http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A18833-2005Apr1.html
Who Gets Held to Account?
By Dan Fromkin
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, April 1, 2005; 12:59 PM
Anyone who's ever worked in a hierarchical organization knows
all about groupthink. People down the food chain feel a nearly
palpable pressure to please the people at the top of the food
chain -- without anyone necessarily saying a word.
It's typically a function of which behaviors get rewarded and
which get punished. Who gets access? Who gets frozen out? Who
is held to account for what? Who gets promoted -- and who gets
pushed aside?
Groupthink is the villain at the heart of the latest intelligence
report to hit the president's desk -- this one from his
hand-picked panel of experts, and this one on its face giving the
White House a complete pass.
But some of today's analyses and opinion pieces are suggesting
that maybe the report should also be read as an indictment of
an administration that has let groupthink run amok.
Analyses
Todd S. Purdum writes in the New York Times: "It found no evidence
that intelligence had been politically twisted to suit
preconceptions about Iraq's unconventional weapons programs,
and made no formal judgments about how top policy makers had
used that intelligence to justify war. Yet in its own way,
the presidential commission on intelligence left little doubt
that President Bush and his top aides had gotten what they wanted,
not what they needed, when they were told that Saddam Hussein
had a threatening arsenal of illicit weapons. . . .
"[T]he latest and presumably the last official review of such
questions leaves unresolved what may be the biggest question
of all: Who was accountable, and will they ever be held to
account for letting what amounted to mere assumptions 'harden
into presumptions,' as Judge Laurence H. Silberman, chairman
of the commission, put it. . . .
"But already some people have been judged, albeit it indirect
ways, while others have been rewarded, even promoted. Some who
foresaw potential disaster were punished or pushed aside,
while the president and vice president were given new terms."
The Washington Post's Dana Priest fielded questions in a Live
Online yesterday.
"St. Marys, Ga.: Who, if anyone, is going to be held accountable
for being 'Dead Wrong?' It seems no one has been held accountable
in the past few years . . . but 'Dead Wrong' is pretty strong
language and I hope it is not ignored.
"Dana Priest: Well, President Bush gave George Tenet the Medal
of Freedom. And the voters gave President Bush another term.
SecDef Rumsfeld is in perfect standing with the president. His
deputy is moving on to head the World Bank. The head of the
other large intel agency, the National Security Agency (does
eavesdropping) is becoming Negroponte's deputy. That leaves
only the worker bees. . . .
"Boston, Mass.: Does the administration itself bear any
responsibility for the failure of its intelligence agencies?
"Dana Priest: The CIA and its director work for the president.
The president is responsible for hiring and firing that person,
for holding that person and his agency responsible, for making
sure, ultimately, that the agencies are working properly,
spending more effectively and serving him -- and the American
people -- the way it is supposed to. Was Nixon responsible for
the operations of Attorney General John Mitchell? Were Johnson
and Kennedy responsible, in any way, for the excesses of
J. Edgar Hoover? Does Johnson bear any responsibility for
McNamara's Vietnam vision? What about Bush I? What's his
responsibility over a CIA that missed the collapse of the
Soviet Union? Should Clinton bare a burden for the intel world's
failure to see the imminent threat from Osama bin Laden? Does
Bush have responsibility for his advisors so misjudging
'post-war' Iraq? You get my drift. It's your call and you bet
historians will be writing about that subject for years to come."
Dafna Linzer and Barton Gellman write in The Washington Post
that it's not like no one spoke up. "Up until the days before
U.S. troops entered Iraqi territory that March, the intelligence
community was inundated with evidence that undermined virtually
all charges it had made against Iraq, the report said."
It's just that they weren't heard. "In scores of additional
cases involving the country's alleged nuclear and chemical
programs and its delivery systems, the commission described a
kind of echo chamber in which plausible hypotheses hardened
into firm assertions of fact, eventually becoming immune to
evidence."
Mark Silva writes in the Chicago Tribune: "Bush has long
refused to assign specific blame for intelligence failures
to himself or top aides. What is not clear is whether
Americans will accept this in the face of this latest,
unusually scathing report."
But Silva says Bush has a tried and true way of dealing with
these things.
"Confronting two large-scale intelligence failures during his
tenure, the Sept. 11 attacks and the misreading of Saddam
Hussein's arsenal, President Bush has largely escaped voters'
wrath by convincing the public he is a man of action who is
moving quickly to tackle any problems.
"Bush took this tack again Thursday."
The First Customer Is Always Right
Here is the full transcript of President Bush's statement upon
receipt of the report yesterday, followed by statements from
the co-chairmen. Bush then left, but the co-chairman stuck
around to take questions.
You can read all about the members of the commission on my
About the Commission page.
And here is the report itself.
There was only one part of the report that explicitly criticized
White House procedures, but it as a telling one: The commission
called for a rethinking of the intelligence reports Bush gets
that are known as the presidential daily briefing.
Walter Pincus and Peter Baker write in Washington Post:
"Leading up to the Iraq war, the panel found, the briefings
were 'disastrously one-sided' and 'more alarmist and less
nuanced' than longer studies, such as the National Intelligence
Estimates. The daily briefings never cast doubt on prior
information provided to Bush and thus 'seemed to be "selling"
intelligence in order to keep its customers, or at least the
First Customer, interested.' "
Editorials and Opinions
New York Times editorial: "The panel said timidly that 'it is
hard to deny the conclusion that intelligence analysts worked
in an environment that did not encourage skepticism about the
conventional wisdom.' But it utterly ignored the way President
Bush, Vice President ***** Cheney, Defense Secretary Donald
Rumsfeld and his team, and Condoleezza Rice, as national
security adviser, created that environment by deciding what
the facts were and saying so, repeatedly."
Los Angeles Times editorial: "Even if the intelligence was not
manipulated, there will always be a tendency on the part of
individuals (not to mention bureaucracies) to try to divine
what outcome bosses want and tailor their facts accordingly,
leaving out some inconvenient truths. That's bad in private
industry and deadly in time of war, and the commission doesn't
quite address this behavioral problem."
As for the report's insistence that there was no politicization
of intelligence (see my column yesterday) the Times editorial
said: "Somehow the panel must have missed the intelligence
agents who told reporters for The Times on several prewar
occasions that they thought their product was being politicized
and that they were pushed to provide evidence to support the
Bush administration's claims that Iraq was a threat."
Wall Street Journal editorial: "[T]the report blows apart
the myth that intelligence provided by Iraqi politician and
former exile Ahmed Chalabi suckered the U.S. into going to war."
USA Today editorial: "In the months before the war, Vice
President Cheney said there was 'no doubt' Saddam was amassing
weapons. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said that even
'a trained ape' knew it was true. President Bush repeatedly
made the case not just that war in Iraq was necessary, but
that it was urgent.
"That is not a climate that would lead anyone to conclude that
facts still needed to be discerned."
Rich Lowry in the National Review Online: "The commission
studying the intelligence failures that produced disastrously
flawed estimates of Iraq's weapons-of-mass-destruction
capabilities has finally produced its report, and it's
devastating. Not just for U.S. intelligence, which is portrayed
as hapless and bungling, but for Bush critics who have vested
so much in the argument that Bush officials pressured
intelligence agencies to support the case for war."
David Ignatius in The Washington Post: "If there's one thing
that has become clear in the history of U.S. intelligence over
the past 50 years it is that the CIA is not in fact a rogue
agency. It is shaped, often to a fault, by the priorities and
pet projects of whoever is in the White House. Intelligence
supports policy, but it doesn't make it."
Derrick Z. Jackson in the Boston Globe: "Perhaps no political
pressure was necessary because everyone in the intelligence
community knew what Bush wanted to hear and there were few
people willing to risk their careers to expose weak evidence.
This obvious possibility did not seem to be prominent in the
commission's inquiry."
More Coverage
Pincus and Baker write: "The report depicted an intelligence
apparatus plagued by turf battles, wedded to old assumptions
and mired in unimaginative thinking.
"Yet while unstinting in its appraisal of intelligence agencies,
the panel that Bush appointed under pressure in February 2004
said it was 'not authorized' to explore the question of how the
commander in chief used the faulty information to make perhaps
the most critical decision of his presidency. As he accepted
the report yesterday, Bush offered no thoughts about relying
on flawed intelligence to launch a war and took no questions
from reporters. . . .
"Some Democrats complained that the commission effectively
ducked the central issue of how Bush decided to go to war in
Iraq to eliminate weapons that were not there."
Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post: "Silberman and
co-chairman Charles S. Robb flanked a beaming Bush as if they
were bodyguards -- and in a sense, they were. . . .
"The commission report is plenty tough, but it directs its
fire at the intelligence professionals -- the same ones
already beaten up by the Sept. 11 commission and congressional
reports -- and gives the political figures a pass."
Tom Raum writes for the Associated Press: "The latest
intelligence-failure report to land on President Bush's
desk raises serious questions about his policy of pre-emptive
action against potential foes. How can he order such strikes
if he doesn't have solid information?"
Dana Priest writes in The Washington Post: "The commission
explicitly warned President Bush that he should expect
intelligence agencies to attempt to undermine the authority
of the new director of national intelligence. 'They are some
of the government's most headstrong agencies,' the commission
wrote Bush. 'Sooner or later, they will try to run around --
or over -- the DNI. Then, only your determined backing will
convince them that we cannot return to the old ways.'"
She quotes from the report: " 'Analysts must be pressed to
explain how much they don't know; the collection agencies must
be pressed to explain why they don't have better information on
key topics . . . no important intelligence assessment should be
accepted without sharp questioning that forces the community to
explain exactly how it came to that assessment and what
alternative might also be true."
Bob Drogin and Greg Miller write in the Los Angeles Times: "The
report puts new pressure on Bush, who has held office during two
of the worst intelligence fiascos in modern U.S. history and who
has struggled, along with Congress, to reform the sprawling,
$40-billion-a-year intelligence system."
NBC News's David Gregory reported: "The U.S. went to war in Iraq
claiming Saddam Hussein threatened America with weapons of mass
destruction. The president's hand-picked commission concluded
today, the intelligence behind that decision was quote,
'worthless', 'misleading', 'dead wrong'. This morning, however,
the president sidestepped any personal responsibility."
When Gregory had Silberman and Robb to himself, he asked them
again the question he tried to get them to answer during their
public briefing: "Does the president of the United States bear
ultimate responsibility for bad intelligence on his watch?"
Robb says: "The commander in chief is responsible for everything
that happens on his or her watch."
Enter Townsend
Bush ordered White House homeland security adviser Frances
Townsend to take point on enacting the commission's
recommendations.
"You will begin to see action in a matter of weeks," she said.
She briefly took questions at yesterday's press briefing:
"Q It's been three-and-a-half years since the September 11th
attacks, when the President first issued the call for the
intelligence agencies to reform themselves to meet the threats
of the 21st century. Here we have another report saying that
they haven't done that. . . . What's the problem? . . .
"MS. TOWNSEND: Well, in fairness, I think the commission, when
you look at the whole report -- I grant you, it's a large
document -- when you look at the whole report, even the
commission acknowledges we've enjoyed some successes,
particularly in the counterterrorism area. . . . I think you
have seen some progress. . . . There are still some hiccups.
It's not perfect yet. We need to constantly work to refine
that. . . .
"Q But the report would suggest that it's far more than a few
hiccups. It's more like a massive case of gastroenteritis here
that you're trying to deal with. (Laughter.)
"MS. TOWNSEND: Well, look, there is no --
"Q With an additional case of diverticulitis on top of that.
(Laughter.)
"MS. TOWNSEND: No question, more needs to be done, and it
will require the attention of the DNI."
The Bubble and the Denver Three
Some more voices today talking about Bush's Bubble and the
"Denver Three" -- the three audience members at a public Bush
event in Denver on March 21, allegedly evicted because of a
bumper sticker on their car. (See Wednesday's column for more.)
Washington Post op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. writes: "And
so you wonder why a president who sells himself as a tough,
confident bring-'em-on type of guy seems so anxious about
facing average citizens who disagree with him. Why does he
insist on being surrounded, always, by people who tell him
that he's right and great and wonderful?"
Senator Charles E. Schumer (D-NY) released a statement: "The
president seems to only want to hear voices that agree with
his position on Social Security; that is a dwindling number
of Americans."
And Rep. Bob Beauprez (R-Colo.) said on a radio show: "This
kind of stuff should never really happen. At least as I
understand it, these folks showed up -- they've got every
right to be there. There was a pro-Bush leaning crowd but by
no means at all, my understanding, a 100 percent pro-Bush
crowd. And unless they did something wrong there's no reason
why they should be yanked out of there and escorted through
the door."
Today's Calendar
The president and first lady talk about America's youth at the
Paul Public Charter School in Washington today.
Social Security Watch
Mike Allen writes in The Washington Post: "House Speaker
J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) has acknowledged that President
Bush's call for completion of a Social Security bill this
year could be unrealistic and that the legislation might
have to wait until 2006.
"The president's aides immediately responded by saying Bush
is committed to winning passage this year. The White House
and Republican congressional leaders have said repeatedly
that the proposed restructuring of the retirement system is
doomed if it does not pass this year, because it will be even
more difficult to get Democratic support in 2006, a midterm
election year."
Alan Elsner writes for Reuters: "President Bush's domestic
agenda has hit roadblocks on two major fronts, leading some
political analysts to conclude his administration is
succumbing to the traditional 'second-term blues.' "
William M. Welch and Richard Benedetto write in USA Today:
"Halfway through his administration's '60 Stops in 60 Days'
national sales pitch for overhauling Social Security, President
Bush hasn't sold his plan to create private investment accounts."
Glen Johnson writes for the Associated Press: "Out on the
hustings, President Bush likes to make a case for allowing
younger workers to invest some of their Social Security taxes
by citing the example of the Thrift Savings Plan, private
investment accounts available to members of Congress and
other federal employees. . . .
"What Bush fails to mention is that his accounts differ from
Thrift Savings Plan accounts in a key way: They would be carved
out of the Social Security taxes nongovernment workers pay.
By contrast, federal employees get their accounts in addition
to a traditional Social Security benefit check."
Heidi Przybyla writes for Bloomberg: "President George W. Bush
began his battle for private Social Security accounts by
targeting vulnerable Democrats. Now Democrats are turning the
tables, using similar tactics to pressure Republican lawmakers."
Steven Greenhouse writes in the New York Times: "The nation's
labor unions stepped up their campaign yesterday to stop President
Bush's Social Security plan, staging demonstrations in New York,
Washington, San Francisco and 70 other cities."
Life and Death
Here's what Bush had to say after Terri Schiavo died yesterday:
"Today millions of Americans are saddened by the death of Terri
Schiavo. Laura and I extend our condolences to Terri Schiavo's
families. I appreciate the example of grace and dignity they have
displayed at a difficult time. I urge all those who honor Terri
Schiavo to continue to work to build a culture of life, where all
Americans are welcomed and valued and protected, especially
those who live at the mercy of others. The essence of civilization
is that the strong have a duty to protect the weak. In cases where
there are serious doubts and questions, the presumption should be
in the favor of life."
Dana Milbank writes in The Washington Post: "Republicans say the
Schiavo case has mobilized their conservative base for the struggles
over judicial nominations and a likely Supreme Court vacancy this
summer. . . .
"Democrats, backed by public opinion polls, say the conservatives
overreached and that the GOP now appears to be a captive of the
religious right."
Ronald Brownstein writes in the Los Angeles Times: "Conservative
lawmakers' denunciations of the courts on Thursday signaled that
Terri Schiavo's death was likely to escalate the war between the
parties over President Bush's judicial nominations."
Karl Rove Watch
Charles S. Johnson writes in the Helena (Mont.) Independent Record:
"Top presidential adviser Karl Rove praised President Bush as 'one
of history's most consequential presidents' and touted Bush's plan
to restructure Social Security as critical for the nation's younger
and future workers. . . .
"On the international front, Bush is 'one of history's great
liberators,' Rove said, while on the domestic side, the president
has the chance to be 'one of history's great reformers.' "
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| User: "Urs Hoelzle" |
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| Title: Re: Who Gets Held to Account? |
03 Apr 2005 10:04:00 PM |
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I can't get an account. My credit is XXX.
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