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| Iraq | |
| A Classified CIA Mea Culpa on Iraq | |
| 2012-09-06 | |
| by Tom Blanton This remarkable CIA mea culpa, just declassified this summer and published here for the first time, describes the U.S. intelligence failure on Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction as the consequence of "analytic liabilities" and predispositions that kept analysts from seeing the issue "through an Iraqi prism." The key findings presented in the first page-and-a-half (the only part most policymakers would read) are released almost in full, while the body of the document looks more like Swiss cheese from the many redactions of codewords, sources, and intelligence reports that remain classified even today, seven years after the Iraq Survey Group reported to the Director of Central Intelligence how wrong the prewar assessments had been. The key findings do not contain the most striking sentences; instead, these are tucked into the tail-end of the document. For example, on page 14, the assessment reports, "Given Iraq's extensive history of deception and only small changes in outward behavior, analysts did not spend adequate time examining the premise that the Iraqis had undergone a change in their behavior, and that what Iraq was saying by the end of 1995 was, for the most part, accurate." On page 16, going even further, the assessment says, "Analysts tended to focus on what was most important to us -- the hunt for WMD -- and less on what would be most important for a paranoid dictatorship to protect. Viewed through an Iraqi prism, their reputation, their security, their overall technological capabilities, and their status needed to be preserved. Deceptions were perpetrated and detected, but the reasons for those deceptions were misread." At the National Security Archive, we first saw a reference to this CIA Retrospective Series document in a footnote to a Senate Intelligence Committee report in September 2006, so we immediately filed a Mandatory Declassification Review request for this specific item (MDRs often move through the backlogged declassification system faster than Freedom of Information requests when you have this kind of exact title and date reference to cite). Still, the CIA took almost six years to release the report. How many years to learn the lessons?
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| Posted by:Steve White |
| #13 So, who was claiming Saddam didn't have WMD? The UN, MSM and Democrats. Nuff said. |
| Posted by: Iblis 2012-09-06 21:15 |
| #12 Yah, whatever. All the world take note. When America gets angry, we will kill you, and we don't need a good reason. That is all you need to remember. |
| Posted by: rammer 2012-09-06 19:33 |
| #11 Simple as this - 3 estimate approach: one is the "best case", one is "worst case" and one is "most probable". Final report is based off most probable with annotation and sometimes content from the best and worse case studies, as warranted by the report writers and senior analysts. In the aftermath of 9/11, far more weight was given to "worst case" because our risk tolerance had just been greatly heightened. We had just been handed a living example of an intel failure and a nearly "worst case" scenario of a highly improbable successful attack. Things we didn't believe were realistically possible all of a sudden became much more "possible" and in some cases, probable. No need for a conspiracy. And the subsequent leaks are just political crap by the careerists and a few partisan fools. Not defending the CIA - it still needs to be dismembered, parts of it farmed out to other agencies as appropriate, and put back together as a much more focused organization. But I've been preaching that for years. |
| Posted by: OldSpook 2012-09-06 16:24 |
| #10 The CIA is just FUBAR. They handed Bush43 a screwed up intel assessment on Iraq and then sent press releases out leaking their "objections" to the screwed up intel assessment they wrote. I still believe the entire CIA gig on Iraq was designed from beginning to end to harpoon and sink Bush43. It was intended to get him impeached. |
| Posted by: Bill Clinton 2012-09-06 15:40 |
| #9 Does everone rememeber Colin Powell's televised presentation of the evidence for WMD in Iraq? That is an event that will stand out in the minds of Americans for a long time. Of course, come to find out that a lot of that info in that presentation was skewed, or based on sources who were highly unreliable. That one incident has caused the US public to distrust any and all intel reports on WMD. Too bad, because this is a time when the public in the USA and Israel need some reliable data. But if there's ZERO confidence - how do you establish a policy??? |
| Posted by: Raider 2012-09-06 12:56 |
| #8 ISTR that as our troops got closer to Baghdad, Saddam's generals made more and more frequent requests for "special weapons" to be used. EVERYONE thought he had WMD. |
| Posted by: Rob Crawford 2012-09-06 11:51 |
| #7 A) it's been proven that he had WMD. B) it's open to debate how much he had left and where they went. (Russian convoy to Syria?) C) it seems very likely that his generals lied to HIM about what they had and how ready it was. D) he probably lied to hold off Iran. E) Does anyone think that the CIA should know more about Iraq than SH? This looks like nothing more than CYA for its content and timing. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2012-09-06 11:47 |
| #6 I was saying the same thing (Saddam wanted everyone to think he had WMD because he was more afraid of Iran than of Bush) here some 10 years ago - they could have saved themselves a lot of time and effort if they just read Rantburg. |
| Posted by: Glenmore 2012-09-06 11:34 |
| #5 Remember NIE 2006. Goal was to hobble Bush against Iran. IMO This is designed to hobble Obama/Rommey by saying, in effect, don't trust us on Iran either. |
| Posted by: Richard Aubrey 2012-09-06 10:09 |
| #4 Are they still watching Pencilneck slaughter his population and wringing their hands that there's nothing they can do? |
| Posted by: Thing From Snowy Mountain 2012-09-06 10:08 |
| #3 Er, huh, all of which had nothing, nothing at all to do with the left leaning, anti-Bush narrative of the Agency. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2012-09-06 09:01 |
| #2 Mea culpa, or ass covering exercise? |
| Posted by: Iblis 2012-09-06 09:00 |
| #1 Iraq's non-existent weapons of mass destruction BS WMD = nuclear, biological, chemical. cite here and just recently here. |
| Posted by: Procopius2k 2012-09-06 08:58 |