Dirty Linen Gets Intel Chief Fired

The
Senate Intelligence Committee's investigation of how 23-year-old
Nigerian Umar
Farouk Abdulmutallab soiled his underpants with a makeshift bomb over
Detroit
last Christmas hung out so much dirty linen on the crowded clothes line
of the
U.S. intelligence community that it was an easy call to get rid of
Director of
National Intelligence, Dennis Blair.

The
Senate committee's findings released on Tuesday showed the community in
all-too-familiar disarray - adrift with no helmsman strong, savvy and
courageous enough to bang heads together to get the far-flung
intelligence
bureaucracies to cooperate. The report is a damning catalogue of
misfeasance
and mistakes.

Yet,
given recent precedent, with the intelligence community screwing up so
clearly
and regularly with no accountability, the Christmas Day fiasco and other
recent
misadventures might not have been enough to send Blair packing.

Rather,
the underpants-bomber fiasco should be seen as the proximate cause of
Blair's
abrupt departure - which came without so much as the de rigueur
thank-you to President Obama for "the privilege of
serving." Truth be told, the White House and the CIA have been out to
get Blair
for many months.

An
incompetent manager? Seems so. But Blair also demonstrated a strain of
integrity. And that can often be the kiss of death in Official
Washington.

On
substantive issues, like Iran's nuclear program, Blair did not show the
malleability that is desired by those who are out to zap Iran; I believe
it
likely that these get-Iran hawks helped to zap Blair.

Denied
His Own Staff

Last
year, the hawks also had their feathers ruffled by Blair's choice of
independent-minded former Ambassador Chas Freeman to be chair of the
National
Intelligence Council, without clearing this first with White House chief
of
staff Rahm Emanuel. The NIC has purview over the preparation of National
Intelligence Estimates and the President' Daily Brief - the two premier
intelligence publications.

Blair's
choice of Freeman raised the ire of Washington's still-influential
neoconservatives and their allies in the Obama administration because he
was
regarded as a "realist" on the Middle East, rather than someone who
would side
reflexively with Israel.

When
rumors began to circulate about Freeman's appointment, the neocons
unleashed a
media barrage, denouncing his criticism of Israel and his associations
with the
Saudi and Chinese governments. One influential column, entitled "Obama's Intelligence Blunder,"
was published Feb.
28 on the Washington Post's neocon-dominated op-ed page, written by Jon
Chait
of The New Republic, another important neocon journal.

Still,
on the morning of March 10, 2009, Blair described the high value that
Freeman
"will" bring to the job - "his long experience and inventive mind," for
example.

Enter
Sens. Chuck Schumer, D-New York, and Joe Lieberman, I-Connecticut who
simply
could not abide someone in that post with open respect for the rights
and
interests of both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. By five
o'clock
that afternoon, Freeman was told by Blair to announce that he (Freeman)
had
asked that his selection "not proceed."

To
his credit, Freeman went down swinging. He made it clear that he was
withdrawing his "previous acceptance" of Blair's invitation to chair the
NIC
because of the character assassination of him orchestrated by the Israel
Lobby.

Freeman
added: "The aim of this Lobby is control of the policy process through
the
exercise of a veto over the appointment of people who dispute the wisdom
of its
views ... and the exclusion of any and all options for decision by
Americans and
our government other than those it [the Lobby] favors."

Foreign
policy analyst Chris Nelson described the imbroglio as a reflection of
the
"deadly power game regarding what level of support for controversial
Israeli
government policies is a 'requirement' for U.S. public office."

Schumer
led Lobby boasting. "His [Freeman's] statements against Israel were way
over
the top," Schumer said. "I repeatedly urged the White House to reject
him, and
I am glad they did the right thing."

Though
the Freeman flap soon faded away, Blair had suffered a political hit and
had
made some powerful enemies.

I
recall the "morning after," as I found myself wondering when White House
chief
of staff Emanuel - who reportedly was Schumer's go-to guy on the
get-Freeman
campaign - saw fit to let Admiral Blair in on the little secret that no
way
could he have Freeman.

And
I wondered why Blair tucked tail, rather than quit in protest of having
his
choice for the nation's senior intelligence analyst blackballed. It is,
after
all, a position that is supposed to be about objectivity, giving the
President
unvarnished information, not ideologically favored spin.

A
Messy Structure

It
seems clear now that Admiral Blair was doomed to failure from the start,
as was
the bureaucratic superstructure built around the Director of National
Intelligence as a key reform that followed the twin intelligence
failures on
9/11 and Iraq's WMD.

The
DNI was given the supremely difficult task of ruling over the
intelligence
community, a responsibility previous invested in the Director of Central
Intelligence. The job was hard enough, but Blair was hampered further
because
he lacked the strong personal support of President Obama.

I
served under nine directors of central intelligence - several of them at
close
remove. Admiral Stansfield Turner, who was picked by his Naval Academy
classmate Jimmy Carter, was the only one who really grasped the reins of
the
entire intelligence community and made it cohere.

A
few years ago, as Adm. Turner and I sat together waiting to go into a TV
studio, I had a chance to ask him how he was able to do that. To the
best of my
recollection, this is what he told me:

"I
was in command of the Sixth Fleet cruising in the Med when I was tipped
off
that I was about to get a call from the president-elect. There had been
earlier
signs that Carter was going to ask me to be his Director of Central
Intelligence.

"Now,
Ray, when you know you're going to be made that kind of offer - one you
can't
really refuse - that's precisely the time when you need to think long
and hard
about how you might use what little bargaining power you may have at
that
point, in order to improve your chances for success in the new job. I
had about
ten minutes. Then the call came.

"Mr.
President-elect, I said, as a former naval officer you will be able to
appreciate this conundrum I see. The job is twofold. I would have no
trouble
running the CIA - I can run the Sixth Fleet; I can run the CIA.

"What
gives me pause is the equally important - maybe more important - job of
running
the entire intelligence community. As a military man I am very reluctant
to
accept responsibility for something over which I have only tenuous
authority.

"And
my experience with the intelligence community suggests that the fiefdoms
that
comprise it will not work together effectively, no matter what I say or
do,
UNLESS you make it clear that I have the authority derived from the
President,
commensurate with my responsibility in leading the entire community. If
you can
make that clear, I will accept the nomination with gusto."

Carter
said he would take care of it and shortly thereafter came a directive
from the
President-elect to heads of the main national security and intelligence
agencies and staffs. In it Carter announced he had selected Turner to be
his
DCI, that ALL addressees would cooperate fully with him as he harnesses
the
intelligence community behind the new administration's main objectives,
and
that he had instructed Turner to let him know immediately, should there
be any
sign that he was not getting the full and unfettered cooperation he
would need
as the chief intelligence adviser to the President. That did it, Turner
told
me.

Turner
was too modest to add what I had already learned as a lesson about his
tenure,
that an effective director of the intelligence community needs the
courage to
put noses out of joint. He should NOT adopt the "team player" mode that
so many
intelligence directors since Turner have succumbed to.

If
Turner was not getting full cooperation from, say, the FBI, he would
simply go
down to the White House and let President Carter and/or his advisers
know. The
attorney general and/or the FBI director would promptly receive the
necessary
remedial instructions.

Consummate
"Team Player"

Two
decades later, "team player" George Tenet (the team being George W.
Bush, Dick
Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld) stood this on its head. Nary a nose did
timid,
incurious George put out of joint.

But
Tenet, who had mastered the skills of serving his "principal" as a staff
aide
to Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman David Boren, was so well-liked
in
Washington that even the 9/11 Commission was reluctant to offer pointed
criticism of his gross misfeasance in his community role.

(At
one hearing, commissioner Jamie Gorelick fawned over Tenet, noting with
admiring wonderment what she said especially distinguished him; namely,
that
everyone in the Establishment simply called him "George," and all
automatically
knew to whom they were referring. Amazing!)

Instead
of affixing blame for 9/11, co-chair Lee Hamilton, Gorelick and others
kept
wringing their hands, complaining, "no one was in charge of the
intelligence
community." True enough, but that was by no means solely due to the
structural
anomaly that gave the DCI responsibility for managing both the agency
and the
entire intelligence community.

It
had much more to do with Tenet's reluctance to give the needed time and
attention to the rest of the community and make it work together.
George preferred to direct his gaze
upward, showing the bureaucratic skills he had learned as a Capitol Hill
aide,
ingratiating himself with the powerful and never putting them-or
himself-in an
uncomfortable situation.

You don't insinuate yourself into top jobs in Washington, or get to stay
in
them, by knocking important noses out of joint, no matter how badly such
disfigurement is needed. No one ever needed plastic surgery after an
encounter
with George Tenet.

On
July 22, 2004, the day the 9/11 report was released, I had been asked to
comment on it immediately at the BBC's studio in Washington. After
expressing
amazement at the report's bizarre bottom line, that the calamity seemed
to be
no one's fault, I emerged from the studio and promptly bumped into two
commissioners, Jamie Gorelick and Slade Gorton. They had been waiting on
deck
in the outer room.

Gorelick
went in first; I thought to myself, now's your chance, McGovern. I
approached
Gorton and said that I was bothered by the report's mantra that no one
is in
charge of the intelligence community and the commission's misguided
notion that
a new DNI superstructure should be placed atop it.

I
said that I was sure he was aware that, by statute, Director of Central
Intelligence George Tenet is supposed to be in charge of the community
and to
ensure that all agencies coordinate and cooperate. Gorton put his arm
around
me, as senior ex-senators are wont to do, and in an avuncular voice (as
if
explaining something pretty basic to a freshman), said: "Yes, of course I
know
that, Ray. But Tenet would not do it."

My
follow-up question was to be: So you all are advocating an entirely new
superstructure just because George Tenet "would not do it?"
Unfortunately, the
door opened, Gorelick walked out and Gorton escaped into the studio.

The
year 2004 was an election year and, in the wake of the 9/11 attacks and
the
commission report, members of Congress wished to be seen as doing
something -
anything. So, they moved to enact many of the 9/11 Commission's
"reforms."

By
then, the CIA and the just-resigned Tenet had been completely
discredited, not
only for failures prior to 9/11 but also for the unconscionable cooking
of
intelligence to justify war on Iraq.

Yet,
instead of focusing on individual responsibility for 9/11 and the
politicization of the CIA's analytical division - what might be called
cultural
failures - Congress found it easier to diagram a new bureaucracy.

Protests
from intelligence professionals were seen as self-serving. So, we got a
new
Director of National Intelligence ostensibly to preside over the whole
enchilada, but WITHOUT the kind of authority and support Carter gave
Turner.

Admirals
and Admirals

If
recent years have proved anything, it is this: there are admirals; and
then
there are admirals.

Admirals
in the mold of Stansfield Turner - like William (Fox) Fallon and Joint
Chiefs'
Chairman Mike Mullen - are one thing. They represent the tough
independence
that the Navy often requires of its senior officers.

Near
the end of the Bush administration, Fallon and Mullen deserved most of
the
credit for facing down Vice President Dick Cheney and persuading
President Bush
that war with Iran would not be a good idea and that Israel needed to be
told
exactly that - in no uncertain terms. That was just three years ago; war
was
pretty close.

Then
there are the admirals who know how to salute and avoid confrontations,
the
likes of Mike McConnell, who was snatched away from his sinecure as a
Booz-Allen & Hamilton marketeer to become the second director of
national
intelligence, apparently because he was judged to be incapable of doing
much
harm.

What
McConnell lacked in managerial knowhow, well, let me put it this way; he
in no
way made up for that lack by his substantive acumen. Three poignant
illustrative vignettes involving the hapless McConnell come to mind.

(1)
Testifying before the Senate, McConnell was asked to venture a guess as
to why
Israel might put forward a more alarming view of Iran's progress toward a
nuclear weapon than that of the U.S. intelligence community. He was at a
loss
for an answer.

(2)
At times McConnell would display his naivete by saying too much. The
subject of
torture came up in an interview McConnell gave Lawrence Wright of the
New
Yorker magazine. McConnell innocently told Wright that, for him:

"Waterboarding
would be excruciating. If I had water draining into my nose, oh God, I
just
can't imagine how painful! Whether it's torture by anybody else's
definition,
for me it would be torture."

Later,
McConnell let slip the rationale for the Bush administration's refusal
to admit
that waterboarding is torture. For anyone paying attention, that
rationale had
long been a no-brainer. But here is McConnell inadvertently articulating
it:

"If
it is ever determined to be torture, there will be a huge penalty to be
paid
for anyone engaging in it."

(3)
More damning was "Malleable Mike" McConnell's attempts to finesse the
key
judgments of the bombshell NIE of November 2007, which directly
contradicted
what Bush and Cheney had been saying about the imminence of a nuclear
threat
from Iran.

Facing
withering criticism from the likes of former Secretary of State Henry
Kissinger, former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger and the
irrepressible
former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton, McConnell backpedaled.

In
testimony to the Senate on Feb. 5, 2008, he confessed to careless
wording in
the NIE due to time constraints, and even indicated he "probably would
have
changed a thing or two."

Whereas
the NIE started out with a straightforward, "We judge with high
confidence that
in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program," McConnell
indicated
he would now prefer to say, for example, that "maybe even the least
significant
portion [of the Iranian nuclear program; i. e., the warhead] was halted
and
there are other parts that continue."

A
Mixed Bag

McConnell's
successor Blair was in no way a strong manager as DNI. And with an
increasingly
bloated staff tripping over one another, there was little hope that
Blair was
up to the job of taking hold of the intelligence community.

Nor
was there any sign that he ever thought to ask President Obama for the
necessary endorsement and support. Besides, Blair seems to have been an
innocent to the ways of Washington.

Anyone
could have told him there would be no percentage in locking horns with
CIA
Director Leon Panetta with the latter's longstanding political
connections in
this town and a CIA staff that has proven past master at political
infighting.

Worse
still, Blair let himself be used in a way no U.S. intelligence official
should
permit. Those in the Obama administration who think it's a good idea to
put
U.S. citizens on the CIA assassination list needed to send up a trial
balloon
to see if Congress and the media would look the other way.

And
so, in February, the White House inflated the balloon for Blair to float
at a
congressional hearing. He contended that there were certain
counterterrorism
cases that could involve killing an American citizen. There were very
few
objections from Official Washington.

Administration
officials have since cited secret evidence showing that the Yemen-based
Muslim
cleric Anwar al-Awlaki's connections to al-Qaeda have gone
"operational," thus
making him a target for killing even though he is a native-born American
citizen. The Bill of Rights be damned.

I
would wager Blair regrets letting himself be used like that. I have
independent
confirmation that during the Sixties at the Naval Academy the curriculum
included a block of instruction on the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

A
Saving Grace

There
is one substantive matter of considerable significance, on which Blair
did
muster the courage to stand up. He withstood intense pressure from those
wishing to exaggerate the danger that Iran could have a nuclear weapon
soon.

There
is no sign that whoever succeeds him will have the courage,
professionalism, or
gravitas needed to face down those in Congress and the administration
determined to exaggerate that threat, to the point where Israeli Prime
Minister
Benjamin Netanyahu could be emboldened to launch a "pre-emptive" attack
(the
term now in vogue for what the post-WWII Nuremberg Tribunal called a
"war of
aggression").

In
testimony before Congress early this year, Blair virtually wore out the
subjunctive mood in addressing Iran's possible plans for a nuclear
weapon. His
paragraphs were replete with dependent clauses, virtually all of them
beginning
with "if."

Blair
repeated verbatim the 2007 National Intelligence Estimate judgment that
Iran is
"keeping the option open to develop nuclear weapons," while also
repeating the
intelligence community's agnosticism on the $64 question: "We do not
know,
however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons."

Addressing
the uranium enrichment plant at Qom, Blair said its small size and
location
under a mountain "fit nicely with a strategy of keeping the option open
to
build a nuclear weapon at some future date, if Tehran ever decides to do
that."

Such
"advancements lead us to affirm our judgment from the 2007 NIE that Iran
is
technically capable of producing enough HEU [highly enriched uranium]
for a
weapon in the next few years, if it chooses to do so."

Notably
absent from Blair's testimony was the first "high confidence" judgment
of the
2007 NIE that "in fall 2003 Iran halted its nuclear weapons program,"
and the
"moderate confidence" assessment that Iran had not restarted it.

That
was the most controversial judgment in 2007. But Blair did not disavow
it. Nor
did he weasel on it, as McConnell did. He simply didn't mention it -
probably
in an attempt to let that sleeping dog lie. But now that
dog is waking up.

Possible
Revisions

A
"Memorandum to Holders" is intelligence jargon for updating a definitive
estimate, like the one from November 2007, with any necessary changes.
As has
been the custom in recent years, one regarding the Iranian nuclear
program has
been delayed and delayed again. The Washington Post says it is now due
in
August.

There
is no minimizing the importance of this update. It needs to be as honest
as the
earlier NIE, though that will take courage and clout.

In
this sense, I regret Blair's departure. For those now in charge are
relative
non-entities with, truth be told, sparse experience in intelligence work
and
little gravitas. It is doubtful they will be able to stand up against
the
mounting pressures to paint Iran in the most alarmist colors.

The
task is complicated by the recent tripartite Iran-Turkey-Brazil deal.
With
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her neocon friends and supporters
already trashing this viable initiative, it will take courage to point
out
clearly to the President the relative merits of allowing Iran to
transfer half
of its low enriched uranium to Turkey and then onward for further
processing.

Except
for the political pressures, not much courage should be needed. By any
objective measure, the relative merits should be pretty obvious, IF one
is
willing to recognize Israeli demands for what they are, as Turkey and
Brazil
made bold to do. (Where is Chas Freeman when we need him?)

Nominating
a Successor

According
to press reports, the leading candidate to succeed Dennis Blair is
retired Air
Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, whose record does not inspire confidence.
Clapper
has a well-deserved reputation for telling consumers of intelligence
what they
want to hear.

He
now serves as undersecretary of intelligence at the Defense Department,
working
for Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who was the chief bureaucrat
responsible
for politicizing U.S. intelligence in the 1980s as an apparatchik for
CIA
Director William Casey.

Some
of my colleagues in Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity have
the book
on Clapper, who served as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency
from 1991
to 1995. There, according to Larry Johnson, Clapper earned the
reputation of
"worst-ever DIA director."

Among
other things, he restructured DIA's analytical corps, removing an
analysis
capability that would have been an invaluable asset in the period before
9/11
and succeeding years. As a direct result, hundreds of the most
experienced
analysts took early retirement, and DIA has had to play catch-up ever
since to
reconstruct its analytic capability.

Retired
U.S. Army Col. Pat Lang, who held some of the most senior positions at
DIA,
told me Friday, "Clapper is a man who is just a walking mass of
ambition."

What
I find most damaging, though, is the fact that Clapper was head of the
National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency from 2001 to 2006. Defense Secretary
Donald
Rumsfeld chose well, for his purposes.

It
is abundantly clear that Clapper smothered any imagery analyst who had
he
temerity to suggest that, since there was not a trace of WMD in the
various
kinds of available imagery of Iraq, there might not be any WMD.

Clapper,
rather, was one to salute smartly. He subscribed enthusiastically to the
Rumsfeld dictum: "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."

Quick,
someone tell Barack Obama about Clapper before the President is led once
again
down the garden path.

This
article appeared first on
Consortiumnews.com.