One Jerusalem hosted an extremely valuable bloggers conference call today with Douglas Feith, former Under Secretary of Defense for Policy.
I
September 2005, Senator Pat Roberts, the Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, requested that the Defense Department Inspector General review whether Feith’s office had conducted “unauthorized, unlawful or inappropriate intelligence activities,” as Senator Carl Levin had alleged in a 2004 “Report of an Inquiry into the Alternative Analysis of the Issue of an Iraq-al Qaeda Relationship.” Levin has been on a crusade for more nearly three years, as part of the Bush Lied Brigade, to create an urban myth — that Feith’s office had produced intelligence that “exaggerated a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida while the Intelligence Community remained consistently dubious of such a connection.”
The Inspector General produced a draft report and received official comments on it in January from Eric S. Edelman, the current Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Edelman’s fascinating 46-page paper is here. The paper explained in great detail that the activities of Feith’s office:
(1) were not intelligence activities, but rather an analysis and criticism of existing intelligence from a different perspective (one that did not presume a priori that a secular regime in Iraq would never cooperate with religious extremists in al Qaida, and one that did not intentionally leave out relevant intelligence documents because — as one of the CIA analysts explained, when questioned about its absence, “putting it out there would be playing into the hands of people like Wolfowitz”);
(2) even if the activities were intelligence activities, they were completely appropriate since they had been expressly commissioned by the Secretary of Defense, through the Deputy Secretary of Defense, and had not only been shared with the Director of the CIA (George Tenet), but had been explained to him in a personal briefing by Defense Department personnel, after which Tenet had written an October 7, 2002 unclassified letter to the Senator Lindsay Graham, Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, stating that:
* Our understanding of the relationship between Iraq and al-Qa’ida is evolving and is based on sources of varying reliability. Some of the information we have received comes from detainees, including some of high rank.
* We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al-Qa’ida going back a decade.
* Credible information indicates that Iraq and al-Qa’ida have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression.
* Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al-Qa’ida members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
* We have credible reporting that al-Qa’ida leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq has provided training to al-Qa’ida members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
* Iraq’s increasing support to extremist Palestinians, coupled with growing indications of a relationship with al-Qa’ida, suggest that Baghdad’s links to terrorists will increase, even absent military action.
On February 12, 2003, a month before the Iraq war commenced, Tenet told the Senate Committee in a prepared statement that:
Iraq has in the past provided training in document forgery and bomb-making to al-Qa’ida. It also provided training in poisons and gasses to two al-Qa’ida associates; one of these associates characterized the relationship he forged with Iraqi officials as successful. Mr. Chairman, this information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence. It comes to us from credible and reliable sources.
Secretary Edelman’s paper provides some of the political background behind the controversy that Senator Levin has pursued, with the help of a credulous media:
[U]ninformed and inaccurate press reports have persisted, generally on the theme that the Office of Special Plans allegedly conducted a rogue intelligence operation before the Iraq war and fed incorrect or exaggerated intelligence information to senior policy makers in the Executive Branch, bypassing the Intelligence Community and contributing to an ill-informed decision to go to war in Iraq. These stories have been repeated so many times that they are now taken as established truth by some members of Congress and many commentators.
Edelman’s report should be read in its entirety, as an antidote to the (using his words) “hypnotic effect of these constantly repeated falsehoods.”
The Inspector General’s final report was sent to Congress on February 9, representing (in the words of the Defense Department news release) “the third determination that activities within DoD’s policy office regarding pre-war intelligence were both legal and authorized.” As Power Line has noted, they were also correct.
On February 9, the Inspector General appeared before Senator Levin’s Senate Armed Services Committee and testified about the report. RedState has a lengthy report. During the bloggers conference call, Feith recommended that people also read the Iraqi Perspectives Project report entitled “A View of Operation Iraqi Freedom from Saddam’s Senior Leadership,” discussing interviews of Sadaam Hussein and other captured Iraqi officials, as well as captured documents from the war. He will appear on "Charlie Rose" tonight.