Nobody's perfect
Earlier this year, Jochen Bittner (of the German newsweekly Die Zeit) travelled to Stockholm to talk about the German intelligence agency BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) with Hans Blix. Given Germany's role in opposing the war, some might have expected warm words from the former chief U.N. arms inspector. But Blix was critical:

The BND, claims former chief weapons inspector Hans Blix, exaggerated the threat of Saddam's mass destruction arsenals just as all the other western intelligence services. The BND was also convinced that there were [biological and chemical] weapons, Blix reports. "I think they overinterpreted what they had." [...]

Blix explicitly includes the BND in the "debacle" of the intelligence services. He directs his chief criticism of all the intelligence services toward German agents as well: "There's a lack of critical thinking. Intelligence agencies know: they'll be punished if they fail to discover something. If they're too alarmist, on the other hand, they aren't punished. So they're inclined to be alarmist."

The BND's performance has significance for Americans, too: German intelligence played a key supporting role in at least one important intelligence miscue in the runup to the second Iraq war. An Iraqi defector, all too aptly codenamed "Curveball," was originally a 'product' of the BND, and was the source for the notorious -- and notoriously undiscovered -- bioweapons labs cited by Colin Powell in his UN speech. As the L.A. Times' Bob Drogin and Greg Miller reported ("Iraqi Defector's Tales Bolstered U.S. Case for War", March 28, 2004; $):

The Bush administration's prewar claims that Saddam Hussein had built a fleet of trucks and railroad cars to produce anthrax and other deadly germs were based chiefly on information from a now- discredited Iraqi defector code-named "Curveball," according to current and former intelligence officials.

U.S. officials never had direct access to the defector and didn't even know his real name until after the war. Instead, his story was provided by German agents, and his file was so thick with details that American officials thought it confirmed long-standing suspicions that the Iraqis had developed mobile germ factories to evade arms inspections.

The Germans eventually developed doubts about "Curveball":

One focus of the ongoing investigations is whether the CIA should have known Curveball was not credible. A former U.S. official who has reviewed the classified file said the BND warned the CIA last spring that it had "various problems with the source." Die Zeit, a German newsweekly, first reported the warning last August.

The official said the BND sent the warning after Powell first described the biowarfare trucks in detail to the U.N. Security Council on Feb. 5, 2003. It's unclear whether the German warning arrived before the war began on March 20 last year.

But any German qualms about "Curveball" couldn't have developed very long before the war: less than three months before Powell's U.N. speech, the BND was testifying before the Bundestag* that the mobile bioweapons labs existed. According to Thomas Klein-Brockhoff, also of Die Zeit:

On November 13, 2002, BND chief August Hanning informed the foreign affairs committee of the Bundestag (German Congress) about what he knew. He confirmed some American fears and added his own findings. According to him, the mobile bioweapons laboratories exist today. Individual parts were supplied by German companies -- declared as agricultural equipment. The [Iraqi] regime possesses unmanned drones with which to spray bio- or chemical weapons [German: "Kampfstoffe"] over wide areas. The BND estimates that Saddam Hussein is hoarding several hundred tons of [such weapons].
(emphases added)

Yet now it appears the BND and its supporters would prefer to forget it ever had such dire views. Jochen Bittner got this response to Blix's criticisms from one source "close to the German government":*

"Our estimate was that Saddam Hussein might still have remnants of biological and chemical weapons from the 1990s, but had lost the operational use of them because of the no-fly zones in [Iraq's] north and south," said a source close to the German government. Saddam was "militarily boxed in." In this situation he could hardly have systematically developed new weapons. German intelligence analysis was -- no different from American or British -- premised on the supposition that there may have been WMD development programs; the BND, however -- in contrast to the partner intelligence services -- emphasized that it had no evidence for the production of biological or chemical weapons. Iraq posed "no acute danger" to its neighbor states or the West.

By this account, then, German intelligence estimates after November of 2002 were reworded and downgraded from "several hundred hoarded tons" to "remnants"; from capability of spraying biological or chemical weapons "over wide areas" to "no acute danger"; and from "mobile bioweapons labs" to "could hardly have systematically developed new weapons."

While Bittner's anonymous source focuses on the BND's estimates of non-nuclear Iraqi WMD, the BND was once a key and seemingly credible source warning of Iraqi nuclear weapons developments as well. According to Reuven Pedatzur, an Israeli political scientist who writes extensively on nuclear arms issues in the Middle East, the BND was issuing grave warnings on that topic at least as late as February of 2002. In a February 27, 2002 Ha'aretz article "German intelligence and the Iraqi threat," Pedatzur wrote:

The most serious of the BND's assessments is the one predicting that Saddam will have nuclear weapons within three years. The Germans stress how little time remains to stop Iraq's nuclear armament program. [...]

This estimate was actually more specific than the controversial American 2002 National Intelligence Estimate: Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs which claimed "if left unchecked, Iraq probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade." Pedatzur reported other warnings by the BND as well:

The German intelligence experts say that by 2005, Iraq will have ballistic missiles capable of striking Western Europe. The knowledge and experience Iraq has acquired in developing missiles with a range of up to 150 kilometers - with the approval of the UN Security Council - will enable it to soon complete work on the development of missiles with a 3,000-km. range. The combination of a long-range missile and a nuclear warhead will turn Iraq into an immediate threat for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's member-states. [...]

To complete this grim picture, the report's authors estimate that the pace of producing chemical weapons in Iraq has increased significantly and that the Iraqis have the capacity for quickly resuming their manufacture of biological weapons.
(emphases added)

Again, these estimates were if anything more specific and alarming than those presented in the 2002 American NIE.** Yet they were presumably produced with the same "sensible balance" between human and technical intelligence sources that Wolbert Smidt, another source for Bittner's July article, somewhat smugly contrasts with American practice. Mr. Pedatzur, of course, has most of us at a disadvantage, since the German report he cites isn't available online anywhere that I'm aware of.*** I e-mailed him about it last year, but got no answer.

With twenty-twenty hindsight and revised intelligence estimates, the BND now appears to be correct that the danger of Iraqi WMD was remote. But at best, the BND was much too vocally alarmist before inspections began, and judging by Bittner's article, it appears unwilling to confront its own shortcomings now that it's clear that the Pullach agency had been quite wrong about Iraq.

But why should it? Nothing the BND said seems to have mattered to its own government anyway: its November 2003 warning about bioweapons labs, chilling to many in the United States, apparently made little difference to the SPD/Green government. Schroeder, of course, was fresh off an election that was basically won on the basis of opposing the looming Iraq war, after an increasingly shrill campaign that seems to have played exceptionally well in eastern Germany. But the alarm bells had been getting ignored for years by then anyway. Of course, maybe Schroeder and Fischer studied intelligence reports deep in to the night and concluded "Curveball" was phony before their own BND did. But probably not.

Mea culpas are flying right and left in the U.S. media about their coverage of intelligence on Iraq before the war; only today the Washington Post added its own to the list, recognizing it played skeptical stories below the fold or in the back pages, at best. It's easier for the German media: an intelligence agency whose dire warnings are ignored by its own government, and then turns out to be wrong, may only deserve listless coverage by the German media as a whole. This doesn't include Jochen Bittner, who is one of the more energetic reporters on the intelligence beat in Germany. (A translation of his article about U.N. inspectors' opinions of Schroeder and Chirac's pre-war politics was a well-visited post on this site a year and a half ago.) The problem is he's also one of the only reporters on the intelligence beat.

You'd think this would change. Germany wants a permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council. Yet if it's serious about that, it will presumably need an intelligence service to match its aspirations -- and both its government and its press will need to pay attention to that intelligence service's warnings and performance. That doesn't seem to be happening yet.


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* TRANSLATION NOTES: (1) Bundestag: the German Congress. (2) Bittner describes the source as "aus dem Umfeld" -- lit., "from the vicinity" or "surroundings" -- of the German federal government. "Close to" captures the ambiguity of that description fairly, I hope. EDIT, 9/7: "was the word from the Umfeld of" finally fully translated to "said a source close to" ("...the German government").
** From the NIE, 2002 summary, pp. 1-3: Baghdad has begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents ... Baghdad has established a large-scale, redundant, and concealed BW agent production capability, which includes mobile facilities; these facilities can evade detection, are highly survivable, and can exceed the production rates Iraq had prior to the Gulf war... Iraq is developing medium- range ballistic missile capabilities, largely through foreign assistance in building specialized facilities...
*** Annoyingly, the Ha'aretz archival article doesn't store the date, but this archived version does. This was not the first article by Pedatzur about BND estimates. In a 3/5/01 Ha'aretz article, "Learning to live with a nuclear Iraq," he reported on an earlier German analysis that also estimated it would take Saddam about three years to develop a nuclear weapon.

UPDATE, 8/13: Mr. Bittner has a blog, where he pointed out (on July 16) that "Curveball" was known to the U.S. as early as May 2000, and considered unreliable by at least one U.S. analyst who observed him badly hung over. Given the LA Times report cited above ("U.S. officials never had direct access to the defector and didn't even know his real name"), it's not clear from Bittner's short post whether the U.S. analyst knew the man in front of him was "Curveball," or whether that was deduced/revealed after the war began; the Senate report on Iraq WMD intelligence failures may clarify this. At any rate, "Curveball's" mobile weapons lab claims were apparently still good enough for the BND as late as November 13, 2003.
posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:09:00 AM -- |    

 
Greater Viet Nam Metropolitan Combat Area
Jack K, of Ruminate this, comments:*

...so let me see if I have this straight: what we are arguing about here is just exactly where in the greater Viet Nam Metropolitan Combat Area John Kerry [w]as getting shot at during Christmas of 1968 , and this is somehow a bigger deal that whether or not Gee Dub was even capable of completing the simple act of fulfilling a National Guard commitment in the warm, cozy safety of the United States...

That about sums it up. Me, I'll cheerfully spot the Bush campaign their guy's full-fledged participation in the Alabama Air National Guard, and just focus on comparing the best possible versions of both careers.

Desperate measures for (politically) desperate times, I guess. Exhibit B (also via SKB): the Sisyphus Shrugged blog notes this bit of effrontery by WorldNetDaily's James Farah, who asks, "Why would John McCain characterize the SWIFT Boat vets commercial about John Kerry as "dishonest and dishonorable"? (Oh, I don't know: honesty and honor? -- ed.) Farah clues us in:

While serving as a POW, McCain was one of the captives who agreed to be used for propaganda purposes by the enemy. In fact, some argue that an interview he gave to a communist publication – detailing an accident aboard his ship, problems with low morale among U.S. servicemen, the chain of command in the U.S. Navy and other pertinent information – went far beyond mere propaganda and crossed the line into disclosing military intelligence secrets.

Etcetera, etcetera, et shameless pathetic cetera. Headline it, "Worm Insults Man."

This will conclude coverage of the Swift Boat Veterans for "Truth" brouhaha at this site. For more, interested readers may consult the Center for American Progress' precis on the subject, Michael Tomasky's article for the American Prospect, or Kevin Drum's post. For a slightly wider perspective, have a look at the Mother Jones timeline for Kerry and Bush. Looks to me like one said "send me," and the other didn't; one got shot at, the other didn't.

While I'd really like to whole-heartedly agree with Matt Welch or Jeff Jarvis that this kind of stuff is a complete waste of time, I can't quite do that. It's not that discussing "character" is a waste of time, it's that these 30 year old events are nowhere near as germane as the central character issue facing us right now: Bush failing to take responsibility, over and over again, for the mistakes and misdeeds of his administration.

But Bush isn't the half of it, in a way. If otherwise decent, sensible Republicans were to spend one-tenth the effort they spend on Kerry's Cambodian whereabouts or Sandy Berger's socks on who sold them a bill of goods on Iraqi WMD, or let the Qaeda out of the bag at Tora Bora, or let uranium get looted from Iraq ... well, they might well be voting for Kerry in November themselves. Do these desperate fixations on trivial issues signal unease with the real ones?

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* ...about this Southknoxbubba post, about this bit of Instapundit derring-do... posted by Thomas Nephew at 11:40:00 PM -- |    

 
Various and sundry

On second thought, I deeply admire Hillary's destruction of federalism - Alan Keyes: "I deeply resent the destruction of federalism represented by Hillary Clinton's willingness go into a state she doesn't even live in and pretend to represent people there, so I certainly wouldn't imitate it." (Via Smijer)

More Marilyn Monroe - ...this time just on the phone chatting -- but she makes it sexy, ahead-of-her-times chatting all the same. (Via Jens Scholz)

Rivers in U.K. perkier, more optimistic - The BBC reports: "Traces of the antidepressant Prozac can be found in the nation’s drinking water, it has been revealed.
An Environment Agency report suggests so many people are taking the drug nowadays it is building up in rivers and groundwater. " Makes me wonder what all's in our water; probably Viagra, cocaine, and ritalin. No wonder the frogs are dying off. (Via Crooked Timber)

Duncan Black? Ho-hum - Amygdala exclusive: Fafnir sighted! claims Gary Farber. Sure you did, says a suddenly "chastened," cautious C.I.A. "Photographs by themselves prove nothing," sniffs Colin Powell in a "newsrack" exclusive. "We need solid, human intel on this or we'll continue to consider Fafnir to be a huge dragon we must deal with sooner or later."

It was all Chalabi's idea, I had nothing to do with it - Washington Post: Premier Warns Gunmen In Najaf: Arrest Warrants Issued For Chalabi, Nephew. And why would the premier warn gunmen in Najaf about it anyway? None of this makes sense!

posted by Thomas Nephew at 6:15:00 PM -- |    

 
Better than Bond
Drop what you're doing, head over to the local Googleplex, buy yourself a bag of popcorn, and take in The Bourne Supremacy. I did this weekend, and enjoyed it immensely. Now I'm biased: the first Bourne movie, The Bourne Identity, is a favorite guilty pleasure of mine on DVD, to the point where I can quote lines -- "I liked him better when he was dead," or "Do you take care of this car?" for example. The latter one begins what I think is the best car chase, bar none, in movie history. Well, maybe bar one. Critics are hailing the Moscow chase in this Jason Bourne movie as the new gold standard, and it may simply be a matter of taste; this one is more of a shaking-off-tackles up-the-middle kind of run, compared to "Identity's" Paris broken-field style-classic.

The Bourne franchise was born to be in the movies. I once picked up the "Supremacy" in book form and found author Robert Ludlum's writing almost unreadable; I couldn't stick with it past page 15 or so (it appears to be completely different, but that may merely be a matter of location). What director Doug Liman did with the "Bourne Identity" was take a decent premise -- a spy who finds himself out in the cold running his own show -- and create a new spy thriller classic that rewrote the rules.

One new rule is that Jason's struggle with his erstwhile keepers careens through foreign (so far) countrysides like a viral disease through a weak body: the chase is all, the hunt relentless. There's an element of nearly a sneer about Europe: stolid, effective Matt Damon takes in whole city maps and subway schedules with a glance, uses demonstrations against something or other as cover, eludes German SWAT teams with ease (he does breathe a little harder when that chase is over). Meanwhile, the CIA blithely sets up something resembling Houston Mission Control in some Berlin office building, and monitors all of the city's security cameras and apparently a couple or five dozen of its own without breaking much of a sweat either. And we are drawn in: we, too, are as gods bestriding a world.

But the main new rule is skill and audacity trump technology and organization -- and skill and audacity want out. All Jason wants, it seems, is what I've got: a family, a grill (although I'd like a better one), a lawn to mow, a life to remember. Were it me being hunted by any of Jason's foes, I'd have to give up halfway up a flight of stairs and say "just shoot me." But because he rejects his past and his skills, I can forgive Jason for his supremacy, while I often can't forgive Bond -- James Bond -- for his pride (--shallow pride) in his unearned, or at least not visibly earned, status and triumphs.

"Supremacy" sets the stage for an ongoing Bourne saga that may -- thankfully -- supplant the tired Bond franchise now creaking towards its 37th or whatever installment. The theme music is a kind of close cousin to that of "Identity," the close-out theme is identical (a Moby song, it seems), suggesting that these will be part of the ongoing brand. The ending leaves the door ajar for Jason's -- and his would-be handlers' -- next move. And while it turns out that not everyone in Bourne's CIA is cold-bloodedly villainous, most are, and not all of them have spun out yet. Finally, and least crucially, it appears there is a third Bourne book in Ludlum's oeuvre. Look for "The Bourne Ultimatum" at a movie near you in a couple of years. I'll be there; middle rows, near an aisle. posted by Thomas Nephew at 12:30:00 AM -- |    

 
Capitol Abuzz as Newsrack Commission Releases Intelligence Recommendations
Alex Tabarrok makes some interesting comments on the intelligence agency recommendations by the 9/11 Commission:

I have yet to see a good argument for creating a new director of intelligence. It's true that the intelligence agencies failed to share information. But an epi-central director of intelligence doesn't solve that problem and may make it worse. The implicit model of the 9/11 Commission is command and control - move all the information from the roots of the tree to the top of tree and then one all-encompassing-mind will evaluate it and make the right decision. Does that model sound familiar? Sure it does, that's the model of economic planning that is currently lying on the ash-heap of history.

Tabarrok cites a related item by fellow Marginal Revolutionary Tyler Cowen, who is skeptical of the effect of increased congressional oversight:

More oversight will make the intelligence agencies, however they are structured, more risk-averse. The President or Congress will peep in every now and then, and the agencies will scurry to respond to the emergency of the day. They will work harder not to look bad. This is hardly the best way to encourage imaginative, long-run thinking in defense of our nation. [...]

Rather than making intelligence agencies more accountable, how about making them more independent? Create some small, elite groups and staff them with the best people we can find. Pay them well. Give them arsm-length protection from political pressures. Treat them like the Federal Reserve, an independent agency renowned for the quality of its staff.

Strictly speaking, I think Tabarrok's objection is more accurate about the quality of the analysis of intelligence under a super-director of intelligence than about intelligence sharing. The more people devoted full-time to compelling intelligence to be shared, the more intelligence will be shared.

I think Cowen's take on oversight correctly identifies "risk aversion" as a problem that's as serious as "failing to connect the dots." But it ignores the fact that these are not just analyst think tanks, but special forces agencies as well, potentially shooting bullets and rockets at enemies; close oversight is mandatory. It also seems to me that the Iraq intelligence failure was due to politicization via the executive branch, not the legislative one. Finally, the legislative branch itself functions as a constitutional voice of the people on matters of national security, and especially on making war. I really doubt creating yet more government institutions secure from direct accountability to Congress is the way to go in matters touching on its direct responsibility.

But I agree with Tabarrok's and Cowen's underlying points: adding a "super" layer to the intelligence org-chart seems an empty and likely counterproductive thing to do, and more analyst voices should speak and be heard, not fewer. Moreover, some of the intelligence failures of 9/11 -- lack of intelligence sharing and timid, compartmentalized analysis -- are quite different from those of Iraq -- insufficient intelligence, followed by unsupportable centralized and (likely) politicized analysis.

For my part, here's a list of things I think need fixing:

• Congressional oversight committees were hobbled by an unusual rule limiting the terms of their members. The rule was meant to avoid Congresspersons becoming too identified with the agencies they oversaw. If that's really a problem, it can be solved at the ballot booth. We need elected representatives who can expect to become experts, not ones who know they'll be cycled out of the committee in a few years.
• Congressional attitudes towards oversight were weak in the first place. For example, only a few members of Congress could be troubled to examine physical intelligence documents supporting administration claims about Iraq. This one doesn't go on an org chart, this one should be ceremonially embossed on Congressional foreheads when they're sworn in: Do your job, you clowns.
• Opportunities for oversight are far too constricted. That Iraqi intelligence should have been more easily available than physically dumping it in one room -- Congresspersons (not staff) deserve clearance to read such things at their desks. I was not pleased to learn about the shenanigans the Pentagon inflicted on the Armed Service Committee regarding ICRC reports on prisons in Iraq (they made them available briefly, then returned them to the Pentagon.) This is an age of computers and communications. Find a secure way to get sensitive information instantly available to Congress on demand, and do it yesterday.
• The FBI should be stripped of its counterintelligence task, which should become a separate agency. It has simply failed too often. Counterintelligence agents should not be part of a bureau that seeks and rewards investigations leading to convictions. They should be part of one that seeks and rewards operations protecting the United States.
• Institutionalize B-teams, i.e., well-supported, independent analysis of shared information. I'd go so far as to suggest a CI"B" analysis agency, specifically charged with independent, parallel analysis of all available information. Field operations would be run by a third, separate agency, and staff would be rotated among all three agencies to prevent undue loyalty to any one group rather than the mission of providing the country with intelligence. Overseeing these would be the job of the super-director the 9/11 commission wants. Failing that, ad hoc B-teams should be assembled as a matter of course from throughout the American intelligence services for issues judged important by the President and Congress, and part of any important decision based on intelligence should be, "What does the B-team say?"

Meanwhile, the Medium Lobster takes the Bush administration's powerless version of the intelligence "czar" to the next level:

...if the president wants a truly independent director, the Medium Lobster suggests that the new director's office be as far removed from Washington as possible, preferably on the top of a mountain in the Himalayas or a very tall pole in the desert, cut off from all lines or methods of communication, where the National Director of Intelligence can meditate on intelligence and the nature of intelligence, and arrive at a priori truths regarding threats to the nation's wellbeing.

posted by Thomas Nephew at 1:10:00 PM -- |