Still Fixing the Intelligence and Facts

Top US/UK Intelligence Directors Still “Fixing the intelligence and facts around the policy.”
By Ray McGovern, Sept. 9, 2024

https://raymcgovern.com/2024/09/09/pushing-rosy-narratives-on-ukraine/

The article below, written in early 2005, sums up how it all went down, with a look ahead to how things could get even worse – as they now have with intelligence on Ukraine. “Sham Dunk” in the title is a play on a sports expression used by former CIA Director George Tenet. When asked by President Bush how strong the evidence was on WMD in Iraq, Tenet bragged it was a “Slam Dunk!” – that is, it was sure as when a tall basketball player stuffs a ball in the net from above.

 

Sham Dunk: Cooking Intelligence for the President (2005)
By Ray McGovern

Chapter 19 in “Neo-CONNED! Again: Hypocrisy, Lawlessness, and the Rape of Iraq”
Light in the Darkness Publications, IHS press, 2005
Introduction by Scott Ritter

Book Dedication:

Ad Deum Iusticiae (To the God of Justice)

To the thousands of Iraqi dead and wounded, to their families, and to the entire Nation at the cradle of civilization. And to the British and American widows and orphans whose dear ones have sacrificed on the altar of cynical statecraft.

And to Bush, Blair, Cheney, Perle, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the ideologues and hypocrites who have orchestrated the unjust and unnecessary war in Iraq. We implore God to have mercy on their souls for the ocean of innocent blood they have spilled in pursuit of their ambitions. 

Excerpt:

On May 1, 2005, a highly sensitive document published by The Sunday Times of London provided the smoking gun showing that President Bush had decided to make war on Iraq long before the National Intelligence Estimate was produced to conjure up “weapons of mass destruction” there and mislead Congress into granting authorization for war.The British document is classified “SECRET AND STRICTLY PERSONAL – U.K. EYES ONLY.” And small wonder. It contains an official account of Prime Minister Tony Blair’s meeting with top advisers on July 23, 2002, at which Sir Richard Dearlove, head of MI6 (the U.K. equivalent to the CIA) – simply “C” in the written document – reported on talks he had just held in Washington with top U.S. officials. (Blair has now acknowledged the authenticity of the document.)

As related in the document, Dearlove told Blair and the others that President Bush wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action, that this “was seen as inevitable,” and that the attack would be “justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD.” He continued: “…but the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” (emphasis added), and tacked on yet another telling comment: “There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath after military action.” British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw concurred that Bush had made up his mind to take military action, but noted that finding justification would be challenging, for “the case was thin.” Straw pointed out that Saddam was not threatening his neighbors, and his WMD capability was less than that of Libya, North Korea, or Iran.

As head of MI6, Dearlove was CIA Director George Tenet’s British counterpart. We Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) had been saying since January 2003 that the two intelligence chiefs’ marching orders were to “fix” the intelligence “around the policy.” It was a no-brainer. Seldom, however, does one acquire documentary evidence that this – the unforgivable sin in intelligence analysis – was used by the most senior government leaders as a way to “justify” a prior decision for war. …

 

Illustrative Stories on The Gaggle

Stories – illustrative ones – I tell on “The Gaggle”. Hunter’s laptop; dangers of a resuscitated Russiagate; Putin’s mocking “preference” re candidate; Stoltenberg & dementia; mini-nukes; Gaza; National Intelligence Director’s unenviable record on Ukraine.

When Will Sweden Learn

Will Sweden ever learn to stay out of Poltava? Its losses to Russia during the Sept 3 missile strike on Ukrainian training site there, while far less than Sweden’s defeat by Peter the Great at Poltava in 1709, are still embarrassing to NATOs newest member.

Proof Putin is Guilty?

PROOF PUTIN GUILTY OF SOWING PRE-ELECTION CONFUSION: AG Garland yesterday: Russian prefers Trump
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/watch-live-garland-expected-to-address-disinformation-election-threats-at-doj-meeting#:~:text=WASHINGTON%20%28AP%29%20—%20The%20Biden%20administration%20is%20preparing,p.m.%20EDT.%20Watch%20live%20in%20our%20player%20above

Putin today “As I said before, Biden was our guy; he asked supporters to back Harris. This is what we are doing; we will back her. https://tass.com/politics/1839047

Conditioning Americans for War With Russia

Russiagate is resuscitated despite the DNR order taped to the bed. AG Garland says Russia favors Trump; cites testimony by Nat’l Intel Director Avril Haines; yes, same Haines who claimed in late 2022 Russia would “quite quickly” run out of ammo in Ukraine.
Text:

RAY McGOVERN: Conditioning Americans for War With Russia

September 4, 2024

With new U.S. action today against Moscow, Russiagate remains like a vampire, with no one able to drive a wooden stake into its heart and keep it there.

By Ray McGovern

Special to Consortium News

As the drums beat louder and louder about alleged threats from Russia, the Biden administration today blew perilous new life into the debunked and disgraced Russiagate disinformation operation.

Russiagate seems too good of a weapon for the Democrats to give up. Its initial appearance, beginning in 2016, dangerously raised tensions with nuclear-armed Russia.  But in the midst of today’s escalating crisis in Ukraine, a Russiagate repeat recklessly raises danger to insane heights.

Here’s how The New York Times reported it today:

 

“The United States on Wednesday announced a broad effort to push back on Russian influence campaigns in the 2024 election, as it tries to curb the Kremlin’s use of state-run media and fake news sites to sway American voters.

 

The actions include sanctions, indictments and seizing of web domains that U.S. officials say the Kremlin uses to spread propaganda and disinformation about Ukraine, which Russia invaded more than two years ago.

 

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland detailed the actions taken by the Justice Department. They include the indictment of two Russian employees of RT, the state-owned broadcaster, who used a company in Tennessee to spread content, and the takedown of a Russian malign influence campaign known as Doppelgänger.

 

‘The American people are entitled to know when a foreign power engages in political activities or seeks to influence public discourse,’ Mr. Garland said. …

 

The State Department has offered a $10 million reward for information pertaining to foreign interference in an American election.”

 

Garland charged: “The Russian effort in this case is to affect the preferred outcome of the presidential election. … the Director of National Intelligence has testified that Russia’s preferences have not changed from the preceding election.” [Emphasis added.

CNN’s Breaking News alert dredged up thoroughly disproven myths of “Russia’s 2016 activity, which included hacking the Democratic National Committee and leaking documents aimed at undercutting Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.”

The Lie That Won’t Die

Most Americans (not attentive readers of Consortium News) will believe this recycled drivel from top Justice Department and F.B.I. officials, whose predecessors promoted the same gambit.

As we pointed out four weeks ago in “Decay, Decrepitude, Deceit in Journalism,” thanks to Establishment media, Russiagate continues to survive “like a science fiction monster resilient to bullets.” This, even though the $32 million Robert Mueller investigation found no conspiracy between Russia and the Trump campaign — a main plank in the Russiagate tale.

The other main plank, that Russia hacked Democratic National Committee computers, was also debunked, as we shall get to shortly.

The government’s actions today were preceded by more Russiagate drivel last Saturday from a repeat offender, Michael Isikoff (via Spy Talk). This time around, Russiagate is consequential drivel as it helps grease the skids for war.

In 2017 Isikoff wrote (with David Corn) Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump —  “how American democracy was hacked by Moscow to help Trump” (Amazon); a “most thorough and riveting account” (The New York Times).

It was all, as the British say, bollocks! In fact, a year after the “riveting” book came out, Isikoff had to admit publicly that the “Steele Dossier” and infamous “pee-tape” were “likely false.” He confessed during an interview on Dec. 15, 2018, (with an unsuspecting — and somewhat shocked) admirer.

[See: Michael Isikoff Cuts His Losses at ‘Russian Roulette’]

The Timing of Isikoff’s Confession

I wondered why Isikoff volunteered his confession at the time (I had thought prematurely). Perhaps there is a clue in what follows:

On Dec. 5, 2017, the House Intelligence Committee took closed-door sworn testimony from Shawn Henry, a top official of the cyber security firm CrowdStrike hired by the F.B.I. to do the forensics on the Democratic National Committee computers.

Henry testified, we only found out years later, that there was no technical evidence that those DNC emails, which were so embarrassing to Mrs. Clinton when published by WikiLeaks, had been hacked, by Russia or by anyone else.

Did someone privy to that testimony tip Isikoff off, so that he could do a pre-emptive “modified, limited hangout” just 10 days later?

Wait! You did not know about Henry’s sworn testimony? Here’s why. Adam Schiff, then chair of the House Intelligence Committee, and the Establishment media have been able to keep that testimony hidden from nearly everyone for almost seven years.

The indignities do not cease. The C.I.A. analyst who wrote the first draft of the meretricious “Intelligence Community Assessment” of Jan. 6, 2017, which was used far and wide to “prove” Russian hacking of the DNC and other offensives, is bragging about the role he played.

Now retired, Michael van Landingham has told his story to Rolling Stone. We dissected it in our last piece.

The unrepentant Isikoff, just a few months ago, in Jeff Stein’s SpyTalk pushed the (now thoroughly discredited) claim that Russia hacked the DNC emails.

To remind one: those emails showed that, because of DNC and Clinton campaign machinations, Bernie Sanders had as much chance of becoming the 2016 Democratic Party nominee as the proverbial snowball in hell.

The Vampire

“Russian hacking the DNC” is like a vampire, with no one able to drive a wooden stake into its heart and keep it there. President Barack Obama himself knew it was phony, yet he expelled 35 Russian diplomats for hacking and other alleged meddling in the 2016 election.

Is Isikoff’s latest redux in SpyTalk a harbinger of more Russophobic brainwashing as National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan and Secretary of State Antony Blinken prepare a response to Russia prevailing in Ukraine?

In the piece, Isikoff peddles the dangerous fantasy that Russia is threatening Europe beyond Ukraine, while at the same time saying Russia can’t even win in the Ukrainian “stalemate.”  Isikoff does this in an interview with John Sullivan, a former U.S. envoy to Moscow, who’s just published a new book about his time in the Russian capital.

He says: ’’This is all about Russian aggression,’ Sullivan continued. ‘It happens to be directed at Ukraine, which is why the point of the spear is sticking into Ukraine, but it won’t end there. And I draw the analogies, many analogies in the book, to the Second World War and the start of the war in the 1930s and the late 30s.’”

Former President Donald Trump’s spokeswoman Kellyanne Conway coined the expression “alternative facts.” With folks like Isikoff and van Landingham back in the saddle — and outlets like Spy Talk and Rolling Stone willing to promote them — expect as many “alternative facts” from Donkeys as from Elephants.

What is important to bear in mind is that the “alternative facts” about Russia are more dangerous by far, given the extremely high tension between Washington and Moscow.

— Joe Lauria contributed to this story.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27 years as a CIA analyst included leading the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and conducting the morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief. In retirement he co-founded Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).