March 15, 2003
By JOHN J. LUMPKIN, Associated Press
WASHINGTON - A small group composed mostly of retired CIA officers is appealing to former colleagues still inside to go public with any evidence that the Bush administration is slanting intelligence to support its case for war with Iraq.
Members of the group say the Bush administration has released information on Iraq that meets only its ends, while ignoring or withholding contrary reporting.
They also say the administration's public evidence about the immediacy of Iraq's threat to the United States and its alleged ties to Al Qaeda is unconvincing, and they accuse policy makers of putting out some information that does not meet an intelligence professional's standards of proof.
''It's been cooked to a recipe, and the recipe is high policy,'' said Ray McGovern, a 27-year CIA veteran who briefed top Reagan administration security officials before retiring in 1990. ''That's why a lot of my former colleagues are holding their noses these days.''
A CIA spokesman said McGovern and his supporters were not qualified to evaluate intelligence provided to policy makers.
''He left the agency over a decade ago,'' spokesman Mark Mansfield said. ''He's hardly in a position to comment knowledgeably on that subject.''
McGovern's group, calling itself Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, includes about 25 retired officers, mostly from the CIA's analytical branch but with some members from its operational side and other agencies, McGovern said.
Leaking classified national defense information is illegal, and CIA officers take an oath of secrecy when they join. Prosecutions of violations are rare, but government personnel caught leaking nondefense information may lose their security clearances, or their jobs. Federal law offers protection to whistle-blowers in some cases.
McGovern and his supporters acknowledge that their request to their former colleagues inside the CIA and other agencies is unusual. The CIA's culture tends to keep disputes inside the organization, and many intelligence officers shun discussions of American policy - such as whether war on Iraq is justified - saying it is their job to provide information, not to decide how to act on it.
McGovern, who works in an urban outreach ministry in Washington, said his group's request ''goes against the whole ethic of secrecy and going through channels, and going to the [Inspector General]. It takes a courageous person to get by all that.''
CIA spokesman Mansfield said: ''Our role is to call it like we see it, to provide objective, unvarnished assessments. That's the code we live by, and that's what policy makers expect from us.''
The administration says its information is sound. During Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's address to the United Nations Security Council last month, he said: ''These are not assertions. What we are giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence.''
This story ran on page A6 of the Boston Globe on 3/15/2003.
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