[Media-watch] Is CIA at war with Bush? - Novak's original column/Chicago Sun-Times - 27/09/2004

Julie-ann Davies jadavies2004 at yahoo.co.uk
Fri Oct 1 23:29:35 BST 2004


This also appeared in the Washington Post - however it is not available on 
their website and despite being syndicated so far I have only found it here.
_____________

http://www.suntimes.com/output/novak/cst-edt-novak27.html

 Is CIA at war with Bush?


September 27, 2004

BY ROBERT NOVAK SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST

 A few hours after George W. Bush dismissed a pessimistic CIA report on Iraq 
as ''just guessing,'' the analyst who identified himself as its author told 
a private dinner last week of secret, unheeded warnings years ago about 
going to war in Iraq. This exchange leads to the unavoidable conclusion that 
the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are 
at war with each other.

Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East 
and South Asia, sat down Tuesday night in a large West Coast city with a 
select group of private citizens. He was not talking off the cuff. Relying 
on a multi-paged, single-spaced memorandum, Pillar said he and his 
colleagues concluded early in the Bush administration that military 
intervention in Iraq would intensify anti-American hostility throughout 
Islam. This was not from a CIA retiree but an active senior official. 
(Pillar, no covert operative, is listed openly in the Federal Staff 
Directory.)

For President Bush to publicly write off a CIA paper as just guessing is 
without precedent. For the agency to go semi-public is not only 
unprecedented but shocking. George Tenet's retirement as director of Central 
Intelligence removed the buffer between president and agency. As the new 
DCI, Porter Goss inherits an extraordinarily sensitive situation.

Pillar's Tuesday night presentation was conducted under what used to be 
called the Lindley Rule (devised by Newsweek's Ernest K. Lindley): The 
identity of the speaker, to whom he spoke, and the fact that he spoke at all 
are secret, but the substance of what he said can be reported. This dinner, 
however, knocks the Lindley Rule on its head. The substance was less 
significant than the forbidden background details.

The Bush-CIA tension escalated Sept. 15 when the New York Times reported a 
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that was circulated in August (not 
July, as the newspaper reported), spelling out ''a dark assessment of Iraq'' 
with civil war as the ''worst case'' outcome. The NIE was prepared by 
Pillar, and well-placed sources believe Pillar leaked it, though he denied 
that at Tuesday night's dinner.

The immediate White House reaction to the NIE, from spokesman Scott 
McClellan, was to associate it with ''pessimists'' and ''hand-wringers.'' 
With Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi at his side at the United 
Nations, Bush said of the CIA: ''They were just guessing as to what the 
conditions might be like.''

A few hours later, Pillar discussed the Iraqi war in a context of increased 
aversion to the United States -- an attitude he said his East Asia section 
at the CIA was aware of three years ago and feared would be exacerbated by 
U.S. military intervention. When Pillar was asked why this was not made 
clear to the president and other higher authorities, his answer was that 
nobody asked -- not even Tenet.

The CIA official spokesman said Pillar's West Coast appearance was approved 
by his ''management team'' at Langley as part of an ongoing ''outreach'' 
program. However, the spokesman said, Pillar told him that the fact I knew 
his name meant somebody had violated the off-the-record nature of his 
remarks. In other words, the CIA bureaucracy wants a license to criticize 
the president and the former DCI without being held accountable.

Through most of the Bush administration, the CIA high command has been 
engaged in a bitter struggle with the Pentagon. CIA officials refer to 
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Undersecretary Douglas Feith as 
''ideologues.'' Nevertheless, it is clear the CIA's wrath has now extended 
to the White House. Bush reduced the tensions a little on Thursday, this 
time in a joint Washington press conference with Allawi, by saying his use 
of the word ''guess'' was ''unfortunate.''

Modern history is filled with intelligence bureaus turning against their own 
governments, for good or ill. In the final days of World War II, the German 
Abwehr conspired against Hitler. More recently, Pakistani intelligence was 
plotting with Muslim terrorists. The CIA is a long way from those extremes, 
but it is supposed to be a resource -- not a critic -- for the president.




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