This Tree Bears No Fruit

The White House reacted to the article in The Washington Post with unusual vigor. In his response to the report that the Administration pushed the false claim that mobile biological weapons labs had been found in Iraq when they had evidence to the contrary, Scott McClellan bristled with indignation:

Now, I will point out that the reporting I saw this morning was simply reckless and it was irresponsible. The lead in The Washington Post left the impression for the reader that the President was saying something he knew at the time not to be true. That is absolutely false and it is irresponsible, and I don’t know how The Washington Post can defend something so irresponsible.

He was of course defending President Bush’s unequivocal statement of May 29, 2003 declaring:

We have found the weapons of mass destruction.

Now, I don’t know about you but if I wake up in the morning and turn on the news and I hear the President of the United States make a declaration like that I would think to myself "Golly, we have found the weapons of mass destruction." I would certainly not be thinking, "Our intelligence community believes we have found the weapons of mass destruction. Let me withhold judgment until the Iraq Survey Group releases its final report a year and a half from now. Gee, I am such a critical thinker, aren’t I?"

Yet, the Administration would like us to believe just that; that the intelligence agencies passed on bad information to the President who mindlessly parroted it. However, the President and the other senior members of his Administration have a peculiar history of cherry picking intelligence that supports their claims while ignoring any intelligence or evidence to the contrary. If this selective use of intelligence were an isolated incident, I would be more sympathetic to Mr. McClellan’s pleading that it was all the fault of the intelligence agencies or the media. The record however shows a pattern of behavior that is either dangerously incompetent or maliciously deceptive. Whether it is incompetence or deception, the effect is the same and the behavior is utterly indefensible.

A close look at the events during May of 2003 suggests a very peculiar breakdown in communications on a matter of grave importance. The timeline is as follows:

•  A technical team dispatched by the DIA begins examining the trailers on May 25, 2003.
• Within four hours the team concludes that the trailers are not mobile biological weapons labs.
• The team’s findings are quickly communicated to Washington and a series of email discussions follow between Washington and Baghdad.
• A CIA analyst completes a draft paper alleging that the trailers were the strongest evidence to date of Iraq’s biological weapons program.
• The technical team publishes their preliminary report in the early hours of May 27, 2003 dismissing the notion that the trailers were biological weapons labs.
• Ignoring the findings on the ground, on May 28, 2003 the CIA and DIA jointly releases a report written by an analyst located at Langley that claims:

  The design, equipment, and layout of the trailer found in late April is strikingly similar to descriptions provided by a source who was a chemical engineer that managed one of the mobile plants. 

• On May 29, 2003 the President of the United States unequivocally states that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
• Scientists and biological weapons experts cast serious doubts on the claim that the trailers were likely used for biological weapons manufacture.
• Throughout 2003 senior Administration officials continue to assert that the trailers were mobile biological weapons labs.
• The report of the technical team is shelved and not shown to David Kay, then head of the Iraq Survey Group, until late in 2003 near the end of his tenure.

A number of questions quickly arise from this chronology of events that need to be answered and cannot simply be brushed away. These are:

• Why did the CIA and DIA ignore the report of the technical team in its report of May 28, 2003? Clearly, the DIA must have been aware of the team’s findings. After all, it was the DIA that dispatched this team.
• The CIA report brushed aside doubts about the trailers, specifically in a New York Times article, by stating "The experts cited in the editorial are not on the scene and probably do not have complete access to information about the trailers. ". This is a curious claim from an analyst writing from Washington when the DIA’s own team on the scene contradicts the analyst’s conclusions.
• The CIA report by its own admission is at best guesswork. The report makes the rather Orwellian claim that "despite the lack of confirmatory samples, we nevertheless are confident that this trailer is a mobile BW production plant". The report continues by stating that sample analysis has begun and the results were not yet known. The report is then, by its own admission, incomplete. In the face of contradictory findings by the DIA’s own technical team on the ground in Iraq, it defies reason why anyone would publish a report of such importance based on speculation and gossip. What was the urgency in releasing an incomplete report? What were the political pressures on the intelligence agencies to produce such an incomplete report?
• The CIA report relies on "Curveball" as a source that confirms its analysis. "Curveball" who is a self-described chemical engineer was the thoroughly discredited Iraqi defector who passed on wild fantasies to the CIA in the prelude to the Iraq war. The report states:
  

  The design, equipment, and layout of the trailer found in late April is strikingly similar to descriptions provided by a source who was a chemical engineer that managed one of the mobile plants.

• Why was the technical teams findings buried? And by whom?
• When did the White House become aware that the technical analysis did not support the conclusions of the CIA report? Why did the White House state as fact that the trailers were biological weapons labs when even the CIA report did not go that far. Did the White House read the CIA report carefully and understand that the analysis was still incomplete?

There are serious questions raised by this mishandling of the Iraqi trailers story by the White House. The pattern of incomplete information that always favors the Administration’s assertion is overwhelming and cannot be accidental. As far as I can discern from the Administration’s position, they are claiming that the CIA and other intelligence agencies led this Administration by the nose into war with Iraq by providing always inaccurate, yet always consistent, intelligence supporting the Administration’s preconceived notions. This is a wonderfully circular argument that has a highly technical description: nonsense.

It is well past time that the Administration stops blaming everyone else for its failures. If the CIA or DIA is to blame, where are the mass firings? Surely, if they are so dangerously incompetent then we as a nation are ill served by having these people on the payroll. From where I sit, it does not at all seem to me that this was a failure of intelligence. After all, it took the DIA team of experts four hours to correctly deduce that the trailers were not biological weapons labs. That is to me very strong evidence that our intelligence agencies have extremely competent and skilled people on the ground. Other public reports we have seen from the Iraq Survey Group and others also suggests a highly professional and well trained group of professionals who are reaching correct reasoned conclusions when allowed to complete their tasks.

The incompetence I see does not appear to be with the men and women of the intelligence agencies. There is a consistent pattern of the field level reports from the intelligence agencies being accurate but somehow, extraordinarily, the final report always being consistent with the preconceived (and always incorrect) notions of this White House. Why is that? This does not appear to me to be a failure of intelligence. It appears to me and I would hope to most reasonable observers to be a case of the King hearing what the King wants to hear.

It is time for common sense to prevail in Washington. It is time for accountability. It is long past time that dedicated hard working career Government servants are made to take the fall for the masters they serve. It is time for the world to see that the emperor has no clothes.