"It was not bad intelligence. It was much more. It was an orchestrated effort. It began before the war, was a major effort during the war and continues as post-conflict distortions." -- Retired Colonol Sam Gardiner, USAF
What began as a personal quest (with help from the late Mark Fineman/ LATimes) to study the use of `spin' by this administration during the lead-up to war eventually led Gardiner to a much broader investigation (sound familiar?): "Washington and London did not trust the people of their democracies to come to the right decisions." Instead, "there were over 50 stories manufactured or at least engineered that distorted the picture of Gulf II."
The Niger story was one of those 50.
Gardiner's study offers background info helpful for us to review as we await the conclusion of Fitzgerald's investigation. Niger references below the fold...
Gardiner's full report available from USNews.com in 6 parts:
1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
(Niger references from pdf file # 5)
Two years ago this month, retired USAF Colonel Sam Gardiner (a teacher of strategy and military operations in the National War College, Air War College and Naval War College) issued a report entitled, "Truth from These Podia: Summary of a Study of Strategic Influence, Perception Management, Strategic Information Warfare and Strategic Psychological Operations in Gulf II".
The report had been researched and written by himself and Mark Fineman of the LATimes. (Fineman was to die of an apparent heart attack while on assignment in Baghdad only days before the report was released.)
In it, Gardiner said The United States (and UK) conducted a strategic influence campaign that:
- distorted perceptions of the situation both before and during the conflict.
- caused misdirection of portions of the military operation.
- was irresponsible in parts.
- might have been illegal in ways.
- cost big bucks.
- will be even more serious in the future.
Main conclusions:
- The assumptions of some in the government: the people of the United States and the United Kingdom will come to a wrong decision if they are given the truth.
- We probably have taken "Information Warfare" too far.
- We allowed strategic psychological operations to become part of public affairs.
- We failed to make adequate distinction between strategic influence stuff and intelligence.
- Message became more important than performance.
Gardiner charged that the Pentagon and White House's "information warfare, strategic influence, strategic psychological operations pushed their way into the important process of informing the peoples of our two democracies. The United States and the UK got too good at the concepts they had been developing for future warfare."
And they got good at in on us...and not the enemy.
They told us what they were going to do. The Department of Defense created a rather significant press storm early in 2002 when it was revealed that there were plans to create an office to do strategic influence. Efforts to create the office were brought to a halt with White House agreement. In November, the Secretary of Defense announced in a press conference [...] that he was just kidding when he said he would not do strategic influence.
The White House gave a similar warning. Andrew Card, the President's Chief of Staff, told us they would do a major campaign to sell the war. Alastair Campbell, Tony Blair's just-resigned Strategy (and Communications) Director, was orchestrating the same on the other side of the Atlantic.
Then they told us again what they were going to do:
"And then there was the Office of Strategic Influence. You may recall that. And `oh my goodness gracious isn't that terrible, Henny Penny the sky is going to fall.' I went down the next day and said fine, if you want to savage the thing fine I'll give you the corpse. There's the name. You can have the name, but I'm gonna keep doing every single thing that needs to be done and I have." - Rumsfeld, November 18, 2002
Lest we think this was all about propaganda, it was not. (Btw, the Gardiner study covers many more angles besides the Niger one reviewed below. It's well worth a look if you haven't reviewed the document in a couple of years.)
Gardiner conjectured that Niger might have been a black propaganda or a black program:
- Niger nuclear materials documents came to the CIA through the Italians and the British.
- Mentioned in the President's State of the Union Address.
- Reported in the September UK Dossier on the threat from Iraq.
- >>> February - Joseph Wilson to Africa to investigate the reports.
- >>> Sep 24th - CIA to Congressional committee
- >>> Sept 26th - Powell in closed hearing
- >>> Dec 19th - State position paper; first public
- >>> Jan 28th - State of the Union Message
- >>> Mar 7th - IAEA reveal forgeries
- Fundamental questions is who had to gain by forging these documents?
To answer the last question on the above list, Gardiner offered 3 possibilities:
- By someone in the US Government other than the CIA.
- By parts the Defense Department.
- By Israeli intelligence (who were participating with the DoD in the Iraq collection effort).
Some interesting facts in the study arrive in the form of George Galloway. Remember him?
Galloway was the feisty British member of Parliament who came to Washington, DC earlier this year to defend himself against charges that he'd enriched himself through Iraq's oil-for-food program. Apparently, that's not all the powers that be were trying to pin on him.
Galloway appears in Gardiner's study, apparently `mixed up' with the Niger story as well (hard to imagine this guy gets any work done in Parliament, huh?):
- April 22, the London Daily Telegraph reports papers retrieved from Iraq's Foreign Ministry alleged payoff to George Galloway, longtime critic of a hard line against Hussein.
- April 25th, Christian Science Monitor reports Saddam Hussein had paid Galloway $10 million over 11 years from a retired general.
- May 11th, British paper The Mail reported to have gotten documents from the same source that were forgeries.
- June 20th, Christian Science Monitor reports their analysis revealed their documents were forgeries.
Gardiner asked, "Documents were forged to suggest direct links between George Galloway and the Iraq regime. Was this part of the pattern or punishment? Was this a black operation?"
Kind of interesting all of these forged documents popping up all of a sudden during the Bush years, isn't it? How many other years are in memory that such a thing has occurred over, and over, and over?
Not only were they perhaps trying to take down Galloway (one of their harshest UK critics), both the US and UK government held the French in contempt for their decision to withhold supporting the Iraq invasion. An attempt was made to smear them as well via another Niger document angle:
"London - The French secret service is believed to have refused to allow Britain's MI6 to give the United States `credible' intelligence showing that Iraq was trying to buy uranium ore from Niger, U.S. intelligence sources said yesterday. US intelligence sources believe the most likely source of the MI6 intelligence was the French secret service, the DGSE." - Michael Smith, London Daily Telegraph, July 14, 2003
The story didn't last very long in the media, but Gardiner wonders who planted it?
It's certainly not suggested that Col. Sam Gardiner, conducting an investigation with the help of one reporter, had all of the answers. But, he sure did have a lot of great questions.
"It will be important to learn who was behind the fake Niger document and why and what other information driving American policies might carry their fingerprints." - Milt Bearden, Former CIA Manager for Clandestine Operations.
It wasn't a conspiracy. The propaganda campaign was, in fact, "well run and networked." Had we (truly) accomplished our mission in Iraq by this time, who knows how much of this would have come to light? Would we have moved on to Iran by now, the Plame outing investigation finding itself relegated to a paragraph on page A35?