- Assess the significance of an Islamic financial system parallel to the international financial system. Include an analysis of the legitimate practices of zakat and hawala as potential sources of terrorist finance.
600 words, use sources posted
2. Compare and contrast organized criminal organizations and international terrorist organizations in terms of ideological drivers and overall objectives. Why are these distinctions significant?
600 words, use sources posted
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Naval War College
joshua.rovner@usnwc.edu
DRAFT: August 2011
Abstract
British and American intelligence agencies produced bad estimates of Iraqi capabilities before
the war in 2003. Why? Official postwar inquiries concluded that intelligence analysts fell
victim to a series of familiar pitfalls that caused them to draw false inferences from limited
information. Others blamed policymakers in London and Washington for pressuring intelligence
officials to exaggerate the threat. Both arguments are half-right. Analysts certainly began with
incorrect but plausible assumptions of Iraqi capabilities, meaning that their estimates were
always likely to conclude that Iraq possessed at least some latent unconventional capabilities.
Subsequent policy pressure, however, caused intelligence officials to lean toward worst-case
scenarios and stifle dissenting views. The politicization of intelligence also inhibited
reassessment in the months before the war, despite new information from UN weapons
inspectors that conflicted with standing estimates. This paper explores the evolution of British
and American assessments and the pattern of intelligence-policy relations in both countries. It
also explains why it is often impossible to understand the content of threat assessments without
understanding the political context in which they are written.
This paper is adapted from chapter 7 of Fixing the Facts: National Security and the Politics of Intelligence (Ithaca,
NY: Cornell University Press, 2011). Prepared for the Annual Convention of the American Political Science
Association, Seattle, WA, September 2011. The views expressed here are solely those of the author. They do not
necessarily represent the views of the Naval War College, the US Navy, or the Department of Defense.
On March 17, 2002, an American satellite captured images of a white tanker truck at the
Al Musayyib Chemical Complex southeast of Baghdad. Some imagery analysts believed that
the truck was a chemical decontamination vehicle, and concluded that increased activity around
Al Musayyib was a sign that Iraq was trying to move and hide chemical weapons (CW). Others
were skeptical about drawing firm conclusions from data that was open to simpler explanations.
As one dissenting analyst from the State Department?s Bureau of Intelligence and Research
(INR) pointed out, “Some of the same hazards exist with conventional munitions as they do for
CW munitions, so you need a fire safety truck.” Throughout the spring and summer analysts
argued over what the imagery meant, and there is little evidence that they resolved the debate. In
October, however, a National Intelligence Estimate confidently declared that Iraq was actively
producing chemical weapons and already possessed 100-500 tons of chemical agent. This was a
significant jump from previous estimates, none of which had claimed that Iraq had more than
100 tons in storage. Intelligence officials later admitted that the upward revision was based in
large part on suspicious activity around chemical plants, and Secretary of State Colin Powell
used imagery of Al Musayyib in his UN presentation of the case against Iraq shortly before the
war.
1
A similar story played out on the other side of the Atlantic. On August 30, the British
Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) issued a startling report from a senior Iraqi military source: Iraq
could prepare chemical and biological munitions for use in no more than 45 minutes.2
This was
1 Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq, July 9, 2004, pp. 195-204; http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/iraq.html. Hereafter
the SSCI Report. INR analyst quoted at pp. 199-200. For Powell?s presentation, see his Remarks to the United
Nations Security Council, “Iraq: Failing to Disarm,” February 5, 2003; www.state.gov/p/nea/disarm/
2
Peter Gill, “Intelligence Oversight Since 9/11: Information Control and the Invasion of Iraq,” paper presented at
the “Making Intelligence Accountable” workshop in Oslo, Norway, September 19, 2003, p. 10; www.dcaf.ch; and
House of Commons Intelligence and Security Committee. Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction – Intelligence and
Assessments (London: The Stationary Office, 2003), paragraphs 49-51.
worrying news. It suggested that Iraq had available stockpiles of unconventional weapons as
well as ready plans to use them. The report was not yet corroborated, however, and new
intelligence on munitions was typically sent to specialists in the Defense Intelligence Service for
review. In this case the specialists were not consulted, for reasons that remain unclear.
Nonetheless, on September 9 the Joint Intelligence Council (JIC) assessed that “chemical and
biological munitions could be with military units and ready for firing within 20-45 minutes.”3
Three days later the director of SIS briefed the prime minister on the new report, and two weeks
after the briefing it was declassified and released as part of the government?s public dossier on
the Iraq threat.4
In a matter of weeks a piece of raw, uncorroborated hearsay was published by
the government to justify a major shift in policy.
According to postwar inquiries in both countries, these episodes were illustrations of
analysis gone wrong under conditions of limited information and tight time-constraints.
Investigations by the U.S. Senate and a special presidential commission concluded that
intelligence agencies fell into a series of analytical traps that caused them to exaggerate the
implications of new data. They might also have fallen victim to what psychologists call
confirmation bias: the tendency to validate information, however tenuous, that confirms
preexisting views while discounting information that cuts in the other direction. British
investigations found that analysts leaned towards worst-case scenarios because their biggest
concern was underestimating the threat, and in cases like the 45-minute claim, they failed to
3 Gill, “Intelligence Oversight,” p. 10.
4 Report of a Committee of Privy Counselors, Review of Intelligence on Weapons of Mass Destruction (London: The
Stationary Office, 2004), p. 139. Hereafter the Butler Report. Philip Davies argues that the exclusion of DIS
analysts stemmed from the long-term weakening of the requirements section in SIS, which was traditionally
responsible for processing raw intelligence. Although the decline of the requirements section is cause for concern,
the DIS analysts were still regularly employed to assess new information on foreign military activities. Moreover,
this was a critical piece of intelligence, and it is unlikely that it would have fallen through the cracks as a result of a
long-term institutional trend. Philip H.J. Davies, “A Critical Look at Britain?s Spy Machinery: Collection and
Analysis on Iraq,” Studies in Intelligence, Vol. 49, No. 4 (2005), pp. 47-48.4
properly vet new information. Whether psychological biases or bureaucratic sloppiness were to
blame for these analytical failures, the result was that policymakers were ill-served by
intelligence.
Or was it the other way around? Did policymakers intentionally manipulate intelligence
in order to generate convenient estimates that supported the case for war? Did American and
British leaders bully intelligence agencies who would have concluded that Iraq did not have
nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons capabilities? Some intelligence officials said as much
after the war. “Never have I seen the manipulation of intelligence that has played out since the
second President Bush took office,” recounted Tyler Drumheller, a high-ranking CIA official. “I
watched my staff being shot down in flames as they tried to put forward their view that Saddam
Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction.”5
Analysts noticed that their colleagues who
presented certain conclusions of the Iraqi threat were given preferential access to policymakers.
Leaders of the intelligence community also took note of pressure from the White House and
responded accordingly. Instead of rigorously protecting the integrity of intelligence estimates,
DCI George Tenet “fell into the beguiling trap that awaits any spymaster: White House
politics.”6 Critics of the British government have also accused it of corrupting intelligence by
turning the assessment process into a propaganda exercise. Its effort to enlist top intelligence
officials for the purpose of public advocacy also ruined the prospects for an independent and
objective estimate of the Iraq threat. Just like George Tenet, critics say, British intelligence
5 Tyler Drumheller with Elaine Monaghan, On the Brink: An Insider’s Account of How the White House
Compromised American Intelligence (New York, NY: Carroll and Graf, 2006), p. 4.
6 Loch K. Johnson, “Congress, the Iraq War, and the Failures of Intelligence Oversight,” in James F. Pfiffner and
Mark Phythian, eds., Intelligence and National Security Policymaking on Iraq: British and American Perspectives
(College Station, TX: Texas A&M University Press, 2008), pp. 172-190, at 181.
chiefs may have failed to protect the objectivity of the intelligence process after they “entered the
prime minister?s magic circle.”7
The existing evidence, however, does not support either general argument about the
intelligence failure before the war. The flawed estimates were not simply the result of bad
analysis. Nor were they simply the product of policy bullying. As I demonstrate below, the
interaction between faulty intelligence assumptions and political pressure led to conclusions that
went far beyond what was actually known about Iraq.
I make four claims. First, policymakers in both countries did attempt to manipulate
intelligence on Iraq, and their efforts changed the content and tone of key estimates on Iraqi
capabilities and intentions. Intelligence analysts already suspected Iraq of possessing some
unconventional weapons, and policy pressure encouraged those suspicions while discouraging
critical analysis. Second, the politicization of intelligence was a response to domestic politics.
When policymakers made controversial public commitments, they pressured intelligence
agencies to join the consensus on the nature of the Iraqi threat and the need for military action.
Third, policymakers used intelligence to oversell policy decisions by invoking the aura of
secrecy. They pretended that there was broad agreement in the intelligence community about the
magnitude of the threat, and suggested that weaknesses in the public case against Iraq were the
result of necessary classification rules. Fourth, the politicization of intelligence prevented any
7 Rodric Braithwaite, “Defending British Spies: The Uses and Abuses of Intelligence,” The World Today, Vol. 60,
No. 1 (January 2004), pp. 13-16, at 15. Although the Butler Report did not blame politicization for the major errors
of analysis in British estimates, it did recommend that the post of JIC chairman should be held by “someone with
experience dealing with Ministers in a very senior role, and who is demonstrably beyond influence.” This suggested
that the previous chairman had not been beyond influence and that some kind of politicization had occurred. When
asked about the logical gap between the report?s conclusions and this recommendation, Lord Butler explained that
the committee did not want to veer from its mandate by addressing the policy process before the war. This is
understandable, but it also throws doubt on the committee?s discussion of intelligence-policy relations. See Butler
Report, p. 144; and Mark Phythian, “Flawed Intelligence, Limited Oversight: Official Inquiries into Prewar UK
Intelligence on Iraq,” in Pfiffner and Phythian, eds., Intelligence and National Security Policymaking on Iraq, pp.
191-210, at 203-204. 6
serious reassessment of standing estimates, even after a new round of international inspections
failed to discover any evidence of chemical, biological, or nuclear capabilities in the months
before the war. In short, the flawed intelligence estimates on Iraq were caused by a complete
collapse in intelligence-policy relations. Analysts began with plausible but erroneous
assumptions about Iraqi capabilities and intentions. Policy pressure subsequently encouraged
them to draw worst case scenarios based on these assumptions, while ignoring or stifling
dissenting views. The upshot was a series of estimates that presented certain conclusions about
the Iraqi threat, despite the weakness of the underlying information.
American Estimates and the Policy Response
Intelligence-policy relations in the United States fell into three phases before the war. In
the first phase, intelligence provided cautious estimates about Iraqi capabilities, noting the
thinness and unreliability of information. Policymakers were understandably skeptical about the
quality of intelligence and relied instead in their own assumptions about Iraq and beliefs about
the nature of the threat. The second phase began after the September 11 attacks and continued
until mid-2002. During this period policymakers asked intelligence agencies about possible
links between Iraq, unconventional weapons, and international terrorism. When they received
inconclusive answers, they went back to ignoring intelligence. The third phase began during the
summer, when bubbling antiwar sentiment led policymakers to worry that intelligence estimates
were going to play an important role in the public debate. At this point the White House stopped
ignoring intelligence and started pressuring it to toe the policy line.7
August 1998-September 2001. Intelligence on Iraq had two defining characteristics
before September 11. First, it was limited by a paucity of information. The regular reports of
UN weapons inspectors had provided the bulk of reliable information on Iraq during the 1990s,
but the inspectors left the country in 1998 on the eve of a four-day bombing campaign over
Baghdad and other suspected weapons sites. After the bombing stopped, analysts only had
sporadic access to sources inside the country, and were forced to rely on overhead imagery and
signals intelligence. Iraqi defectors offered lurid descriptions of Saddam?s burgeoning weapons
infrastructure, but these reports were treated cautiously because analysts knew that defectors
were motivated to exaggerate the threat. Second, intelligence was based on circumstantial
evidence. Lacking firsthand knowledge, analysts tried to piece together Iraqi capabilities by
looking at its procurement efforts. This task was especially difficult because Iraq regularly
imported dual-use materials that could be used for commercial or military applications.
Because of the dearth of information and the dual-use dilemma, intelligence estimates
were conservative in the months following the departure of the UN Special Commission
(UNSCOM). Analysts generally agreed that Saddam Hussein sought to rebuild Iraq?s chemical,
biological, and nuclear programs, but they did not believe that Iraq could achieve the industrial
scale production of banned weapons, especially as long as international sanctions remained in
place. The few remaining sources within Iraq gave differing accounts; for example, some
reported that the regime had continued with “low-level theoretical research” into chemical and
biological weapons while others were convinced that the program was completely “halted.”8
8 NIC, Current Iraqi WMD Capabilities, October 1998; quoted in The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities
of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States, March
31, 2005, p. 55; http://www.gpoaccess.gov/wmd/. Hereafter the WMD Report.
Jermaine Byrant
Nicole Johnson
OVER
RATING
YEARS
