Jonathan Schwarz was nice enough to email me about this over the weekend, but I wanted to hold onto it until today so it wouldn’t get lost in the holiday shuffle.
Here’s the deal, Peter Eiser’s and Knut Royce’s new book, The Italian Letter, includes some discussion on Alan Foley, the head of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence Non-Proliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC). Given his position, Foley was right at the heart of the intelligence about Saddam Hussein’s non-existent weapons of mass destruction.
As Jonathan noted, Foley shares some fascinating insights.
There were strong indications that Foley all along was toeing a line he did not believe. Several days after Bush’s State of the Union speech, Foley briefed student officers at the National Defense University at Fort McNair in Washington, DC. After the briefing, Melvin Goodman, who had retired from the CIA and was then on the university’s faculty, brought Foley into the secure communications area of the Fort McNair compound. Goodman thanked Foley for addressing the students and asked him what weapons of mass destruction he believed would be found after the invasion. “Not much, if anything,” Goodman recalled that Foley responded. Foley declined to be interviewed for this book. […]
One day in December 2002, Foley called his senior production managers to his office. He had a clear message for the men and women who controlled the output of the center’s analysts: “If the president wants to go to war, our job is to find the intelligence to allow him to do so.” The directive was not quite an order to cook the books, but it was a strong suggestion that cherry-picking and slanting not only would be tolerated, but might even be rewarded.
What’s more, as Kevin noted, the information has been corroborated, with citations Jonathan includes in his post. “Maybe someone in Congress should take an interest in asking him a little more forcefully?” Kevin asks.
Good point. Waxman, send Foley an invitation and see what happens. It’s not a fishing expedition — he’s already acknowledged some potentially explosive news. Go ask him.