|
Former CIA Officials: Bush
Iran Claims "Preposterous"
Thomas B. Edsall and Max Follmer
Huffington
Post
Thursday December 6, 2007
Four former CIA officials who provided intelligence
information to past presidents described as preposterous President
Bush's claim that he was unaware until very recently that Iran
had stopped its nuclear weapons program in 2003.
"It's unbelievable," said Melvin Goodman, who worked
for the CIA from 1966 to 1990 and now is a senior fellow at the
Center for International Policy.
Goodman's assessment of Bush's assertions were very similar to
those of Larry C. Johnson, who worked at the CIA from 1985 to
1989 and from 1989 to 1993 served as Deputy Director in the U.S.
State Department's Office of Counter Terrorism; Ray McGovern,
a former CIA official who gave daily intelligence briefings to
George H. W. Bush while he was vice president; and Bruce Riedel,
who spent over two decades at both the CIA and National Security
Council and is the former National Intelligence Officer for Near
East and South Asian Affairs
At a December 4 (Tuesday) press conference, Bush asserted:
I was made aware of the NIE last week. In August, I think it
was Mike McConnell [Director of National Intelligence] came in
and said, 'we have some new information.' He didn't tell me what
the information was; he did tell me it was going to take a while
to analyze.
(Article continues below)
Why would you take time to analyze new information? One, you
want to make sure it's not disinformation. You want to make sure
the piece of intelligence you have is real. And secondly, they
want to make sure they understand the intelligence they gathered:
If they think it's real, then what does it mean? And it wasn't
until last week that I was briefed on the NIE that is now public.
McGovern was totally incredulous: "The notion that the head
of National Intelligence whispered in Bush's ear 'I've got a surprise
for you and it's really important, but I'm not going to tell you
about it until we check it out' -- The whole thing is preposterous,"
he said in an interview with The Huffington Post.
Riedel agreed, saying "the president either chose to ignore
what he heard or his director of national intelligence is not
doing his job." Riedel said he doubted McConnell failed to
"do his part of the bargain."
"To me it is almost mind boggling that the President is
told by the DNI that we have new important information on Iran
and he doesn't ask 'what is that information?'" said Riedel,
who is now a Senior Fellow at the Saban Center For Middle East
Policy at the Brookings Institution.
He said it wasn't the DNI's responsibility to tell the President
to "stop hyperventilating about the Iranian threat."
"The President and his policy advisers - National Security
Adviser Stephen Hadley in particular - have the responsibility
of keeping their eye on the intelligence and to take into account
new information as it comes along," Riedel told The Huffington
Post.
Bush and Cheney have repeatedly warned of the dangers of Iran
obtaining nuclear weapons, with no mention of the intelligence
findings that Iran had stopped its program in 2003. On October
17, Bush was asked at a press conference, "But you definitively
believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?" He replied
I think so long -- until they suspend and/or make it clear that
they -- that their statements aren't real, yeah, I believe they
want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear
weapon. And I know it's in the world's interest to prevent them
from doing so. I believe that the Iranian -- if Iran had a nuclear
weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace. But this
-- we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to
destroy Israel. So I've told people that if you're interested
in avoiding World War III, it seems like you ought to be interested
in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a
nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon
very seriously.
White House Press Secretary Tony Fratto declined Wednesday to
discuss what McConnell told Bush at their August meeting.
Q ...Was there any indication from McConnell of the nature of
the intelligence in the meeting in August?
MR. FRATTO: I can't give you more detail on what Director McConnell
said to the President.
Larry Johnson pointed out that the National Intelligence Estimate
is actually the result of an analysis of information from all
intelligence agencies. The material on which the NIE report was
based had been acquired well before the report itself was issued
to the public.
When that information first became available to the CIA and other
agencies, it would automatically have been included in the Presidential
Daily Briefing (PDB) months before the NIE report, Johnson said.
The President, Vice President, Defense Secretary and Secretary
of State are all given daily accounts of the PDB, Johnson said.
McGovern and Goodman agreed.
|
INFOWARS:
BECAUSE THERE'S A WAR ON FOR YOUR MIND
|
|
