[Media-watch] CIA felt pressure to alter Iraq data - LATimes - 1/7/2004

[Julie-ann Davies]

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/asection/la-na-intel1jul01,1,7747402.story?coll=la-news-a_section

CIA Felt Pressure to Alter Iraq Data, Author Says
Agency analysts were repeatedly ordered to redo their studies of Al
Qaeda ties to Hussein regime, a terrorism expert charges.
By Greg Miller
Times Staff Writer

July 1, 2004

WASHINGTON - In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, CIA analysts were
ordered repeatedly to redo intelligence assessments concluded that Al
Qaeda had no operational ties to Iraq, according to a veteran CIA
counter-terrorism official who has written a book that is sharply
critical of the decision to go to war with Iraq.

Agency analysts never altered their conclusions, but saw the pressure to
revisit their work as a clear indication that Bush administration
officials were seeking a different answer regarding Iraq and Al Qaeda
leader Osama bin Laden, the CIA officer said in an interview with The
Times.

"We on the Bin Laden side [of the agency's analytic ranks] were required
repeatedly to check, double-check and triple-check our files about a
connection between Al Qaeda and Iraq," said the officer, who spoke on
condition that he be identified only by his first name, Mike.

Asked whether he attributed the demands to an eagerness among officials
at the White House or the Pentagon to find evidence of a link, he said:
"You could not help but assume that was the case. They knew the answer
[they wanted] before they asked the question."

The officer is the author of a forthcoming book titled, "Imperial
Hubris: Why the West Is Losing the War on Terror," published by
Brassey's Inc. of Dulles, Va. He is listed as "Anonymous" on the book,
which describes him as a "senior U.S. intelligence official with nearly
two decades of experience in national security issues."

The author has held a number of high-ranking agency positions, including
serving from 1996 to 1999 as head of a special unit tracking Bin Laden.

The book was approved for publication by the CIA after a four-month
review - creating an unusual situation in which one of the secretive
agency's senior officers was offering public criticism of administration
policies and the prosecution of the war on terrorism.

CIA spokesman Bill Harlow emphasized that the opinions in the book were
those of the author, not the agency. He acknowledged that the book's
publication was awkward for an agency that sought to be apolitical, but
that the CIA found no classified material in it, and therefore allowed
its release.

Some have questioned the author's motives, noting that he was removed as
head of the Bin Laden unit in 1999 over concerns about his performance.
An intelligence official who has worked with the author at the CIA said
that he might have been embittered by his removal, but that "people tend
to think of him as a straight shooter."

Mike said he was removed from the post because agency leaders "thought I
was too myopic, too intense, too aggressive." He declined to elaborate.
But he insisted that he did not write the book to settle scores.

"The important thing to me is that we're missing the boat on this
issue," he said.

The book has created a stir in intelligence and policymaking circles for
its scathing critique of U.S. efforts after the Sept. 11 attacks. In the
book, Mike writes that the war in Afghanistan was in many respects a
failure because the United States waited nearly a month to launch the
invasion - allowing Al Qaeda operatives to flee - and relied heavily on
proxy Afghan forces that were not always loyal to the U.S. cause.

The book asserts that invading Iraq has inflamed anti-American sentiment
to such a degree that it is minting a new generation of terrorists.

"We have waged two failed half-wars and, in doing so, left Afghanistan
and Iraq seething with anti-U.S. sentiment, fertile grounds for the
expansion of Al Qaeda and kindred groups," he writes.

In an interview this week, Mike, who has close-cropped hair and a beard,
said Monday's transfer of authority to Iraq was likely to do little to
curtail insurgent attacks.

"Iraq, with or without a transfer of power, will be a mujahedin magnet
as long as whatever government is there is dependent on America's
sword," he said, adding that he thought his view was widely shared among
counter-terrorism officials at the CIA and other intelligence agencies.

The stealth manner in which sovereignty was transferred this week in
Iraq - in a surprise ceremony two days ahead of schedule involving L.
Paul Bremer III, the U.S. civilian administrator in Iraq, and the
country's interim prime minister, Iyad Allawi - also sent a weak signal,
he said.

"From Bin Laden's perspective, we were afraid they were going to attack
us and we left like a thief in the night, with Bremer throwing the keys
to Allawi," he said. "They can only see this as a victory."

Mike's criticism of the war in Iraq echoes that of other prominent
counter-terrorism officials, including former White House aide Richard
A. Clarke. But he is the first active CIA official to make the criticism
publicly, albeit anonymously. Mike, however, faulted Clarke and others
who served in the Clinton administration for failing to mount operations
to capture or kill Bin Laden when the CIA had intelligence on his
whereabouts.

He said he thought Bin Laden would have been extremely reluctant to
enter a collaborative relationship with Hussein, in part because he saw
Iraq's military and spying services as inferior, incapable of protecting
the security of Al Qaeda plans and operations.

Mike said that because he did not work in the agency's Iraq section, he
could not assess the accuracy of claims that analysts were pressured by
the White House to tailor their assessments of Iraq's alleged illicit
weapons programs to help make the case for war. Despite being forced to
redo their work several times, he said, counter-terrorism analysts never
altered their conclusion that Iraq was not working with Al Qaeda.

"There was pressure to perform. But to its credit, the intelligence
community as a whole said there was nothing" to suggest a collaborative
relationship, he said. "The director on down insisted we call it
straight."

Mike still serves in the agency's counter-terrorism center, but
acknowledges that he has been marginalized. "I get invited to speak" on
counter-terrorism at the Defense Department, the FBI and the National
Security Agency, he said, "but not within my own building."

He wrote an earlier book, also anonymously, on Bin Laden and Islamic
terrorism that was titled, "Through Our Enemies' Eyes."