Paul Pillar, the CIA, the DIA and "The Connection"
In an op-ed for the Washington Post today (reg. required), former DIA analyst Christina Shelton corrects George Tenet's mischaracterization of her analysis on Iraq's ties to al Qaeda.
Ms. Shelton points to something in Tenet's book that caught my eye as well. Tenet explains that the CIA's terrorism analysts "believed to be credible the reporting that suggested a deeper relationship," while the agency's regional analysts "significantly limited the cooperation that was suggested by the reporting."
When Tenet mentions the agency's "regional" analysts he is most certainly referring to Paul Pillar, the former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, and his supporting crew. Pillar has been a very vocal opponent of the idea that Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda could cooperate. He apparently believes that ideology trumps all other concerns such that the "secular" Saddam and the Islamists of al Qaeda couldn't possibly find common ground.
This is nonsense, of course. Our enemies are not cheap cartoon caricatures. They are more than capable of overlooking even substantial ideological disagreements in order to cooperate against their common enemies (just as humans have for all of recorded history: The Soviets and Nazi Germany pre-World War II, the Soviets and the U.S. in World War II, etc.). And Saddam cloaked his regime in the language of the jihadis during the 1990's as well.
But Pillar has made a name for himself by advancing this argument. His Foreign Affairs piece published last year, for example, has been widely cited. In that piece, Pillar accused the Bush administration - including Vice President Cheney - of "cherry-picking" data. He wrote:
But the greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned not WMD (there was indeed a broad consensus that such programs existed), but the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the "alliance" the administration said existed. The reason the connection got so much attention was that the administration wanted to hitch the Iraq expedition to the "war on terror" and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood.
The issue of possible ties between Saddam and al Qaeda was especially prone to the selective use of raw intelligence to make a public case for war. In the shadowy world of international terrorism, almost anyone can be "linked" to almost anyone else if enough effort is made to find evidence of casual contacts, the mentioning of names in the same breath, or indications of common travels or experiences. Even the most minimal and circumstantial data can be adduced as evidence of a "relationship," ignoring the important question of whether a given regime actually supports a given terrorist group and the fact that relationships can be competitive or distrustful rather than cooperative.
The intelligence community never offered any analysis that supported the notion of an alliance between Saddam and al Qaeda...
Pillar goes on. But he never mentions that some of his colleagues within the CIA disagreed with his take - as pointed out by Tenet and Shelton. Pillar leaves no room for the possibility that there was more than one way to look at the issue of Saddam's ties to al Qaeda, or that perhaps he and his analysts in the NESA were simply wrong. Instead, Pillar pretends that only those interested in justifying a war by "capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood" could possibly think that Saddam's ties to al Qaeda were worrisome.
Pillar also does not mention that his own boss, George Tenet, thinks that there was "more than enough evidence" to worry about. Nor does he mention that his own CIA produced at least three analytic products (memos) from the summer of 2002 to the eve of the Iraq war in January 2003, all of which discussed the evidence of a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. The evidence I cite in my piece on Tenet's book goes through the intelligence that was in those three memos - as recounted by Tenet himself.
None of this has been critically examined by the mainstream press. Instead, Pillar is uncritically cited as an unbiased source. (For example, as explained by Robert Novak, Pillar became a "hero" for journalists like Michael Isikoff and David Corn.) But perhaps those journalists that rely on Paul Pillar for their (mis)understanding of these events should rethink their sourcing.
Pillar's "analysis" is based on an assumption about our enemies. There is much evidence that contradicts that assumption, but Pillar couldn't be bothered to honestly investigate it. Others in the CIA and the DIA did.
That story is still not widely known.
Ms. Shelton points to something in Tenet's book that caught my eye as well. Tenet explains that the CIA's terrorism analysts "believed to be credible the reporting that suggested a deeper relationship," while the agency's regional analysts "significantly limited the cooperation that was suggested by the reporting."
When Tenet mentions the agency's "regional" analysts he is most certainly referring to Paul Pillar, the former National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia, and his supporting crew. Pillar has been a very vocal opponent of the idea that Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda could cooperate. He apparently believes that ideology trumps all other concerns such that the "secular" Saddam and the Islamists of al Qaeda couldn't possibly find common ground.
This is nonsense, of course. Our enemies are not cheap cartoon caricatures. They are more than capable of overlooking even substantial ideological disagreements in order to cooperate against their common enemies (just as humans have for all of recorded history: The Soviets and Nazi Germany pre-World War II, the Soviets and the U.S. in World War II, etc.). And Saddam cloaked his regime in the language of the jihadis during the 1990's as well.
But Pillar has made a name for himself by advancing this argument. His Foreign Affairs piece published last year, for example, has been widely cited. In that piece, Pillar accused the Bush administration - including Vice President Cheney - of "cherry-picking" data. He wrote:
But the greatest discrepancy between the administration's public statements and the intelligence community's judgments concerned not WMD (there was indeed a broad consensus that such programs existed), but the relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. The enormous attention devoted to this subject did not reflect any judgment by intelligence officials that there was or was likely to be anything like the "alliance" the administration said existed. The reason the connection got so much attention was that the administration wanted to hitch the Iraq expedition to the "war on terror" and the threat the American public feared most, thereby capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood.
The issue of possible ties between Saddam and al Qaeda was especially prone to the selective use of raw intelligence to make a public case for war. In the shadowy world of international terrorism, almost anyone can be "linked" to almost anyone else if enough effort is made to find evidence of casual contacts, the mentioning of names in the same breath, or indications of common travels or experiences. Even the most minimal and circumstantial data can be adduced as evidence of a "relationship," ignoring the important question of whether a given regime actually supports a given terrorist group and the fact that relationships can be competitive or distrustful rather than cooperative.
The intelligence community never offered any analysis that supported the notion of an alliance between Saddam and al Qaeda...
Pillar goes on. But he never mentions that some of his colleagues within the CIA disagreed with his take - as pointed out by Tenet and Shelton. Pillar leaves no room for the possibility that there was more than one way to look at the issue of Saddam's ties to al Qaeda, or that perhaps he and his analysts in the NESA were simply wrong. Instead, Pillar pretends that only those interested in justifying a war by "capitalizing on the country's militant post-9/11 mood" could possibly think that Saddam's ties to al Qaeda were worrisome.
Pillar also does not mention that his own boss, George Tenet, thinks that there was "more than enough evidence" to worry about. Nor does he mention that his own CIA produced at least three analytic products (memos) from the summer of 2002 to the eve of the Iraq war in January 2003, all of which discussed the evidence of a relationship between Saddam's Iraq and al Qaeda. The evidence I cite in my piece on Tenet's book goes through the intelligence that was in those three memos - as recounted by Tenet himself.
None of this has been critically examined by the mainstream press. Instead, Pillar is uncritically cited as an unbiased source. (For example, as explained by Robert Novak, Pillar became a "hero" for journalists like Michael Isikoff and David Corn.) But perhaps those journalists that rely on Paul Pillar for their (mis)understanding of these events should rethink their sourcing.
Pillar's "analysis" is based on an assumption about our enemies. There is much evidence that contradicts that assumption, but Pillar couldn't be bothered to honestly investigate it. Others in the CIA and the DIA did.
That story is still not widely known.
posted by Thomas Joscelyn at 11:55 AM
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