Stephen Hayes, writing in the Weekly Standard, on the release of Iraq documents:
On February 16, President George W. Bush assembled a small group of congressional Republicans for a briefing on Iraq. Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley were there, and U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad participated via teleconference from Baghdad. As the meeting was beginning, Mike Pence spoke up. The Indiana Republican, a leader of conservatives in the House, was seated next to Bush.
“Yesterday, Mr. President, the war had its best night on the network news since the war ended,” Pence said.
“Is this the tapes thing?” Bush asked, referring to two ABC News reports that included excerpts of recordings Saddam Hussein made of meetings with his war cabinet in the years before the U.S. invasion. Bush had not seen the newscasts but had been briefed on them.
Pence framed his response as a question, quoting Abraham Lincoln: “One of your Republican predecessors said, ‘Give the people the facts and the Republic will be saved.’ There are 3,000 hours of Saddam tapes and millions of pages of other documents that we captured after the war. When will the American public get to see this information?”
Bush replied that he wanted the documents released. He turned to Hadley and asked for an update. Hadley explained that John Negroponte, Bush’s Director of National Intelligence, “owns the documents” and that DNI lawyers were deciding how they might be handled.
Bush extended his arms in exasperation and worried aloud that people who see the documents in 10 years will wonder why they weren’t released sooner. “If
I knew then what I know now,” Bush said in the voice of a war skeptic, “I would have been more supportive of the war.”
Bush told Hadley to expedite the release of the Iraq documents. “This stuff ought to be out. Put this stuff out.” The president would reiterate this point before the meeting adjourned. And as the briefing ended, he approached Pence, poked a finger in the congressman’s chest, and thanked him for raising the issue. When Pence began to restate his view that the documents should be released, Bush put his hand up, as if to say, “I hear you. It will be taken care of.”
It was not the first time Bush has made clear his desire to see the Iraq documents released. On November 30, 2005, he gave a speech at the U.S. Naval Academy. Four members of Congress attended: Rep. Pete Hoekstra, the Michigan Republican who chairs the House Intelligence Committee; Sen. John Warner, the Virginia Republican who chairs the Senate Armed Services Committee; Rep. John Shadegg of Arizona; and Pence. After his speech, Bush visited with the lawmakers for 10 minutes in a holding room to the side of the stage. Hoekstra asked Bush about the documents and the president said he was pressing to have them released.
Says Pence: “I left both meetings with the unambiguous impression that the president of the United States wants these documents to reach the American people.”
Negroponte never got the message. Or he is choosing to ignore it. He has done nothing to expedite the exploitation of the documents. And he continues to block the growing congressional effort, led by Hoekstra, to have the documents released.
[…]
Officials involved with DOCEX–as the U.S. government’s document exploitation project is known to insiders–tell The Weekly Standard that only some 3 percent of the 2 million captured documents have been fully translated and analyzed. No one familiar with the project argues that exploiting these documents has been a priority of the U.S. intelligence community.
Negroponte’s argument rests on the assumption that the history captured in these documents would not be important to those officials–elected and unelected, executive branch and legislative–whose job it is to
craft U.S. foreign and national security policy. He’s mistaken.An example: On April 13, 2003, the San Francisco Chronicle published an exhaustive article based on documents reporter Robert Collier unearthed in an Iraqi Intelligence safehouse in Baghdad. The claims were stunning.
The documents found Thursday and Friday in a Baghdad office of the Mukhabarat, the Iraqi secret police, indicate that at least five agents graduated Sept. 15 from a two–week course in surveillance and eavesdropping techniques, according to certificates issued to the Iraqi agents by the “Special Training Center” in Moscow . . .
Details about the Mukhabarat’s Russian spy training emerged from some Iraqi agents’ personnel folders, hidden in a back closet in a center for electronic surveillance located in a four-story mansion in the Mesbah district, Baghdad’s wealthiest neighborhood. . . .
Three of the five Iraqi agents graduated late last year from a two-week course in “Phototechnical and Optical Means,” given by the Special Training Center in Moscow, while two graduated from the center’s two-week course in “Acoustic Surveillance Means.”
One of the graduating officers, identified in his personnel file as Sami Rakhi Mohammad Jasim al-Mansouri, 46, is described as being connected to “the general management of counterintelligence” in the south of the country. . . .
His certificate, which bears the double-eagle symbol of the Russian Federation and a stylized star symbol that resembles the seal of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, uses a shortened version of al-Mansouri’s name.
It says he entered the Moscow-based Special Training Center’s “advanced” course in “acoustic surveillance means” on Sept. 2, 2002, and graduated on Sept. 15.
Four days later, the Chronicle reported that the “Moscow-based Special Training Center,” was the Russian foreign intelligence service, known as SVR, and the SVR confirmed the training:
A spokesman for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), Boris Labusov, acknowledged that Iraqi secret police agents had been trained by his agency but said the training was for nonmilitary purposes, such as fighting crime and terrorism.
Yet documents discovered in Baghdad by The Chronicle last week suggest that the spying techniques the Iraqi agents learned in Russia may have been used against foreign diplomats and civilians, raising doubt about the accuracy of Labusov’s characterization.
Labusov, the press officer for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, confirmed that the certificates discovered by The Chronicle were genuine and that the Iraqis had received the training the documents described.
The Russians declared early in the U.N. process that they preferred inspections to war. Perhaps we now know why. Still, it is notable that at precisely the same time Russian intelligence was training Iraqi operatives, senior Russian government officials were touting their alliance with the United States. Russian foreign minister Boris Malakhov proclaimed that the two countries were “partners in the anti-terror coalition” and Putin spokesman Sergei Prikhodko declared, “Russia and the United States have a common goal regarding the Iraqi issue.” (Of course, these men may have been in the dark on what their intelligence service was up to.) On November 8, 2002, six weeks after the Iraqis completed their Russian training, Russia voted in favor of U.N. Resolution 1441, which threatened “serious consequences” for continued Iraqi defiance on its weapons programs.
Maybe this is mere history to Negroponte. But it has practical implications for policymakers assessing Russia’s role as go-between in the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran.
Perhaps anticipating the weakness of his “mere history” argument, Negroponte abruptly shifted his position last week. He still opposes releasing the documents, only now he claims that the information in these documents is so valuable that it cannot be made public. Negroponte gave a statement to Fox News responding to Hoekstra’s call to release the captured documents. “These documents have provided, and continue to provide, actionable intelligence to ongoing operations. . . . It would be ill-advised to release these materials without careful screening because the material includes sensitive and potentially harmful information.”
This new position raises two obvious questions: If the documents have provided actionable intelligence, why has the intelligence community exploited so few of them? And why hasn’t Negroponte demanded more money and manpower for the DOCEX program?
Sadly, these obvious questions have an obvious answer. The intelligence community is not interested in releasing documents captured in postwar Afghanistan and Iraq. Why this is we can’t be sure. But Pete Hoekstra offers one distinct possibility.
“They are State Department people who want to make no waves and don’t want to do anything that would upset anyone,” he says.
This is not idle speculation. In meetings with Hoekstra, Negroponte and his staff have repeatedly expressed concern that releasing this information might embarrass our allies. Who does Negroponte have in mind?
Allies like Russia?
Hoekstra says Negroponte’s intransigence is forcing him to get the documents out “the hard way.” The House Intelligence chairman has introduced a bill (H.R. 4869) that would require the DNI to begin releasing the captured documents. Although Negroponte continues to argue against releasing the documents in internal discussions, on March 9, he approached Hoekstra with a counterproposal. Negroponte offered to release some documents labeled “No Intelligence Value,” and indicated his willingness to review other documents for potential release, subject to a scrub for sensitive material.
And there, of course, is the potential problem. Negroponte could have been releasing this information all along, but chose not to. So, in a way, nothing really changes. Still, for Hoekstra, this is the first sign of any willingness to release the documents.
“I’m encouraged that John is taking another look at it,” Hoekstra said last Thursday. “But I want a system that is biased in favor of declassification. I want some assurance that they aren’t just picking the stuff that’s garbage and releasing that. If we’re only declassifying maps of Baghdad, I’m not going to be happy.”
He continued: “There may be many documents that relate to Iraqi WMD programs. Those should be released. Same thing with documents that show links to terrorism. They have to release documents on topics of interest to the American people and they have to give me some kind of schedule. What’s the time frame? I don’t have any idea.”
Hoekstra is not going away. “We’re going to ride herd on this. This is a step in the right direction, but I am in no way claiming victory. I want these documents out.”
[My emphases]
I have speculated on this before—particularly in light of potentially explosive (if proven) intel from former Iraqi commanders that the Russian special forces helped in the movement of Iraq’s WMD to Syria and in scrubbing the program’s footprint—but it might be the case that the State Department really does believe, for strategic purposes, that it has to delay the release of the Iraqi documents, in order to keep from embarrassing the Russians (and perhaps the French?), allies they desperately need if they are to put the kind of necessary pressure on Iran that can forestall its nuclear weapons ambitions.
Of course, at this point, that’s all we have—idle speculation—and the reason is, as the Hayes piece points out:
For months, Negroponte has argued privately that while the documents may be of historical interest, they are not particularly valuable as intelligence product. A statement by his office in response to the recordings aired by ABC said, “Analysts from the CIA and the DIA reviewed the translations and found that, while fascinating from a historical perspective, the tapes do not reveal anything that changes their postwar analysis of Iraq’s weapons programs.”
Left unanswered was what the analysts made of the Iraqi official who reported to Saddam that components of the regime’s nuclear program had been “transported out of Iraq.” Who gave this report to Saddam and when did he give it? How were the materials “transported out of Iraq”? Where did they go? Where are they now? And what, if anything, does this tell us about Saddam’s nuclear program? It may be that the intelligence community has answers to these questions. If so, they have not shared them. If not, the tapes are far more than “fascinating from a historical perspective.”
Why are those on the left who scream for the release of internal deliberation notes from Dick Cheney’s energy meetings not up in arms about what it is increasingly obvious is a deliberate attempt on the part of certain members of the intel community to hold back what could perhaps be very illuminating intel?
Is it possible that, though Bush has given lipservice to the importance of the release of this intel, he has been convinced by key members of his administration that it is in our best interests to bite the bullet right now and allow history to exonerate certain of his pre-war pronouncements? And if this is the case, how much of the decision has to do with Iran—specifically, what the administration knows about the nuclear program and our plans to combat it that both the public and press, as yet, do not know?
****
h/t Nuke ‘m Hill, who has more.
I’ve always believed that if Americans got the full story on the activities and doubledealing of their supposed “allies,” especially those in Europe, it would put them over the edge into quasi-isolationsim.
As in, “to hell with all those people.”
To expound a little bit further: …and that the reason we don’t broadcast the duplicity of our “friends” is that for better or for worse, we still have to work with these people. For the American people’s attitude to turn that sour would be to force and expand the problem we see over the UAE ports, where sheer indignation hampers our policy options for the worse.
Relations with foreign countries may be a big part of it, it would require a public response, and it may be better handled in private.
Another valid reason is the intel community’s natural reluctance to release raw data. Data without analysis has got more than a few operators in trouble. While I support the move, there is a lot of chaff there, and more than a few forgeries. Like any other “explosive relevation” the first reports are probably going to be wrong here too.
Your thoughts on H.R. 4869, Jeff? It seems pretty clearly unconstitutional even to me, and I take a less expansive view of the CinC power than you do. No one but the President has any business demanding the release of this intelligence.
Isn’t Negroponte in an appointed position? Seems like a remember a squabble with the obstructionist wing of the Senate a couple of years ago over his confirmation. If so couldn’t Bush relieve him of his duties and hire someone more compliant with his wishes?
duh.
what other reason could they have?
look, the threat matrix for Iran is consuming all resources right now.
GW really doesn’t care much what anyone thinks of him, isn’t that obvious to you yet?
I’d give Negroponte a deadline – release of the docs or his resignation on my desk. Lucky for him I’m not CinC…
The only reason I can fathom for Negroponte’s dithering is that the “proof” of our “supposed allies” is being used to extort cooperation of the Iran situation. We’ll see if this is true when the Security Council votes. If China is the only NO vote then I’ll assume I’m correct.
What other reason could there conceivably be?
Busy playing gotcha games: nice that bush wants the documents that make him look nice released. Or maybe they’re not so nice at all.
Are these supposed to be secret? I wonder if they’re FOIAble.
I’d bet one of the internal arguments being offered is that, since there are so many documents, it’s going to take too long to translate them, and we really shouldn’t release the information until it’s all done and analyzed. I interviewed with a company here on the East Coast recently. They specialize in OCR. They have been on the forefront of translating these very same documents. The OCR software being used to translate Arabic has made quantum strides forward in sophistication over the last few years. It’s going to be pretty straight-forward to run through all of these docs.
Had the commute not been so horrendous, I’d be working there now. Of course, I’d be under NDA, and they’d have to shoot me for revealing the above!
Yeah, it’s not like they wanted to lease any of our docks or something serious like that…
I hate to say it (and I’m not the first), but no matter what is in these documents, no matter what proof of malign intentions or capabilities is found, it will be dismissed.
There is now a large segment of the population that thinks the most sensible explanation for all we’ve observed is that Saddam Hussein, having watched us pull out our inspectors in late ‘98, decided to fold up and destroy his WMD programs in secret. (Which I am willing to believe, but it does seem odd.)
Whereas the idea that he really did want those weapons in the first place, and would have sought some way to stash them really well (and make us look like fools in the event that we “give the sanctions time to work”) is simply outlandish fantasy, clung to by us neocons who just can’t admit we were wrong.
And, of course, even if there were proof so overwhelming as to convince Howard Dean, the fallback line would be, “But obviously he never would have dared use them on us.”
For the record, I don’t need this story to be true to think that removing him was sadly necessary; I don’t cling to it in desperation, I just don’t see how we know, as my left-liberal friends do, that of course he had no chem/bioweapons during our yearlong rush to war.
– Its always fun, and better yet “safe”, to use arguments that no one will probably know the truth of for another 15 years.
– In the mean time there could be info pertaining to Irans nuke program in there, and even more damning other countries like Russia’s duplicity in it.
– In the other mean time, all the UN resolutions in the world, and blustering from both sides, won’t mean a damn thing if Isreal comes to believe Iran is making any serious headway. They’ll act before its too late, and we’ll have to step up to the plate, so lets hope we’re ready when the time comes.
NukemHill: I suggested here putting images of the documents online so an Army of Davids can have at the task of translating them. I found out a little later that J.R. Dunn had made a similar suggestion at American Thinker—I like his version of the idea better than mine.
If there is any valid reason for not releasing the documents to the public blackmailing some supposed “allies” would have to be it. I’m more inclined to think it’s just a matter of an anal-retentive career diplomat enjoying playing ”I know something you don’t know!”, in which case it’s time for W to fire his ass.
More fiction from the Weekly Standard.
Maybe Stephen Hayes is gathering material for a spy thriller.
GIGO, I always say.
If this crap is so important, how come the MSM hasn’t come up with more on these documents?
And we appreciate that you practice what you preach.
A retired Army intel has deep misgivings on the possible blogstorm over this issue.
link
A commmenter on that thread:
I fear the right leaning blog storm/swarm. They have no direction or purpose. The early swarm during Katrina (Malkin and the Corner :ahhh
AGAINST Fedgov/FEMA/Brown helped set the pace for the regular Media. The early swarm during the ports deal (Malkin and the Corner :ahhh
did the same.
Jeff has been the best I’ve read about waiting for information before passing judgement.
Others (Malkin and the Corner :ahhh
need to follow his lead.
TW: large. Large collection of lemmings.
would be the correct iconic expression for my previous post
If there were indications that these documents were being aggressively translated and analyzed, I’d agree with you. But the indications seem to be that the intelligence community isn’t taking them very seriously, and little of the material has even been analyzed. It’s important enough that it needs to get out there somehow, and if making it public is the only way for that to happen, well…
There may be bad consequences from releasing it all. There may be worse ones from leaving them untranslated in a vault somewhere, up to and including finding those missing chem weapons the hard way.
I can just see the MSM headlines – “BUSH RIGHT ALL ALONG, WE LIED AND PEOPLE DIED.”
Sure.
I like how Carl just assumes the MSM would be able to get at all these docs – and translate them, analyze them, etc. I guess the “get at” part is backed up by events… must be nothing in them damning to the CinC then…
Carl,
The silliness of your comment is truly astronomical.
RE:
—
It has always been my assertion that no doubt
Saddam may have made a deal with “Syria” to join him in a final solution against the United States, this is not to say
a hypothetical conclusion-
if Iraq and Syria joined to hide the WMD they talked about what event would
justify using them,
Jeff I 100% agree with the questions you raised “unanswered” but history has recorded
We all know “when” the indisputable proof finally comes out ..the democrats will counter it
despite the fact the democrats have made America look like a confused disorganized un-unified joke to the world this goes all the way back to the pre war protest as in
the “Win without War Coalition Petition” you just cant keep pure stupidity down..
We have been there done that..well the left wing has for the last 30 years and “
The result of the liberal left wing middle east policy of Winning without War” which is liberal code for “Appeasement Ideology” was executed on 9-11
it is freedom of speech… not freedom of stupidity..
how had is it to comprehend the obvious,
“Yeah, it’s not like they wanted to lease any of our docks or something serious like that…”
The Dubai government more trustworthy than either Germany or France. And according to the current Bush plan, we have to work with them and likeminded Muslim governments.
Otherwise we might as well wall ourselves off and start bombing the entire region, now.
RE: RE:
[“RUSSIAN SPECIAL FORCES HELPED IN THE
MOVEMENT OF IRAQ’S WMD” ]
[“TO SYRIA AND IN SCRUBBING THE
PROGRAM’S FOOTPRINT” ]
Russia is now jumping in bed with “IRAN’S” nuclear programs
Russia
Russia
Russia
Every where you look – Russia
and always on the other side of America,
I can still hear Bob Dole standing on the senate floor just days before Desert Shield turned into Desert Strom,
Dole declared to Russia “ Butt out “ ..
My note to John Negroponte:
Dear Mr. Negroponte,
I have noted recently that you are interfering with the rights of the Executive to provide the American People with documents currently under your purview. As the Director of National Intelligence, when the President in his role of Head of Government and Command in Chief gives you an order to release documents, you may do many things to ensure National Security. However, as those things would only cover sources and methods of the United States and these involve captured documents from Iraq under Saddam, one expects that there should be NONE of those.
You may *not* use foreign policy reasons to say why you will not release them. That is a sole Article II power given to the Executive by the People.
You may *not* argue that they are of historical interest only, as then you MUST provide them to the National Archives. Non-actionable, historical documents go to THEM.
You may *not* then turn around and claim them to have *actionable* intelligence. If you do so, then you may redact such areas as will imperil US Citizens or US Armed Forces, of which, if they are *historical* there will not be much.
If you feel the Executive is putting the Republic at *peril* you MUST go to Congress and tell them so.
And if you are impeding intelligence documents under military purview from being released, you are then working to subborn the Commander in Chief power of the Executive which is solely given to that office.
If redaction is total pages and blank tapes, you will find yourself at the pointy end of the stick as you are *not* above an Inspector General, you are *not* above the Executive and you are *not* above Congress.
You may *not* set foreign policy, give military orders contrary to the CinC, nor bypass the laws of historical documents, nor set up the Intelligence Community to act independently of oversight by the duly elected Representatives of the People of the United States.
Mr. Negroponte: you have not been elected to hold your office. You *must* obey orders or suffer the consequences. Contradiction of the Executive in this arena is an act against the Republic of the United States, even if each and every argument you give is 100% CORRECT.
It is not YOUR DECISION TO MAKE.
Because when the FBI Counter-Intelligence people come for YOU, they are going to ask who, exactly, you work FOR.
Release the documents and let the chips fall where they may.
That is your duty.
Or turning big rocks into small rocks if you choose otherwise.
Good day.
A Jacksonian