From the archive: Islamophobe & Bolton pal Fred Fleitz has been named chief of staff for the National Security Council. Fletiz was a danger a decade ago in the Bush administration and is even more so now, recalls Ray McGovern. McGovern says that with Bolton\u2019s old \u201cenforcer\u201d Fred Fleitz as NSC Chief of Staff, the odds increase on war with Iran. Bolton and his cronies can now elbow out any honest intelligence on Iran and goad the President into a world-class catastrophe. This time the result would be much worse – geometrically worse. <\/i><\/p>\n
On a recent TV appearance, I was asked about whistleblowing<\/a>, but the experience brought back to mind a crystal-clear example of how, before the Iraq War, CIA careerists were assigned \u201ctwo bosses\u201d \u2013 CIA Director George Tenet and John Bolton, the Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, the arch-neocon who had been thrust on an obedient Secretary of State Colin Powell.<\/p>\n CIA \u201canalyst\u201d Frederick Fleitz<\/a> took the instructions quite literally, bragging about being allowed to serve, simultaneously, \u201ctwo bosses\u201d — and becoming Bolton\u2019s \u201cenforcer.\u201d Fleitz famously chided<\/a> a senior intelligence analyst at State for not understanding that it was the prerogative of policymakers like Bolton \u2013 not intelligence analysts \u2013 to \u201cinterpret\u201d intelligence data.<\/p>\n In an email from Fleitz in early 2002, at the time when one of his bosses, the pliable George Tenet, was \u201cfixing\u201d the intelligence to \u201cjustify\u201d war on Iraq, Fleitz outlined the remarkable new intelligence ethos imposed by President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and their subordinates who were reshaping the U.S. Intelligence Community.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Apparently, senior State Department intelligence analyst, Christian Westermann, \u201chad not gotten the memo\u201d on how things had changed. Rather, he was performing his duties like a professional analyst under the old rules. Westermann had the temerity to block coordination on a speech in which Bolton wanted to make the spurious assertion that Cuba had a developing biological weapons program.<\/p>\n On Feb. 12, 2002, after a personal run-in with Westermann, Fleitz sent Bolton this email: \u201cI explained to Christian [Westermann] that it was a political judgment as to how to interpret this data and the I.C. [Intelligence Community] should do as we asked.\u201d Fleitz informed Bolton that Westermann still \u201cstrongly disagrees with us.\u201d<\/p>\n At this point, Bolton became so dyspeptic that he summoned Westermann to his office for a tongue-lashing and then asked top officials of the State Department\u2019s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) to fire him. Instead, they defended him, and this was not the only time intelligence managers at State \u2013 virtually alone in the Intelligence Community \u2013 gave the Bush-43 White House and political hacks like Bolton the clear message not to count on managers and analysts at INR to acquiesce in the politicization of intelligence.<\/p>\n Exaggerating Iran Threat<\/strong><\/p>\n Later, Fleitz went on to bigger and better things. In 2006, he became \u201csenior adviser\u201d to House Intelligence Committee chair Pete Hoekstra, R-Michigan. Bowing to desires of the White House to portray Iran as a strategic threat, Hoekstra had Fleitz draft an almost comically alarmist paper titled \u201cRecognizing Iran as Strategic Threat: An Intelligence Challenge for the United States.\u201d Fleitz was told not to coordinate his paper with the Intelligence Community.<\/p>\n The objective was to pre-empt a formal National Intelligence Estimate on Iran\u2019s nuclear weapons program \u2013 an NIE that the Senate had just commissioned. Fleitz and Hoekstra feared the NIE might come to unwelcome conclusions, contradicting the kinds of stark warnings about Iran’s nuclear program that the White House wanted to use to stir up fear and justify action against Iran. Iraq deja vu.<\/p>\n The Fleitz-Hoekstra gambit failed. Their over-the-top paper made them the subject of ridicule in professional intelligence circles.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence Thomas Fingar was named to manage the formal NIE on Iran, and, mirable dictu<\/em>, he was not only a seasoned professional but also a practitioner of the old-time ethos of objective, non-politicized intelligence.<\/p>\n Worse still for Bush, Cheney and their sycophants, the NIE of November 2007, endorsed by all 16 agencies of the Intelligence Community began: \u201cWe judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.\u201d<\/p>\n That Estimate holds the distinction of being the only NIE of which I am aware that demonstrably played a key role in preventing an unnecessary war \u2013 the war on Iran that Cheney and Bush were planning for 2008. Bush pretty much admits this in his memoir Decision Points<\/em>, which includes a highly instructive section that he must have written himself.<\/p>\n Indeed, nowhere in his memoir is Bush\u2019s bizarre relationship to truth so manifest as when he describes his dismay at learning that the Intelligence Community had redeemed itself for its lies about Iraq by preparing an honest NIE that stuck a rod in the wheels of the juggernaut rolling toward war with Iran.<\/p>\n Bush complains bitterly that the \u201ceye-popping\u201d NIE \u201ctied my hands on the military side,\u201d adding that the \u201cNIE\u2019s conclusion was so stunning that I felt it would immediately leak to the press.\u201d He writes that he authorized declassification of the key findings \u201cso that we could shape the news stories with the facts.\u201d Facts?<\/p>\n A disappointed Bush writes, \u201cThe backlash was immediate. [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad hailed the NIE as a \u2018great victory.\u2019\u201d Bush\u2019s apparent \u201clogic\u201d here is to use the widespread disdain for Ahmadinejad to discredit the NIE through association, i.e. whatever Ahmadinejad praises must be false.<\/p>\n An Embarrassment<\/strong><\/p>\n How embarrassing it must have been for Bush and Cheney! Here before the world were the key judgments of an NIE, the most authoritative genre of intelligence report, unanimously approved \u201cwith high confidence\u201d by 16 US intelligence agencies and signed by the Director of National Intelligence, saying, in effect, that Bush and Cheney were lying about the \u201cIranian nuclear threat.\u201d Just a month before the Estimate was issued, Bush was claiming that the threat from Iran could lead to \u201cWorld War III.\u201d<\/p>\n In his memoir, Bush laments: \u201cI don\u2019t know why the NIE was written the way it was. \u2026 Whatever the explanation, the NIE had a big impact – and not a good one.\u201d Spelling out how the NIE had tied his hands \u201con the military side,\u201d Bush included this kicker:<\/p>\n \u201cBut after the NIE, how could I possible explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?\u201d<\/p>\n Yet, that didn\u2019t stop neocon warmongers from trying. The NIE was subject to virulent criticism by those disappointed that it did not provide justification for a \u201cpreventive\u201d attack on Iran.<\/p>\n Former CIA Director James Woolsey, who has proudly described himself as the \u201canchor of the Presbyterian wing of the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs (JINSA),\u201d called<\/a> the Iran NIE “deceptive.” Hoekstra called it \u201ca piece of trash.\u201d<\/p>\n Greg Thielmann, a former State Department official who had managed strategic intelligence analysis but quit before the intelligence debacle on Iraq, could not resist commenting<\/a> on this bizarre set of circumstances from his new position as a senior fellow at the Arms Control Association: \u201cThere is some considerable irony in hearing such criticism from those intimately familiar with the inner workings of the intelligence community, who seemed to have sleepwalked through the serious professional lapses of the 2002 NIE on Iraq WMD.\u201d<\/p>\n But the neocons were deprived of the Iran war for which they had been lusting (just as, six years later, they were deprived of the war on Syria, into which they almost mouse-trapped President Barack Obama).<\/p>\n Still, you need not worry about any negative consequences for the compliant Bush-Cheney \u201canalysts\u201d who were willing to \u201cfix\u201d more intelligence around war policies. As usually happens in Official Washington, they landed on their feet. For instance, Fleitz is now Senior Vice President for Policy and Programs with the Center for Security Policy, a think tank founded by Frank Gaffney, Jr., an archdeacon of neocondom, who is still its president.<\/p>\n Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year career as a CIA analyst includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer\/briefer of the President\u2019s Daily Brief. He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). Reprinted with permission from Consortium News<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From the archive: Islamophobe & Bolton pal Fred Fleitz has been named chief of staff for the National Security Council. Fletiz was a danger a decade ago in the Bush administration and is even more so now, recalls Ray McGovern. McGovern says that with Bolton\u2019s old \u201cenforcer\u201d Fred Fleitz as NSC Chief of Staff, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":64,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-31207","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":{"disable_donate_message":"","custom_donate_message":"","subtitle":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31207","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/64"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31207"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31207\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31209,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31207\/revisions\/31209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31207"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31207"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31207"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.antiwar.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=31207"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}