Pacific Views

Iraq Intelligence - Public Forum

Congressman Jay Inslee (D-WA) held a public panel today in Shoreline, WA, on the subject of the possible mishandling of the intelligence information that was used to lead America to war. I went, and it was too good to keep all to myself. The following are the most accurate notes I could scribble down, only a few direct quotes, but I've tried very hard to keep to the spirit of what was said. Again, unless there are quotes around something, this is not a transcript.

The three panelists chosen by Rep. Inslee were Ambassador Joseph Wilson, Admiral Bill Center, and Professor Brewster Denny. Read on to find out which one of these distinguished gentlemen said that he wanted to "see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs."

This forum was announced on Rep. Inslee's website, through his email list, and through MoveOn, starting about a week ago. About 1400 people showed up (I was early enough to get into the main auditorium instead of one of the overflow rooms), opened the forum with a standing ovation, and nearly brought the house down cheering for Ambassador Wilson.

Congressman Inslee opened by saying that he'd recently read in the paper about a thorough investigation of gambling allegations against a football coach. It highlighted for him the need to investigate the lead up to war, one of the most serious decisions a government can make. He further stated that the purpose of the panel was not to debate the merits of the war, but to discuss whether or not the public had been told the truth.

Congressman Jay Inslee: Admiral Center, could you please give a summary of the intelligence gathering and sharing process?

Admiral Bill Center: This information isn't like scientific information, it isn't some special kind of knowledge just because of the secretive way it's gathered. If intelligence information were published in a newspaper, it would be the opinion page. As with other opinions, it's important to know whose opinion you're reading. And the different agencies (named several, CIA, etc.) may have different views of the same topic.

The answers you get depend on how you ask, and who you ask. These opinions are usually conservative and capability oriented. It's a very different thing to say that someone has the capability to do such and such, than to say that they're actually doing it.

The process also has room for dissent built into it, for other agencies to disagree with each other. Everyone should always remember that anyone's opinion about intelligence information is an "opinion about an opinion." In a court of law, I think they call that hearsay.

CJI: Professor Denny, how do you see the executive branch dealing with these issues. What can be done to correct false impressions, like that Hussein was working with Al-Qaida, or that Iraq had nuclear capability?

Professor Brewster Denny: The answers will not be found by putting the intelligence community on a couch, but in how national policy is made. The National Security Council is key in these matters.

Was there sufficient evidence of imminent threat? No. Were the inspections given enough time? No. Was the limited intelligence available spun? Yes. Did they spend enough time building an international consensus? "They gave it the finger!" And those 16 words damaged our relationship with our oldest and closest ally, Britain.

CJI: Ambassador Wilson, How should we think about the misuse of intelligence information? How does this affect our democracy, and our ability to protect our national security?

Ambassador Joseph Wilson: In October, very few on either side of the aisle questioned much in the runup to war. During that time, there was a tremendous investment of trust. This was due to 9-11, and our need for the president to succeed in his role as our protector.

Our government owes the people and their elected representatives full accounting of the facts. "This was not fundamentally a problem of bad intelligence," but of how it was used.

The documents in question [the Niger forgeries] were so bad that an Italian tabloid used to printing pictures of bare breasts wouldn't even publish them. This episode seriously impacts our credibility at a critical time. It was sold as if the threat was imminent, but it's clear now that it was not.

We face other threats and dangers as a nation. Going forward, it will be harder for this, or future administrations to convince congress or our allies to go forward in dealing with more credible threats.

ABC: I think congress voted the way they did for reasons other than the intelligence information. I believe they were properly skeptical of it.

CJI: I'd like to note that the legislation calling for an investigation is sponsored by Rep. Henry Waxman, who voted in favor of the war.

It seems that so much attention has been focused on the Niger yellowcake issue that other misimpressions have been forgotten. The administration created the impression among many Americans that: Saddam Hussein was responsible for 9-11; that he was working closely with Bin Laden; was about to give terrible weapons to terrorists; that our soldiers would be cheered; and that a representative democracy would be installed.

AJW: I've lived in several repressive dictatorships where speaking out meant that you could be killed or imprisoned, and I've seen that happen to people. True courage is to speak out under those circumstances. For us, it's our responsibility to hold our government to account. I'm glad to see that it seems that people are finally focusing more on the fate of our country than on the stock market. After all, "a billion dollars a week adds up to big money."

The "Niger yellowcake [issue] galvanized the press, got them to focus less on being an 'amen' chorus" for the administration. Once you have put a chink in the armor of the credibility of this administration, more chinks will appear.

Republican friends have thanked me for giving the ammunition to rein in the neoconservatives. A Democratic friend thanked me for, and this is a little bawdy, being the baboon that that threw the turd that finally stuck.

CJI: (Politely mumbled a humourous disavowal of having anything to do with the previous remark.) It's not just Republican administrations that have succumbed to the temptation not to level with the American people. We ought to be just as outraged with a Democratic administration who did the same thing.

PBD: Formerly, the congressional joint intelligence committees were told everything. They were of course expected to protect sources and methods. This seems to have eroded recently, I don't think that was the case this time.

CJI: At first, I was concerned that there was information that I might not have been aware of. After all the many pages of intelligence information that had been used were made available to all of congress, I was much angrier than I had been before. It appeared there was no justification for what the public was told.

Open Questions At this point, members of the audience were invited to come up to the microphones and begin asking questions. These questions as reported here have been substantially cut down, and several questions that the panel members answered with no more than an acknowledgement, or being politically prudent did not answer, have been omitted. Audience questions will be noted as AQ.

AQ: Now that we know that the president lied to us, when will impeachment hearings begin?

AJW: It will be hard to get even a cursory hearing, considering that the Democrats are in the minority in both houses. This will have to play out in the next election. The best thing you can do is to call 10 friends, and have them call 10 friends, and all show up to vote.

ABC: I don't think the president's statements would hold up in court as a lie. The problem was a misuse of the policy process. The process needs to be fixed, or this could happen again with a future, even a Democratic, administration.

AQ: Have production facilities capable of producing thousands of tons of chemical weapons been found?

AJW: Evidence after the first gulf war indicated that there was still a threat. Under the unanimously passed UN resolution 1441, inspections should have been allowed to run their course. I still think there will be some weapons or weapons programs discovered. But the question is whether or not there was evidence of imminent threat.

ABC: If we had such good intelligence, we could have given it to the inspectors and had them find the weapons. If we knew where they were, we could have dealt with the problem with a few well placed missiles. These were the things, as a military man, that made me question the case for war.

PBD: One question that occupies me is the one of regime change. There are plenty of bad regimes in the world. The UN is frustrating, but we have to work with it. We created it so the international community could act against these threats together.

AQ: How can the American people get information past the Bush regime's censorship? (Yes, the questioner did actually use the phrase "Bush regime," and was a mature individual.)

CJI: One way would be to reverse the FCC decisions. This will be a big issue when we reconvene after Labor Day. Bush threatened to veto any legislation rolling back those regulations, but I say "bring it on."

AQ: Could Ambassador Wilson tell us what happened with his wife?

AJW: Thirty-six hours after my article was released, Cliff May said that I told the truth because I was a Democrat. It fell flat, because if he's saying that only Democrats tell the truth, then Republicans... fill in the blank.

Then Caspar Weinberger attacked me, which is ironic, because if he hadn't received a presidential pardon he'd have been doing hard time. Then Robert Novak released his column.

Hypothetically, if my wife were what Novak implied, the individuals responible for the leak are in breach of federal law. If not, they have caused a considerable amount of embarassment and trouble.

Their purpose was not to shut me up, but to intimidate others.

AQ: Who forged the documents and why?

AJW: Things like this come in every day. It's important to find out who benefitted.

ABC: In the intelligence business, so many people out there are trying to fool you. Many people are feeding disinformation into the system, and if disinformation fits into someone's world view, they're more likely to accept it. This seems to be what happened in this case.

AQ: Admiral Center, it seems that congress did in fact use intelligence in their defense of their war stand.

CJI: As a member of congress, let me answer that. Rep. Waxman trusted this intelligence, but now he wants to know why we didn't get the straight scoop. Some representatives genuinely believed that Hussein would soon have nuclear weapons, they believed Vice President Cheney.

AJW: I'd just like to note that right now, many of the angriest members of congress are Republicans.

AQ: Could we have a non-partisan panel of experts review this matter?

PBD: That's up to congress. They have a "special responsibility because they're the ones that got spoofed."

ABC: It would be good to have an independent panel, like with the NASA investigation. Congress should focus on a debate about our role in the world, that's the main issue.

PBD: We haven't publicly discussed our role in the world since the Cold War ended. It's the situation as a whole that people need to understand.

AQ: Assuming that what Novak said was true, can we expect a ful FBI investigation?

AJW: First, the CIA would perform an internal investigation. The results of that would be passed on to the Justice Department for professional investigation. I don't think this will be dropped. "At the end of the day, it's of keen interest to me to see whether or not we can get Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs. And trust me, when I use that name, I measure my words."

[Ed. This last portion of the above quote corrected thanks to Mark Kleiman, my original version read as follows: It's of great interest to me to "see Karl Rove frog-marched out of the White House in handcuffs." And I choose my words on this very carefully.]

AQ: Everyone I talked to last year, friends, representatives, everyone, that "I have to trust the leaders, they know more than I do." How will we deal with the aftermath of finding out that we can no longer have that blind trust.

PBD: It's not just about our trust but that of the rest of the world.

CJI: It would help restore trust if the administration would punish those responsible for the breaches.

AQ: What about the aluminum tubes?

CJI: At the time, at least one intelligence agency believed that the tubes could be used in centrifuges, another doubted it. But the president said there was no doubt that Hussein had the most deadly weapons of mass destruction.

AQ: Is Iraq or Saudi Arabia the biggest threat to us?

ABC: What's important to understand is that terrorists act mainly as individuals, though the governments of these countries do provide an environment for them.

AJW: With 140,000 troops sitting in Iraq, that's now the biggest security threat we face. Saudi Arabia is a bit more complicated. The need to get hold of the education system there, they've let the mullahs run it. It's been so privatized, it's like a school voucher system run amok.

PBD: Ambassador, isn't it true that our presence makes us a target of the whole region? Haven't we acted in a way as to assume responsibility for fixing it?

AJW: Usually people in the area have been described as having an amorphous anger, but now that we've taken the "highest risk, lowest reward" option, this anger will crystallize. Shock and Awe was seen as a humiliation, and I believe we will face foreign fighters and other nations trying to undermine the occuption.

AQ: The proposed investigation is too narrow, it needs to be traced back to the corporations who stood to benefit.

AJW: Yes, many corporations will benefit, but I think this was deeper than that. This was a redrawing of the map of political influence.

AQ: What's the outline of the intelligence misuse?

CJI: It seems the least examined issue was the superimposition of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. Two chief Al-Qaida members who were questioned at Guantanamo Bay before the October debate had revealed that the two refused to work together because they hated each other.

AJW: One of the things about the invasion (that makes me doubt the administration's credibility?) [ed. very unsure about the previous portion of this statement] was that they did not secure Tuwaitha, a known nuclear facility, right away. They waited until the press was broadcasting images around the world of people in the area with radiation poisoning after the looting.

This forum will shortly be webcast here, where you can also go read about the legislation Congressman Inslee is co-sponsoring to initiate a full congressional inquiry.

For the curious, the audience in the main room was overwhelmingly approving of the discussion, with frequent applause breaks. The only points where booing and hissing were heard were when Admiral Center said that he didn't think the president had lied, and when a questioner mentioned the pro-war vote of Washington state Senator Maria Cantwell.