The Men Who Knew Too Little For more than a decade, the CIA has been wrong on Iraq
Mylroie, Laurie
The Men Who Knew Too Little FoL _ore t_ _de, the CIA has been consistently wrong on Iraq—big time. BY LAURIE MYLROIE N 1991, AS THE UNITED STATES PREPARED FOR WAR, the CIA sought to keep the...
...If Schwarzkopf did this because the U.S...
...The State Department viewed that move in terms of its own rivalry with the Pentagon and believed top officials there had slyly inserted their own man...
...forces and perform the tasks that Americans could not do well, or would not want to do...
...A rebellion had just begun in the south...
...That is also why the Defense Ministry was not bombed until late in the war...
...So, too, was the INC...
...Reality soon passed judgment on this choice of contacts...
...Bush granted the CIA a near monopoly on Iraqi policy...
...The information it provided was faulty, quite possibly, Iraqi disinformation...
...authorities in Baghdad came to recognize that they needed Iraqis to work with, both at a political level and in terms of providing security...
...The administration agreed, on the condition that the opposition unite, which it did, founding the Iraqi National Congress (INC) in the fall of 1992 in Kurdish-controlled territory...
...Insiders were either compromised by their own collaboration with the Ba'ath or so beaten down by 35 years of intense repression, that they were incapable of playing an effective political role...
...The rebellion is strengthening Saddam, not weakening him...
...Nor did the Agency prove any more effective in its effort to target the regime leadership during the war...
...It was Abizaid, who, when the Fedayeen posed unexpected problems in the early stages of the war, asked that the 700 Free Iraqi Forces, whom Chalabi had recruited and trained on his own initiative in Northern Iraq shortly before the war began, be sent to the south to help U.S...
...In Northern Iraq, according to a knowledgeable American source, a prominent Sufi sheikh was able to convince the CIA that many Sufis served in the bodyguard of Saddam, including his two sons...
...He even said that Iraqi helicopters could fly over coalition forces, despite the obvious danger...
...Both times it was slow to acknowledge that it was mistaken...
...The way to precipitate a coup, they argued, was to allow Saddam to crush the uprising...
...Yet there were individuals within the Pentagon who tried hard to arrange exactly that...
...In fact, it was the exile opposition which had both the confidence and lacked the taint of collaboration to step into that role...
...Similarly, Henry Rowan, a Stanford professor and top aide to Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, ran into the ban when he sought to meet Ahmad Chalabi, a Shi'ite businessman who would go on to found the Iraqi National Congress and much later become a central figure in the Iraqi Governing Council...
...NOVEMBER 2003 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 15 THE MEN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE soned one man, Safa al-Battat, with thallium, and that British doctors saved his life...
...This was fully supported by the U.S...
...Following Iraq's liberation, U.S...
...The results speak for themselves...
...Tellingly, The CIA asked Bush for the sole operate in Iraq before the war...
...The CIA had accused him of drug abuse...
...policy was to keep the Ba'ath in control of all Iraq, it backfired...
...It was even suggested that those who had remained inside Iraq, enduring the regime's oppression, possessed a moral superiority to those who had not...
...The "Accord" on which the CIA had relied in Iraq was yet another edition of "The Trust," a group established in the 1920s by Soviet intelligence that purported to oppose Russia's new Communist regime and sought out its opponents who had taken up exile in Europe...
...But the State Department blocked the meeting...
...If U.S...
...Richter was also supported by NSC Advisor Anthony Lake...
...Turkey had been a key ally in the war, and the White House was obliged to resolve the refugee crisis on its border...
...Twelve years later, as the United States prepared for a second war with Iraq, the CIA still sought to lop off the top of the regime, relying on the Iraqi bureaucracies remaining intact to form the core of the post-war government...
...Al-Tai asked if Baghdad could fly helicopters to transport officials...
...In fact, Tenet would maintain his preference for a coup throughout his tenure as CIA director under Clinton and under George W. Bush...
...NOVEMBER 2003 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR 17...
...As a routine procedure, the DIA polygraphed all those involved, including Karim, who passed with flying colors...
...But when one Kurdish party learned that the offensive did not have U.S...
...official told the Post, "Bush believes Saddam will quash the rebellions and after the dust settles, the Ba'ath military establishment and other elites will blame him for not only the death and destruction from the war, but the death and destruction from putting down the rebellion...
...The Trust told the exiles that it represented disillusioned officials within the country, and was preparing to help overthrow the detested regime...
...Many lived in Great Britain, and the British spy agency MI-6 was as enthusiastic about them as the CIA was...
...Moreover, the Agency continued to pursue its own long-established agenda, including the vendetta against the INC...
...The Agency thought that the Ba'athist political structure—army, police, etc.—would remain intact after the war and serve as the core of the post-war government...
...Neither the CIA nor the State Department were anywhere near up to the task...
...Richter, Tenet, and Lake worked with the Iraqi National Accord, bypassing CIA head James Woolsey, who was kept in the dark...
...When President George H.W...
...The National Security Council's Richard Haass had brought in two Iraq experts, Phebe Marr and Christine Helms, to brief Bush during the run-up to the war...
...Until the situation is stabilized nobody is going to be able to focus on getting rid of Saddam Hussein...
...However, there was no Sufi network, and the money was simply wasted...
...She ordered him to stop speaking to Zebari...
...The White House's decision to accept the Agency's perspective on post-war Iraq now haunts the administration...
...S ADDAM'S SURVIVAL and the deaths of his enemies somehow confirmed the CIA's confidence in its own judgment...
...Following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait, the CIA, working with Saudi intelligence, focused on a group of ex-Ba'athists, who claimed they could launch a successful coup against Saddam...
...He leaned toward war with Iraq but decided to consider it after Afghanistan...
...Iraq was the Agency's turf, and after 9/11 it was handed $200 million for covert operations...
...More than any other U.S...
...The Kurdish north was the primary target of Saddam's post-war ferocity...
...That is why Iraqi television was not eliminated early on...
...It dispersed a lot of money to dubious characters, and virtually noth'rig came of its efforts...
...On March 26, it announced that the helicopters would not be shot down...
...Perhaps it had confused thallium with valium...
...Nonetheless, as war approached, Miller was dispatched to Qatar to serve as intelligence liaison to CENTCOM, and another Agency official replaced him at the White House...
...Both held this bizarre view publicly...
...AlMaj id was, in fact, later captured by U.S...
...As a senior U.S...
...Freeburg's boss thought it was a good idea, if only to learn more about what was happening in Iraq...
...But al-Suleiman is a weak character, short, squat, and prone to public drunkenness, the very antithesis of what a tribal leader is supposed to be, and he delivered nothing...
...The evidence was highly classified...
...In the spring of 1994, Steve Richter was promoted to chief of the CIA's Near Eastern Division...
...Similarly, when it came to promoting an Iraqi political authority, there turned out to be virtually nothing on the inside...
...FTER BOTH CIA OPERATIONS COLLAPSED in 1996, the Clinton administration wanted to do nothing about Iraq...
...And the helicopter squadrons played a critical role in crushing the revolt...
...Bill Clinton had been tougher on Iraq than Bush as a candidate in 1992...
...The INC leadership council had consisted of three people...
...Nonetheless, the State Department continues to cling to its established perspective, seeking to maintain an increasingly difficult occupation, rather than develop and empower an Iraqi partner...
...Ben Miller, the Agency's first man at the Bush White House, claimed that the INC's chief of intelligence Arras Karim was an agent of Iran and Iraq—certainly of Iran, and maybe of Iraq—and that dealing with him would endanger U.S...
...In early 2002, as the Afghan war was winding down, the Agency was again tasked with overthrowing Saddam, but it was also recognized that prospects for success were slim...
...The sheikh was given over $100 million, 100 satellite phones, and 20 land cruisers in exchange for his promise that his Sufi network would support the United States...
...Fearing that he would use chemical weapons against them, most of the Kurdish population fled to the Turkish and Iranian frontiers...
...BY LAURIE MYLROIE N 1991, AS THE UNITED STATES PREPARED FOR WAR, the CIA sought to keep the structure of Iraq's Ba'athist regime intact, while removing Saddam through a coup...
...The Accord learned of the plan, perhaps from the CIA, and General Adnan Nuri flew to Washington, warning that the INC was trying to drag the United States into war with Saddam and that the INC operation would interfere with their coup...
...be detained as security risks...
...Paul Freeburg, a marine seconded to the Pentagon's Policy Planning Office, heard Zebari speak at the Brookings Institution and wanted to meet with him...
...By late summer the United States was racing to train that force—which could have been in existence on the day the war began...
...As Sandra Charles, deputy to Richard Haass, responsible for the Middle East at the White House, affirmed, "Our policy is to get rid of Saddam Hussein, not remove his regime...
...AOLLOWING THE 1991 WAR, b 4 after it became clear 4 that no coup was likely to occur, Ahmad Chalabi persuaded the Bush administration to support a popular insurgency as an alternative way to remove Saddam...
...To defeat an Arab regime, occupy the country, and establish a reasonable government is not an easy task...
...As late as July 4, Tenet was stilltelling people that Saddam had been killed...
...No amount of experience caused them to correct them on their own, and no one else ever obliged them to do so...
...It turned out that Iraqi intelligence had poiMore than any other U.S...
...For example, the CIA directed that eight of the Kurdish fighters evacuated to the U.S...
...But this official had his own doubts: "There might not be a coup...
...S THE CIA PREPARED FOR WAR IN IRAQ, it had little idea with whom it should work...
...The coup would follow...
...under State Department tutelage, it was expanded to seven, at least one or two of whom could be expected to heed the Department's wishes...
...That nothing came of the Pentagon's desire to train an Iraqi force has cost the lives of G.I.'s...
...They will emerge then and install a new leadership...
...forces...
...It sought to deport them to Iraq...
...The solution ended LAURIE MYLROIE up being a small Kurdish safe haven, protected by a much larger no-fly zone, running at the 36th parallel...
...If so, the intelligence gathered by the Agency would help prepare for the conflict coming, or so it was judged...
...04 Laurie Mylroie is the author of Bush vs...
...government's Arabists in the State Department and elsewhere...
...Congress passed legislation to rge the White House to return to backing the INC in overthrowing Saddam...
...Though publicly for democracy, he backed the coup, perhaps because George Tenet, then responsible for intelligence at the White House, supported the plan...
...government agency, the CIA is responsible for the lack of post-war planning...
...His caution was disregarded, and the attempted coup collapsed in spectacular failure in July, as 8addam used the occasion to arrest some 100 officers and execute 30 others...
...Fallujah has been a hotbed of postwar resistance...
...They held wrong views about Iraq...
...To be even half-successful in such an enterprise requires that every step be executed with the outmost thoughtfulness and care...
...The Trust provided them much secret intelligence...
...lives...
...Franks was not interested in involving Iraqis in the conflict...
...The Agency's promise that an indigenous political talent would emerge was totally false...
...However, the U.S...
...The CIA asked Bush for the sole right to operate in Iraq before the war...
...Soon most of the country would be in revolt against the seemingly defeated regime...
...These men had all once worked with the dictator, but had 12 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2003 THE MEN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE broken with him over the years and gone into exile...
...After the 9/11 attacks, however, his thinking changed...
...the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror (HarperCollins...
...April Glaspie, U.S...
...should deal with the "insiders," rather than the "outsiders" (the exile leadership...
...It developed ties with a certain Majid Abdel Razzak al-Ali al-Suleiman, a member of the Dulaim tribe that dominates the area...
...This is a simple ploy...
...Miller maintained a thick file on Karim to that effect...
...For the next seven years, the Agency pursued a vendetta against Chalabi...
...Schwarzkopf responded affirmatively...
...But once he was elected, his position changed radically...
...The Agency, however, had little understanding of the situation in Iraq...
...ambassador to Iraq when Saddam invaded Kuwait, informed Freeburg that such contacts were to be handled through intelligence channels...
...All of this contributed mightily to the serious problems in post-war Iraq...
...and all these thousands and thousands will be dead while we looked on...
...Bush was extraordinarily bold and courageous in his decision for war with Iraq, but that boldness was not matched in his dealings with his own bureaucracies...
...Richter had headed the station in Amman, where he had begun preparations for what would become the next U.S...
...Bush called a cease-fire to the war with Iraq on February 28,1991, General Norman Schwarzkopf met an Iraqi military delegation in the southern town of Safwan to work out the details...
...In March 1995, they planned a modest offensive against Iraqi army units in the North...
...government agency, the CIA is responsible for the lack of post-war planning, which bedevils the U.S...
...Salah Omar Ali al-Tikriti, a senior member of the Ba'ath party closely involved in the public hanging of 14 Iraqis, 11 of them Jews, a prominent member of the Accord who had broken and reconciled with Saddam several times (but had not been killed), assured the CIA and MI-6 that the key to the coup was his cousin, Hakam Ali al-Tikriti, who headed Army Aviation, Iraq's helicopter squadrons...
...They wanted 15,000 Iraqis to receive the training that would allow them to fight alongside U.S...
...This dismal experience was pregnant with lessons...
...The administration paid lip service to the legislation while it worked to discredit and undermine the INC...
...The administration's response was to hold a grudge against Chalabi, because he had warned that their plot was penetrated, and because he subsequently told others what fools the CIA had been...
...As the INC offensive was about to begin, a CIA official working with them delivered a White House cable that disavowed the operation, and warned that the INC would be on their own...
...support, it attacked the other...
...forces...
...Iraq was the Agency's turf LAURIE MYLROIE State could not recognize the military necessity behind that move...
...Subsequently, the Kurdish militias, joined by the population, succeeded in expelling the Ba'athist apparatus from all Kurdish territory...
...Thus, in the Agency's view, there was no need to train any of the millions of Iraqis in exile to provide the functions, including security, that would be necessary after the conflict...
...An Iraqi intelligence officer even called the station chief in Amman on the CIA's own communications equipment—shades of "The Trust...
...The old regime would do the job...
...During the critical month of March, several opposition figures were in Washington, including Hoshyar Zebari, of the Kurdish Democratic Party, and now Iraqi Foreign Minister...
...The standard State/CIA line was that the INC was a group of feckless exiles, and they tried hard to make it into that...
...Calling themselves the Iraqi National Accord, the former regime officials claimed they had unique contacts with those still inside the government, and they developed a list of Iraqi officials who would carry out a coup...
...Even more, it believed that entire segments of the Iraqi regime, including the military, would defect to the American side once the war began...
...No need for any of the millions of Iraqis in exile...
...position in Iraq today...
...16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2003 When the Defense Intelligence Agency later began working with the INC, however, the information it contained was shown to be false...
...The United States has never done so before (the half-hearted attempt in Lebanon, pursued for far less weighty reasons than the war in Iraq, was disastrous...
...coup attempt against Saddam...
...Similarly, Helms told the New York Times: "It is important to stabilize the 14 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR NOVEMBER 2003 situation in Iraq...
...The CIA and the rest of Washington's Arabist establishment claimed that the uprising had frightened off the would-be plotters...
...Initially, George W. Bush maintained Clinton's posture on Iraq...
...Thus it lured back to their deaths many exile leaders, destroying its opponents abroad, while confounding almost every Western intelligence agency with the disinformation the exiles unwittingly promulgated...
...At the core of the Iraqi Governing Council is, in fact, the old INC...
...Meanwhile, as plans for the coup proceeded, Chalabi warned the CIA that Saddam knew of their plot...
...The White House now seems to recognize it has a serious problem, and to fix it now is not easy...
...There was also a difference of perspective between CENTCOM commander Tommy Franks, and his deputy, John Abizaid, a Lebanese American...
...For example, the Agency believed it would be able to neutralize Western Iraq—including the towns of Ramadi and Fallujah—by winning over the tribes, and it tried to do so by working through its old client, the Iraqi National Accord...
...Yet it might begin by ceasing to follow the advice of those who have proven, consistently wrong over the past decade and pay more attention to those who have generally been right...
...But by 1993 the CIA again began to tout prospects for an inside the Ba'ath coup...
...General Sultan Hashim Ahmed al-Tai—later Defense Minister, a position he held in 2003—headed the Iraqi delegation...
...But the CIA continued to work with the Accord...
...government believed that the helicopters would be part of a coup against Saddam, he was tragically mistaken...
...Moreover, although the State Department was obliged to pass on to the INC some portion of the funds that Congress appropriated for the organization, it attached one debilitating condition: none of the money was to be spent inside Iraq, including in the Kurdish North...
...Experts on the region," explained the Washington Post, "such as Phebe Marr of the National Defense University, contend that the domestic chaos in Iraq will reduce the likelihood that the military can get rid of Saddam soon...
...Its constant refrain (and that of State) was that the U.S...
...He showed the Agency video of Sufi mystics entertaining the top Iraqi leadership, swallowing swords and the like...
...The White House removed any ambiguity, giving a green light to Saddam...
...The CIA had fallen for the oldest ploy in the book...
...The Agency also claimed to have killed off Saddam twice...
...The Agency claimed to have killed off Ali Hassan al-Majid (responsible for the chemical attacks against the Kurds...
...Nonetheless, the operation was reasonably successful, precipitating many defections from the demoralized army units they faced...
Vol. 36 • November 2003 • No. 6
