By any standards it seems a fine kettle of fish. Most of the intelligence gathered by two of the best-equipped nations on earth seems to have been false. False because the agencies were deceived, either by the ‘enemy’, or by people with an interest in promoting a particular response. False because analysts made wrong deductions as they either ignored evidence and analysis which did not suit their prepossessions, or because they filled in the blank spaces according to their preconceptions, or their feeling of what the target was up to. And they did this long before any idea of pleasing political masters, or the ‘customers’, came into it.
The customers made clear what they wanted to hear. When this was not the case, they doubted the analysis. Governments demanded that intelligence information be made publicly available so as to justify political decisions already made. The analysis became advocacy, often at the initiative of analysts themselves.
The closer one gets to the customer, the greater the anxiety to please. William Percy, a former senior military spook, gave a nice example to a parliamentary committee last year.
‘It is my experience that initial assessments (made by the relevant desk officer) often undergo significant changes in tone during their progress up through an organisation, depending on the disposition of the various reviewing officers. A simple example of changes might illustrate the point: Originator/desk officer: there is no evidence that Section head: it is unlikely that Division head: it is unlikely, but possible, that Branch head: It is possible that Such changes are not incompatible, but they do alter the tone of an assessment.’
In the blame game for the false impressions given by governments about the existence, extent and threat posed by weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, claims that Saddam might arm terrorist groups, and of his links with Islamist organisations, it is almost impossible to find a formal pre-invasion assessment, whether in Australia, Britain or the US, with significant caveats about these findings. Only one intelligence analyst, Australia’s Andrew Wilkie, made public his doubts before the invasion, resigning in protest at political misuse of intelligence. Britain’s dissenters, Dr David Kelly and Brian Jones, did not voice their frustrations until after the war. While some unnamed American analysts leaked their concerns about the misuse of intelligence, they were swamped by the noise of those ‘in the team’.
The public had ample access to information casting