Did Bush Get New Iran Intel Last Winter?
WASHINGTON - White House officials have now admitted that George W. Bush was told that the intelligence assessment on a covert Iranian nuclear programme might change last August, but they have avoided answering the question of when the president was first informed about the new intelligence that led to that revised assessment.
That evasion is necessary, it now appears, to conceal the fact that Bush likely knew about that intelligence as early as February or March 2007.
The White House evasions began on the day the ‘key judgments’ in the Iran National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) were released. At his Dec. 3 press conference, National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley was asked, ‘So was it recent weeks that this intelligence came in?’ Hadley answered, ‘What the intelligence community has said is in the last few months.’
In fact, no intelligence official had commented on when the crucial intelligence had been first obtained.
Then a journalist asked, ‘Steve, when was the first time the president was given the inkling of something? …Was this months ago, when the first information started to become available to intelligence agencies?’ This time Hadley responded, ‘You ought to go back to the intelligence community.’
The evidence now available strongly suggests, however, that Hadley dodged the question not because he did not know the answer, but because he did not wish to reveal that Bush had been informed about the new intelligence months before the August meeting with Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell.
The key development that altered the course of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iran, according to intelligence sources, was the defection of a senior official of the Iranian Ministry of Defence, Ali Reza Asgari, on a visit to Turkey last February, as widely reported in international news media in subsequent weeks. The Washington Post’s Dafna Linzer, citing a ’senior U.S. official’, reported on Mar. 8 that Asgari, who had been deputy minister of defence for eight years under the reformist President Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005, was already providing information to U.S. intelligence.
The senior official told Linzer, however, that Asgari was not being questioned about Iran’s nuclear programme, despite the fact that Asgari certainly had significant knowledge of policy decisions, if not technical details, of the nuclear programme. That incongruous denial that Asgari had anything to say about Iran’s nuclear programme suggested that the information being provided by Asgari on that subject was considered extraordinarily sensitive.
Intelligence officials have kept any reference to Asgari out of the discussion of the NIE. Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi has told IPS, however, that, according to intelligence sources, information provided by Asgari was indeed a ‘key component’ of the intelligence community’s conclusion that Iran ended its nuclear weapons-related work in 2003, although it was corroborated by other sources.
Giraldi says Asgari had been recruited by Turkish intelligence in 2003, and defected to Turkey after he had picked up indications that Iranian intelligence had become suspicious of him. Giraldi said his sources confirm press reports that Asgari came out with ‘bags of documents’. Intelligence officials have confirmed that papers on military discussions of the nuclear programme were part of the evidence that led the analysts to the new conclusion about the Iranian nuclear programme.
Equally important to the NIE’s conclusion, according to Giraldi, was the information provided by Asgari about the Iranian defence communications system that allowed U.S. intelligence to gain new access to sensitive communications within the Iranian military. That was a crucial to the intercepted electronic communications which also played a role in the analysis that led to the estimate’s conclusion.
Gary Sick, who was the principal White House aide on Iran during the Carter administration and is now a senior research scholar at the Middle East Institute of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, says he believes Asgari’s knowledge of the debate in Tehran’s defence establishment also may have allowed the intelligence community to identify which intercepted communications were most important.
‘There are zillions of pieces of evidence, and what you look for is defined by what you know,’ says Sick. ‘What Asgari gave them was a new way of looking at the evidence.’
There are other indications that, by April 2007, the intelligence community was already intensively reviewing new evidence provided by Asgari and old evidence that the new information suggested could corroborate it. Thomas Fingar, chair of the National Intelligence Council, who was directing the whole NIE process, gave an exclusive interview to NPR’s Mary Louis Kelly on Apr. 27 in which he dropped hints of the new phase of the NIE process.
Fingar referred to ’some new information we have’ and declared, ‘We are serious about reexamining old evidence…’ Fingar even said that the estimated time frame for Iran’s obtaining a nuclear weapon ‘might change’, because ‘we are being completely open-minded and taking a fresh look at the subject’.
It now seems clear that these were references to the search for corroboration of the basic intelligence obtained from Asgari about the Iranian nuclear programme. But Fingar misled listeners about the direction of the intelligence community’s investigation by seeming to suggest that advances in Iranian uranium enrichment announced earlier that month might cause analysts to shorten the minimum time frame within which Iran might have sufficient fissile material for a bomb.
Fingar said the evidence that Iran was beginning to enrich on an ‘industrial scale’ was ‘one of the questions we have got to weigh the new information to see what it does to our judgment’. He also referred to International Atomic Energy Agency reports on the Iranian programme, allowing listeners to infer that that the delay in the NIE was due to new evidence that would lead to a more alarmist estimate on Iran’s nuclear programme.
The Fingar interview suggests that the process of seeking corroboration of the 2003 change in nuclear policy in Iran was already well underway in April.
The intelligence on the Iranian nuclear programme obtained as a result of the U.S. debriefing of Asgari, however, would have been made available to Bush as soon as it was evaluated as important by the intelligence officials. The debriefing of a high-ranking defector represents very important intelligence, and summaries of the most important information from such a debriefing would normally go into the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB), the summary of key intelligence developments that is prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency each night and given to the White House the first thing the next morning.
‘It is inconceivable to me that the PDB did not included whatever information Asgari gave us on the nuclear programme,’ says Ray McGovern, a 26-year veteran of CIA who once presented the daily briefing to Richard Nixon. Furthermore, every major new development in the collection of intelligence obtained as a result of Asgari’s debriefings would have been included in the PDB, according to McGovern.
Contrary to Hadley’s suggestion that he didn’t know when Bush had first gotten the new intelligence, moreover, McGovern points out that the national security adviser has gotten the same PDB as the president for decades. The former CIA analyst told IPS that Hadley certainly would have known when the new intelligence regarding the covert Iranian nuclear weapons programme was presented to the president.
Gareth Porter is an historian and national security policy analyst. His latest book, “Perils of Dominance: Imbalance of Power and the Road to War in Vietnam“, was published in June 2005.
© 2007 Inter Press Service
treason’s a bitch.
…and wexlerwantshearings.com
please sign the petition to help get this ball rolling.
That’s exactly how I feel about it CELEBRITY.
Bush has been a lying, cynical sociopath since before his first term. It’s way past time Congress to start impeachment proceedings. Had the Dims actually ever been an opposition party over a million needless deaths could have been avoided.
Impeach? Seen any pigs flying around lately?
The expression in the photo says it all…I don’t give a damn what you think, I’m the king and I’ll do what I want, (unless uncle dick(head) tells me not to).
Edward1793,
I was about to say the same thing. Look at that photo… what an arrogant bastard!
This is a country based on slavery and the genocide of Native Americans. We take what we want and what we need. From Mexico, from China, from Viet-Nam. Manifest Destiny indeed. Now we need more oil. Hillary realizes this as readily as the Bush and Cheney clan. What are the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis or Iranians when we want the oil? Take a deep breath, America. You are about to descend into black, cold water. And, poor babies, your joke writers are on strike. How will you survive? The arrogant bastard in the photograph would never have been president if Americans had paid attention. It is a slothful, arrogant, generally inebriated country. About to submerge.
We have a theocratic state with nuclear weapons. The theology is desert, tribal, based on a vengeful god. They consider themselves the chosen people. They have shown themselves to be irrational and bellicose. A danger to their neighbors. Israel. Why are we sending them billions?
Great photo, “Yea? so? whata yous gunno do bout it?”
Bush has NEVER HAD ANY INTELLIGENCE…that’s why he has that stupid look on his face.
So How much more thoroughly must we document the criminal activity and murderous intent of these contemptuous thugs?
Day after day the laundry list of atrocities grows ever longer.
Every day we wring our hands at each new outrage.
Jaded Prole,
From all indications, “Bush has been a lying, cynical sociopath since before” he graduated from Andover. It was just the corporate media that made him ever to appear to be anything else.
And guess who owns the corporate media?
Me, I don’t even give bush the credit of knowing what the NIE is or says.
He looks like a guy that is told what to do by his bosses, and then has to answer questions, when he has no idea what the truth is, so, he wings it.
His expression says to me “You people know better than I do, what can I say, I’m in the middle here.”
Besides, focusing on Bush narrows the breadth of critical vision, he’s a patsy. He is up there because he is easily manipulated. He has no ideas of his own. From power’s point of view he’s a perfect president.
So what if he’s a liar, that doesn’t make him special, that’s part of the job description aint it? Besides that makes him like the majority of Americans as far as I can tell (present company excluded).
That said, I am all for prosecuting his negligent ass plausible deniability be damned. and post date that conviction all the way back to the original G.W burner of villages.
Looks like he’s been practicing the big man behind the scenes Bill Crystal look as well as the Cheney snarl.
There is nothing President Bush takes more pride in than his ability to fool people into thinking he’s stupid; nothing thrills him more than to see deliberate vicious acts written off to incompetence; and he doesn’t care if you do it with him or one of his adversaries; listening to people saying, “he’s such an idiot” while the idiot leads them to their deaths, makes him smile every time; he loves it; every time you do it, you make his day.
Good grief…
Yeah, and the lobsters don’t feel anything when you drop them in the water.
Did Bush Get New Iran Intel Last Winter? Would it matter? Just when has new information, or any information for that matter, made any difference to bush policy? Policy is policy. Facts are convenient only if they fit the policy; otherwise, facts are simply ignored.
shrub is acting much dumber than his otherwise obvious incompetence
He needs to be impeached, removed, and hauled into Federal and then International Court.
Crimes are crimes.
Anyone who talks about “carrots and sticks” in dealing with Iran demonstrates an affection for facile catch words and a one-half understanding of these people. That would be George W. Bush and Hillary R. Clinton along with many others, especially talking heads or talking-some-other-part-of-the-anatomy.
If these sheeple had carefully read the books
“Yellow Ribbon” by Bruce Laingen and “The Iranians” by Sandra Mackey they would know better. Laingen of course was head of the American diplomats held for so long in Tehran during the Carter Administration.
If Hillary Clinton wants to be president she must show more depth than this. She must be independent, reflective and more thoughtful
than her husband is, drawing more on presumed education and intellect. Just to stay even with Obama she will have to do this, I believe. The centrist John Edwards with his concern for poor people and the most different of all Dennis Kucinich with best record for wise decisions are formidable opponents, too.
But the political game is more of a bore today than ever in our history, with every candidate on all sides reading from their resume every time they open their mouth. It’s time to behave less predictably by ceasing the superficiality.
Google “characteristics of a psychopath” and you’ll find 12 psychopathic profiles. Virtually all apply to Bush, especially Number 7:
“7. The Charismatic Leader manipulates others to obtain status, control, compliance, money, attention. His effective brainwashing tactics often [are] found in religious cults or political venues. He targets the naive, vulnerable, uneducated or mentally weak. He falsely portrays himself to be virtuous, the perfect father, husband, spiritual leader, advisor, mentor, friend.
Defense Strategy: Avoid him. Know his payoff is attention, money or controlling us. Be suspicious of excessive charisma emanating from others. Pay attention when your gut instinct tells you to avoid him.”
Avoid Bush? Impossible. Impeach him? Better than waiting out the next 13 months. The dilemma: Most in the House are corrupt and the rest are eunuchs.
Still…
“All that is essential for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing”.
–Edmunde Burke
“The evidence now available strongly suggests, however, that Hadley dodged the question not because he did not know the answer, but because he did not wish to reveal that Bush had been informed about the new intelligence months before the August meeting with Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell.”
“The intelligence on the Iranian nuclear programme obtained as a result of the U.S. debriefing of Asgari, however, would have been made available to Bush as soon as it was evaluated as important by the intelligence officials. The debriefing of a high-ranking defector represents very important intelligence, and summaries of the most important information from such a debriefing would normally go into the Presidential Daily Brief (PDB), the summary of key intelligence developments that is prepared by the Central Intelligence Agency each night and given to the White House the first thing the next morning.”
Get it?
He knew.
We didn’t know; but, he knew.
WW 3; but, he knew.
Next time you see Bush coming up to a speaking podium notice what he does every time just before he reaches it—puts on this weary, annoyed, “oh this democracy crap again” face that shows all of his complete boredom and contempt for the very idea of answering to anybody except his paired gargoyles of parents….The picture herewith catches it very well. GOD is this fuckin’ lunatic’s reign of t/error EVER going to end?
I have a feeling that I could construct a candidate out of the contents of my cat’s litter box, and it would govern better than this maggot. In fact, I would probably be a better leader than any of the candidates in the race now, save Kucinich, of course.
I don’t know, AnguselheimStudios; you might be the best; bar none.
Have been thinking lately that Bush is the perfect mirror for the US population. In many respects we should be profoundly grateful–he reflects back for all to see those ignoble traits that we as a nation thought we could not possibly possess. He is the embodiement of our communal addictions—- to consumerism, status, wealth, waste, junk, ignorance, self-disception, celebrity.
Small wonder we have an addict for a President, full of self, full of denial, full of fear, full of sh*t. He is US personified. Take a look at this perfect mirror.
Now we can no longer pretend we are the good guys, the envy of the rest of the world, the exceptions to the rule. George Bush has exposed US to ourselves and we should all take a good hard look at why he is so dispicable, because what makes him so, makes all of us so. He is not OTHER than US, and to pretend that he is, is to engage in our own arrogant collective denial.
We can change, we must change, for we can clearly see the criminality in the one who leads us, but it surely represents our collective crimes.
If we embrace truth and caring, acknowledge the potential for good and evil that is in each of us, and choose the good, the lies and crimes that led us here will be nothing more than lessons learned.
(Mirror mirror on the wall who’s the star I see reflected in your sea of glass?)
dreamertoo,i doubt that bush casts any reflection in the mirror,reflection has never been his strong point…he is much better at sticking a live firecracker up a frogs butt and to this day, always gets about the same results…….
I like the photo choice also. Caption:
“Whaddya want? I should be honest? I got what I got. We’re all in this ride ta-getha.”
Sorry about that being again a bit redundant in parts, but we have limited time for editing.
Another story that reporters should place more focus on is the following.
“French journalist investigated over intelligence leaks regarding 9/11 attacks”,
by Committee to Protect Journalists, CPJ.org, Dec 17 2007, originally Dec 10th,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7638
The photo’s fitting alright, for Bush, but then he’s an idiot and neither he nor Cheney are the real rulers; although we all know or certainly can know that Cheney has more clout than Bush does.
Yet the photo’s more of the usual kind of Bush; nothing novel about him. He either has no brain, or is missing most of both halves, and I guess it must be the latter, given that he does talk on his own; stupidly, but still on his own.
Question is whether it’s the Chinese, Israelis or Saudis really in charge. Whoever is the highest bidder, perhaps?
He’s the type of person who would instigate a fight in a bar.
If he had someone there to do the fighting for him.
War criminal. I would love to see him spend the rest of his life in a cold cement cell with nothing but a shoelace to keep him company… well that and the sociopathic chatter of the others in nearby cells: Cheney, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Bolton, Colin, Bremer, Condi, and those in Congress who gave away their consitutional duties, such as Hillary and company.
Aren’t you people tired of trashing the two assholes day in day out?
AmeriKKKa is the real threat to global peace
SALIA — It seems fair to me, as those two have been reaming ‘ol USA for ~ decade on a 24/7 basis.
I heard a rumor that they even got the Statue of Liberty down on all fours, and found a place for that pesky torch that was shinning too brightly and casting shadows (of their shadows) about (no more).
StaroftheSea
I agree with you.
He does represent us.
And the fact that we hate him implies we hate ourselves.
And people who hate themselves engage in self destructive behaviors.
And as a collective organism (the earth included) we are self destructing.
What could be even more unbearable when Bush leaves office is for his brother(or one of them) to steal the next election and for us to still have to look at his ugly parents. Horror of horrors, we just couldn’t stand for it. Right?
What other job in the world is better suited for a golden spooned spoiled brat than sitting around getting drunk {and don’t forget the coke} and reading a speech once in a while? Take a vacation whenever he gets bored watching TV. George didn’t even have to show up for the military during wartime… and then gets promoted at a record setting rate… anybody else would have been in Levinworth with hard time… Now the azzhole is king of the world… pretty much; with no accountability to be seen.
God MUST be on vacation.
He is if Bush is, ___ according to Bush.