The Build-a-War Workshop - New York Times

February 10, 2007
Editorial
The Build-a-War Workshop
It took far too long, but areport by the Pentagon inspector general has finally confirmed thatDefense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s do-it-yourself intelligence officecooked up a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda to help justify anunjustifiable war.
The report said the team headed by Douglas Feith, under secretary ofdefense for policy, developed “alternative” assessments of intelligenceon Iraq that contradicted the intelligence community and drewconclusions “that were not supported by the available intelligence.”Mr. Feith certainly knew the Central Intelligence Agency would cryfoul, so he hid his findings from the C.I.A. Then Vice President DickCheney used them as proof of cloak-and-dagger meetings that neverhappened, long-term conspiracies between Saddam Hussein and Osama binLaden that didn’t exist, and — most unforgivable — “possible Iraqicoordination” on the 9/11 attacks, which no serious intelligenceanalyst believed.
The inspector general did not recommend criminal charges against Mr.Feith because Mr. Rumsfeld or his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, approvedtheir subordinate’s “inappropriate” operations. The renegadeintelligence buff said he was relieved.
We’re sure he was. But there is no comfort in knowing that his dirtywork was approved by his bosses. All that does is add to evidence thatthe Bush administration knowingly and repeatedly misled Americans aboutthe intelligence on Iraq.
To understand this twisted tale, it is important to recall how Mr.Feith got into the creative writing business. Top administrationofficials, especially Mr. Cheney, had long been furious at the C.I.A.for refusing to confirm the delusion about a grand Iraqi terroristconspiracy, something the Republican right had nursed for years. Theirfrustration only grew after 9/11 and the C.I.A. still refused to buythese theories.
Mr. Wolfowitz would feverishly sketch out charts showing how thisIraqi knew that Iraqi, who was connected through six more degrees ofseparation to terrorist attacks, all the way back to the 1993 WorldTrade Center bombing.
But the C.I.A. kept saying there was no reliable intelligence aboutan Iraq-Qaeda link. So Mr. Feith was sent to review the reports andcome back with the answers Mr. Cheney wanted. The inspector general’sreport said Mr. Feith’ s team gave a September 2002 briefing at theWhite House on the alleged Iraq-Qaeda connection that had not beenvetted by the intelligence community (the director of centralintelligence was pointedly not told it was happening) and “was notfully supported by the available intelligence.”
The false information included a meeting in Prague in April 2001between an Iraqi official and Mohamed Atta, one of the 9/11 pilots. Itnever happened. But Mr. Feith’s report said it did, and Mr. Cheney willstill not admit that the story is false.
In a statement released yesterday, Senator Carl Levin, the newchairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, who has been dogged inpursuit of the truth about the Iraqi intelligence, noted that thecooked-up Feith briefing had been leaked to the conservative WeeklyStandard magazine so Mr. Cheney could quote it as the “best source” ofinformation about the supposed Iraq-Qaeda link.
The Pentagon report is one step in a long-delayed effort to figureout how the intelligence on Iraq was so badly twisted — and by whom.That work should have been finished before the 2004 elections, and itwould have been if Pat Roberts, the obedient Republican who ran theSenate Intelligence Committee, had not helped the White House drag itout and load it in ways that would obscure the truth.
It is now up to Mr. Levin and Senator Jay Rockefeller, the currenthead of the intelligence panel, to give Americans the answers. Mr.Levin’s desire to have the entire inspector general’s report on theFeith scheme declassified is a good place to start. But it will be upto Mr. Rockefeller to finally determine how old, inconclusive,unsubstantiated and false intelligence was transformed into fresh,reliable and definitive reports — and then used by Mr. Bush and othertop officials to drag the country into a disastrous and unnecessary war.