Politicization of Intelligence, Part VI

We’ve been at this for quite a while. . Now we read extracts from the Pentagon’s acting inspector general, Thomas V. Gimble. Here is the lead paragraph from the Washington Post’s Walter Pincus and R. Jeffrey Smith:

Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.

The NYT’s David Cloud and Mark Mazetti start it this way:

A Pentagon investigation into the handling of prewar intelligence has criticized civilian Pentagon officials for conducting their own intelligence analysis to find links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, but said the officials did not violate any laws or mislead Congress, according to Congressional officials who have read the report.

Pat Lang gave an accounting of how all this happened in the summer 2004 edition of the Middle East Policy Journal.  He is not optimistic that things have changed:

Douglas Feith is now gone from the Pentagon but his spirit marches on there.  The "Iraq Project" is reborn with new goals.  We now have the "Iran Project."

    Maybe we can now understand what Vice President Cheney meant when he said that the administration did not bring political pressure on the intelligence community. They didn’t need to press for different assessments, they just used their own.

    NOTE: This post linked to Beltway Traffic Jam for 02/09/07

Comments

[ByrdBlog]

Check out the major correction the Post has up now on that article.