[Mb-civic] Ray McGovern on Bolton

[richard haase]

michael butler is my hero
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Mike Blaxill" <mblaxill at yahoo.com>
To: <mb-civic at islandlists.com>
Sent: Friday, April 29, 2005 11:33 AM
Subject: [Mb-civic] Ray McGovern on Bolton


> 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.
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