WaPo (2003) - Some Iraq Analysts Felt Pressure From Cheney Visits

[TomCADem]

Trump has been trying to justify his attacks on intelligence agencies with the idea that Dubya and Cheney were mislead into launching a war on Iraq. Of course, for folks who remember, a lot of the controversy behind the war was related to how Cheney was heavily pressuring Intelligence agencies to support the idea that Iraq had access to WMD. Remember Valeria Plane and Scooter Libby?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/06/05/some-iraq-analysts-felt-pressure-from-cheney-visits/4afb2009-20e7-4619-b40f-669c9d94dcf3/?utm_term=.b8957632813d

Vice President Cheney and his most senior aide made multiple trips to the CIA over the past year to question analysts studying Iraq's weapons programs and alleged links to al Qaeda, creating an environment in which some analysts felt they were being pressured to make their assessments fit with the Bush administration's policy objectives, according to senior intelligence officials.

With Cheney taking the lead in the administration last August in advocating military action against Iraq by claiming it had weapons of mass destruction, the visits by the vice president and his chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, "sent signals, intended or otherwise, that a certain output was desired from here," one senior agency official said yesterday.

Other agency officials said they were not influenced by the visits from the vice president's office, and some said they welcomed them. But the disclosure of Cheney's unusual hands-on role comes on the heels of mounting concern from intelligence officials and members of Congress that the administration may have exaggerated intelligence it received about Iraq to build a case for war.

While visits to CIA headquarters by a vice president are not unprecedented, they are unusual, according to intelligence officials. The exact number of trips by Cheney to the CIA could not be learned, but one agency official described them as "multiple." They were taken in addition to Cheney's regular attendance at President Bush's morning intelligence briefings and the special briefings the vice president receives when he is at an undisclosed location for security reasons.

[mr_lebowski]

1. Wow, Trump misleading the public? Now even about critical national security matters?

It's way past time to impeach the MF'er.

And yeah, I totally remember this story.

[SunSeeker]

2. Thank you. Trump is attempting to rewrite history.

The IC was not wrong about Iraq. They were forced to xhange their conclusions. And when they wouldn't, they were punished or their covert identities outed, like the traitorous Valerie Plame unmasking.

The IC failure is indeed instructive for today, but in exactly the opposite way that Trump is trying to use it. It instructs us that we need to listen to the IC, not force a political conclusion on them against their better judgments, like Cheney did.