REVIEW & OUTLOOK
'Stupid' Intelligence
Some of our spooks simply oppose Bush administration antiterror policy.
If there's a silver lining to the controversy surrounding the Valerie Plame "outing," it's that an increasingly poisonous dispute over counterterrorism policy has been outed along with her. We're talking about the disagreement between the Bush Administration and many of the career intelligence officials at the State Department and the CIA.
Let us stipulate that most American diplomats and CIA employees do their duty in loyal, and often courageous, fashion. But for a cadre that dominated U.S. anti-terror policy for years, September 11 changed everything except their thinking. They continue to view terrorism as a containable and endurable problem to be fought primarily in the courts after the fact and through cooperation with friendly intelligence agencies. Since preventive military action might jeopardize international cooperation, they see it as something to be avoided at all costs.
For the Bush team, on the other hand, September 11 showed that America can no longer afford to view terrorism as a law-enforcement problem and wait for the next attack. With the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, the danger of mass casualties is such that aggressive action is warranted against terrorism's state sponsors. Hence regime change in Afghanistan and Iraq.
Reasonable people can disagree on these issues. But while President Bush and his Administration argue the case for their policy in speech after speech and interview after interview, part of the intelligence community pursues its cause largely through media leaks and what can only be called insubordination.
"Intelligence sources" are routinely quoted questioning Administration claims and complaining of "political interference." In yesterday's New York Times, those "sources" admitted to reporter James Risen (their go-to guy) that Joseph Wilson had been chosen for the Niger mission precisely because the CIA did not take Vice President Dick Cheney's interest in pursuing the yellowcake story seriously.
Conveniently, the motives and policy aims of these sources are spared scrutiny by the cloak of anonymity. But are they really just the disinterested experts the media portray them to be? Joe Wilson (Ms. Plame's husband) has made no secret of his broad disagreement with Bush policy since outing himself with an op-ed. Likewise, those friends and colleagues who have flocked publicly to Mr. Wilson's side have made it clear their dispute with the Administration goes well beyond any possible leak.
Consider Larry Johnson, the former CIA and State Department counterterrorism official interviewed on PBS's "NewsHour with Jim Lehrer" Tuesday night. Most of us are still waiting to learn the details surrounding the mention of Ms. Plame. But Mr. Johnson had no doubt "this was about a political attack. . . . It sickens me." He called the Administration's interest in the Niger-yellowcake story "a stupid policy, an erroneous policy."
Who is Larry Johnson? He's the author of one of the more poorly timed op-eds in history. On July 10, 2001, he wrote in the New York Times under the headline "The Declining Terrorist Threat" that "Americans have little to fear" from terrorism unless they travel or work in a few of the world's hotspots. He added that "Early signs suggest that the decade beginning in 2000 will continue the downward trend" in terrorist activity. (He co-authored a similar piece for this page in 2000.)
A month earlier, and only three months before 9/11, Mr. Johnson told U.S. News and World Report that "Bin Laden has an international network of contacts, but it's more analogous to the Elvis Presley fan club than a corporation like General Motors."
In the same vein, current senior CIA official Paul Pillar wrote shortly before 9/11 that counterterrorism should not be viewed as a "war" we can hope to win, but more like "the effort by public-health authorities to control communicable diseases" or improve "highway safety." He also reportedly assailed Mr. Bush's Iraq policy in a public appearance earlier this year at Johns Hopkins. This is precisely the mindset that failed to prevent September 11.
The larger point here is that intelligence is supposed to be a tool for elected policy makers, not a restraint on their action. CIA analysts aren't an infallible Sanhedrin but are supposed to be collectors of facts and interpreters of often fragmentary evidence. The policy judgments are supposed to be made by Presidents who have to decide--based on that ambiguous evidence--how best to protect and defend the American people. They don't have the luxury of waiting until the bowels of the CIA reach consensus on some disputed set of facts.
By all means, let's have a national debate about intelligence priorities and counterterrorism policy. But let's acknowledge what we are really debating and not hide behind sideshows over leaks and claims of "politicized intelligence." When the arguments are made, we imagine Americans will feel safer with the Bush policy than with the one advocated by Joe Wilson and his anonymous friends.
