In My Time - Dick Cheney [218]
But there were no stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction. That was the big news, and it came at the beginning of a presidential election year. The Democrats did not, apparently, want to admit that they too had accepted and relied on faulty intelligence. Instead they decided to blame us for “misleading” the country, for “lying” the nation into war. This was the most blatant hypocrisy, since they had seen the intelligence—and reached the same conclusions we had. When John Kerry accused the president of trafficking in “untruth,” he was guilty of exactly what he accused the president of doing.
One part of the attack was aimed specifically at me. It was said that I pressured CIA analysts so that they exaggerated the threat that Saddam represented. It wasn’t a charge that made any sense, since the judgments the CIA arrived at were essentially the same as those produced by the agency during the Clinton years. Intelligence services in other countries had also reached similar conclusions. It became something of a journalistic sport during my time in office to portray me as the all-powerful vice president, but not even the most aggressive versions of this story suggested that my influence reached to MI6 or BND, the British and German intelligence services.
The charge seemed to arise out of my visits to the CIA, which began with George Tenet and a few senior analysts briefing me and quickly expanded to include more junior regional or topic experts. We would sit around a conference table where Tenet or his deputy would introduce topics and analysts. I would then ask questions and the analysts could report on what they knew. I found these sessions immensely valuable, and I believe the analysts, who often work long hours in obscurity removed from policymakers, did as well.
The Robb-Silberman Commission and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence produced bipartisan reports on our intelligence failures regarding stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, and both concluded that there was no politicization of intelligence or inappropriate pressure from policymakers. The Robb-Silberman report urged, in fact, that “policymakers actively probe and question analysts.” I asked tough questions, no doubt about that. And I asked a lot of them. I pushed hard to get information that would help us develop policies that would ensure America wasn’t attacked again. If I had not been as thorough as I was, I would not have been fulfilling my obligations and responsibilities as a senior official. In light of subsequent revelations, such as the mistakes in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi WMD, I wish I’d been even tougher.
One line of questioning I pursued had to do with the relationship between al Qaeda and Saddam. It was important to know what the association was in the wake of 9/11, as many besides myself recognized. Senator Evan Bayh, in a closed hearing, parts of which were later made public, asked about Iraqi links to al Qaeda. George Tenet responded in a letter dated October 7, 2002, with a list that included these points:
• We have solid reporting of senior level contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda going back a decade.
• Credible information indicates that Iraq and al Qaeda have discussed safe haven and reciprocal non-aggression.
• Since Operation Enduring Freedom, we have solid evidence of the presence in Iraq of al Qaeda members, including some that have been in Baghdad.
• We have credible reporting that al Qaeda leaders sought contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire WMD capabilities. The reporting also stated that Iraq had provided training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.
Despite such statements coming from the agency’s highest levels, I’d find the CIA sometimes seemed hesitant to use the words al Qaeda and Iraq in the same sentence. In early 2003, for example, I received an intelligence