The Intelligence Failure In Iraq: What Did George Tenet Know — And When Did He Know It?

(Washington, D.C.): When an
intelligence operation fails,
counterintelligence officers are
obligated to study the facts and issue
what is called in the intelligence
profession a “damage report”
intended to evaluate the causes for the
operation’s failure and assess all the
ramifications arising from that failure.

The need for such assessments was
evident recently when the Justice
Department harshly criticized the FBI for
doing a less-than-adequate damage report
following the arrest and execution in
1985 of two FBI informants in the Soviet
Embassy, KGB officers Valery Martinov and
Sergei Motorin. The FBI’s desultory
efforts were blamed for allowing Aldrich
Ames, the KGB mole in the CIA said to be
responsible for blowing these agents’
covers, to continue to inflict grave harm
until 1994.

Where’s the Damage Report
on Iraq?

A 60 Minutes segment on Iraqi
refugees in the United States broadcast
on 20 April 1997 underscored the
continuing problem that Iraq represents
for the United States government. The
segment closely tracks with an article in
the British newspaper, The
Independent, which reported that the
Iraqi National Accord (INA) — a
London-headquartered, CIA-supported group
opposed to Saddam Hussein’s regime — had
been so thoroughly penetrated by Iraqi
intelligence that what was alleged to be
an INA coup attempt in July 1996 was
rolled up by Baghdad before it could even
get underway. The newspaper, presumably
based on sources in British intelligence,
claims that about 100 anti-Saddam Iraqi
military officers now face death or
imprisonment because of this debacle.

As the Center noted on 20 March 1997, href=”97-D62.html#N_1_”>⁽¹⁾
Saddam exploited fratricidal struggles
between the INA and another anti-Saddam
group known as the Iranian National
Congress, to undermine the entire Agency
effort to oppose the Iraqi dictator. In
August 1996, Saddam moved forces into
northern Iraq liquidating the entire CIA
operation by murdering numerous friends
of the United States and forcing the
evacuation of thousands more.

Even though the Clinton CIA continues
to support the Iranian National Accord,
Saddam Hussein last week celebrated
another birthday in power with every
indication that he will outlast the
sanctions that have somewhat constrained
his potential for malevolence in the
region and beyond. For one thing, Rolf
Ekeus — the leader of the UNSCOM
inspection operation in Iraq who has been
unable, despite six years of trying, to
uncover Saddam’s weapons of mass
destruction and ballistic missile
programs and still believes that Iraq
retains large quantities of the highly
lethal chemical agent VX as well as its
entire stockpile of deadly biological
agents along with the missiles and
warheads to deliver them; and therefore
has courageously refused to recommend
dismantling the sanctions regime — will
shortly be replaced by an Australian
diplomat, Richard Butler, known for his
determined deal-cutting. For another
thing, pressure is inexorably mounting,
especially from Russia, France and China,
to ease sanctions on Iraq.

Over to You, George

The Senate hearings scheduled to start
tomorrow on the nomination of George
Tenet to be Director of Central
Intelligence (DCI) will offer an
opportunity to explore, among other
issues, Mr. Tenet’s conduct with respect
to the failure of U.S. intelligence and
policy toward Iraq. It has been widely
reported that the nominee has spent his
two years as Deputy Director of Central
Intelligence working almost exclusively
on clandestine operations. As a result,
he must be familiar — perhaps intimately
so — with this affair and whatever
lessons have been drawn from it.

Although any formal damage report for
the failed INA operation will be
classified, the public is entitled to
have confidence that Tenet, during his
tenure as DDCI, acquired a solid grasp of
the basics of intelligence operations and
security and, therefore, brings to the
job more than the skills as an
inside-the-Beltway operator that he
learned before moving to the CIA. To be
sure, the ability to deal effectively
with the legislative branch of government
— something a former staff director for
the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence (SSCI) like George Tenet
clearly enjoys — is useful for any DCI.
Such skills may even be necessary in the
Washington environment of today, but they
are clearly not sufficient.

A DCI must also be able to recognize
and take corrective action in the face of
evidence that the CIA is paying millions
of taxpayer dollars to an Iraqi
opposition organization secretly
controlled by Saddam Hussein, as appears
to be the case with the INA. It is Mr.
Tenet’s responsibility to communicate to
the public without endangering
intelligence sources and methods
what went wrong with the INA operation,
when it went wrong, how badly it went
wrong, who went wrong and betrayed the
operation, and how that failure has
affected events and U.S. policies toward
Iraq. Most important, Tenet must
communicate how he personally will ensure
that the causes of such failures are
corrected.

The SSCI Must Get to the
Bottom of This Fiasco

The Senate Intelligence Committee must
pose a number of questions about the INA
debacle and determine the level of
responsibility Mr. Tenet himself had for
the INA operation — both as DDCI and as
an important NSC staff official for
intelligence affairs. This is
particularly important since it appears
that Mr. Tenet was charged with
overseeing the INA operation when he was
with the NSC and he should have been
overseeing the operation as the DDCI.

Unfortunately, The Independent
article describes the INA failure to be
one of the worst in the CIA’s history and
quotes an unnamed former U.S. government
official to have declared: “As
in the case of Somalia, the disaster in
Iraq was so complete that nobody in
Washington wants an inquiry into what
went wrong.” As a result,
the following questions are of vital
importance:

• Has a full and complete
  damage report been written for
  the June-July 1996 INA failure? If
  one exists, will it be made
  available to the Committee? If it
  has not been written yet or is
  not available, why not?
• Has the CIA identified the INA
  officials who were under the
  control of the Iraqi intelligence
  service and who betrayed to
  Baghdad the INA coup attempt?
• Who are these individuals and
  where are they now? Have they
  been brought under control if
  they are outside Iraq?
• What investigative measures
  (i.e., what “asset
  scrubbing” efforts) were
  carried out before the
  summer of 1996 to ensure that INA
  operatives were not under the
  control of Baghdad? Why did any
  such efforts fail?
• Britain’s Official Secrets Act
  probably precluded The
  Independent from mentioning
  British government involvement in
  the INA failure. Was there
  British government involvement?
• If there were such
  involvement, could British
  government agencies be the cause
  of security problems that led to
  the failure?
• What is the nature of the
  current CIA relationship with the
  INA? Is the United
  States government still paying
  the INA? For what purposes?
• Does the CIA still maintain
  personal contacts with the INA?
  If so, what has been done to
  ensure that these contacts are
  not under the control of Baghdad
  and do not present a security
  threat to CIA officers or
  operations? Is it judged to pose
  such a threat?
• The INA failure closely resembles
  a pre-World War II
  Soviet-controlled intelligence
  operation, known as the
  “Trust,” which was
  designed to trick anti-Soviet
  individuals and émigré
  organizations into believing
  there was a viable anti-regime
  organization inside the Soviet
  Union. The Trust then lured
  dissidents and foreign
  intelligence operatives including
  British intelligence officer,
  Sidney Reilly, to their deaths
  inside the Soviet Union.
  (Reilly’s demise was recounted in
  television’s Reilly: Ace of
  Spies.)
• Has the CIA
  investigated the degree of
  control the Iraqi intelligence
  service had over INA operations
  before the summer of 1996? What
  about after the summer of 1996?
  What has been the result of those
  investigations?
• Did the INA undermine other
  opposition groups, including the
  Iraqi National Congress? Could
  any such disruptive INA
  activities have been at the
  behest of the Iraqi intelligence
  services?
• If the INA did engage in this
  sort of activity, what form did
  it take? Specifically, there are
  reports that the INA was
  responsible for an autumn 1995
  explosion in Salahadin (in free
  northern Iraq) that killed a
  senior INC official, other INC
  officers and many Kurdish
  civilians. Is this information
  true?
• The Independent article
  states that the failed INA coup
  attempt led to the decision in
  the summer of 1996 by Masud
  Barzani, leader of the Kurdish
  Democratic Party (KDP), to invite
  Iraqi troops into Irbil, a city
  previously outside the control of
  Saddam Hussein and under the
  control of the Patriotic Union of
  Kurdistan (PUK), a rival to the
  KDP.
• Is there any information that
  INA representatives undermined
  U.S.-sponsored efforts to
  maintain a common anti-Saddam
  front involving the KDP-PUK?
  Specifically, there are reports
  that INA representatives
  attempted to exacerbate
  KDP-PUK-INC tensions in early
  spring of 1995. Are such reports
  accurate?
• Is there information that
  indicates INA representatives
  assisted the KDP in dealing with
  the Baghdad government?
• The INA radio supported by U.S.
  taxpayer dollars has been accused
  of disseminating anti-Israel
  propaganda. Has the INA radio
  been involved in advocating
  policies or broadcasting
  propaganda that counters the
  foreign policy of the United
  States?
• What does the CIA do to
  minimize the chances that INA
  broadcasts will undermine U.S.
  foreign policy objectives — and
  redound to the benefit of those
  of the Iraqi regime?

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy applauds the
stated intention of SSCI Chairman Richard
Shelby to subject George Tenet’s
nomination to thorough scrutiny. It also
welcomes the interest the Washington
Post reports today that will be
taken by a number of other Senators in
exploring with the DCI-designate such
issues as: the Roger Tamraz affair, the
Iran-Bosnia scandal, the handling of
intelligence regarding Haiti, the
politicization of intelligence, etc.

The FBI — and, indeed, the
intelligence community as a whole —
learned the hard way in the Ames disaster
that a thorough examination of the
mistakes made in an intelligence
operation and a determination of
accountability are essential for future
intelligence successes. For that reason,
an intensive inquiry into the INA failure
must be undertaken. The Tenet
confirmation hearings offer an
opportunity to begin such an inquiry in
earnest — an opportunity that must not
be missed.

– 30 –

1. See The
System Worked on Lake; Will It on Tenet?
(No. 97-D 42,
20 March 1997).