Prewar Intelligence Either ‘Not Illegal’ or ‘Very Damning’ Depending on Source

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By Noel Sheppard (Bio | Archive)
February 9, 2007 - 10:29 ET
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The highly anticipated report from the Pentagon’s acting inspector general concerning prewar intelligence was released on Thursday, and depending on the media outlet you rely on for information, the determination was either that “officials did nothing illegal,” or their reporting was of “dubious quality and reliability.”

As a result, it appears that if a media outlet wanted to present a negative picture of what the Bush administration did with intelligence before the war, it could. Conversely, if another organization wanted to depict the opposite, that was possible, too.

For instance, one of the most consistently antiwar writers has been Walter Pincus of the Washington Post who actually wrote about bad intelligence information days before the war began. On Friday, he wrote this in the first paragraph of an article on the Pentagon report published on WaPo’s front page (emphasis mine throughout):

Story Continues Below Ad ↓

Intelligence provided by former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith to buttress the White House case for invading Iraq included "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" that supported the political views of senior administration officials rather than the conclusions of the intelligence community, according to a report by the Pentagon's inspector general.

Nice lead for the front page, don’t you agree?

Shockingly, the New York Times piece on this issue was far less damning:

A Pentagon investigation into the handling of prewar intelligence has criticized civilian Pentagon officials for conducting their own intelligence analysis to find links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, but said the officials did not violate any laws or mislead Congress, according to Congressional officials who have read the report.

Quite a different take on exactly the same report, no?

Moving forward, as the Associated Press often releases many different versions of the same story during a given day, those disparities in this case appear to give publishers a wonderful display case of options concerning the slant on this issue they can present to their readers. For instance, this is an AP piece by Robert Burns published in USA Today:

Some of the Pentagon's pre-war intelligence work, including a contention that the CIA had underplayed the likelihood of significant al-Qaeda connections to Saddam Hussein, was inappropriate but not illegal, a Pentagon investigation has concluded.

In a report to be presented to Congress on Friday, the Pentagon inspector general clears former Pentagon policy chief Douglas J. Feith of allegations by some Democrats of illegal activities — specifically, that he misled Congress about the basis of the administration's assertions on the threat posed by Iraq.

Compare and contrast that to this AP piece by Burns published in the Houston Chronicle:

A "very damning" report by the Defense Department's inspector general depicts a Pentagon that purposely manipulated intelligence in an effort to link Saddam Hussein to al-Qaida in the runup to the U.S. invasion of Iraq, says the chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Some difference, wouldn’t you agree?

—Noel Sheppard is the Associate Editor of NewsBusters. Follow him at Facebook and Twitter.

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This is yet another reason wh

February 9, 2007 - 10:36 ET by Dyne

This is yet another reason why I tell my family and friends to read articles on the same topic from multiple sources, including liberal and conservative sources, so they can have the information at hand and come to their own conclusion.

"I don't know the key to success, but the key to failure is to try to please everyone." - Bill Cosby

I think it was Ben Franklin

February 9, 2007 - 12:11 ET by dervish

I think it was Ben Franklin who said you can get a fair approximation of the truth just by comparing lies.

Good ol' Uncle Walter Pincus.

February 9, 2007 - 10:49 ET by bigtimer

Good ol' Uncle Walter Pincus...

The perfect embodiment of the enemy within...always has been.

Who bothers to read this tripe...

Never-mind.

Clinton - al Qaeda - Iraq?

February 9, 2007 - 11:38 ET by Gary Hall

Clinton - al Qaeda - Iraq? Of course, since Bill Clinton is not a Republican, such as is Ronald Reagan, what never seems to be voluntarialy revisted, discussed, compared, etc., by the media are the facts that connect the dots:

From the Washington Times, June 25, 2004:

... In fact, during President Clinton's eight years in office, there were at least two official pronouncements of an alarming alliance between Baghdad and al Qaeda. One came from William S. Cohen, Mr. Clinton's defense secretary. He cited an al Qaeda-Baghdad link to justify the bombing of a pharmaceutical plant in Sudan.

Mr. Bush cited the linkage, in part, to justify invading Iraq and ousting Saddam. He said he could not take the risk of Iraq's weapons falling into bin Laden's hands. 

 The other pronouncement is contained in a Justice Department indictment on Nov. 4, 1998, charging bin Laden with murder in the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa.

The indictment disclosed a close relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam's regime, which included specialists on chemical weapons and all types of bombs, including truck bombs, a favorite weapon of terrorists.

The 1998 indictment said: "Al Qaeda also forged alliances with the National Islamic Front in the Sudan and with the government of Iran and its associated terrorist group Hezbollah for the purpose of working together against their perceived common enemies in the West, particularly the United States. In addition, al Qaeda reached an understanding with the government of Iraq that al Qaeda would not work against that government and that on particular projects, specifically including weapons development, al Qaeda would work cooperatively with the government of Iraq."

Shortly after the embassy bombings, Mr. Clinton ordered air strikes on al Qaeda training camps in Afghanistan and on the Shifa pharmaceutical factory in Sudan.

To justify the Sudanese plant as a target, Clinton aides said it was involved in the production of deadly VX nerve gas. Officials further determined that bin Laden owned a stake in the operation and that its manager had traveled to Baghdad to learn bomb-making techniques from Saddam's weapons scientists.

Mr. Cohen elaborated in March in testimony before the September 11 commission. 

He testified that "bin Laden had been living [at the plant], that he had, in fact, money that he had put into this military industrial corporation, that the owner of the plant had traveled to Baghdad to meet with the father of the VX program."

He said that if the plant had been allowed to produce VX that was used to kill thousands of Americans, people would have asked him, " 'You had a manager that went to Baghdad; you had Osama bin Laden, who had funded, at least the corporation, and you had traces of [VX precursor] and you did what? And you did nothing?' Is that a responsible activity on the part of the secretary of defense?"

Got to protect that Clinton legacy.

Wow! Interesting reading. I h

February 9, 2007 - 18:55 ET by HypocriteHater

Wow! Interesting reading. I hadn't read about this story before, and I definately didn't see it plastered all over the news at the time. So basically, Clinton's defense secretary testifies to a connection between Iraq and al quaeda, and the MSM decides this is a non-story. People should be very afraid of the potential these terrorists have of attacking us again. Libs are too concerned with freaking out about "global warming", than about terrorists who TELL us they want to KILL us!. But that's the problem with libs. They can't handle the possibility of a physical confrontation against their enemy. They prefer to fight carbon dioxide.     

Ann Coulter had a great article this week about this exact topic. When faced with evidence that's contrary to their liberal agenda, the MSM will tell any lie to surpress the truth.

"Today we did what we had to do. They counted on America to be passive. They counted wrong."    - Ronald Reagan

I'm making a pre-emptive stri

February 10, 2007 - 17:36 ET by Del Dolemonte

I'm making a pre-emptive strike here, in case one of our leftist friends accuses you of using the "Moonie Times" as your source.

One can find the entire text of the 1998 indictment of bin Laden-by Clinton's Justice Department-at the website of the Federation of American Scientists, which is hardly a pro-Bush group:

http://www.fas.org/irp/news/1998/11/98110602_nlt.html

The specific cite of bin Laden and Iraq is item #4 in the section entitled "al Qaeda Background".

In addition the Power Line blog has just put up an ABC News video from 2000 (before Bush was President) which also cites a connection between the two.

http://www.plnewsforum.com/index.php?/video/

As a commentor at the Power Line Forum noted:

"The media had a different world view when it was Bill Clinton telling them that Saddam and Osama were the bad guys. "

great post, Gary.  Its amazi

February 10, 2007 - 17:57 ET by Chicago Republican

great post, Gary.  Its amazing how these things just get swept under the rug.

Chicago Rep

February 10, 2007 - 19:28 ET by Gary Hall

Thanks. I suspect that most gets swept under the rug -- intentionally.

Short story. I was in a rather public debate a while back, and in the course of the "all the bad in the world is caused by the conservative capitalist imperialists" discussion, which had briefly veered off to something on Afghanistan, a mid 60's PhD type bloated, "...come on man.. you've got to understand that it was Ronald Reagan and his cronies that supplied Bin Laden with weapons in the first place - we created this hatred, man.."

I know, I know -- we've all heard that over and over again - even in the national media. I simply offered - "Well, first of all, it was President Jimmy Carter who began the support for the opposition to the imperialist USSR, not Ronald Reagan..."

To which all of the lefties protested - "not true - not true."

In the end they were content to believe, amongst themselves. that if it were true - then the media (I'm confident they are counting on the NY Times, a "paper of record"), would have kept this information out in the pubic discussion.

Oh yea baby.

Maybe it's just me, but doe

February 9, 2007 - 12:16 ET by dervish

Maybe it's just me, but doesn't calling intelligence "of dubious quality and reliability" some FIVE YEARS after the fact seem a little less than earth-shaking? That's like criticizing a game-show contestant's wrong answer only after you see the correct one.

I heard this report damning t

February 9, 2007 - 12:42 ET by semby

I heard this report damning the intelligence on my Christian radio station in NJ - I can't trust these reports anymore; every single one of them is bias!

Don't trust Hillary any more

February 9, 2007 - 20:02 ET by uc

Don't trust Hillary any more than you shouldn't trust Bill.   The French may still be medium to Al Qaeda for Saddam since they were in great position not to be effected by oil markets - what with their eighty percent energy from nuclear energy - and regular angst about needing to be saved from Hitler even if using Hitler like Saddam to effecto so was necessary.  What does Karl Levin know for certain at this point, anyway?  Many sympathies to our current President who has had to calculate some way threw the it could be them or it could be the other them analysis that has landed on his desk as well as it could still just still be Bill and Hillary trying to regain control theories.

I watched this story as the l

February 10, 2007 - 04:34 ET by old cro

I watched this story as the lead for Katies show (before I had a chance to change the channel).
I am glad you posted it because I was left scratching my head then in a "What was that all about?" way. Being an early riser, I just turned off a documentary of flight 175 (the second plane, it flew into the North tower.) Bad intelligence! Bad intelligence! Bad intelligence?
What is so hard to understand when the pictures are being shown on your tv that these people, and I use the term loosely, want to kill us? I had the same sick feeling in the pit of my stomach when watching for the umpteenth time as I did the first.
Whatever the prewar intelligence said DOES NOT MEAN SH_T. This presidents job is to prevent such future attacks by any means possible, and IMHO, he is doing a pretty good job. "Very damning" the report was? WTF? My distain for their souls is also "very damning" for them to even report this tripe.
Sorry, my BP must still be up and I just had to vent.

"I would talk to James Brown about a girlfriend, or what clothes to buy."
Al Sharpton

"James Brown became my father. He would talk to me the way a father talked to a son. He became the father I never had."
Al Sharpton

No matter politics, 9/11/01 was a failure of government.

February 10, 2007 - 10:15 ET by acaiguana

No matter politics, 9/11/01 was a failure of government.

Katrina was no failure of government.

We should all be upset at the government failing at one of its fundamental tasks which is to protect the country from threats to its internal security.

I see no point in any of these studies except to put blame on those agencies, individuals and bureaucrats who failed the American people.  I include politicians in this list.

Clinton failed the American people.  There is no getting around that.  Reno failed the American people.  Tenant failed the American people.  The Congress and the Senate failed the American people.  The CIA failed the American people.  Albright failed the American people.

How anyone could even consider electing Bill Clinton's wife to the Presidency after such a catastrophic failure of her husband is so far beyond me that I find it stupid.

I'd love to see someone defend this.

ACA

...

Hillary Clinton says:  "I want to take those profits."

aca,I see you have no takers.

February 10, 2007 - 15:06 ET by bigtimer

aca,

I see you have no takers...yet.

Great post.

She could very well be our ne

February 10, 2007 - 17:43 ET by Del Dolemonte

She could very well be our next President. The American population was stupid enough to almost elect Al Gore, and stupid enough to almost elect John Kerry. In Gore's case, it was 500 something votes-even though he lost his home state and Clinton's home state.

In Kerry's case, which I find even scarier having had Jean Francois as my "Senator" for several years when I lived in Massachusetts, it was only a hundred thousand or so votes in Ohio. The man is the definition of an empty suit-but very nearly won.

And remember, Kerry's been re-elected for decades in Massachusetts, as has Chappaquidick Fats.

Chappaquidick Fats - hell yea

February 10, 2007 - 17:52 ET by Chicago Republican

Chappaquidick Fats - hell yeah!  You should see me laughing at that!  YES!  I'll never call him anything else!  Nice!

The WaPo has backed off the s

February 10, 2007 - 14:40 ET by Steve L.

The WaPo has backed off the story, realizing that many of the comments attributed to the report were actually comments from Senator Levin:

"Correction to This ArticleA Feb. 9 front-page article about the Pentagon inspector general’s report regarding the office of former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith incorrectly attributed quotations to that report. References to Feith’s office producing “reporting of dubious quality or reliability” and that the office “was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda” were from a report issued by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in Oct. 2004. Similarly, the quotes stating that Feith’s office drew on “both reliable and unreliable reporting” to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq “that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration” were also from Levin’s report. The article also stated that the intelligence provided by Feith’s office supported the political views of senior administration officials, a conclusion that the inspector general’s report did not draw.The two reports employ similar language to characterize the activities of Feith’s office: Levin’s report refers to an “alternative intelligence assessment process” developed in that office, while the inspector general’s report states that the office “developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers.” The inspector general’s report further states that Feith’s briefing to the White House in 2002 “undercuts the Intelligence Community” and “did draw conclusions that were not fully supported by the available intelligence.”

LOL, saying the WaPo has &quo

February 10, 2007 - 17:21 ET by Del Dolemonte

LOL, saying the WaPo has "backed off" the story is being charitable. I'll be interested to see how their "public editor" Deborah Howell spins this one!