On Monday evening, NBC News reported that sources inside U.S. intelligence agencies believe that the attack on Saudi oil processing facilities “originated in” Iran. This does not necessarily mean that the drones or missiles involved literally flew to the facilities from a site in Iran, but that the attack “displays a level of sophistication” outside the range of Houthi militia forces in Yemen, which have taken responsibility for the attach. The sources also indicated that Democrats would not dispute that Iran was behind the attack. That may well be the case, but it still leaves open an enormous question: Can we trust that analysis?
After all, the intelligence community wasn’t just wrong about the situation in Iraq previous to the U.S. invasion there; it was completely wrong. Wrong about the presence of weapons of mass destruction, wrong about the nature of facilities and equipment, wrong about the ease with which a post-war Iraq could be converted into a model of a modern, stable nation. That completely inaccurate picture of Iraq has directly caused the deaths of over 4,400 U.S. service members, left over 31,000 injured—often for life—and cost the lives of at least half a million Iraqis.
To be fair, there were many at the CIA, NSA, and other intelligence agencies who were absolutely right in their analysis of both the conditions that existed in Iraq at the time, and the consequences of a military incursion. But those voices, the voices backed by evidence and reason, were drowned out by highly selective editing that mined a variety of data and pulled out only those bits that supported a preconceived notion of “the right thing to do.” Senior leadership at the Pentagon and the White House had in their hands the evidence that showed that Iraq was not developing nuclear weapons, that Iraq did not have a significant program developing either chemical or biological weapons, and that Iraq was not directly connected to the terrorists who attacked America on 9/11. They simply chose to either ignore or actively suppress all that evidence.
In a phone call to legislators, Trump’s special representative for Iran said that the Saudis considered the attack on the oil facilities “their 9/11.” That strikes a lot of Americans as offensive—even leaving out the fact that the first 9/11 could easily be considered as belonging to Saudi Arabia. This wasn’t something that cost thousands of lives. Where it hurt the kingdom of Mohammed bin Salman was in the pocketbook. What the attack really does share with 9/11 is that it was highly asymmetric, with the cost of the attack a tiny fraction of the dollar damage done.
The other thing it may share is serving as a pretext for invasion. Because, except for a single-letter edit in the target, the United States seems poised to make the same huge mistake again.
There’s another concern about the intelligence community at this point beyond just the eternal tendency of agencies to edit their output so that their results have a funny way of looking like what the boss wanted to begin with. The biggest concern may be: How much of the intelligence community is actually left?
Even before taking office, Trump expressed his disdain for intelligence agencies at all levels. Since he slid into the White House, there has been both a mass exodus from many agencies and a concerted effort to replace experienced field operatives with Trump-friendly assets. The acting director of national intelligence is at this moment sitting on a whistleblower report that the inspector general found to be both urgent and credible. Congress doesn’t know what’s in that report. Congress wouldn’t even know there was a report had the inspector general not let it slip more than a week after the date when the law required the acting DNI to turn it over.
Trump has run through agency heads like six-packs of Coke, searching out only the “best” in the form of those who agree with him, always agree with him, and only agree with him. Under the best of conditions, the output of the intelligence community deserves heavy scrutiny before it means dropping a bomb or putting a boot on foreign soil. These aren’t the best of conditions.
What we know at the moment is that Trump and Jared Kushner have deep personal ties to Saudi leader Mohammed bin Salman. We know that Trump has decimated the intelligence agencies to replace both supervisors and analysts with those who provide answers that he likes. We know that any results received from the intelligence community on this front come filtered through the White House.
We don’t know what the evidence is about the nature or origin of the attack on Saudi Arabia. We don’t know whether the intelligence sources speaking out can be trusted. And we don’t know why the United States should be involved.