PNAC the OSP and Iraqs WMDs

In 2003, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before the UN Security Council that Iraq had mobile weapons labs and was in possession of uranium, which was being used in the country's WMD program. His testimony was based on faulty U.S. and British Intelligence: the invasion of Iraq that followed found no evidence of such labs or of such a program. Joe Wilson, husband of CIA operations officer Valerie Plame and former U.S. Ambassador to Gabon penned an op-ed for The New York Times entitled "What I Didn't Find in Africa" -- a piece that described how neither he nor Ambassador Owens-Kirkpatrick had uncovered any evidence of Niger uranium sales to Iraq.[footnoteRef:1] Both Owens-Kirkpatrick and Wilson, moreover, had submitted briefings to the CIA to this point. Nonetheless, the CIA along with British intelligence stood by as the narrative that Iraq had purchased uranium took hold in the Oval Office. Both British and American intelligence were wrong about Iraq's WMD program in 2003. This paper will explain why, where, when and how the two countries' intelligence agencies were wrong. [1: Joe Wilson, "What I Didn't Find in Africa," The New York Times, 6 July 2003. http://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/06/opinion/what-i-didn-t-find-in-africa.html]

Donald Rumsfeld's usage of phrases like "known knowns," "known unknowns," and "unknown unknowns"[footnoteRef:2] set the stage for Powell's testimony on mobile weapons but did little to hide the State Department's known connections to the neo-conservative think-tank and now-defunct Project for the New American Century headed by William Kristol (Weekly Standard editor) and Robert Kagan. This group along with Richard Perle -- chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board Advisory Committee -- promoted the narrative that Hussein was a threat to the Middle East in their policy papers and their initiatives.[footnoteRef:3] Kagan and Kristol had publicly called for regime change in Iraq since the late 1990s in their own New York Times op-eds.[footnoteRef:4] Kristol, Kagan, Bolton, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz and many other members of PNAC would sign the blueprint for the war on terror in the 2000 policy paper entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses," which identified the possibility of a "new Pearl Harbor" serving as a catalyst for "American military preeminence."[footnoteRef:5] [2: David Logan, "Known knowns, known unknowns, unknown unknowns and the propagation of scientific enquiry," Journal of Experimental Botany, vol. 60, no. 3 (March 2009), 712. https://academic.oup.com/jxb/article/60/3/712/453685/Known-knowns-known-unknowns-unknown-unknowns-and] [3: David Rose, "Neo Culpa," Vanity Fair (December 2006) http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2006/12/neocons200612] [4: William Kristol, Robert Kagan, "Bombing Iraq Isn't Enough," The New York Times, 30 Jan 1998. http://www.nytimes.com/1998/01/30/opinion/bombing-iraq-isn-t-enough.html] [5: Donald Kagan, Gary Schmitt, Thomas Donnelly, Rebuilding America's Defenses (DC: Project for the New American Century, 2000), 54.]

Kristol, Perle and others of the PNAC group would go on to sign a letter to President Bush in the wake of 9/11 urging a "war on international terrorism."[footnoteRef:6] In effect, this group was supplanting policy for intelligence -- in other words, the initiative for action in Iraq would be based on a pre-fabricated policy of the PNAC rather than on actual factual intelligence. The "facts" that Powell used did not come from CIA or MI6 officers; and officers within the CIA and MI6 supported the invasion policy of PNAC to the extent that they did little to counter the prevailing opinion. The PNAC members, who aligned themselves with the policy paper of Israel's Oded Yinon, set the agenda and their accomplices (i.e., Libby in the State Department) fabricated the evidence.[footnoteRef:7] As James Pfiffner and Mark Phythian observe, "The CIA and MI6, both of whom realized that policymakers were expressing an unwarranted alarmist stance toward Iraq, stood by mutely for the most part."[footnoteRef:8] Stone and Kuznick report, moreover, that the false claims of a secret meeting in Prague "between the [9/11] hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence official" were trumpeted by Vice-President Dick Cheney and Lewis Libby (Cheney's national security advisor) -- "even though [CIA Director George] Tenet had proved that Atta was in the United States at the time of the alleged meeting."[footnoteRef:9] Tenet was not the only one to attempt to put these rumors to rest. [6: John Davis. Presidential Policies and the Road to the Second Iraq War. (VT: Ashgate, 2006), 51. ] [7: Israel Shahak, Oded Yinon, The Zionist Plan for the Middle East (Association of Arab-American University Graduates), 1-26; Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (NY: Gallery Books, 2012), 514.] [8: James Pfiffner, Mark Phythian, Intelligence and National Security Policymaking on Iraq: British and American Perspectives (TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2008), 178.] [9: Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (NY: Gallery Books, 2012), 514.]

As the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace showed, "the 731 inspections conducted by UNMOVIC [United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission] between November 27, 2002, and March 18, 2003, did not reveal any 'evidence of the continuation or resumption of programs of weapons of mass destruction or significant quantities of proscribed items.'"[footnoteRef:10] However, the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 on Iraq's WMDs (prepared just prior to UNMOVIC's inspections) held that Iraq had mobile weapons laboratories -- the kind that Powell would later cite as justification for invasion. Yet, the October 2002 NIE did not correspond with "prior intelligence assessments"[footnoteRef:11] -- or with the UNMOVIC assessment conducted shortly thereafter. The NIE was offering "intelligence" that no other parties could corroborate. The United States Select Senate Committee on Intelligence noted that the NIE purported that "Iraq continues to circumvent and undermine UN sanctions to enhance its biotechnical self-sufficiency, while advancing its BW program when possible."[footnoteRef:12] The source of this information was "codenamed CURVE BALL" -- the same source who claimed Iraq used mobile weapons labs.[footnoteRef:13] [10: Joseph Cirincione, Jessica Mathews, George Perkovich, Alexis Orton, "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and implications" (DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), 35.] [11: Joseph Cirincione, Jessica Mathews, George Perkovich, Alexis Orton, "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and implications" (DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), 7.] [12: "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq." United States Select Senate Committee on Intelligence (9 July 2004), 179. http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB234/SSCI_phaseI_excerpt.pdf] [13: "Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq." United States Select Senate Committee on Intelligence (9 July 2004), 181. http://nsarchive.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB234/SSCI_phaseI_excerpt.pdf]

The Carnegie Endowment concluded in its 2004 report that "the dramatic shift between prior intelligence assessments and the October 2002 NIE" indicated an undercurrent of pressure brought into the intelligence community from outside sources.[footnoteRef:14] This undercurrent was identified by the Carnegie Endowment as "an independent intelligence entity at the Pentagon" -- a reference to the Office of Special Plans (OSP), headed by Abram Shulsky, Paul Wolfowitz (Deputy Secretary of Defense) and Douglas Feith (Under-Secretary of Defense for Policy).[footnoteRef:15] Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersch noted by May 2003 that the OSP had "brought about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence community."[footnoteRef:16] Compiling data from other intelligence agencies, including information given them by the Iraqi National Congress (itself headed by Iraqi exile Ahmad Chalabi), the OSP not only produced the analysis that would "shape public opinion and American policy toward Iraq" but it also dominated the other intelligence agencies (from the CIA to the DIA to the DNI) into accepting its own version of events regarding Iraq and WMDs.[footnoteRef:17] The goal of the OSP was not to find the truth of the matter regarding Iraq and WMDs but rather to find evidence of what Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz "believed to be true."[footnoteRef:18] In other words, the OSP was tasked with crafting a case against Iraq -- regardless of what the actual intelligence was. The CIA did nothing to stop them, nor did the DNI (producer of the infamous 2002 NEI). Tenet offered objections based on fact -- but did not press the point.[footnoteRef:19] [14: Joseph Cirincione, Jessica Mathews, George Perkovich, Alexis Orton, "WMD in Iraq: Evidence and implications" (DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2004), 7.] [15: Karen Kwiatkowski, "The New Pentagon Papers," Salon, 10 Mar 2004. http://www.salon.com/2004/03/10/osp_moveon/; Seymour Hersch, "Selective Intelligence," The New Yorker, 12 May 2003. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intelligence] [16: Seymour Hersch, "Selective Intelligence," The New Yorker, 12 May 2003. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intelligence] [17: Seymour Hersch, "Selective Intelligence," The New Yorker, 12 May 2003. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intelligence] [18: Seymour Hersch, "Selective Intelligence," The New Yorker, 12 May 2003. http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/05/12/selective-intelligence] [19: Oliver Stone, Peter Kuznick, The Untold History of the United States (NY: Gallery Books, 2012), 514.]

Loch Johnson points out that even though 13 of the 16 American intelligence agencies viewed it likely that Iraq held WMDs, "every analyst knew the data were soft (as personified by Curve Ball's unsubstantiated speculations)."[footnoteRef:20] Moreover, Johnson holds that the true failure of the intelligence agencies was that they did not convey "this softness" to Bush or to Congress; this was a failure of duty on their part: "intelligence reports, based on flimsy evidence, had helped pave the way to war."[footnoteRef:21] This same failure was found in British Intelligence, too: "The Prime Minister's communications director gave to the British people the impression that Iraq had WMD that could strike the British Isles," while MI6 had already concluded that if Iraq possessed any WMDs they were "probably" only tactical (i.e., capable of being used in close combat -- as in to counter an invasion).[footnoteRef:22] This exaggeration on the part of the Prime Minister's communications director was not corrected by the Director of MI6. Like Tenet, he allowed himself to be sidelined so that policymakers could guide the narrative.[footnoteRef:23] As a result, the British public believed an Iraq invasion was justified in order to pre-empt an assault on their homeland by Hussein (an assault that MI6 knew was not coming). [20: Loch Johnson, National Security Intelligence (UK: Polity Press, 2012), 73.] [21: Loch Johnson, National Security Intelligence (UK: Polity Press, 2012), 73.] [22: Loch Johnson, National Security Intelligence (UK: Polity Press, 2012), 73.] [23: Loch Johnson, National Security Intelligence (UK: Polity Press, 2012), 73.]

Both Britain and the U.S. sought a casus belli -- a reason to go to war with Iraq: they revived the narrative from the late 80s and early 90s -- that Hussein had WMDs -- and encouraged and promoted new faulty intelligence that would give them the casus belli they desired. Policymakers were in effect disrupting the intelligence cycle. The CIA's intelligence cycle begins with the Planning and Direction stage, proceeding to the Collection stage, then the Processing, Analysis and Production, and Dissemination stages.[footnoteRef:24] The cycle is started by the need to know something and concludes with the appropriate dissemination of what was found and what it should mean to policymakers. This process was subverted in the case of the Iraq invasion: policymakers were on the giving end rather than on the receiving end. The OSP consisted of policymakers acting as intelligence officers. David Omand notes that "much of the public outrage over the intelligence background to the 2003 intervention in Iraq stemmed from a feeling that government had interfered with the process of producing that professional advice in order to end up with an assessment for public consumption that bolstered its policy case."[footnoteRef:25] This bolstering was supported by journalists like Judith Miller who presented the case for war against Iraq to the public in a series of pieces that were full of false narratives, such as the 2001 story of the Iraqi defector who had worked at 20 different secret Iraqi weapons sites: the story was exposed as a lie when, following the invasion, authorities examined the sites and found nothing to indicate they had ever served as the location of a weapons program.[footnoteRef:26] [24: "The Intelligence Cycle," CIA. https://www.cia.gov/kids-page/6-12th-grade/who-we-are-what-we-do/the-intelligence-cycle.html] [25: David Ormand, Securing the State (UK: Oxford University Press, 2010), 37.] [26: Erik Wemple, "Judith Millter tries, and ultimately fails, to defend her flawed Iraq reporting." The Washington Post, 9 Apr 2015. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/a-reporters-defense-of-her-flawed-reporting/2015/04/09/5bf93f14-de15-11e4-a500-1c5bb1d8ff6a_story.html?utm_term=.d4b259628596]

Yet, even today, the narrative is shifting as the public learns of Operation Avarice -- a recently declassified mission conducted by the CIA along with army intelligence. Operation Avarice oversaw the purchasing of degraded chemical weapons beginning in 2005 from an anonymous Iraqi -- the purpose being to reduce the risk of these weapons being sold on the black market.[footnoteRef:27] More than 400 warheads were recovered -- Borak rockets "that Saddam Hussein's Baathist government manufactured in the 1980s but that were not accounted for by the United Nations inspections mandated after the 1991 Persian Gulf War."[footnoteRef:28] This declassified information indicates that intelligence agencies knew a great deal more than they shared prior to the Iraq invasion -- including where the weapons were that the policymakers sought. As MI6 intelligence rightfully assessed, the weapons were not long-range WMDs and posed no threat to the West. [27: C. J. Chivers, Eric Schmitt, "CIA is said to have bought and destroyed Iraqi chemical weapons, New York Times, 15 Feb 2015. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have-bought-and-destroyed-iraqi-chemical-weapons.html?referer&_r=1] [28: C. J. Chivers, Eric Schmitt, "CIA is said to have bought and destroyed Iraqi chemical weapons, New York Times, 15 Feb 2015. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/02/16/world/cia-is-said-to-have-bought-and-destroyed-iraqi-chemical-weapons.html?referer&_r=1]

In conclusion, the October 2002 NEI should have been taken at face value -- not as the end-all-be-all of intelligence reporting. At face value, it recognized that chemical weapons "probably" existed in Iraq (and Operation Avarice would bear this out later).[footnoteRef:29] But -- as Operation Avarice would show -- these weapons were not a threat to the Western States -- which MI6 knew but did not adamantly assert (even to correct the mistaken record of the Prime Minister's communications director). Policymakers within the UK and US administrations had their own narrative. The story they wanted to tell was one that would provide a pretext for a Gulf War 2 -- and that is what they obtained thanks to the OSP, PNAC policymakers, the failure of MI6, CIA and other intelligence agencies to accurately and responsibly report to their governments the true nature of the case, and the desire of the UK and US administrations to launch a strike against Hussein. [29: Richard K. Betts, "Two Faces of Intelligence Failure: September 11 and Iraq's Missing WMD," Political Science Quarterly, vol. 122, no. 4 (2007-08), 605.]

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