Washington — In all the hullabaloo surrounding Super Tuesday
over the primaries and caucuses, perhaps the most important news
story of the day slipped from sight, or was reported only in
fragments. I have in mind our intelligence community’s annual
appearance before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
There our spy chiefs appeared to report how the war against terror
is going.
How I wish I had a seat on that committee just for the day. I
would have a few questions of my own. One would be, “Have any of
you fellows detected the whereabouts of Boy Clinton?” Since the
South Carolina primary when Bill fanned the smoldering embers of
his party’s white racism, America’s most recent redneck president
has slipped from sight. As I reported in my book on Bill’s restless
life in retirement, The Clinton Crack-Up, his record of
campaigning for others is dismal. In 2004 of the 14 candidates he
campaigned for 12 lost. Doubtless Hillary’s strategists are even
now pondering where to hide the big lovable oaf lest he do her
campaign any more injury. They might consider hiding Hillary too.
She is proving to be an implausible candidate.
But back to our spy chiefs’ appearance on Capitol Hill — a more
serious question that I would like to have asked would be about
that National Intelligence Estimate of late 2007. Why were its
claims about Iran’s nuclear plans so out of sync with those that
the Bush administration had been making? Contrary to the
administration, the NIE report claimed Iran had halted its nuclear
arms program. What is more, this report conflicted with
intelligence from France, the UK, and Israel. In fact, Israel’s spy
agency, Mossad, reported this very week that Iran will have nuclear
weapons in three years. Gratefully, National Intelligence Director
Michael McConnell explained the discrepancy. The NIE report was
faulty.
As reported in the New York Sun, “The director of
national intelligence is backing away from his agency’s
assessment….” McConnell explained that “If I had ‘til now to
think about it, I probably would change a few things.” One would be
“the way we describe the Iranian nuclear program.” The Iranians
have halted work on nuclear warheads, said McConnell, but they
proceed with the more dangerous business of attempting the
enrichment of uranium and procuring the capacity to hit North
Africa and Europe with nuclear arms. So I am putting my money on
Mossad’s reports.
McConnell also gave a grave warning to senators about the
survival of Pakistan, telling them that, “In the last year, the
number of terrorist attacks and deaths were greater than in the
past six years combined.” The terrorists include members of al
Qaeda and the Taliban, all of whom threaten Pakistan’s “very
survival.” Another news story coming from McConnell at these
momentous hearings is that al Qaeda is planning more attacks
against the United States and had a plan in the works for attacking
the White House as recently as 2006. Homegrown al Qaeda cells here
have been primitive, but McConnell registered his concern that new,
more sophisticated cells might threaten us domestically in the
years ahead.
All these news stories are pretty gloomy. Whether the Democratic
presidential candidates admit it or not, we are in a war with
Islamofascists that will go on for years. Rolling up our forces
abroad and bringing them home will neither end nor ameliorate the
threat. But there was one spy chief on the Hill this week with good
news. CIA Director Michael Hayden confirmed that the CIA has used
waterboarding and it works prodigiously. The agency only used this
technique of simulated drowning three times since 9/11, saving it
for terror leaders who have posed the utmost threat to our
security, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, mastermind of attack on the USS
Cole, Abu Zubaydah, the brains behind the thwarted
millennium attacks, and Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who directed 9/11 —
as deserving a trio of barbarians as any waterboardist can imagine.
From these brutes — and in the wink of an eye — Hayden reports
that CIA got a quarter of all the human intelligence it obtained
from 2002 to 2006. Now we also know that this impressive
interrogation technique was undertaken not only with the knowledge
of the Bush administration but also the knowledge of then House
Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and then ranking Senate Intelligence
Committee member Jay Rockefeller.
So the news from our chief intelligence practitioners is not all
bad. It is sobering, however, and should have been on the front
pages of newspapers throughout the country.
