by Gareth Porter / September 9th, 2013
IPS – Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news
media, the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the
Barack Obama administration August 30 did not represent an intelligence
community assessment, an IPS analysis and interviews with former
intelligence officials reveals.
Contrary to the general impression in Congress and the news media,
the Syria chemical warfare intelligence summary released by the Barack
Obama administration August 30 did not represent an intelligence
community assessment, an IPS analysis and interviews with former
intelligence officials reveals.
The evidence indicates that Director of National Intelligence James
Clapper culled intelligence analyses from various agencies and by the
White House itself, but that the White House itself had the final say in
the contents of the document.
Leading members of Congress to believe that the document was an
intelligence community assessment and thus represents a credible picture
of the intelligence on the alleged chemical attack of August 21 has
been a central element in the Obama administration’s case for war in
Syria.
That part of the strategy, at least, has been successful. Despite
strong opposition in Congress to the proposed military strike in Syria,
no one in either chamber has yet challenged the administration’s
characterisation of the intelligence. But the administration is
vulnerable to the charge that it has put out an intelligence document
that does not fully and accurately reflect the views of intelligence
analysts.
Former intelligence officials told IPS that that the paper does not
represent a genuine intelligence community assessment but rather one
reflecting a predominantly Obama administration influence.
In essence, the White House selected those elements of the
intelligence community assessments that supported the administration’s
policy of planning a strike against the Syrian government force and
omitted those that didn’t.
In a radical departure from normal practice involving summaries or
excerpts of intelligence documents that are made public, the Syria
chemical weapons intelligence summary document was not released by the
Office of the Director of National Intelligence but by the White House
Office of the Press Secretary.
It was titled “Government Assessment of the Syrian Government’s Use
of Chemical Weapons on August 21, 2013.” The first sentence begins, “The
United States government assesses,” and the second sentence begins, “We
assess”.
The introductory paragraph refers to the main body of the text as a
summary of “the intelligence community’s analysis” of the issue, rather
than as an “intelligence community assessment”, which would have been
used had the entire intelligence community endorsed the document.
A former senior intelligence official who asked not to be identified
told IPS in an e-mail Friday that the language used by the White House
“means that this is not an intelligence community document”.
The former senior official, who held dozens of security
classifications over a decades-long intelligence career, said he had
“never seen a document about an international crisis at any
classification described/slugged as a U.S. government assessment.”
The document further indicates that the administration “decided on a
position and cherry-picked the intelligence to fit it,” he said. “The
result is not a balanced assessment of the intelligence.”
Greg Thielmann, whose last position before retiring from the State
Department was director of the Strategic, Proliferation and Military
Affairs Office in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, told IPS he
has never seen a government document labeled “Government Assessment”
either.
“If it’s an intelligence assessment,” Thielmann said, “why didn’t they label it as such?”
Former National Intelligence Officer Paul Pillar, who has
participated in drafting national intelligence estimates, said the
intelligence assessment summary released by the White House “is
evidently an administration document, and the working master copy may
have been in someone’s computer at the White House or National Security
Council.”
Pillar suggested that senior intelligence officials might have signed
off on the administration paper, but that the White House may have
drafted its own paper to “avoid attention to analytic differences within
the intelligence community.”
Comparable intelligence community assessments in the past, he
observed – including the 2002 Iraq WMD estimate – include indications of
differences in assessment among elements of the community.
An unnamed “senior administration official” briefing the news media
on the intelligence paper on August 30 said that the paper was “fully
vetted within the intelligence community,” and that, ”All members of the
intelligence community participated in its development.”
But that statement fell far short of asserting that all the elements
of the intelligence community had approved the paper in question, or
even that it had gone through anything resembling consultations between
the primary drafters and other analysts, and opportunities for agencies
to register dissent that typically accompany intelligence community
assessments.
The same “senior administration official” indicated that DNI Clapper
had “approved” submissions from various agencies for what the official
called “the process”. The anonymous speaker did not explain further to
journalists what that process preceding the issuance of the White House
paper had involved.
However, an Associated Press story on August 29 referred to “a report
by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence outlining the
evidence against Syria”, citing two intelligence officials and two other
administration officials as sources.
That article suggests that the administration had originally planned
for the report on intelligence to be issued by Clapper rather than the
White House, apparently after reaching agreement with the White House on
the contents of the paper.
But Clapper’s name was not on the final document issued by the White
House, and the document is nowhere to be found on the ODNI website. All
previous intelligence community assessments were posted on that site.
The issuance of the document by the White House rather than by
Clapper, as had been apparently planned, points to a refusal by Clapper
to put his name on the document as revised by the White House.
Clapper’s refusal to endorse it – presumably because it was too
obviously an exercise in “cherry picking” intelligence to support a
decision for war – would explain why the document had to be issued by
the White House.
Efforts by IPS to get a comment from the Office of the Director of
National Intelligence suggest strongly that Clapper is embarrassed by
the way the Obama White House misrepresented the August 30 document.
An e-mail query by IPS to the media relations staff of ODNI
requesting clarification of the status of the August 30 document in
relation to the intelligence community was never answered.
In follow-up phone calls, ODNI personnel said someone would respond
to the query. After failing to respond for two days, despite promising
that someone would call back, however, ODNI’s media relations office
apparently decided to refuse any further contact with IPS on the
subject.
A clear indication that the White House, rather than Clapper, had the
final say on the content of the document is that it includes a
statement that a “preliminary U.S. government assessment determined that
1,429 people were killed in the chemical weapons attack, including at
least 426 children.”
That figure, for which no source was indicated, was several times
larger than the estimates given by British and French intelligence.
The document issued by the White House cites intelligence that is
either obviously ambiguous at best or is of doubtful authenticity, or
both, as firm evidence that the Syrian government carried out a chemical
weapons attack.
It claims that Syrian chemical weapons specialists were preparing for
such an attack merely on the basis of signals intelligence indicating
the presence of one or more individuals in a particular location. The
same intelligence had been regarded prior to August 21 as indicating
nothing out of the ordinary, as was reported by CBS news August 23.
The paper also cites a purported intercept by U.S intelligence of
conversations between Syrian officials in which a “senior official”
supposedly “confirmed” that the government had carried out the chemical
weapons attack.
But the evidence appears to indicate that the alleged intercept was
actually passed on to the United States by Israeli intelligence. U.S.
intelligence officials have long been doubtful about intelligence from
Israeli sources that is clearly in line with Israeli interests.
Opponents of the proposed U.S. strike against Syria could argue that
the Obama administration’s presentation of the intelligence supporting
war is far more politicised than the flawed 2002 Iraq WMD estimate that
the George W. Bush administration cited as part of the justification for
the invasion of Iraq.
Gareth Porter is an investigative historian and
journalist specialising in U.S. national security policy. The paperback
edition of his latest book,
Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam, was published in 2006.
Read other articles by Gareth.
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