Thursday, July 8, 2004

CIA's message was scripted to please

SEATTLE POST-INTELLIGENCER EDITORIAL BOARD

Most people have a tendency to hear what they want to hear. That appears to be part of the problem with the United States' intelligence agencies.

The CIA apparently began hearing as early as 2000 that Iraq had dropped its dangerous weapons programs. According to The New York Times, a Senate panel found that the agency had received the information from interviews with relatives of Iraqi scientists connected with Saddam Hussein's regime.

But the CIA apparently never took the statements seriously -- and the agency did not circulate those interviews to other intelligence agencies or higher-ups.

The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence is close to releasing a report on the government's prewar assessments of Iraq and weapons of mass destruction. The report is expected to offer strong criticisms of the CIA and other intelligence agencies for mistaken warnings about the supposed threat Iraq posed.

It's already clear that while the CIA made serious mistakes about Iraq, other parts of the government were much further off base. A Pentagon unit created by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld poisonously pushed the idea that the CIA was underestimating the threats posed by Iraq. That notion found an all-too-willing audience in Vice President Dick Cheney.

Meanwhile, the CIA'S interviews of scientists' families received little attention. Supposedly, the information was never passed along to President Bush.

That's curious, of course. But the omission confirms the well-known tendency to skip past unwelcome news.