A Letter to Jay Solomon and Siobhan Gorman
By Larry Johnson on January 14, 2008 at 3:25 PM in Uncategorized
Dear Jay:
Did you readily agree to the title heading your article in today’s Wall Street Journal, In Iran Reversal, Bureaucrats Triumphed Over Cheney Team? Because the article, at least as I read it, is a smear of Tom Fingar and certainly implies that he is some partisan, political maverick eager to thwart George Bush for his own petty reasons. I am particularly troubled by the following portion of your story:
In 2002, Mr. Fingar vigorously quizzed his analysts’ assumptions on Iraq, according to people who took part in the process. He particularly liked running “red teaming” exercises where competing groups sought to expose flaws in the bureau’s judgments. Mr. Fingar told top State Department officials, including former Secretary of State Colin Powell, what his analysts had concluded: Saddam Hussein didn’t have an active nuclear-weapons program. In particular, they disputed evidence cited by the White House relating to Iraq’s purchase of aluminum tubes, purportedly for use in making weapons-grade nuclear fuel.
Mr. Powell ultimately broke from his analysts’ beliefs, arguing before the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 that Mr. Hussein was actively seeking a nuclear weapon.
Mr. Fingar’s department’s Iraq position, a lonely one, infuriated top Bush administration officials, say current and former U.S. officials.
The two sides clashed on other issues. One of Mr. Fingar’s State Department colleagues, Vann Van Diepen, for example, repeatedly battled with John Bolton, the close ally of Vice President Cheney who served as the State Department’s top counter-proliferation official at the time.
Are you in an Alice in Wonderland world? Fingar’s approach was what one would expect of a professional intelligence officer. He had no preconceived notions. He simply insisted that the judgments advanced by his analysts be supported by intelligence rather than wishful thinking. Moreover, we now know without one shred of doubt that the positions presented by State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research with respect to the threat posed by Iraq were accurate and sound. If policymakers like John Bolton and David Wurmser had been willing to act on legitimate intelligence rather than preconceived notions at least 3000 American soldiers would still be alive not to mention at least 150,000 Iraqis.
Your article is a disservice and insult to intelligence professionals. Pretending that Fingar was acting in the same reckless manner as the likes of neocons like David Wurmser and John Bolton is simply not supported by the facts. Instead of educating your readers about how an NIE is crafted and how it is coordinated before it is released to the public, you have decided to cast your lot with the same officials who insisted they knew where Iraq’s WMDs were stashed and promised that American soldiers would be greeted with flowers and embraces. That is not journalism. That is propaganda. Shame on you.
Larry Johnson
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