Woolsey Agrees with Weldon book on Iran, CIA

GIBSON: A Republican congressman is blasting the CIA, accusing the agency of gross incompetence, saying it dropped the ball on everything from the hunt for Usama to Iran's nuclear weapons programs.

Representative Curt Weldon of Pennsylvania is the vice chairman of the House Homeland Security and Armed Services Committees. He makes his charges in a new book. The congressman says the top tier of the CIA, entire top tier of the CIA, should be fired. That is a suggestion that is not sitting all that well in Langley.

Joining us now to talk about it, the former Director of the Central Intelligence Agency under President Clinton James Woolsey. He's also vice president of Booz Allen and Hamilton, a consulting firm.

So, what do you make of this dust-up with Congressman Weldon calling for the -- a decapitation strike, essentially, on the CIA?

JAMES WOOLSEY, FORMER CIA DIRECTOR: Well, the first thing that's important here is, this is a very serious and knowledgeable congressman.

I have traveled with Congressman Weldon, worked with him closely back in the '90s on a number of issues related to Russia. And he does not go off half-cocked. He's intense about what he believes, but he's a careful man. And I think that one of the things that's going on here is that the CIA does have a propensity for not wanting to talk to or listen seriously to walk- ins -- they -- people who volunteer information.

WOOLSEY: Somebody who walks into an embassy and volunteers information, sometimes, a foreign intelligence officer, sometimes someone else. They tend to listen very closely to their liaison services, as they're called, the foreign intelligence service that they talk to. And what Congressman Weldon I think is saying here is that they should have checked out far more thoroughly the stories that have come, the allegations that have come from this Mr. Ali, as he calls him, that is the main individual who is talking to Congressman Weldon.

Ali has some other things. I have read the manuscript of Congressman Weldon's book and I wrote a forward for it. Ali had some other allegations that are very interesting about bin Laden working with the Iranians and being present from time to time in Iran that are rather detailed, and they track very closely with what is in a new book by Ken Timmerman called "Countdown to Crisis." Both the Weldon book and the Timmerman book begin with the word countdown. And they both have the themes that the Iranians may be up to a good deal more in the terrorism area against the United States and may have worked together from time to time, not only with Al Qaeda, but with the Iraqis.

Now, a lot of American intelligence analysts don't like thinking about that. They like saying that the Shia will never work with the Sunni and neither will ever work with the secular Baathists and so on. To my mind, that makes about as much sense as the people in the 1930s who said the communists would never would with the Nazis. And then whoops. Here comes the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939. (CROSSTALK)

GIBSON: Mr. Woolsey, you know, one of the retired CIA guys who was in this very area has denounced this thing bitterly, saying that this is not a credible source that Weldon is relying on.

GIBSON: And that Weldon is impugning a lot of people whose professional judgment was to say, hey, this guy isn't worth anything. Don't any pay attention to him.

WOOLSEY: Well, Weldon has a number of facts in his book, and they ought to look at the facts he alleges, such as this cooperation between Iraq -- I'm sorry -- between Iran and Al Qaeda. The locations bin Laden is supposed to have visited and been in, in Iran, some of those are confirmed in the Timmerman book by a different source. They need to get out of the mode out there at Langley of just protecting what they've done in the past. You need to have an open mind in intelligence. And I don't care if this man who was talking with Congressman Weldon may have been introduced by Manishir Gobanifar (ph). Mr. Gobanifar may have been wrong in the past and right now. You have to keep an open mind in this business. And I get worried when the retort to a serious congressman's allegations is one of just fury from out there at Langley. People ought to stick to the facts and start debating the facts as alleged.

GIBSON: Former Director of the CIA James Woolsey -- Mr. Woolsey, it's good to see you. Thanks.

The CIA seems to have developed, over many years, an advanced case of institutionalized arteriosclerosis, by choice.

Its arteries are blocked. It is adverse to what is part of the very life blood of good intelligence - diverse points of view, and diverse streams of information.

It has lost the ability, and the desire, to develop its own channels of human intelligence. It is extremely reliant on the cooperation it has with the foreign intelligence services of other nations.

This causes three problems that the CIA has developed no remedy for, yet.

The CIA can be duped by the foreign intelligence service of a cooperating "ally" - such as the Saudis or Jordan for instance. Twenty years from now the public could likely learn that most of the British, German, French and US "intelligence" on Iraq, outside of our own electronic data, originated with middle east "allies".

The CIA is hesitant to upset those channels, because it has very little of its own resources with which to replace them.

The CIA is fearful of challenging the assumptions that itdraws from "information" from its copperating foreign services, because it has little basis of its own with which to challenge them.

Thus, it goes its merry way, letting analysts wax and wane over intelligence that the CIA does not largely develop on its own; it comes to its conclusions and thats it. They cannot be challenged because it has little internal means to go out and do the spade work, on its own, to determine if that challenge is correct or not.

It is no wonder that a state department hack like Joe Wilson was sent by the CIA to Africa to look into documents and claims about Iraqi pursuit of WMD technology there. They lacked, and still do, sufficient internal human resources to the job themselves; and alot of what they had came from British and Itallian sources, not their own.

The real problem is not whether or not Weldon's claims about Iran are right or wrong. The real problem is that the CIA's defensiveness about them stems from their inability to fully, completely, independently, 100% on their own go and find out if they are right. They have to stick with an an analysis that largely comes from information they have not developed themselves; they lack the means to challenge it. Thus, the only institutional response they can give is to defend it.

On that, Weldon is right.

If the new CIA director is unwilling to shake up this mindset, he should be replaced. If the current, or any new CIA director is unable to change this mindset, then the CIA should be replaced. Let the DIA form a nucleus for building a new organization.

In WW-2 ...Ike,Omar Bradley and others were entangled with the reward Britian thing,
Monte's walk on water......or to Arnhem at least.

Patton was furious.
Some Historians margin that this Monte show was permitted for other reasons.
The Russians were still a good ways off from Berlin.
Better they get wasted on Vermacht and SS.
Maybe Patton knew right then His Glory was taken from him....By Grinning Uncle Joe in Moscow.

James Woolsey is sharp.
Wisely covers for others.
Others who have set things into motion which have returned to crush many who had nothing to do with Al Qaeda/Bin Laden...or the Travelling Snake oil show of Chilabi.

Woolsey probably knows their will be more damaging things suddenly appearing from the poofy British.
Who should by now have discovered the benefit of business document shredders.

Some here at FR really roast President Bush over Iraq..and the lead up to the war.
This is hard...He is President...but has many people in powerfull places who have agenda's.
Iraqs oilfields and their brokering has undergone several changes.
Washington has been back and forth on this several times.
With key slotted types in both Iraq admin and oil sector their being rotated.
It seems OPEC is not to be pulled down.
Saudi's have swung some deal for their fiscal future.

The Bush admin has had pressure to crush OPEC....and then to rescue it.....err....the Saudi's.
Bin and Al Qaeda isn't the half of it.
add to the mix....Iranian lucid moment where ..Hey..if you Have Nuclear weapons you don't get attacked.
scheme and lie.

President Bush has alot on his plate.
Iraq's political circus is just that....
This guy gets his brother a posting..who gets cousin a posting.
At each appointment....the technical skill in that sector of governence lessens.
Alot of promises were made to President Bush...assurances...like Iraqs oil production to cover war costing and reconstruction.

Most of the lunatic moon children suiciding in Iraq turn out to be Saudi's.
Weaponry and funding from Whabbi land still finds it way to Iraq.
Special U.N. weasel Lahkdar Brahimi [Algerian Sunni]...descends from the heavens above and has U.S. forces stand down in Fallujah.
Technical scatter like rats.
Suddenly...7 cities become overnight Fallujahs....Ramadi...Sammarra etc.
Why Fallujah was bypassed in the initial drive on Baghdad at the beginning of the war is another point which could easily be another promise which went south.

Woolsey probably has a good idea who is pushing the stupid op plans.
General Tommy Franks has some eye opening comments on the net concerning Douglas Feith and a few other neo-cons.
Like Patton....Franks was livid with what was presented before him.

The burden President Bush faces must be phenominal.
The shear number of treacherous leaders in the equation,
From the grinning Pharaoh of Egypt...to the Grinning Musharref of Pakistan.
Now it seems South Korea are pissing themsleves...reaching for Depends..and breaking out the dinner menu's from the Emperor Clintonius days.

I'm hoping James Woolsey visits Charlie Rose soon.
Thats going to be a good show.

I have always liked Woolsey. Clinton met with him twice, then replaced him with Deutch who compromised 17,000 files.

Weldon has been very good in tracking Russia and China, and doesn't suffer fools.

Speaking of the CIA, Robert Baer in See No Evil marks how the agency has never recovered from Carter's DCI Stansfield Turner firing 820 case officers Halloween 1977.

Baer was on the trail of the IJO (term of art for Iran) bomber responsible for the 1983 Beirut Embassy bombing when he found himself back in DC facing FBI and Tony Lake re a trumped up assassination charge vis-a-vis Saddam.

Reading Corsi Atomic Iran and have no doubt they are stalling for time in order to test and display--and that we now approve a third term for al Baradei is criminal.

Perhaps Goss can do better, but he didn't have much to say when his COS Millis sucked a shotgun in the Breezeway Motel bathtub after calling Clinton the worst president for counterintelligence and Deutch the worst DCI ditto.

Baer says we still lack humint and it shows.

Besides which the agency is overrun with panda huggers and Clinton moles out to subvert 43.

With Iran's nuclear dawn and our wide open border with Mexico God help us.

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