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Trading On Fear |
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by The Guardian
(No verified email address) |
13 Jul 2003
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From the start, the invasion of Iraq was seen in the US as a marketing project. Selling 'Brand America' abroad was an abject failure; but at home, it worked. Manufacturers of 4x4s, oil prospectors, the nuclear power industry, politicians keen to roll back civil liberties - all seized the moment to capitalise on the war. PR analysts Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber explain how it worked. |
"The United States lost the public relations war in the Muslim world a long time ago," Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News, said in October 2001. "They could have the prophet Mohammed doing public relations and it wouldn't help."
At home in the US, the propaganda war has been more effective. And a key component has been fear: fear of terrorism and fear of attack.
Early scholars who studied propaganda called it a "hypodermic needle approach" to communication, in which the communicator's objective was to "inject" his ideas into the minds of the target population. Since propaganda is often aimed at persuading people to do things that are not in their own best interests, it frequently seeks to bypass the rational brain altogether and manipulate us on a more primitive level, appealing to emotional symbolism.
Television uses sudden, loud noises to provoke a startled response, bright colours, violence - not because these things are inherently appealing, but because they catch our attention and keep us watching. When these practices are criticised, advertisers and TV executives respond that they do this because this is what their "audience wants". In fact, however, they are appealing selectively to certain aspects of human nature - the most primitive aspects, because those are the most predictable. Fear is one of the most primitive emotions in the human psyche, and it definitely keeps us watching. If the mere ability to keep people watching were really synonymous with "giving audiences what they want", we would have to conclude that people "want" terrorism. On September 11, Osama bin Laden kept the entire world watching. As much as people hated what they were seeing, the power of their emotions kept them from turning away.
And fear can make people do other things they would not do if they were thinking rationally. During the war crimes trials at Nuremberg, psychologist Gustave Gilbert visited Nazi Reichsmarshall Hermann Goering in his prison cell. "We got around to the subject of war again and I said that, contrary to his attitude, I did not think that the common people are very thankful for leaders who bring them war and destruction," Gilbert wrote in his journal, Nuremberg Diary.
"Why, of course, the people don't want war," Goering shrugged. "Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? ... That is understood. But, after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship ... That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
Politicians and terrorists are not the only propagandists who use fear to drive human behaviour in irrational directions. A striking recent use of fear psychology in marketing occurred following Operation Desert Storm in 1991. During the war, television coverage of armoured Humvees sweeping across the desert helped to launch the Hummer, a consumer version of a vehicle originally designed exclusively for military use. The initial idea to make a consumer version came from the actor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who wanted a tough-looking, road-warrior vehicle for himself. At his prodding, AM General (what was left of the old American Motors) began making civilian Hummers in 1992, with the first vehicle off the assembly line going to Schwarzenegger himself.
In addition to the Hummer, the war helped to launch a broader sports utility vehicle (SUV) craze. Psychiatrist Clotaire Rapaille, a consultant to the automobile industry, conducted studies of postwar consumer psyches for Chrysler and reported that Americans wanted "aggressive" cars. In interviews with Keith Bradsher, the former Detroit bureau chief for the New York Times, Rapaille discussed the results of his research. SUVs, he said, were "weapons" - "armoured cars for the battlefield" - that appealed to Americans' deepest fears of violence and crime.
Another hostility-intensification feature is the "grill guard" promoted by SUV manufacturers. "Grill guards, useful mainly for pushing oryx out of the road in Namibia, have no application under normal driving conditions," says writer Gregg Easterbrook. "But they make SUVs look angrier, especially when viewed through a rearview mirror ... [They] also increase the chance that an SUV will kill someone in an accident."
Deliberately marketed as "urban assault luxury vehicles", SUVs exploit fear while doing nothing to make people safer. They make their owners feel safe, not by protecting them, but by feeding their aggressive impulses. Due to SUVs' propensity for rollovers, notes Bradsher, the occupant death rate in SUVs is actually 6% higher than for cars, 8% in the largest SUVs. Of course, they also get worse mileage. According to dealers, Hummers average a mere eight to 10 miles a gallon - a figure that takes on additional significance in light of the role that dependency on foreign oil has played in shaping US relations with countries in the Middle East. With this combination of features, selling SUVs on their merits would be a challenge, which is why Rapaille consistently advises Detroit to rely instead on irrational fear appeals.
Other products and causes have also exploited fear-based marketing following September 11. "The trick in 2002, say public affairs and budget experts, will be to redefine your pet issue or product as a matter of homeland security," wrote PR Week. "If you can convince Congress that your company's widget will strengthen America's borders, or that funding your client's pet project will make America less dependent on foreign resources, you just might be able to get what you're looking for."
Alaska senator Frank Murkowski used fear of terrorism to press for federal approval of oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, telling his colleagues that US purchases of foreign oil helped to subsidise Saddam Hussein and Palestinian suicide bombers. The nuclear power industry lobbied for approval of Yucca Mountain, Nevada, as a repository for high-level radioactive waste by claiming that shipping the waste there would keep nuclear weapons material from falling into the hands of terrorists. Of course, they didn't propose shutting down nuclear power plants, which themselves are prime targets for terrorists.
The National Drug Council retooled the war on drugs with TV ads telling people that smoking marijuana helped to fund terrorism. Environmentalists attempted to take the fund-a-terrorist trope in a different direction, teaming up with columnist Arianna Huffington to launch the "Detroit Project", which produced TV ads modelled after the National Drug Council ads. "This is George," a voiceover said. "This is the gas that George bought for his SUV." The screen then showed a map of the Middle East. "These are the countries where the executives bought the oil that made the gas that George bought for his SUV." The picture switched to a scene of armed terrorists in a desert. "And these are the terrorists who get money from those countries every time George fills up his SUV." In Detroit and elsewhere, however, TV stations that had been only too happy to run the White House anti-drugs ads refused to accept the Detroit Project commercials, calling them "totally inappropriate".
September 11 was frequently compared to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, with White House officials warning that the war on terror would be prolonged and difficult like the second world war, and would require similar sacrifices. But whatever those sacrifices may entail, almost from the start it was clear that they would not include frugality. During the second world war, Americans conserved resources as never before. Rationing was imposed on petrol, tyres and even food. People collected waste such as paper and household cooking scraps so that it could be recycled and used for the war effort. Compare that with the headline that ran in O'Dwyer's PR Daily on September 24, less than two weeks after the terrorist attack: "PR Needed To Keep Consumers Spending."
President Bush himself appeared in TV commercials, urging Americans to "live their lives" by going ahead with plans for vacations and other consumer purchases. "The president of the US is encouraging us to buy," wrote marketer Chuck Kelly in an editorial for the Minneapolis-St Paul Star Tribune, which argued that America was "embarking on a journey of spiritual patriotism" that "is about pride, loyalty, caring and believing" - and, of course, selling. "As marketers, we have the responsibility to keep the economy rolling," wrote Kelly. "Our job is to create customers during one of the more difficult times in our history."
Fear also provided the basis for much of the Bush administration's surging popularity following September 11. In the week immediately prior to the terrorist attacks, Bush's standing in opinion polls was at its lowest point ever, with only 50% of respondents giving him a positive rating. Within two days of the attack, that number shot up to 82%. Since then, whenever the public's attention has begun to shift away from topics such as war and terrorism, Bush has seen his domestic popularity ratings slip downward, spiking up again when war talk fills the airwaves. By March 13-14 2003, his popularity had fallen to 53% - essentially where he stood with the public prior to 9/11. On March 18, Bush declared war with Iraq, and the ratings shot up again to 68% - even when, briefly, it appeared that the war might be going badly.
Only four presidents other than Bush have seen their job rating meet or surpass the 80% mark:
· Franklin Delano Roosevelt reached his highest rating ever - 84% - immediately after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
· Harry Truman hit 87% right after FDR died during the final, crucial phase of the second world war.
· John F Kennedy hit 83% right after the colossal failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba.
· Dubya's dad, President George HW Bush, hit 89% during Operation Desert Storm.
It seems to be a law of history that times of war and national fear are accompanied by rollbacks of civil liberties and attacks on dissent. During the civil war, Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of habeas corpus. The second world war brought the internment of Japanese-Americans and the cold war McCarthyism. These examples pale compared with the uses of fear to justify mass killings, torture and political arrests in countries such as Mao's China, Stalin's Russia or Saddam's Iraq. Yet these episodes have been dark moments in America's history.
Although the Bush administration took pains to insist that "Muslims are not the enemy" and that it viewed Islam as a "religion of peace", it was unable to prevent a series of verbal attacks against Muslims that have occurred in the US following 9/11 - with some of the attacks coming from Bush's strongest supporters in the conservative movement. "This is no time to be precious about locating the exact individuals directly involved in this particular terrorist attack," wrote columnist Ann Coulter - now famously - two days after the attacks. "We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."
Of course, Coulter's column does not reflect the mainstream of US opinion. But it offers a telling illustration of the way that fear can drive people to say and do things that make them feel brave and powerful while actually making them less safe by fanning the flames of intolerance and violence.
Shortly after Coulter's column appeared, it resurfaced on the website of the Mujahideen Lashkar-e-Taiba - one of the largest militant Islamist groups in Pakistan - which works closely with al-Qaida. At the time, the Lashkar-e-Taiba site was decorated with an image that depicted a hairy, monstrous hand with claws in place of fingernails, from which blood dripped on to a burning globe of planet earth. A star of David decorated the wrist of the hairy hand, and behind it stood an American flag. The reproduction of Coulter's column used bold, red letters to highlight the sentence that said to "invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity". To make the point even stronger, the webmaster added a comment: "We told you so. Is anyone listening out there? The noose is already around our necks. The preparation for genocide of ALL Muslims has begun ... The media is now doing its groundwork to create more hostility towards Islam and Muslims to the point that no one will oppose this mass murder which is about to take place. Mosques will be shut down, schools will be closed, Muslims will be arrested, and executed. There may even be special awards set up to kill Muslims. Millions and millions will be slaughtered like sheep. Remember these words because it is coming. The only safe refuge you have is Allah."
Corporate spin doctors, thinktanks and conservative politicians have taken up the rhetoric of fear for their own purposes. Even before 9/11, many of them were engaged in an ongoing effort to demonise environmentalists and other activist groups by associating them with terrorism. One striking indicator of this preoccupation is the fact that Congressman Scott McInnis (Republican, Colorado) had scheduled congressional hearings on "eco-terrorism" to be held on September 12 2001, one day after Congress itself was nearly destroyed in an attack by real terrorists. (The September 11 attacks forced McInnis temporarily to postpone his plans, rescheduling his hearings to February 2002.)
On October 7 2001, the Washington Times printed an editorial calling for "war against eco-terrorists," calling them "an eco-al-Qaida" with "a fanatical ideology and a twisted morality". Conservatives sometimes used the war on terrorism to demonise Democrats. The then Democratic Senate majority leader Tom Daschle was targeted by American Renewal, the lobbying wing of the Family Research Council, a conservative thinktank that spends most of its time promoting prayer in public schools and opposing gay rights. In newspaper ads, American Renewal attempted to paint Daschle and Saddam Hussein as "strange bedfellows". "What do Saddam Hussein and Senate majority leader Tom Daschle have in common?" stated a news release announcing the ad campaign. "Neither man wants America to drill for oil in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge."
William J Bennett, Reagan's former education secretary, authored a book titled Why We Fight: Moral Clarity And The War On Terrorism. Through his organisation, Empower America, he launched Americans For Victory Over Terrorism, a group of well-connected Republicans including Jack Kemp, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Trent Lott. "The threats we face today are both external and internal: external in that there are groups and states that want to attack the United States; internal in that there are those who are attempting to use this opportunity to promulgate their agenda of 'blame America first'. Both threats stem from either a hatred for the American ideals of freedom and equality or a misunderstanding of those ideals and their practice," he stated.
Washington Times reporter Ellen Sorokin used terrorist-baiting to attack the National Education Association, America's largest teachers' union and a frequent opponent of Republican educational policies. The NEA's crime was to create a "Remember September 11" website for use as a teaching aid on the first anniversary of the attack. The NEA site had a red, white and blue motif, with links to the CIA and to Homeland Security websites, and it featured three speeches by Bush, whom it described as a "great American". In order to make the case that the NEA was somehow anti-American, Sorokin hunted about on the site and found a link to an essay preaching tolerance towards Arab- and Muslim-Americans. "Everyone wants the terrorists punished," the essay said, but "we must not act like [the terrorists] by lashing out at innocent people around us, or 'hating' them because of their origins ... Groups of people should not be judged by the actions of a few. It is wrong to condemn an entire group of people by association with religion, race, homeland, or even proximity."
In a stunning display of intellectual dishonesty, Sorokin took a single phrase - "Do not suggest any group is responsible" (referring to Arab-Americans in general) - and quoted it out of context to suggest that the NEA opposed holding the terrorists responsible for their deeds. Headlined "NEA delivers history lesson: Tells teachers not to cast 9/11 blame", her story went on to claim that the NEA simultaneously "takes a decidedly blame-America approach".
This, in turn, became the basis for a withering barrage of attacks as the rightwing media echo chamber, including TV, newspapers, talk radio and websites, amplified the accusation, complaining of "terrorism in the classroom" as "educators blame America and embrace Islam". In the Washington Post, George Will wrote that the NEA website "is as frightening, in its way, as any foreign threat". If, as Will insinuated, even schoolteachers are as scary as Saddam or Osama, no wonder the government needs to step in and crack the whip.
Since 9/11, laws have been passed that place new limits on citizen rights, while expanding the government's authority to spy on citizens. In October 2001, Congress passed the ambitiously named USA Patriot Act, which stands for "Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism". In addition to authorising unprecedented levels of surveillance and incarceration of both citizens and non-citizens, the Act included provisions that explicitly target people simply for engaging in classes of political speech that are expressly protected by the US constitution. It expanded the ability of police to spy on telephone and internet correspondence in anti-terrorism investigations and in routine criminal investigations. It authorised secret government searches, enabling the FBI and other government agencies to conduct searches without warrants and without notifying individuals that their property has been searched. It created a broad new definition of "domestic terrorism" under which political protesters can be charged as terrorists if they engage in conduct that "involves acts dangerous to human life". It also put the CIA back in the business of spying on US citizens and allowed the government to detain non-citizens for indefinite periods of time without trial. The Patriot Act was followed in November 2001 by a new executive order from Bush, authorising himself to order a trial in a military court for any non-citizen he designates, without a right of appeal or the protection of the Bill of Rights.
As if determined to prove that irony is not dead, the Ad Council launched a new series of public service advertisements, calling them a "Freedom Campaign", in July 2002. "What if America wasn't America? Freedom. Appreciate it. Cherish it. Protect it," read the tag line at the end of each TV ad, which attempted to celebrate freedom by depicting what America would look like without it. In one ad, a young man approaches a librarian with a question about a book he can't find. She tells him ominously that the book is no longer available, and the young man is taken away for questioning by a couple of government goons. The irony is that the Patriot Act had already empowered the FBI to seize book sales and library checkout records, while barring booksellers and librarians from saying anything about it to their patrons. It would be nice to imagine that someone at the Ad Council was trying to make a point in opposition to these encroachments on our freedoms. No such point was intended, according to Phil Dusenberry, who directed the ads.
In response to complaints about restrictions on civil liberties, the attorney general, John Ashcroft, testified before Congress, characterising "our critics" as "those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty; my message is this: Your tactics only aid terrorists - for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition to America's enemies, and pause to America's friends. They encourage people of good will to remain silent in the face of evil." Dennis Pluchinsky, a senior intelligence analyst with the US state department, went further still in his critique of the media. "I accuse the media in the United States of treason," he stated in an opinion article in the Washington Post that suggested giving the media "an Osama bin Laden award" and advised, "the president and Congress should pass laws temporarily restricting the media from publishing any security information that can be used by our enemies".
At MSNBC, a cable TV news network, meanwhile, a six-month experiment to develop a liberal programme featuring Phil Donahue ended just before the war began, when Donahue's show was cancelled and replaced with a programme titled Countdown: Iraq. Although the network cited poor ratings as the reason for dumping Donahue, the New York Times reported that Donahue "was actually attracting more viewers than any other programme on MSNBC, even the channel's signature prime-time programme, Hardball with Chris Matthews". Further insight into the network's thinking appears in an internal NBC report leaked to AllYourTV.com, a website that covers the television industry. The NBC report recommended axing Donahue because he presented a "difficult public face for NBC in a time of war ... He seems to delight in presenting guests who are antiwar, anti-Bush and sceptical of the administration's motives." It went on to outline a possible nightmare scenario where the show becomes "a home for the liberal anti-war agenda at the same time that our competitors are waving the flag at every opportunity".
At the same time that Donahue was cancelled, MSNBC added to its line-up Michael Savage, who routinely refers to non-white countries as "turd world nations" and who charges that the US "is being taken over by the freaks, the cripples, the perverts and the mental defectives". In one broadcast, Savage justified ethnic slurs as a national security tool: "We need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy."
In addition to restricting the number of anti-war voices on television and radio, media outlets often engaged in selective presentation. The main voices that television viewers saw opposing the war came from a handful of celebrities such as Sean Penn, Martin Sheen, Janeane Garofalo and Susan Sarandon - actors who could be dismissed as brie-eating Hollywood elitists. The newspapers and TV networks could have easily interviewed academics and other more traditional anti-war sources, but they rarely did. In a speech in the autumn of 2002, Senator Edward Kennedy "laid out what was arguably the most comprehensive case yet offered to the public questioning the Bush administration's policy and timing on Iraq", according to Michael Getler, the Washington Post's ombudsman. The next day, the Post devoted one sentence to the speech. Ironically, Kennedy made ample use in his remarks of the public testimony in Senate armed services committee hearings a week earlier by retired four-star army and marine corps generals who cautioned about attacking Iraq at this time - hearings that the Post also did not cover.
Peace groups attempted to purchase commercial time to broadcast ads for peace, but were refused air time by all the major networks and even MTV. CBS network president Martin Franks explained the refusal by saying, "We think that informed discussion comes from our news programming."
Like all good TV, the war in Iraq had a dramatic final act, broadcast during prime time - the sunlight gleaming over the waves as the president's fighter jet descended from the sky on to the USS Abraham Lincoln. The plane zoomed in, snagged a cable stretched across the flight deck and screeched to a stop, and Bush bounded out, dressed in a snug-fitting olive-green flight suit with his helmet tucked under his arm. He strode across the flight deck, posing for pictures and shaking hands with the crew of the carrier. He had even helped fly the jet, he told reporters. "Yes, I flew it," he said. "Yeah, of course, I liked it." Surrounded by gleaming military hardware and hundreds of cheering sailors in uniform, and with the words "Mission Accomplished" emblazoned on a huge banner at his back, he delivered a stirring speech in the glow of sunset that declared a "turning of the tide" in the war against terrorism. "We have fought for the cause of liberty, and for the peace of the world," Bush said. "Because of you, the tyrant has fallen, and Iraq is free." After the day's festivities, the Democrats got their chance to complain, calling Bush's Top Gun act a "tax-subsidised commercial" for his re-election campaign. They estimated it had cost $1m to orchestrate all of the details that made the picture look so perfect.
In the end, though, the spin doctors agreed that these were images that would stay in the minds of the American people. It is impossible, of course, for anyone to predict whether the Bush administration's bold gamble in Iraq has succeeded or whether, as Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak warned at the peak of the war, "there will be 100 Bin Ladens afterward". But in the wake of this conflict, we should ask ourselves whether we have made the mistake of believing our own propaganda, and whether we have been fighting the war on terror against the wrong enemies, in the wrong places, with the wrong weapons.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited 2003
http://www.guardian.co.uk |
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Analysis: Anatomy Of A Quack-Mire
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20 Lies About The War |
by Glen Rangwala and Raymond Whitaker
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
13 Jul 2003
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1. Iraq was responsible for the 11 September attacks
A supposed meeting in Prague between Mohammed Atta, leader of the 11 September hijackers, and an Iraqi intelligence official was the main basis for this claim, but Czech intelligence later conceded that the Iraqi's contact could not have been Atta. This did not stop the constant stream of assertions that Iraq was involved in 9/11, which was so successful that at one stage opinion polls showed that two-thirds of Americans believed the hand of Saddam Hussein was behind the attacks. Almost as many believed Iraqi hijackers were aboard the crashed airliners; in fact there were none.
2. Iraq and al-Qa'ida were working together
Persistent claims by US and British leaders that Saddam and Osama bin Laden were in league with each other were contradicted by a leaked British Defense Intelligence Staff report, which said there were no current links between them. Mr Bin Laden's "aims are in ideological conflict with present-day Iraq", it added.
Another strand to the claims was that al-Qa'ida members were being sheltered in Iraq, and had set up a poisons training camp. When US troops reached the camp, they found no chemical or biological traces.
3. Iraq was seeking uranium from Africa for a "reconstituted" nuclear weapons program
The head of the CIA has now admitted that documents purporting to show that Iraq tried to import uranium from Niger in west Africa were forged, and that the claim should never have been in President Bush's State of the Union address. Britain sticks by the claim, insisting it has "separate intelligence". The Foreign Office conceded last week that this information is now "under review".
4. Iraq was trying to import aluminum tubes to develop nuclear weapons
The US persistently alleged that Baghdad tried to buy high-strength aluminum tubes whose only use could be in gas centrifuges, needed to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. Equally persistently, the International Atomic Energy Agency said the tubes were being used for artillery rockets. The head of the IAEA, Mohamed El Baradei, told the UN Security Council in January that the tubes were not even suitable for centrifuges.
5. Iraq still had vast stocks of chemical and biological weapons from the first Gulf War
Iraq possessed enough dangerous substances to kill the whole world, it was alleged more than once. It had pilotless aircraft which could be smuggled into the US and used to spray chemical and biological toxins. Experts pointed out that apart from mustard gas, Iraq never had the technology to produce materials with a shelf-life of 12 years, the time between the two wars. All such agents would have deteriorated to the point of uselessness years ago.
6. Iraq retained up to 20 missiles which could carry chemical or biological warheads, with a range which would threaten British forces in Cyprus
Apart from the fact that there has been no sign of these missiles since the invasion, Britain downplayed the risk of there being any such weapons in Iraq once the fighting began. It was also revealed that chemical protection equipment was removed from British bases in Cyprus last year, indicating that the Government did not take its own claims seriously.
7. Saddam Hussein had the wherewithal to develop smallpox
This allegation was made by the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, in his address to the UN Security Council in February. The following month the UN said there was nothing to support it.
8. US and British claims were supported by the inspectors
According to Jack Straw, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix "pointed out" that Iraq had 10,000 liters of anthrax. Tony Blair said Iraq's chemical, biological and "indeed the nuclear weapons program" had been well documented by the UN. Mr Blix's reply? "This is not the same as saying there are weapons of mass destruction," he said last September. "If I had solid evidence that Iraq retained weapons of mass destruction or were constructing such weapons, I would take it to the Security Council." In May this year he added: "I am obviously very interested in the question of whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction, and I am beginning to suspect there possibly were not."
9. Previous weapons inspections had failed
Tony Blair told this newspaper in March that the UN had "tried unsuccessfully for 12 years to get Saddam to disarm peacefully". But in 1999 a Security Council panel concluded: "Although important elements still have to be resolved, the bulk of Iraq's proscribed weapons programs has been eliminated." Mr Blair also claimed UN inspectors "found no trace at all of Saddam's offensive biological weapons program" until his son-in-law defected. In fact the UN got the regime to admit to its biological weapons program more than a month before the defection.
10. Iraq was obstructing the inspectors
Britain's February "dodgy dossier" claimed inspectors' escorts were "trained to start long arguments" with other Iraqi officials while evidence was being hidden, and inspectors' journeys were monitored and notified ahead to remove surprise. Dr Blix said in February that the UN had conducted more than 400 inspections, all without notice, covering more than 300 sites. "We note that access to sites has so far been without problems," he said. : "In no case have we seen convincing evidence that the Iraqi side knew that the inspectors were coming."
11. Iraq could deploy its weapons of mass destruction in 45 minutes
This now-notorious claim was based on a single source, said to be a serving Iraqi military officer. This individual has not been produced since the war, but in any case Tony Blair contradicted the claim in April. He said Iraq had begun to conceal its weapons in May 2002, which meant that they could not have been used within 45 minutes.
12. The "dodgy dossier"
Mr Blair told the Commons in February, when the dossier was issued: "We issued further intelligence over the weekend about the infrastructure of concealment. It is obviously difficult when we publish intelligence reports." It soon emerged that most of it was cribbed without attribution from three articles on the internet. Last month Alastair Campbell took responsibility for the plagiarism committed by his staff, but stood by the dossier's accuracy, even though it confused two Iraqi intelligence organizations, and said one moved to new headquarters in 1990, two years before it was created.
13. War would be easy
Public fears of war in the US and Britain were assuaged by assurances that oppressed Iraqis would welcome the invading forces; that "demolishing Saddam Hussein's military power and liberating Iraq would be a cakewalk", in the words of Kenneth Adelman, a senior Pentagon official in two previous Republican administrations. Resistance was patchy, but stiffer than expected, mainly from irregular forces fighting in civilian clothes. "This wasn't the enemy we war-gamed against," one general complained.
14. Umm Qasr
The fall of Iraq's southernmost city and only port was announced several times before Anglo-American forces gained full control - by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, among others, and by Admiral Michael Boyce, chief of Britain's Defense staff. "Umm Qasr has been overwhelmed by the US Marines and is now in coalition hands," the Admiral announced, somewhat prematurely.
15. Basra rebellion
Claims that the Shia Muslim population of Basra, Iraq's second city, had risen against their oppressors were repeated for days, long after it became clear to those there that this was little more than wishful thinking. The defeat of a supposed breakout by Iraqi armour was also announced by military spokesman in no position to know the truth.
16. The "rescue" of Private Jessica Lynch
Private Jessica Lynch's "rescue" from a hospital in Nasiriya by American special forces was presented as the major "feel-good" story of the war. She was said to have fired back at Iraqi troops until her ammunition ran out, and was taken to hospital suffering bullet and stab wounds. It has since emerged that all her injuries were sustained in a vehicle crash, which left her incapable of firing any shot. Local medical staff had tried to return her to the Americans after Iraqi forces pulled out of the hospital, but the doctors had to turn back when US troops opened fire on them. The special forces encountered no resistance, but made sure the whole episode was filmed.
17. Troops would face chemical and biological weapons
As US forces approached Baghdad, there was a rash of reports that they would cross a "red line", within which Republican Guard units were authorized to use chemical weapons. But Lieutenant General James Conway, the leading US marine general in Iraq, conceded afterwards that intelligence reports that chemical weapons had been deployed around Baghdad before the war were wrong.
"It was a surprise to me ... that we have not uncovered weapons ... in some of the forward dispersal sites," he said. "We've been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad, but they're simply not there. We were simply wrong. Whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think still very much remains to be seen."
18. Interrogation of scientists would yield the location of WMD
"I have got absolutely no doubt that those weapons are there ... once we have the co-operation of the scientists and the experts, I have got no doubt that we will find them," Tony Blair said in April. Numerous similar assurances were issued by other leading figures, who said interrogations would provide the WMD discoveries that searches had failed to supply. But almost all Iraq's leading scientists are in custody, and claims that lingering fears of Saddam Hussein are stilling their tongues are beginning to wear thin.
19. Iraq's oil money would go to Iraqis
Tony Blair complained in Parliament that "people falsely claim that we want to seize" Iraq's oil revenues, adding that they should be put in a trust fund for the Iraqi people administered through the UN. Britain should seek a Security Council resolution that would affirm "the use of all oil revenues for the benefit of the Iraqi people".
Instead Britain co-sponsored a Security Council resolution that gave the US and UK control over Iraq's oil revenues. There is no UN-administered trust fund.
Far from "all oil revenues" being used for the Iraqi people, the resolution continues to make deductions from Iraq's oil earnings to pay in compensation for the invasion of Kuwait in 1990.
20. WMD were found
After repeated false sightings, both Tony Blair and George Bush proclaimed on 30 May that two trailers found in Iraq were mobile biological laboratories. "We have already found two trailers, both of which we believe were used for the production of biological weapons," said Mr Blair. Mr Bush went further: "Those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons - they're wrong. We found them." It is now almost certain that the vehicles were for the production of hydrogen for weather balloons, just as the Iraqis claimed - and that they were exported by Britain.
© 2003 Independent Digital (UK) Ltd
http://www.independent.co.uk/ |
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Core Of Weapons Case Crumbling |
by Paul Reynolds
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
14 Jul 2003
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Of the nine main conclusions in the British government document "Iraq's weapons of mass destruction", not one has been shown to be conclusively true.
The confusion evident about one of the claims, that Iraq sought uranium from Niger despite having no civilian nuclear program, is the latest example of the process under which the allegations made so confidently last September have been undermined.
The CIA has admitted that the claim should not have been in President Bush's State of the Union speech.
It turns out that the CIA and the British intelligence agency MI6 passed each other like ships in the night and did not share information.
Correspondents attending a Foreign Office briefing last week were astounded when an official remarked that there had been no duty on Britain to pass its information on Niger, which it obtained from "a foreign intelligence service", to Washington as it was "up to the other intelligence service to do so."
Apparently there is a protocol among intelligence services which could not be broken despite the grave nature of the information and the use to which it was put - in this case, to help justify going to war.
Even a CIA statement of explanation issued late last week was not quite correct.
It said that the President's famous 16 words were accurate in that the "British Government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa."
Mr Bush did not in fact simply mention a British "report" on the uranium.
He actually said that the British had "learned" that Iraq had sought these supplies. He therefore hardened up the position.
Democratic Senator Carl Levin said on Sunday that this suggested intent by the White House to exaggerate the threat from Iraq.
The nine main conclusions and the broad evidence which has emerged about them are these:
1. "Iraq has a useable chemical and biological weapons capability which has included recent production of chemical and biological agents."
No evidence of Iraq's useable capability has been found in terms of manufacturing plants, bombs, rockets or actual chemical or biological agents, nor any sign of recent production.
A mysterious truck has been found which the CIA says is a mobile biological facility but this has not been accepted by all experts.
2. "Saddam continues to attach great importance to the possession of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles... He is determined to retain these capabilities."
He may well have attached great importance to the possession of such weapons but none has been found. The meaning of the word "capability" is now key to this.
If the US and UK governments can show that Iraq maintained an active expertise, amounting to a "program", they will claim their case has been made that Iraq violated UN resolutions.
3. "Iraq can deliver chemical and biological agents using an extensive range of shells, bombs, sprayers and missiles."
Nothing major has been found so far. There was one aircraft adapted with a sprayer but its capability was small.
4. "Iraq continues to work on developing nuclear weapons... Uranium has been sought from Africa."
The UN watchdog the IAEA said there was no evidence for this up to the start of the war and none has been found since. It is possible, though, that a case could be made from a shopping list of items needed for such a program
These include vacuum pumps, magnets, winding and balancing machines - all listed in the British dossier. No details about these purchasing attempts have been provided.
A claim that aluminum tubes were sought for this process was not wholly accepted by the British assessment though it was by the American and has subsequently not been proved.
The uranium claim is currently under question, though the British Government stands by its allegation.
5. "Iraq possesses extended-range versions of the Scud ballistic missile."
No Scuds have been found. The British said Iraq might have up to 20, the CIA said up to 12.
6. "Iraq's current military planning specifically envisages the use of chemical and biological weapons."
That may have been the case but direct evidence from serving Iraqi officers will be needed to prove it.
7. "The Iraqi military are able to deploy these weapons (chemical and biological) within 45 minutes of a decision to do so."
The 45 minute claim is currently under question. It is said to come from "a single source" probably a defector or Iraqi officer. It has not been proven.
8. "Iraq... is already taking steps to conceal and disperse sensitive equipment."
This is a focus of the current American and British investigation being carried out in Iraq by the Iraq Survey Group. One Iraqi scientist has come forward to say that he hid blueprints of centrifuges under his roses but that was in 1991.
If a pattern of concealment can be established, it would add to the credibility of the allegations that Iraq wanted to defy the UN.
9. "Iraq's chemical, biological, nuclear and ballistic missile program are well funded."
Evidence will be needed from serving Iraqi officials backed up by documents. Again, if a pattern of funding can be established, a case against Iraq could be made but if the actual programs did not exist, was the funding of much use and in any case, how much was it?
President Bush and Prime Minister Blair will be meeting in Washington later this week when they will discuss their strategy to justify the claims.
Copyright 2003 BBC
http://news.bbc.co.uk |
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Former Intelligence Officials, Arms Control Experts Say Bush Administration Misrepresented And Hyped Iraqi Threat |
by Arms Control Association
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
14 Jul 2003
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WASHINGTON - July 11 - Intelligence and arms control experts charged Wednesday that the Bush administration exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein and derided the UN arms inspections process in order to justify toppling the Iraqi dictator. Appearing at a press conference sponsored by the non-profit, non-partisan Arms Control Association, the speakers said the Bush administration made its case for going to war by misrepresenting intelligence findings, as well as citing discredited information, about the status of Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs and ties to terrorists.
The experts did not dispute that Iraq at one time possessed chemical and biological weapons, pursued nuclear weapons, violated its disarmament commitments, and did not fully cooperate with arms inspectors. Instead, they took issue with the Bush administration's dire description of Iraq as an immediate threat to U.S. and world security that required U.S. military action.
Greg Thielmann, who served as director of the office of Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Affairs in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research until September 2002, said, "I believe the Bush administration did not provide an accurate picture to the American people of the military threat posed by Iraq. Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community, but most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided."
Thielmann highlighted the administration's characterization of the Iraqi nuclear threat as being the most misleading. "Going down the list of administration deficiencies, or distortions, one has to talk about, first and foremost, the nuclear threat being hyped," he said. In particular, Thielmann said he believed "something was seriously amiss" about President George W. Bush's reference in his State of the Union speech to a report that Iraq was trying to procure uranium from Africa. Thielmann's office had concluded previously that this was "bad information." This assessment was delivered to Secretary of State Colin Powell in March 2002.
But the Bush administration's distorted portrait of the Iraqi threat was not confined to just one wrong allegation. The panelists also discussed other overblown claims by the Bush administration, including its contention that aluminum tubes bought by Iraq were for a nuclear weapons program even though the International Atomic Energy Agency and some analysts in the U.S. government disputed that conclusion.
Thielmann argued that it appeared that senior administration officials had already made up their minds about the U.S. course of action on Iraq and then selectively used intelligence to support preconceived conclusions. "This administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude. It's top-down use of intelligence; 'we know the answers, give us the intelligence to support those answers.'"
Gregory Treverton, a former vice chair of the National Intelligence Council, explained that intelligence is not straightforward so "you do get a lot of probablys/may-haves that are susceptible to very different interpretations." In the case of Iraq, he said the question is not the intelligence but "whether the administration improperly characterized that intelligence in making a public case for war in Iraq."
Testifying before the Senate Armed Service Committee July 9, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said that the United States did not go to war with Iraq because of new intelligence but because "we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light, through the prism of our experience of 9/11."
Joseph Cirincione, director of the Non-Proliferation Project of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, described Rumsfeld's admission as "shocking." Cirincione noted that the Bush administration "repeatedly gave the impression, and in fact said, that they had new evidence."
Cirincione further stated that administration descriptions of U.S. intelligence findings often were at odds with the actual intelligence reports. He said, "The public statements went far beyond the now-unclassified and publicly available intelligence assessments. All the 'could-be' and 'may-have' and 'possibly' were dropped from the public statements, and they became 'is, 'has' and 'definitely.'"
Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association, added that the Bush administration often skewed the fact the inspectors could not account for previously reported Iraqi weapons as evidence that Baghdad was hiding them. Kimball noted that Hans Blix, the head of the UN arms inspection team in Iraq, warned many times that "one should not equate not accounted-for with existing."
The Bush administration never had much enthusiasm for the inspection process and publicly doubted it could be effective. Cirincione asserted the administration did not want the inspectors to have success. "In order to build their case for war, the administration had to discredit the inspection process," he said.
Thielmann said that the misuse of U.S. intelligence could have serious consequences. "A little flaw in presentation here and a little flaw there and pretty soon you have fostered a fundamentally flawed view of reality, seriously eroding the credibility of the U.S. government in the process," Thielmann cautioned.
Kimball warned that lingering questions about U.S. credibility could undermine efforts to deal with greater proliferation dangers than Iraq, such as North Korea and Iran. He said, "It is going to become harder and harder for the United States to mobilize international action to deal with other threats...unless there is some clarity about how (the Iraq) episode played out and how it can be fixed in the future."
Kimball and Cirincione both pointed out that the lack of dramatic weapons finds in Iraq so far underscores the value of international arms inspections in stymieing the development of militarily significant stockpiles of weapons or major weapons programs.
"It is now fair to say that the U.N. inspection process was working and-if given the time and resources necessary-could have had a good chance of both preventing any ongoing programs; discovering any activities that were underway; ending a good deal of this low-level activity, such as the hiding of critical blueprints and parts recently unearthed in the backyard of an Iraqi scientist who came forward; and preventing the restart of any of these programs as long as (inspections) had been allowed to continue," Cirincione concluded.
A full transcript of the press conference is available at the Arms Control Association's Web site. In addition, the Association has collected a selection of Bush administration statements on the threat posed by Iraq, which is also available at the Arms Control Association's Web site.
http://www.armscontrol.org |
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Intelligence Unglued |
by Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
(No verified email address) |
Current rating: 0
14 Jul 2003
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MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Intelligence Unglued
The glue that holds the Intelligence Community together is melting under the hot lights of an awakened press. If you do not act quickly, your intelligence capability will fall apart—with grave consequences for the nation.
The Forgery Flap
By now you are all too familiar with the play-by-play. The Iraq-seeking-uranium-in-Niger forgery is a microcosm of a mischievous nexus of overarching problems. Instead of addressing these problems, your senior staff are alternately covering up for one another and gently stabbing one another in the back. CIA Director George Tenet’s extracted, unapologetic apology on July 11 was classic—I confess; she did it.
It is now dawning on our until-now somnolent press that your national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, shepherds the foreign affairs sections of your state-of-the-union address and that she, not Tenet, is responsible for the forged information getting into the speech. But the disingenuousness persists. Surely Dr. Rice cannot persist in her insistence that she learned only on June 8, 2003 about former ambassador Joseph Wilson’s mission to Niger in February 2002, when he determined that the Iraq-Niger report was a con-job. Wilson’s findings were duly reported to all concerned in early March 2002. And, if she somehow missed that report, the New York Times’ Nicholas Kristoff on May 6 recounted chapter and verse on Wilson’s mission, and the story remained the talk of the town in the weeks that followed.
Rice’s denials are reminiscent of her claim in spring 2002 that there was no reporting suggesting that terrorists were planning to hijack planes and slam them into buildings. In September, the joint congressional committee on 9/11 came up with a dozen such reports.
Secretary of State Colin Powell’s credibility, too, has taken serious hits as continued non-discoveries of weapons in Iraq heap doubt on his confident assertions to the UN. Although he was undoubtedly trying to be helpful in trying to contain the Iraq-Niger forgery affair, his recent description of your state-of-the-union words as “not totally outrageous” was faint praise indeed. And his explanations as to why he made a point to avoid using the forgery in the way you did was equally unhelpful.
Whatever Rice’s or Powell’s credibility, it is yours that matters. And, in our view, the credibility of the intelligence community is an inseparably close second. Attempts to dismiss or cover up the cynical use to which the known forgery was put have been—well, incredible. The British have a word for it: “dodgy.” You need to put a quick end to the dodginess, if the country is to have a functioning intelligence community.
The Vice President’s Role
Attempts at cover up could easily be seen as comical, were the issue not so serious. Highly revealing were Ari Fleisher’s remarks early last week, which set the tone for what followed. When asked about the forgery, he noted tellingly—as if drawing on well memorized talking points—that the Vice President was not guilty of anything. The disingenuousness was capped on Friday, when George Tenet did his awkward best to absolve the Vice President from responsibility.
To those of us who experienced Watergate these comments had an eerie ring. That affair and others since have proven that cover-up can assume proportions overshadowing the crime itself. All the more reason to take early action to get the truth up and out.
There is just too much evidence that Ambassador Wilson was sent to Niger at the behest of Vice President Cheney’s office, and that Wilson’s findings were duly reported not only to that office but to others as well.
Equally important, it was Cheney who launched (in a major speech on August 26, 2002) the concerted campaign to persuade Congress and the American people that Saddam Hussein was about to get his hands on nuclear weapons—a campaign that mushroomed, literally, in early October with you and your senior advisers raising the specter of a “mushroom cloud” being the first “smoking gun” we might observe.
That this campaign was based largely on information known to be forged and that the campaign was used successfully to frighten our elected representatives in Congress into voting for war is clear from the bitter protestations of Rep. Henry Waxman and others. The politically aware recognize that the same information was used, also successfully, in the campaign leading up to the mid-term elections—a reality that breeds a cynicism highly corrosive to our political process.
The fact that the forgery also crept into your state-of-the-union address pales in significance in comparison with how it was used to deceive Congress into voting on October 11 to authorize you to make war on Iraq.
It was a deep insult to the integrity of the intelligence process that, after the Vice President declared on August 26, 2002 that “we know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons,” the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) produced during the critical month of September featured a fraudulent conclusion that “most analysts” agreed with Cheney’s assertion. This may help explain the anomaly of Cheney’s unprecedented “multiple visits” to CIA headquarters at the time, as well as the many reports that CIA and other intelligence analysts were feeling extraordinarily great pressure, accompanied by all manner of intimidation tactics, to concur in that conclusion. As a coda to his nuclear argument, Cheney told NBC’s Meet the Press three days before US/UK forces invaded Iraq: “we believe he (Saddam Hussein) has reconstituted nuclear weapons.”
Mr. Russert: …the International Atomic Energy Agency said he dose not have a nuclear program; we disagree?
Vice President Cheney: I disagree, yes. And you’ll find the CIA, for example, and other key parts of the intelligence community disagree…we know he has been absolutely devoted to trying to acquire nuclear weapons. And we believe he has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons. I think Mr. ElBaradei (Director of the IAEA) frankly is wrong.
Contrary to what Cheney and the NIE said, the most knowledgeable analysts—those who know Iraq and nuclear weapons—judged that the evidence did not support that conclusion. They now have been proven right.
Adding insult to injury, those chairing the NIE succumbed to the pressure to adduce the known forgery as evidence to support the Cheney line, and relegated the strong dissent of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (and the nuclear engineers in the Department of Energy) to an inconspicuous footnote.
It is a curious turn of events. The drafters of the offending sentence on the forgery in president’s state-of-the-union speech say they were working from the NIE. In ordinary circumstances an NIE would be the preeminently authoritative source to rely upon; but in this case the NIE itself had already been cooked to the recipe of high policy.
Joseph Wilson, the former US ambassador who visited Niger at Cheney’s request, enjoys wide respect (including, like several VIPS members, warm encomia from your father). He is the consummate diplomat. So highly disturbed is he, however, at the chicanery he has witnessed that he allowed himself a very undiplomatic comment to a reporter last week, wondering aloud “what else they are lying about.” Clearly, Wilson has concluded that the time for diplomatic language has passed. It is clear that lies were told. Sad to say, it is equally clear that your vice president led this campaign of deceit.
This was no case of petty corruption of the kind that forced Vice President Spiro Agnew’s resignation. This was a matter of war and peace. Thousands have died. There is no end in sight.
Recommendation #1
We recommend that you call an abrupt halt to attempts to prove Vice President Cheney “not guilty.” His role has been so transparent that such attempts will only erode further your own credibility. Equally pernicious, from our perspective, is the likelihood that intelligence analysts will conclude that the way to success is to acquiesce in the cooking of their judgments, since those above them will not be held accountable. We strongly recommend that you ask for Cheney’s immediate resignation.
The Games Congress Plays
The unedifying dance by the various oversight committees of the Congress over recent weeks offers proof, if further proof were needed, that reliance on Congress to investigate in a non-partisan way is pie in the sky. One need only to recall that Sen. Pat Roberts, Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has refused to agree to ask the FBI to investigate the known forgery. Despite repeated attempts by others on his committee to get him to bring in the FBI, Roberts has branded such a move “inappropriate,” without spelling out why.
Rep. Porter Goss, head of the House Intelligence Committee, is a CIA alumnus and a passionate Republican and agency partisan. Goss was largely responsible for the failure of the joint congressional committee on 9/11, which he co-chaired last year. An unusually clear indication of where Goss’ loyalties lie can be seen in his admission that after a leak to the press last spring he bowed to Cheney’s insistence that the FBI be sent to the Hill to investigate members and staff of the joint committee—an unprecedented move reflecting blithe disregard for the separation of powers and a blatant attempt at intimidation. (Congress has its own capability to investigate such leaks.)
Henry Waxman’s recent proposal to create yet another congressional investigatory committee, patterned on the latest commission looking into 9/11, likewise holds little promise. To state the obvious about Congress, politics is the nature of the beast. We have seen enough congressional inquiries into the performance of intelligence to conclude that they are usually as feckless as they are prolonged. And time cannot wait.
As you are aware, Gen. Brent Scowcroft performed yeoman’s service as National Security Adviser to your father and enjoys very wide respect. There are few, if any, with his breadth of experience with the issues and the institutions involved. In addition, he has avoided blind parroting of the positions of your administration and thus would be seen as relatively nonpartisan, even though serving at your pleasure. It seems a stroke of good luck that he now chairs your President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board
Recommendation #2
We repeat, with an additional sense of urgency, the recommendation in our last memorandum to you (May 1) that you appoint Gen. Brent Scowcroft, Chair of the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board to head up an independent investigation into the use/abuse of intelligence on Iraq.
UN Inspectors
Your refusal to allow UN inspectors back into Iraq has left the international community befuddled. Worse, it has fed suspicions that the US does not want UN inspectors in country lest they impede efforts to “plant” some “weapons of mass destruction” in Iraq, should efforts to find them continue to fall short. The conventional wisdom is less conspiratorial but equally unsatisfying. The cognoscenti in Washington think tanks, for example, attribute your attitude to “pique.”
We find neither the conspiracy nor the “pique” rationale persuasive. As we have admitted before, we are at a loss to explain the barring of UN inspectors. Barring the very people with the international mandate, the unique experience, and the credibility to undertake a serious search for such weapons defies logic. UN inspectors know Iraq, know the weaponry in question, know the Iraqi scientists/engineers who have been involved, know how the necessary materials are procured and processed; in short, have precisely the expertise required. The challenge is as daunting as it is immediate; and, clearly, the US needs all the help it can get.
The lead Wall Street Journal article of April 8 had it right: “If the US doesn’t make any undisputed discoveries of forbidden weapons, the failure will feed already-widespread skepticism abroad about the motives for going to war.” As the events of last week show, that skepticism has now mushroomed here at home as well.
Recommendation #3
We recommend that you immediately invite the UN inspectors back into Iraq. This would go a long way toward refurbishing your credibility. Equally important, it would help sort out the lessons learned for the intelligence community and be an invaluable help to an investigation of the kind we have suggested you direct Gen. Scowcroft to lead.
If Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity can be of any further help to you in the days ahead, you need only ask.
/s/
Ray Close, Princeton, NJ
David MacMichael, Linden, VA
Raymond McGovern, Arlington, VA
Steering Committee
Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity |
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