Colin Powell Got Snookered at CIA
by Ray McGovern
From CommonDreams
Think back six years. How often did we hear then-Secretary of State Colin Powell tout his intense four-day vigil at CIA headquarters preparing the speech he would give to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003? Retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, who was asked by Powell to herd cats in putting that speech together, recently threw light on why it turned out to be such an acute embarrassment.
Surrogates of Vice President Dick Cheney were insisting on giving prominence to highly dubious reports of operational ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, but on this particular issue (unlike the phantom WMD) CIA and State department intelligence analysts had stood firm in the face of heavy pressure. Indeed, the CIA ombudsman saw fit to tell Congress that never in his 32 years as a CIA analyst had he witnessed a more aggressive "hammering" on analysts to change their minds and give credence to reporting that was trash.
How was it, then, that Secretary Powell ended up citing a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network" to depict a relationship that did not exist? Fair labeling: Reading what follows may not make you quite as ill as reading the Department of Justice torture memos, but it may well sicken-and anger-you just the same.
According to Col. Wilkerson, just days before trying to sell the invasion of Iraq to the United Nations, his boss Colin Powell had decided not to regurgitate the dubious allegations about Saddam Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda. Just in the nick of time, however, top CIA officials produced a "bombshell" report alleging such ties. The information was more than a year old and apparently extricated via torture, but Powell took the bait.
(More here.)
From CommonDreams
Think back six years. How often did we hear then-Secretary of State Colin Powell tout his intense four-day vigil at CIA headquarters preparing the speech he would give to the United Nations Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003? Retired Army Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, Powell's chief of staff, who was asked by Powell to herd cats in putting that speech together, recently threw light on why it turned out to be such an acute embarrassment.
Surrogates of Vice President Dick Cheney were insisting on giving prominence to highly dubious reports of operational ties between al-Qaeda and Iraq, but on this particular issue (unlike the phantom WMD) CIA and State department intelligence analysts had stood firm in the face of heavy pressure. Indeed, the CIA ombudsman saw fit to tell Congress that never in his 32 years as a CIA analyst had he witnessed a more aggressive "hammering" on analysts to change their minds and give credence to reporting that was trash.
How was it, then, that Secretary Powell ended up citing a "sinister nexus between Iraq and the al-Qaeda terrorist network" to depict a relationship that did not exist? Fair labeling: Reading what follows may not make you quite as ill as reading the Department of Justice torture memos, but it may well sicken-and anger-you just the same.
According to Col. Wilkerson, just days before trying to sell the invasion of Iraq to the United Nations, his boss Colin Powell had decided not to regurgitate the dubious allegations about Saddam Hussein's ties to al-Qaeda. Just in the nick of time, however, top CIA officials produced a "bombshell" report alleging such ties. The information was more than a year old and apparently extricated via torture, but Powell took the bait.
(More here.)
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