|
Democratic
Policy Committee Hearing On Pre-War
Iraq Intelligence — Selected comments from Congressman Walter Jones, and
replies |
This
segment of the hearing can be streamed online at this address: |
Speakers quoted:
CONGRESSMAN WALTER JONES — Republican of North
Carolina
LT. COL. LAWRENCE WILKERSON — Chief of Staff to
Sec'y of State Colin Powell, 2001-05
PAUL PILLAR — Former CIA Iraq Intelligence
Coordinator, 2000-05
CARL FORD — Former Asst. Sec'y of State for
Intelligence and Research, 2001-03
WAYNE WHITE — Former State Department Principal
Iraq Analyst, 2003-05
CONGRESSMAN JONES:
Senator, I am very pleased and honored that this
distinguished panel, the Democratic Policy Committee, will allow me to spend
just a few minutes, and ask questions. I have actually met with Mr.
Pillar, and Mr. Wilkerson, and eight other individuals, from Gen. Zinni, to
Newbold, to Batiste, to Karen Kwiatkowski, to Sam Gardiner, to James
Bamford. These men know that my heart has ached ever since I found out
that maybe the intelligence we that were given as members of the House to vote
for the resolution was flawed and possibly manipulated.
I've taken it upon myself to write every
family [of a casualty] in America. It's a two-page letter that requires
my signature on both pages. And when you count the extended families, we
have sent over eight thousand letters.
I say that to you and this distinguished group
here today because my heart has ached ever since I have questioned whether my
vote was justified, based on fact. What I would like to ask, and it might
be, and it — only two or three questions — but what has befuddled me so greatly
is — I will make reference very briefly to Gen. Newbold, who I've met
with. And he wrote an article in Time magazine in April of 2006, that
says "Why Iraq Was A Mistake". And this is not co-authored,
this is his name, Lt. Gen Greg Newbold, who actually gave up a third
star — he was a two-star Marine general, and gave up a third star, because he
could no longer stay at Department of Defense. He was part of J3. I
want to read this, then I'll get at my question.
"I was a witness and therefore a party to the
action that led us to the invasion of Iraq, an unnecessary war. Inside
the military family I made no secret of my view, that the zealots' rationale
for war made no sense." He goes on to say that maybe he should have
done more.
What I am just, and I think the American people,
quite frankly, am so perplexed with, is how, and I think, Col. Wilkerson, since
you identified yourself as I was driving in earlier, on the radio, as being a
Republican, and since I'm a Republican, I will go to you first.
Uh, how did the four or five, the
neoconservatives that were put into policy positions in and around the
Department of Defense — how were they able to take credible, or at least
the best information that could be given, and somewhat, it seems, and correct
me if I'm wrong, it seems like they rewrote the intelligence. And I guess
my point is, because you were there with Secretary Powell, I'm sure, at some
inner meetings, so to speak, classified meetings at the time — I don't know
how, unless someone wanted them to have that authority, that they themselves
could have so much influence. And knowing that the previous history of
these individuals, was that they tried to get President Clinton to go into
Iraq.
My question is this to all four of you, if you
would like to answer, maybe it's a very simple question, I apologize if it's
been asked before. But what perplexes me is how in the world could
professionals — and I'm not criticizing anybody here at this table — but how
could the professionals see what was happening, and nobody speak out?
I'm not saying you did not do your duty, please
understand. My point is, as a congressman, who trusted what I was being
told, I'm not on the Intelligence Committee, Sen. Dorgan, but I am on the Armed
Services Committee, and I was being told this information. And I wish I'd
had the wisdom then that I might have now. I would have known what to
ask. But I think many of my colleagues that did not have the
experience on the Intelligence Committee, we just pretty much accepted.
So, where along the way, how did these people so early on get so much
power, that they had more influence in those — in the administration, to make
decisions than you, the professionals?
COL. WILKERSON:
Um, let me try to answer you first, but let me
say, right off the bat, I'm glad to see you here.
CONGRESSMAN JONES:
Thank you, sir.
COL. WILKERSON:
Uh, as a Republican I'm somewhat embarrassed by
the fact that you're the only member of my party here.
CONGRESSMAN JONES:
I agree.
COL. WILKERSON:
But I understand it. Um, I'd answer you with
two words. Let me put the article in there, and make it three: The
Vice President.
CONGRESSMAN JONES:
Would the other three gentlemen agree with Col. Wilkerson's
three words?
CARL FORD:
I don't. And I'm also a Republican, but I
don't — they — they've disowned me
a long time ago.
CONGRESSMAN JONES:
Uh — I might be next. [laughter]
COL. WILKERSON:
They're still sending me things, asking for contributions.
WAYNE WHITE:
I have to interject something similar to what I
said to Sen. Feinstein. To a lot of the analysts working these issues, we
weren't aware of what was going on — up there [gestures upward
with both hands ], whether it was the Vice President, or somebody else.
To give you an illustration, I didn't even know
about the existence of the Feith Office [of Special Plans] in the Pentagon,
until maybe — six, seven months before the war. And the way I found
out about the existence of Mr. Feith's office [was] because somebody who worked
in Terrorism in our bureau showed me a product produced by that office — as I
recall, it was two pages long. And it was the evidence linking Iraq with
Terrorism.
And the person was giving it to me effectively as
comic relief, saying, "Can you believe — what's on this
paper?" It was as if I'd gotten my morning traffic someday,
because there's a lot of junk in intelligence that the analyst knows that has
to be sifted out, to get to the real kernels, and it looked like an
unsorted pile of junk. And this is one reason the Feith office,
which does relate to the Sec'y of Defense, and then to others, becomes
extremely important. I didn't go into it in my, uh — in what I've read
here: it's in my written testimony.
Those kinds of nodes and offices must be completely
eliminated. Because, people aren't even aware of them, there
aren't standard communications between them and the rest of the intelligence
community, and more importantly, there has been no vetting of their
personnel, y'know, whatsoever, for professionalism, for experience in
that field — . That office basically was writing intelligence which was
getting far more attention than a lot of what — Carl, and I, y'know, were
working on, and yet it had none of the professional standards, y'know, that
applied to the rest of the intelligence community.
And it was so low profile, that if you
didn't know what was going on behind the scenes, to — to many of us it was
utterly invisible till the last — last moments.
CONGRESSMAN JONES:
Senator, let me ask one more question when Mr.
Pillar finishes.
PAUL PILLAR:
Congressman Jones, if I can just extend what Wayne
White mentioned with regard to the detached nature of some of what was going on
in the office of the Sec'y of Defense and the Office of [the] Vice President,
what this little group under Mr. Feith was doing in trying to come up with all
the scraps, y'know, trying to show a link with al-Qaeda — uh, they did put
together a briefing, which was briefed out at Langley [CIA HQ, where Pillar
worked] to Mr. Tenet and to members of the counter-terror center, and I wasn't
working on counter-terrorism at the time, I didn't receive the briefing, but it
wasn't the whole briefing, as we later learned, that they provided down at
the White House.
And the way that I and others found out about this
was at a hearing of the Senate Select Committee of Intelligence, a closed
hearing, in which one of Sen. Feinstein's colleagues had before him the version
of the briefing slides that he was given, and my colleague, who was then deputy
chief of the counter-terror center had the version that he was given,
and the version that came to the Intelligence community was missing the
couple of slides that were devoted to criticizing the community for how
they were missing this big link between Saddam and al-Qaeda, and
"here's what the intelligence community is doing wrong, and why their
analysis on this is so poor".
This was never briefed to Mr. Tenet, or the
counter-terror center, it was just briefed down at the White House, and only
thanks to one of the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee did we ever
find out about it.
But if I could just add one more, and if I would
disagree with my friend Carl Ford on this, [hand gestures] that group wasn't
established because the intelligence community wasn't doing its job. It
was doing its job rather intensively, and devoting a great deal of effort,
particularly the counter-terror center — again I wasn't in it at the time, to
this whole issue of Iraq and al-Qaeda, because they were asked so many
questions, again and again and again and again and again, so they wrote a bunch
of papers, it wasn't that they didn't do the good analysis, or come up with the
specific evidence: it's that the policy makers, these particular ones
in the Office of Sec'y of Defense, didn't like the answer. [long
pause] And the answer was, "there's no alliance".
And that was a very well documented answer.
And there was a lot of other evidence that pointed in an opposite direction
from all the scraps that Mr. Feith's office put together, and we later read
about in the The Weekly Standard, evidence that showed for example that
there was not training going on, that there were not contacts
between Iraq and — just about any Islamist you could come up with in
Afghanistan. That was all the other side that was ignored.