of Inspector General] Team also found that the IC did not have a documented, comprehensive approach to al-Qa'ida and that the DCI did not use all of his authorities in leading the IC's strategic effort against [Osama bin Laden].

And while the report notes that George Tenet signed a December 1998 memorandum declaring "We are at war" against al-Qaeda, it goes on to condemn him and the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) for not "creating a documented, comprehensive plan to guide the counterterrorism effort at the Intelligence Community level." As the report clearly indicates, the comedy(?) of errors that led up to 9/11 can be laid at Tenet's feet; this was his C.I.A.

Of course if there is such a thing as historical precision, it would demand that we not be neglectful of the fact that this was also Bill Clinton's C.I.A. The man who professed to being "obsessed" with bin Laden seemed willing to do little to organize Central Intelligence such that OBL could be captured or killed. If anything, Clinton can be faulted for failing to do enough to bring bin Laden to justice; he surely remained obtuse to the warnings issued about bin Laden by the U.S. State Department. Indeed, his own words from a February 2002 speech are the strongest rebuttal to the idea that Clinton was concerned - let alone obsessed - with anything other than Monica Lewinsky's thong. (Audio from an interview with Bill on the matter, along with Hillary Clinton's more recent attempts at obfuscation, can be heard here. H/T: NewsMax.com)

Mr. bin Laden used to live in Sudan. He was expelled from Saudi Arabia in '91 and he went to the Sudan. We'd been hearing that the Sudanese wanted America to start dealing with them again. They released him. At the time, '96, he had committed no crime against America, so I did not bring him here because we had no basis on which to hold him, though we knew he wanted to commit crimes against America. So I pleaded with the Saudis to take him, 'cause they could have, but they thought it was a hot potato. They didn't and that's how he wound up in Afghanistan.

To be sure, Bill Clinton has repeatedly expressed "regret" for his failure to kill or capture bin Laden.

But even beyond Clinton's foibles vis-a-vis the nascent threat of Islamic terrorism, it should be noted that this was Michael Scheuer's C.I.A., as it was Paul Pillar's and Valarie Plame's. None of these now-vocal critics of the current administration could - by themselves or in collaboration with their peers - prevent or disrupt any of what occurred on September 11, 2001. Nor (as discussed elsewhere) could they...

...preempt the April 1983 Embassy bombing in Beirut, the October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the attack on the World Trade Center in February of 1993, the suicide attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in June of 1996, the bombings of American Embassies in the East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 or the deadly attacks of September 11, 2001, all of which would seem to fall under [their] agency's purview.

Scheuer, Pillar and Plame - among many other standard-bearers of Bush hatred - would have us all believe that we were one Presidential Daily Briefing away from stopping the 9/11 attacks before they started. As the aforementioned C.I.A. mea culpa indicates, the truth is far more damning than any of them would let on. Pillar's concern over politicization of intelligence gathering should be the least of our concerns.

Most important of all, this was the C.I.A. that the Left built. Some of the same braying asses in the Senate - who on this very day dared to launch verbal assaults against David Petraeus and Ryan Crocker - were the very persons who emasculated the intelligence services (and never sought to remove a single brick from the much-discussed Janet Reno-Jamie Gorelick "wall" between law enforcement and intelligence.) And while they strutted and fretted before the cameras about "politicized intelligence" in the run-up to the Iraq War, they have become the politicizers, blithely attempting to de-link the Iraq War from the war on Terror.

And so in spite of ourselves, the terrorists did not win today. We are still Americans, and we still crave our indulgences. And American politicians being who they are still yield to their indulgence of choice. We would do well to remember that those with whom we struggle do not crave luxury for themselves. They seek only our deaths, as they made evident six years ago. Ignorance of the threat did not set us in good stead then, and arrogance or wishful thinking will bring us no closer to victory in the long war.

Feith and Reason, pt. 3 - Subversion by leak has become standard operating procedure at the CIA and elsewhere. It might be easier for the intelligence establishment to produce information that is only tangentially related to the interests of the executive branch simply because its more readily available, or represents more of the consensus among analysts. But easily derived intelligence is no substitute for accurate, actionable intelligence in meeting the needs of policymakers. Nor does the judgment of unelected, unaccountable analysts trump that of those who are elected and sworn to defend the United States and uphold its Constitution

From his previously referenced Foreign Affairs essay, former CIA agent Paul Pillar recommends steps to repair the relationship between policymaking and intelligence gathering. In particular, he proposes that the intelligence community be allowed to widen its constituent base beyond the executive branch in order to "reflect the fact that influence and relevance flow not just from face time in the Oval Office, but also from credibility with Congress and, most of all, with the American public." The readily apparent question that Pillar leaves unanswered is why this wouldnt just be a means of institutionalizing and legitimizing damaging leaks. (If the executive branch doesn't appreciate your "artwork," show it to Congress.) And by expanding their relationship with Congress, the intelligence community would simply create more customers for it to cater to, as well as more "politicizers" to be appeased. If the CIA cannot withstand the subtle influence of the executive branch, how will it resist the direct influence of an overbearing legislature - teeming with the likes of Senators Levin and Jay Rockerfeller - that also has budget authority.

Reasonable observers of the conduct of the CIA in recent times can only conclude that the agency's priorities have shifted from the defense of the United States and its interests to the defense of its own prerogatives and agendas. This shift would account for the reasoning expressed in Mr. Pillar's article, and also provides insight into the actions of fired CIA officer Mary McCarthy in leaking classified information on "secret" prisons used to house al-Qaeda detainees to the Washington Post. (Public records confirm that Ms. McCarthy gave $2,000 to John Kerrys Presidential campaign.) It explains former CIA analyst Michael Scheuer's "anonymous" publication of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror, a blistering critique of President Bush's handling of the War on Terror. It also answers the question of why retired CIA officer Raymond McGovern would heckle Donald Rumsfeld during a speech on May 4, 2006.

And while these stalwarts were laboring in the dark recesses of Langley, the CIA was unable to foresee either the imminent fall of the Soviet Union, or the gathering threat of al-Qaeda. Nor could it preempt the April 1983 Embassy bombing in Beirut, the October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut, the attack on the World Trade Center in February of 1993, the suicide attack on the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia in June of 1996, the bombings of American Embassies in the East African cities of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and Nairobi, Kenya in 1998, the attack on the USS Cole in Yemen in 2000 or the deadly attacks of September 11, 2001, all of which would seem to fall under the agency's purview.

Unfortunately, none of the copious failings of America's once formidable intelligence apparatus can be remedied by any ill-conceived bureaucratic shuffling of titles and boxes on an organizational chart. The urgent need is for a real increase in the ability of our operatives to penetrate the inner workings of al-Qaeda, Hamas, Hezbollah and Abu Sayyaf. As Paul Pillar's article makes abundantly clear, the first step towards increasing the effectiveness of America's intelligence infrastructure (and perhaps reconfiguring the relationship between the White House and the intelligence community), is to recruit vertebrates for all future openings within the ranks of CIA analysts.

Snakes, chickens, jackasses or any other species with a spinal column will do better than the protozoa that presently infest America's intelligence agencies. And given the attitudes of current intelligence officers, as best exemplified by Mr. Pillar's comments, bias seems to sway the CIA in every direction except that which leads to the best defense of the American homeland. For their part, policymakers must accept and anticipate bias when evaluating any intelligence, be it the analyst's bias or their own. Surely it was such a realization that provided reason enough for Douglas Feith and his cohorts to question and evaluate the intelligence that they received from the intelligence community's fetid petri dish.

Feith and Reason, pt. 2 - As we turn our attention to the conduct of Sen. Carl Levin (or as he was described in a Wall Street Journal editorial, "Senator Ahab") as it regards his incessant investigations of pre-Iraq War intelligence, we get to ask ourselves how many more times must one misguided theory be disproved before it falls out of favor. Above and beyond the findings of the previously discussed Senate Select Intelligence Committee Report or the Robb-Silberman Report on WMD Intelligence, a recently published investigation on the handling of prewar intelligence conducted by the Pentagon's Inspector General also absolves senior officials - to include former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Douglas J. Feith - of any "illegal or unauthorized" activity in regards to production or dissemination of intelligence estimates.

Of course, Sen. Levin is hardly one to let the facts get in the way of a good story. As much was noted by the Journal.

But instead of moving on to more important things, Mr. Levin is still chasing his great white whale. He's grabbed on to an odd bit of editorializing by the Inspector General that Mr. Feith "was inappropriately performing Intelligence Activities...that should be performed by the Intelligence Community."

Mr. Levin's line of reasoning seems to be that policymakers like Mr. Feith are to be mere consumers of the product of the intelligence community, and should not challenge its assumptions, which themselves are usually the product of "lowest common denominator judgments - or group-think." This should sound familiar, as it is exactly the reasoning espoused by Paul R. Pillar, the former CIA official who coordinated U.S. intelligence efforts in the Middle East. In an article printed in the March/April 2006 issue of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Pillar attempted to breathe life into the oft-repeated (and by now, tiresome) charge of presidential interference with and dissembling about intelligence gathering efforts.

In his essay, Mr. Pillar attempts to make the case that the relationship between policymakers and the intelligence community has been damaged by the Bush administration’s supposed obsession with finding evidence of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda in order to justify military action against the regime of Saddam Hussein. He concedes (but only begrudgingly) that prewar intelligence was flawed and that the Bush administration’s understanding of the threat posed by Iraq’s weapons programs "was shared by the Clinton administration, congressional Democrats, and most other Western governments and intelligence services," but counters that "even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war." Mr. Pillar suggests that the administration used prewar intelligence to justify a decision that had already been reached, leaving policy analysts "to register varying degrees of private protest," and describes how the Bush administration influenced the development of intelligence regarding war with Iraq.

But the principal way that the intelligence community’s work on Iraq was politicized concerned the specific questions to which the community devoted its energies. As any competent pollster can attest, how a question is framed helps determine the answer. In the case of Iraq, there was also the matter of sheer quantity of output – not just what the intelligence community said, but how many times it said it. On any given subject, the intelligence community faces what is in effect a field of rocks, and it lacks the resources to turn over every one to see what threats to national security may lurk underneath. In an unpoliticized environment, intelligence officers decide which rocks to turn over based on past patterns and their own judgments. But when policymakers repeatedly urge the intelligence community to turn over only certain rocks, the process producing a body of reporting and analysis that, thanks to quantity and emphasis, leaves the impression that what lies under those rocks is a bigger part of the problem than it really is.

Mr. Pillar acknowledges that the issue of "politicization" of intelligence gathering is ground that has been covered by the both the Senate Select Committee and the Robb-Silberman Commission, but tries to get around their conclusions by suggesting that these investigations "would have caught only the crudest attempts at politicization." (I find it interesting that Mr. Pillar does not address why a genuinely distressed CIA officer would not seize upon one of these investigations as an opportunity to register their concerns.)

Throughout his essay, Mr. Pillar seems to be indicting the Bush administration for exercising its prerogatives to ask for what it needs and to ignore or reject the work product of intelligence gatherers. This line of thinking becomes more plausible in light of another statement made by Pillar.

It was clear that the Bush administration would frown on or ignore analysts that called into question a decision to go to war and welcome analysts that supported such a decision. Intelligence analysts – for who attention, especially favorable attention, from policymakers is a measure of success – felt a strong wind consistently blowing in one direction. The desire to bend with such a wind is natural and strong, even if unconscious.

The light that this remark sheds on the motivations of analysts is hardly flattering. It makes the entire intelligence community sound like a group of kindergarteners who want their "artwork" to end up on the wall in their classroom or on their parent's refrigerator. It also shatters the illusion that intelligence analysts are unbiased, almost Solomonic figures. In this light, they appear to be more political animals than professional analysts.

Perhaps it is just as well that we are disabused of such notions, no matter how inadvertent it was that Pillar did so. The idea that America’s intelligence apparatus is made up of all-seeing, all-knowing, completely agenda-free professionals was a tough sell even before September 11, 2001. Decades of neglect on the part of Congressional Democrats rendered the intelligence agencies useless, but benign. The intelligence community's current attempts to play political catch-up in the face of "strong winds" after 9/11 have turned it into a malignancy, riddled with careerists who are not merely content with providing useful intelligence, but would rather shape policy itself (but only in such a way as to avoid direct accountability.) By these efforts, the intelligence community has shown itself to be a greater danger to our Republic than George Bush ever will be, as they undermine our representative government by attempting to thwart the stated will of the majority of Americans as expressed through their election of President Bush.

More to come...