Stephen Hayes: "The Unvarnished Facts"

The Weekly Standard ^ | July 9, 2004 | Stephen F. Hayes

[RWR8189]

Carl Levin distorts and exaggerates intelligence on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection. The Bush administration was careful with its words, the Michigan senator is not.

DOES SENATOR CARL LEVIN believe in preemption?

The Michigan Democrat, one of the fiercest partisan critics of the Bush administration and the war in Iraq, held a bizarre press conference Thursday to criticize the Senate Intelligence Committee's not-yet-released report on prewar intelligence. Levin faulted the exhaustive document for failing to include a critique of the Bush administration for its alleged "exaggeration" of the connection between the former Iraqi regime an al Qaeda.

No one in the Congress has had more to say about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection than Levin. And no one has been as misleading.

Here is Levin, in an appearance on CNN on July 8, 2003: "There is some evidence that there was an exaggeration by the intelligence community about that relationship," he alleged. "We need them to be credible. That means no exaggeration. That means they have to give the unvarnished facts to the policymakers."

That claim--the intelligence community exaggerated the Iraq-al Qaeda connection--were a dilation of comments Levin had made in a June 16, 2003, interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. "We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al Qaeda and Iraq." [emphasis added]

By February 2004, Levin was saying precisely the opposite.

"The intel didn't say that there is a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq," he told John Gibson of Fox News. "That was not the intel. That's what this administration exaggerated to produce. And so there are many instances where the administration went beyond the intelligence . . . I'm saying that the administration's statements were exaggerations of what was given to them by the analysts and the intelligence community."

Why did Levin shift the blame? Only he knows. But developments between his contradictory assessments seem relevant. Initially, of course, the Bush administration was accused by critics of pressuring intelligence analysts to shape their findings to fit predetermined policy goals. Just days before Levin refocused his critique, chief weapons inspector David Kay testified that he had seen no evidence of such pressure. "I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated," Kay told the Senate on January 28, 2004. "And never, not in one single case, was the explanation, 'I was pressured to do this.'"

The new report by the Senate Intelligence Committee apparently confirms this. Here is how the July 8, 2004, New York Times reported the findings.

The unanimous report by the panel will say there is no evidence that intelligence officials were subjected to pressure to reach particular conclusions about Iraq. That issue had been an early focus of Democrats, but none of the more than 200 intelligence officials interviewed by the panel made such a claim, and the Democrats have recently focused criticism on the question of whether intelligence was misused.

What's a senator to do? Focus on Mohammed Atta, apparently. Levin released an unclassified assessment from the CIA that expresses doubt about whether Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi Intelligence official in Prague in April of 2001. "This newly released unclassified statement by the CIA demonstrates that it was the administration, not the CIA, that exaggerated relations between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda."

Levin's statement is patently absurd. How is possible that an unclassified CIA opinion about one alleged meeting "demonstrates that it was the administration, not the CIA, that exaggerated relations between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?" Levin doesn't say, but he has surely traveled a long way from his claim that "we were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al Qaeda and Iraq."

But let's play Levin's game anyway. According to Levin, the CIA opinion "states that the CIA finds no credible information that the April 2001 meeting occurred, and in fact, that it was unlikely that it did occur." That Levin suddenly expresses unqualified faith in CIA assessments now is bizarre, coming as it does one day before the release of the Intelligence Committee's report that is, according to Levin, a "hard-hitting and well-deserved critique of the CIA."

Nonetheless, to make his case Levin reaches back to a statement from Vice President Dick Cheney on Meet the Press with Tim Russert, December 9, 2001. Said Cheney: "Well, what we now have since we last talked, Tim, was that report that's been pretty well confirmed that he [Mohammed Atta] did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi Intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack."

In his accusation, Levin rather conveniently leaves out the question from Russert that prompted Cheney's answer. The relevant part reads:

Russert: Let me turn to Iraq. When you were last on this program, September 16, five days after the attack on this country, I asked you whether there was any evidence that Iraq was involved in the attack and you said no. Since that time, a couple articles have appeared which I want to get you to react to. The first: "The Czech interior minister said today that an Iraqi intelligence officer met with Mohammed Atta, one of the ringleaders of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, just five months before the synchronized hijackings and mass killings were carried out."

So Cheney was reacting to a statement from a Czech official publicly confirming the meeting. That would seem relevant. So, too, would the fact that the interior minister was the second top Czech official to claim that meeting took place. Not for Levin.

Was Cheney alone in his alleged "exaggeration"? Hardly.

On December 15, 2001, after Cheney's comments, Czech Interior Minister Stanislav Gross reiterated his belief that the meeting took place. "According to my information, and mainly according to the information of the Czech counter-intelligence service BIS, the source of our original stand, there is no reason to change anything in the original stand."

The following day, the New York Times published an article raising questions about the alleged meeting. The story included this passage:

"There was definitely one meeting," between Mr. Ani and Mr. Atta, an intelligence official in Washington said. "We don't know if it was significant. We certainly don't attribute to it the significance others attribute to it automatically. Just because there was a meeting doesn't mean it was connected to 9/11."

In its December 17, 2001, issue, Time magazine reported on "intriguing bits of circumstantial evidence, including two meetings in Prague between Mohammed Atta, who piloted American Airlines flight 11 into the World Trade Center, and a senior Iraqi intelligence officer."

IT MAY WELL TURN OUT that the alleged Atta meeting did not take place. (Even the CIA opinion that has Levin so excited concedes that the intelligence community "cannot rule it out.") For Levin to suggest that the Atta meeting was a major part of the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq is silly. By September 26, 2002, Martha Raddatz of ABC News reported that the Bush administration had "dropped the subject." Any mention of Atta after that date was highly qualified.

BUT LEVIN'S STATEMENT goes on:

The American public was led to believe before the Iraq War that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 attack on America and that the actions of al Qaeda and Iraq were "part of the same threat," as Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz has put it. It was not the CIA that led the public to believe that. It was the leaders of this administration.

Really? How does Levin explain Condoleezza Rice's comments on September 8, 2002, a month before Congress voted to authorize the Iraq War and some seven months before the beginning of that war? Wolf Blitzer queried Rice about the alleged Atta meeting, asking "Can you confirm absolutely that the meeting took place?" Rice responded:

We continue to look at evidence of that meeting. And it's just more of a picture that is emerging that there may well have been contacts between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein's regime. There are others. And we will be laying out the case. But I don't think that we want to try and make the case that he directed somehow the 9/11 events. That's not the issue here.

And how does he explain the comments of Dick Cheney that same day, in another appearance on Meet the Press? Russert pressed Cheney again on his September 16, 2001, statement that there was no evidence Iraq was behind the 9/11attacks. Here is that exchange:

Cheney: I want to be very careful about how I say this. I'm not here today to make a specific allegation that Iraq was somehow responsible for 9/11. I can't say that. On the other hand, since we did that interview, new information has come to light. And we spent time looking at that relationship between Iraq, on the one hand, and the al Qaeda organization on the other. And there has been reporting that suggests that there have been a number of contacts over the years. We've seen in connection with the hijackers, of course, Mohamed Atta, who was the lead hijacker, did apparently travel to Prague on a number of occasions. And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade Center. The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn't he there, again, it's the intelligence business.

Russert: What does the CIA say about that? Is it credible?

Cheney: It's credible. But, you know, I think a way to put it would be it's unconfirmed at this point. We've got--

Russert: Anything else?

Cheney: There is--again, I want to separate out 9/11 from the other relationships between Iraq and the al Qaeda organization. But there is a pattern of relationships going back many years. And in terms of exchanges and in terms of people, we've had recently since the operations in Afghanistan--we've seen al Qaeda members operating physically in Iraq and off the territory of Iraq. We know that Saddam Hussein has, over the years, been one of the top state sponsors of terrorism for nearly 20 years.

And when reporters from Newsweek asked President Bush whether Iraq was involved with the September 11 attacks, Bush was direct: "I cannot make that claim."

Bush made this comment on January 31, 2003, two months before the Iraq War. Such facts are rather inconvenient for Levin, so he simply omits them. Some might be inclined to call that cherry-picking.

If Carl Levin had trouble understanding these rather straightforward statements, the man he supports for president did not. Said John Kerry, on October 9, 2002, in explaining his vote to authorize war in Iraq: "And while the administration has failed to provide any direct link between Iraq and the events of Sept. 11, can we afford to ignore the possibility that Saddam Hussein might accidentally, as well as purposely, allow those weapons [of mass destruction] to slide off to one group or other in a region where weapons are the currency of trade?" Sounds positively Wolfowitzian.

Perhaps Levin believes, as do many administration critics on the left, that the conspiracy was far more subtle: Tell the public that Saddam Hussein was not involved in September 11, but continue to invoke those attacks to justify the war in Iraq.

It must have been a vast conspiracy. Again, to John Kerry's October 9, 2002, speech:

In the wake of Sept. 11, who among us can say with any certainty to anybody that the weapons might not be used against our troops or against allies in the region? Who can say that this master of miscalculation will not develop a weapon of mass destruction even greater, a nuclear weapon, than reinvade Kuwait, push the Kurds out, attack Israel, any number of scenarios to try to further the ambitions to be the pan-Arab leader or simply to confront in the region and once again miscalculate the response, to believe he is stronger because he has those weapons?

Levin's continuing attempt to discredit the administration on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection is meeting resistance from unexpected quarters. The New York Times's Thom Shanker reported on the connection on June 25, 2004. Shanker wrote about an Iraqi Intelligence document discussing potential Iraq-al Qaeda collaboration in Saudi Arabia.

Among the stunning revelations in the document: bin Laden "requested joint operations against foreign forces" in Saudi Arabia; that Iraqi Intelligence officials sought to maintain the "relationship" after bin Laden left Sudan; that "cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement."

Those words--"joint operations" and "the relationship" and "cooperation"--come not from the Bush administration, but from Iraqi intelligence. They expand on our understanding of the Iraq-al Qaeda connection and, if anything, suggest that the Bush administration and the U.S. intelligence community may have actually understated the relationship.

Levin's preemptive report is indeed revealing, but not in the way he intends. We have a much clearer picture of who, exactly, is exaggerating intelligence to score political points.

Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard and author of The Connection: How al Qaeda's Collaboration with Saddam Hussein has Endangered America (HarperCollins).

[VOA]

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[doug from upland]

In the tradition of the drunken lifeguard, week after week after week after week, the DemocRATS have told lie after lie after lie after lie.

[Just mythoughts]

"Carl Levin distorts and exaggerates intelligence on the Iraq-al Qaeda connection."

There is nothing new under the sun.

So did this distorter and exaggerator vote for the destruction of the "CIA".

[tlb]

bookmark bump

[what's up]

Levin has been poison his whole time in the Senate.

And talk about bad hair...!

[randog]

So did this distorter and exaggerator vote for the destruction of the "CIA".

Oh, I'm sure that's just around the corner. Vote for Kerry and the Church Committee will look like a PTA meeting.

[DmBarch]

Levin is never held to any standard for his comments. He'll lie, distort and make things up. It seems to all get forgotten though many of us can tell it is BS as soon as it comes out of his mouth.

[kellynla]

Excellent piece by Hayes.
This Levin is a fountain of misinformation. LOL
Any chance that the good folks in Michigan will be removing him from office in the near future???