Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

Cheney and Rumsfeld wanted to avoid the extensive filtering and vetting that the Intelligence Community (IC) applies to each piece of raw data.  They preferred to use their own staff to conduct the analysis.  Presumably,  they were aware that raw data in inexperienced hands could produce an intelligence product  equivalent to this...

No responsible person, for example, would decide an important issue based on third-hand information from an uncorroborated source of unknown reliability. Imagine your doctor saying, Well, I haven't exactly looked at your charts or X-rays, but my friend Martin over at General Hospital told me a new guy named Radar thinks you need triple bypass surgery. So - when are you available?

In October of 2002, the New York Times reported on the existence of new Pentagon offices...

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his senior advisers have assigned a small intelligence unit to search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists that the nation's spy agencies may have overlooked...

...many in the intelligence agencies disagree that Mr. Hussein can be directly linked to Osama bin Laden and his network, Al Qaeda, or that the two are likely to make common cause against the United States.

The four- to five-person intelligence team was established by Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and another strong advocate for military action against Mr. Hussein.

Seymour Hersh interviewed Kenneth Pollack, a former National Security Council expert on Iraq, whose book The Threatening Storm generally supported the use of force to remove Saddam Hussein...

They always had information to back up their public claims, but it was often very bad information, Pollack continued. They were forcing the intelligence community to defend its good information and good analysis so aggressively that the intelligence analysts didn't have the time or the energy to go after the bad information.

The Administration eventually got its way, a former C.I.A. official said. The analysts at the C.I.A. were beaten down defending their assessments. And they blame George Tenet--the C.I.A. director--for not protecting them. I've never seen a government like this.

For an administration that is known to classify toilet paper before allowing it off the shelf, there is some evidence that such paranoid tendencies did not extend to their own intelligence.

For instance, when John Bolton was Under-Secretary of State for Arms Control, he shunned the intelligence officer (Greg Thielmann) assigned to him by Colin Powell....

...because INR was not telling him what he wanted to hear. [Instead,] Bolton demanded that he and his staff have direct electronic access to sensitive intelligence, such as foreign-agent reports and electronic intercepts. In previous Administrations, such data had been made available to under-secretaries only after it was analyzed, usually in the specially secured offices of INR. The whole point of the intelligence system in place, according to Thielmann, was to prevent raw intelligence' from getting to people who would be misled.

Eventually, stovepiped information, like the buck, has to stop somewhere. Yet another former NSC staffer, Daniel Benjamin, weighs in on that final destination...

It has become a cliché to say that Dick Cheney is the most powerful vice president in American history. Nonetheless, here is a prediction: When the historians really get digging into the paper entrails of the Bush administration--or possibly when Scooter Libby goes on trial--those who have intoned that phrase will still be astonished at the extent to which the Office of Vice President (OVP) Dick Cheney was the center of power inside the White House--and at the grip it had on foreign and defense policy.

Cheney's connection with intelligence and, particularly, Pentagon intelligence is not exactly new. The transmission lines for many of the bogus claims in 2002 and 2003 about the purported ties between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida ran from the civilian Office of the Secretary of Defense through Cheney's office. Although the Libby indictment might lead some to believe that OVP was running an apolitical enforcement operation, it was doing much more than that. Cheney's team was producing the basic justification for going to war.

Some of CTEG's (Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group-the name of Feith's operation) material was leaked to the Weekly Standard, where it was published.

Dick Cheney was CTEG's patron. He had the group present its material at OVP and the National Security Council. He made frequent public remarks, drawing on CTEG conclusions, alleging an al-Qaida/Saddam connection. (Even after the 9/11 commission delivered its verdict that there was no collaborative relationship between the two sides, Cheney announced that the evidence of the Bin Laden-Baghdad ties was overwhelming.)

Benjamin has already done a superb job of unwrapping the facts and intelligence from the policy. The bonus is when his next paragraph unwittingly explains Mr. Cheney's lack of participation in the Republican quest to restore honesty and trustworthiness to the White House, as revealed in the CNN report...

The wide airing of CTEG material clearly irked George Tenet, who declared at one point when pressed by congressmen in 2003 that he would talk to Cheney about some of the claims he was making. Whatever passed between them, Cheney was not deterred. In January 2004, he told a reporter for the Rocky Mountain News that the Standard article was the best source of information on Saddam's ties to al-Qaida. In June 2004, Cheney was still claiming that 9/11 conspirator Mohammed Atta met an Iraqi agent in Prague.

Because the Republicans should never be underestimated when they are on a campaign that ignores truth, and at the same time hypes it, the following reports from Senator Carl Levin are offered cautiously.  On July 8, 2004...

Where Does Vice President Cheney Get His Information?

I am releasing this response today, because it is further evidence that Vice President Cheney has and continues to misstate and exaggerate intelligence information to the American public. This pattern, the record of which has continued to grow over time, suggests that Vice President Cheney is getting his intelligence from outside of the U.S. Intelligence Community. In February, I asked him to clarify the basis for some of his statements, but he has not yet responded to my request (letter attached). I am therefore left to continue wondering what his sources are.

By October 21, 2004, Senator Levin  laid out his whole case, point by point...(this is a very small portion)

 Although Administration officials cited classified intelligence in support of their statements about the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship, their statements did not accurately reflect the intelligence assessment provided in classified reports to the Executive Branch and Congress by the IC.

Administration officials were apparently using intelligence analyses that originated outside of the IC. Those intelligence analyses claiming a close relationship were produced by the office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith, and presented to high- level Administration officials. Vice President Cheney specifically stated that the Feith analysis was the best source of information.

For now the most powerful man in the White House seems to be scoring points for the Democrats side.

(All emphasis are mine in the quote boxes).