The 9/11 Commission had some excellent suggestions on revamping Congressional oversight of intelligence. They suggested a joint subcommittee whose members would be responsible for oversight of the actual intelligence product and operations, rather than focusing on the budget--which is what Congress does almost exclusively.
Ed, unless I'm mistaken, Cheney was not SecDef under GHW Bush. Indeed, both the military and the intelligence community took severe cuts as a result of the end of the Cold War. In the mid-90's, the CIA was running its smallest training classes ever. (That's the program from which I graduated in the late 60's, and if the numbers I've seen are correct, they would have fallen far short of just normal attrition within the Clandestine Service.)
Will, my recollection is that Ritter was one of the people who signed off on Iraq still having tons of chem weapons when the inspectors pulled out in 97. He changed his stance prior to the invasion, although I'm not sure why. The Downing St memo is evidence, I think, of discussions within the Blair govt in London. However, to my knowledge, British intelligence never produced any official assessment that said Iraq did not have WMD's.
Based on my own experience as an analyst and supervisor of analysts, here's the way I look at it: I'm always ready to challenge the conventional wisdom, and I'm looking for people who "think outside the box" and do the same thing. But the "outside the box" thinking has to be supported by intelligence. If one of my analysts had come to me and said "Sir, I don't believe Iraq has WMD's any more," my response would have been: "OK, so make your case to me. Show me the reporting that indicates Saddam had a program to destroy, export, or otherwise get rid of those weapons."
I can give a clear example of how challenging conventional wisdom works in the intel business. At the end of his administration, President Carter had announced fairly large scale troop withdrawals from South Korea. This was based on the assessment of the threat posed by North Korea. An imagery analyst at ITAC--the Army's Intel and Threat Analysis Center--put together a presentation showing that, in his view, the threat was far more serious than the rest of the intel community believed it to be. In order to make his case, he had to convince his branch chief that his theory held water, then his division chief, then the commander of ITAC, and then the brass at the Pentagon--and ultimately, the president. His case was compelling enough that Carter cancelled the troop withdrawal. But that's because the individual in question backed up his theory with hard intelligence.
In the case of Iraq's WMD's, I've never seen anyone make a case, based on hard intelligence, that we should have known they were no longer there. That's why Tenet pointed out that his analysts reached the only conclusion they could have reached, based on the information available. You can certainly fault the lack of good intelligence to support their conclusion--I do; our collection was very weak--but I can't fault their conclusion based on what they had to work with.
Last edited by L. Brown; 05/23/07 07:32 AM.
