An intelligence postmortem
THE SENATE Committee on Intelligence issued two reports last week, one on the Bush administration's misuse of intelligence in the run-up to the Iraq war and the other on meetings in Rome and Paris, in 2001 and 2003, between US officials and dubious Iranian contacts. The reports are valuable both for what they reveal and for affirming the oversight responsibilities of Congress.
Most of the committee's findings, to be sure, would be familiar to any alert newspaper reader. The public already knew, or should have known, not just that intelligence about Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons was faulty, but also that President Bush, Vice President Cheney, and other officials exaggerated the threat and omitted mention of dissenting views among intelligence analysts.
Yet the committee's inquiry still sheds light into the handling of prewar intelligence. A lack of reliable human intelligence - of spies - inside Saddam Hussein's regime intertwined with an administration propensity for deception that eventually shaded into self-deception.
The report on the Rome and Paris meetings described how former Reagan administration consultant Michael Ledeen arranged for Defense Department officials to meet with a former Revolutionary Guard officer and Manucher Ghorbanifar, the Iranian exile arms dealer who was at the epicenter of the Iran-Contra scandal. The CIA had put out a "burn notice" on Ghorbanifar, calling him "an intelligence fabricator."
The report's goal was to determine if the defense officials were conducting unauthorized contacts. The meetings were technically authorized, since CIA director George Tenet and Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage were notified. But the report concluded that Tenet and Armitage were not told "of the full nature of the planned contact with the Iranians in Rome." It also said Ledeen's role was "inappropriate." The decision by Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz to keep a "close hold" on the meeting was "ill-advised."
These are procedural quibbles. The scandal is that rightist ideologues and a confirmed liar were allowed to make an end run around the CIA and the State Department. Ghorbanifar was asking for $25 million from the Bush administration to run a fanciful regime-change operation in Iran.
Members of the Bush administration were outsourcing national security to deluded ideologues and foreign charlatans. If they are asked about this scandal - and they should be - we hope that presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama will both say, "never again."
