Presidential Commission Finds U.S. Spy Agencies at Fault for Flawed Pre-Iraq War Intelligence

No examination conducted of possible White House misuse of data.

Interview with David MacMichael, former CIA analyst, conducted by Scott Harris

The Bush administration's repeated assertion that Saddam Hussein possessed dangerous weapons of mass destruction served as the pretext for their 2003 war against Iraq. But after the invasion and an exhaustive search, the alleged arsenal of chemical, biological and nuclear weapons were never found. In the midst of a heated election campaign the White House established a presidential commission to conduct a limited investigation into the intelligence failures leading up to the war.

The commission led by Judge Laurence Silberman and former Sen. Charles Robb, predictably found serious flaws in the operation of the nation's intelligence agencies, but made no judgments on how the president and his Cabinet used or misused the information it received about Iraq's weapons programs. Critics contend that the administration had a longstanding plan for launching an invasion of Iraq regardless of what the intelligence agencies produced. The panel made recommendations for the reorganization of the nation's 15 intelligence agencies, but offered no view on holding accountable those responsible for what many view as the most serious intelligence failure in U.S. history.

The Bush administration's honoring and promotion of key officials answerable for the flawed intelligence, provides insight into the priorities of a White House seemingly uninterested in accountability. Between The Lines' Scott Harris spoke with former CIA analyst David MacMichael, who assesses the findings of the presidential commission and the importance of learning the truth about why our nation went to war.

Read David MacMichael's article about the presidential credibility gap online, "Credibility Gap? More Like an Abyss," The Foreign Policy in Focus, March 21, 2005

Related links:

"Bush Threw Us a 'Curveball': Report Shines a Light on 'Crazy' Iraqi Informant," by Robert Scheer, the Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2005

"WMD Commission -- Yet Another Intelligence Failure," by Rahul Mahajan, CommonDreams.org, April 1, 2005

"Bush, Cheney, Get Their Whitewash," by Matthew Rothschild, by The Progressive, April 2, 2005

"Honest Intelligence Needed," by Ray McGovern, the Miami Herald, April 1, 2005

"WMD Commission Continues the Stonewall for Bush," by David Corn, www.Davidcorn.com April 1, 2005 Compilation of Washington insiders speaking out on Bush administration policies and actions

"Clarke's Take on Terror," 60 Minutes, March 21, 2004

"A White House 'Adept at Revenge,'" The Associated Press, March 27, 2004 Project for the New American Century's Letter to President Clinton on Iraq, Jan. 26, 1998 Urges President Clinton to remove the threat that Iraq poses by stating a strategy to do so in his "upcoming State of the Union Address."

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