Mother Jones - August 16, 2004
http://www.motherjones.com/news/qa/2004/08/08_401.wilkieQA.html
Interview
Andrew Wilkie, a top Australian intelligence official, didn't think the
available WMD intel justified invading Iraq. When the government of Prime
Minister John Howard joined the Coalition of the Willing anyway, Wilkie quit
in protest. Since then, he's been speaking out.
By Jeff Fleischer
As a senior analyst at Australias top intelligence agency, the Office of
National Assessments, Andrew Wilkie had high-level access to the raw data
pouring in before the Iraq war. But while his countrys prime minister,
John Howard, resolutely supported an invasion, Wilkie saw a significant
gap between the evidence the intelligence community collected and the way
Howard, George Bush, and Tony Blair argued the case for war.
Just a few days before the U.S., UK and Australia led the Coalition of the
Willing into Iraq, Wilkie resigned his post at ONA in protest, and took
his case against the Howard government public. Since then, he has spoken
at numerous protests, testified before government inquiries in Australia
and the UK, and won the inaugural Whistleblower of the Year award from the
United Nations Association of Australia.
Wilkie has written a new book, AXIS OF DECEIT, which discusses the
intelligence relating to Iraq and how it was politicized in Canberra,
London, and Washington. And he is continuing to take the fight to the
government, running an underdog race as the Green Party candidate for
Howards parliamentary seat in the upcoming Australian elections. The
former intelligence officer spoke with MotherJones.com about his
resignation, the war in Iraq, and how the post-war focus on intelligence
failures is helping governments avoid responsibility.
MotherJones.com: When did you make the decision to resign from ONA and
why?
AW: It was many, many weeks in the making. I first started to have some
concerns about the Iraq war in late 2002, when I wrote the secret report
for the Australian government on the possible humanitarian implications of
a war. It was a very sobering exercise; it made me start to look at the
evidence much more critically. And there were certain waypoints, such as
Colin Powells address to the Security Council on Feb. 5 2003. So much so
that by about a fortnight before the war, I had reached the conclusion
that a war was not going to be the most sensible or ethical way to resolve
the Iraq issue. There are all sorts of things that public servants
disagree with, but to my mind, I was looking at government misconduct on
an extraordinary scale. So much so that I felt I couldnt support the
government any longer and, also, that I had an obligation to speak out
publicly.
I never thought I could stop the war. In fact, I dont think anybody could
stop the war by early 2003 -- not even George Bush; there was just so much
momentum behind it. What I did hope to do was to energize the public
discussion about it. I had a very privileged access to secret information,
and was basically just backing up what many of the people on the outside
were already thinking. I just felt I had an obligation to tell them what I
knew and to basically stir up the debate.
MJ: How did John Howard and the government react?
AW: The evening I resigned, they told the media that I hadnt been involved
in the Iraq issue - in other words, that I didnt know what I was talking
about. Which was a nonsense, as I'd been involved in the Iraq issue from
the start, and Id written the report in December on the possible
consequences of a war. The morning after I resigned, one of the prime
ministers staff told the media that I was mentally unstable and shouldnt
be listened to. The foreign minister here, Alexander Downer, has been very
outspoken about me and called me all sorts of things, and I have been
vilified very strongly in our Parliament by government politicians. But,
mind you, Ive gone strongly in return and spoken very strongly against the
Howard government in laying out my case.
MJ: How have you seen public opinion toward the war shift in Australia?
AW: Before the war, there was overwhelming public opposition. Different
polls had different results, but certainly in the order of three-quarters
of Australians opposed the war. Now as soon as the war started, that did a
backflip, and most Australians got behind it. I think part of the
explanation was, our troops are in combat; its our duty to support them.
And then, of course, the war seemed to go well at first. George Bush
landed on the aircraft carrier with Mission Accomplished, the statue was
pulled down in the square in Baghdad, and Prime Minister Howard did what
Id call a victory lap around the world and went out to Washington and
London. At that point, I think the war was almost a political plus for
John Howard, as well as for George Bush and Tony Blair. But steadily, it
has turned sour in Australia, and the war has now become a clear political
negative for the prime minister, one that he is seeking to neutralize in
our forthcoming election.
MJ: In your book, you discuss ONAs pre-war assessments of the United
States and its intentions. How did that information shape the case for
war?
AW: This is a very important point. Theres been so much debate in
Australia -- and in the UK -- about what our intelligence agencies were
reporting about Iraq. But just as important -- maybe more important -- is
what Australian and British intelligence agencies were saying about the
United States. It was made very clear to the Australian government that
there was a very broad range of drivers for this war - of which WMD and
terrorism were only two, and they were well down the list. What that means
is every time John Howard stood up in front of the Australian people --
and every time Tony Blair stood up in front of the British people -- and
waxed on about WMD and terrorism, they were doing that in the full
knowledge that those werent the main reasons for the war.
In Australia, there were only two dimensions to the official case for war.
One, that Iraq had failed to disarm its weapons of mass destruction, that
it had a massive arsenal. And two, that it was collaborating actively with
Al Qaeda, and that it was just a matter of time before those weapons were
passed to terrorists. That was really the official case for war in
Australia. Unlike in the U.S., I might add, where your government did talk
about the value of regime change. In Australia, John Howard dismissed
regime change. In response to a question by a journalist before the war,
he said we wouldnt be able to justify a war on the basis of regime change.
So all this talk now about the value of that change and the humanitarian
benefits, it has nothing to do with the pre-war case presented in
Australia.
MJ: What did Howard hope to gain by Australias supporting the war?
AW: First and foremost, he has a deep personal conviction about the
Australian alliance with the U.S. Howard was in the U.S. on Sept. 11, and
I think thats one reason why he feels so much a part of this. But his
personal ideology is strongly inclined that way, much more than even his
Liberal Partys is. The Iraq war in Australia is very much John Howards
war; it reflects that obsessive relationship with the Bush administration.
I think thats what drives him. There are practical benefits -- for
example, security guarantees for Australia, free-trade agreements and so
on -- but they are really just dividends of this fundamental personal
conviction of his.
MJ: How have the Australian intelligence agencies changed their approach
to terrorism after Sept. 11?
AW: It goes without saying that 9/11 was a shock, even to the intelligence
agencies. They had completely underestimated the threat from Islamic
extremists. So it really has shaken them up, and there was certainly an
increased focus on terrorism, and transnational threats generally.
Having said that, in Australia there wasnt enough of a focus brought to
bear on the terrorism threat. Where I used to work, at the Office of
National Assessments, they only took on two terrorism experts after 9/11.
It was a bit token, and I think that helps to explain why Australia then
got caught out, again, with the Bali bombing. We didnt see that coming
either. We hadnt really learned our lesson from 9/11, and I dont think we
really learned our lesson from the Bali bombing either. Its only now,
because of this Iraq misadventure, that the intelligence agencies are
looking more carefully at how they operate.
I should make one more point about the 9/11 thing. Because of the way we
were all caught out over 9/11, I think the agencies have been more
inclined to think worst-case. And I think that helps to explain the
intelligence failure over Iraq. They didnt want and couldnt afford to be
caught out again, so the agencies tended to overestimate the threat posed
by Iraq.
MJ: How did the governments make the qualified intelligence on Iraq fit
their arguments?
AW: Intelligence is inherently ambiguous. That's just the nature of the
way its collected -- there are always uncertainties, and the intelligence
agencies know that. The agencies will invariably give very measured and
carefully qualified advice to government. That was, in fact, the finding
of this recent Philip Flood report in Australia. The official government
inquiry has found - and these are the words used by Flood himself -- that
the intelligence agencies gave cautious and qualified advice.
But that cautious sort of advice was, of course, not the style of what was
being said by George Bush or Cheney or Wolfowitz or Rumsfeld or John
Howard or Alexander Downer. To them, the advice was always strong and
unambiguous; it always had those qualifications removed. And the
qualifications were normally just simple words like could, as in Iraq
could be doing this, qualifications like uncorroborated evidence suggests
or caveats like intelligence suggests. Words like suggests, could, cant be
ruled out or uncorroborated. And those words were almost always dropped
from the official government statements. In doing so, all our governments
very deliberately, very mischievously and very dishonestly turned
uncertainty into certainty. And that completely reengineered the threat
posed by Iraq.
MJ: What were the main gaps you saw in the intelligence relating to Iraq?
AW: The first main intelligence gap was the unaccounted-for WMD material.
There wasnt a lot unaccounted for, but that material became quite central
to the official case for war last year. The other intelligence gap was
what Iraq got up to after 1998, when UNSCOM pulled out. Now, I think that
highlights the inadequacies in our intelligence services, that we didnt
have effective human intelligence operations going on, and were relying
instead on Iraqi dissidents and whatnot, who all had an agenda. There were
too many people who were trying to encourage a U.S. intervention and were
prepared to say anything that the U.S. government wanted to hear. In that
context, the intelligence database on Iraq just became increasingly
contaminated with what Id call garbage-grade intelligence. So it made it
very easy to cheery-pick the database and basically come up with the case
for war that the politicians wanted.
MJ: One of the things you worked on at ONA was an assessment of the
possible humanitarian costs of an invasion. How has the aftermath compared
to the scenarios you considered?
AW: Thankfully, my worst-case scenarios have not eventuated. Mind you, I
wasnt looking this far ahead; I was looking at the immediate aftermath.
And some of the possible scenarios there were quite scary, in particular
the idea of Saddam Hussein himself creating a humanitarian disaster to
complicate coalition war-fighting operations or to compel the
international community to intervene and say stop this madness. Given that
we all thought he had a very limited chemical and biological capability,
it was not impossible that he would use some sort of chem-bio agent on one
of his own cities. It wasnt impossible that hed blow dams and flood areas.
There were lots of things he might have done. If I had my time again, Id
probably write the same assessment of the possible humanitarian
implications, even though some of those things havent come to pass. But
some did. Theres no doubt that the situation in Iraq, for many Iraqis
currently, is very dire. Its unfortunate that some parts of the country
are now so violent that the media cant get out there and report the
situation. It will still be a long time before Iraq is a better place for
most Iraqis.
MJ: Youve said the post-war focus on intelligence failures in all three
countries lets the governments off the hook. How so?
AW: In all three countries, the governments have very deliberately kept
the focus on the intelligence agencies and steered the focus away from the
bigger issue, which is the governments relationship with the agencies, and
the governments misuse of intelligence material. And were saying this in
all three countries. The Flood reports terms of reference were very
specifically to look only at the performance of the intelligence agencies.
Everyone knows they failed -- the previous Australian inquiry found that
out. The most recent British inquiry did the same thing -- looked at the
intelligence agencies. The U.S. inquiry did the same thing. I think the
governments are being very mischievous in the way theyre keeping the focus
on the intelligence agencies. Which did fail, there was a limited
intelligence failure. But that limited failure in no way excuses the
governments for their decision to go to war.
MJ: With the Australian election coming up, how effective has the
opposition been at making the war an issue?
AW: Weve got a real problem in Australia in this regard. I think the
opposition, the Labor Party, has really let us down on this. The Labor
Party flip-flopped on its position before the war, and more recently, I
dont think Mark Latham [the Labor leader] has been inclined to go hard on
this issue; he just doesnt seem to go near the war too much. Hes taken a
bit of a stand on troops out by Christmas, but I think the Labor Party
knows theyre a bit vulnerable on this issue, because they didnt take a
strong enough stand before the war. Then youve got the Australian media,
and they havent got a good record on this. Australias good journalists are
the best in the world, but too much of the Australian media was lazy over
Iraq, sometimes incompetent, and often compliant with Rupert Murdochs
empire. His papers, like the The Australian, were just mouthpieces for the
Bush administration and, by implication, the Howard government. So its not
entirely unsurprising that so many Australians have been a bit disengaged,
and thats certainly motivated me to keep speaking out.
MJ.com: What should the opposition do, then?
AW: The Labor Party just needs to focus more on it. Were still engaged in
an unjustified war. This should bring a government down, and the Labor
Party just isnt going hard enough. The Greens have gone very hard on this,
which probably helps to explain my attraction to the Greens. And Im still
going hard on it. National security is really the central, main plank in
my own campaigning. Rather than being strong on national security, I think
John Howard is actually recklessly dangerous on it.
MJ: On the intelligence end, what will the agencies do to prevent similar
failures?
AW: Im very confident that the intelligence agencies are already well
advanced in reform. The intelligence agencies are made up of mostly highly
competent, highly professional people, and I think the focus on the
intelligence failure has been somewhat unfair on the agencies.
Intelligence can never be perfect, and will fail from time to time,
because thats the nature of the work. Thats why intelligence has to
treated with great care. It needs to always be kept in balance with things
like the advice of political staffers and policy departments, public
opinion, polling, the medias views -- and the intelligence has to be kept
in perspective.
MJ: One of the recommendations in the Sept. 11 commissions report was the
creation a national intelligence czar to oversee the various U.S.
agencies. Does that seem like a step in the right direction?
AW: Not knowing all the details, I would agree with the need for better
coordination between agencies. But I think its important that agencies
still have a certain amount of independence so they can come up with
independent opinions. Depending how its done, theres a danger that if you
have one person in charge, linked too closely to the government, you end
up getting one line of compliant reporting. One of the strengths of the
U.S. intelligence system before the war was that the INR in the State
Department took an independent position on Iraq and was actually much
closer to the mark than the CIA. I think that shows the value of having
separate lines of reporting from separate agencies and getting those
different opinions. So whatever reform occurs, you wouldnt want to get rid
of that.
MJ: On the political end, what will it take to ensure the American,
British and Australian governments dont make the same mistakes in the
future?
AW: That rests upon all three governments being punished at the polls. Its
looking more and more like Bush is gone in the U.S. Its hard to imagine
the British Labor Party having Blair in charge come the next election. And
I think Howards on the ropes in Australia. Its hard to tell, its about
50-50 maybe. But if all three governments are punished at the polls, if
all three are turned out, that will send a strong signal to the future
governments that people wont accept this happening again. If any of those
governments survive, that will of course be very worrying, because it will
almost legitimize what they did. Hence its so important that they be
punished at the polls. But regardless of the election results, I think the
Bush administration is generally shocked at the mess they now find
themselves in with Iraq, and I think U.S. foreign security policy will be
in the shadow of Iraq for the forseeable future. If only because with so
many troops bogged down there, the U.S. doesnt have the resources to be
too reckless anywhere else for a while. So I suppose theres some good news
in this mess.
MJ: Youre standing as the Green Partys candidate for John Howards seat in
Parliament. Why did you decide to run, and to challenge that specific
seat?
AW: I wasnt a member of any particular party or politically active when I
resigned. But not long after, I decided to become active because I just
wanted to keep pressing my case against the government, and didnt believe
the government had been held to account. I eventually decided to join the
Greens; theyre the best match for me personally for a range of reasons.
And Im standing against John Howard personally in his own seat of
Bennelong, in part because I want to represent the people in the
electorate of Bennelong, but in part also that I judge by going up against
the PM personally, its another way for me to get some more traction for my
case against the government.
Theres three strong candidates running, though there will probably be a
dozen or more candidates in Bennelong. The standout candidates will be
John Howard for the Liberal Party, the Labor candidate will poll strongly,
and I will also poll strongly. In fact, I think I can get the
second-largest number of primary votes; I think I can beat the Labor
candidate. So with the primary vote split three ways, nobody will get more
than 50 percent, which means it will go to preferences. So someone can win
the seat with as little as 30 percent of the primary vote. In that
context, a John Howard victory is the likely outcome, but it cant be taken
for granted. I have a small, but real, chance of causing a major upset. .
What do you think?
[Jeff Fleischer is an editorial intern at MotherJones.com]
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