Intelligence
and Policy Formulation, Implementation and
Linkage: A Personal Perspective
Remarks by Raymond Close
13th Arab-U.S. Policymakers Conference
Washington, DC
September 13, 2004 |
|
 Mr.
Raymond Close: I'm
going to pick up on something Frank [Anderson] just said.
I'm glad he took that extra minute to add the three
different kinds of failures because I have a fourth, which
I think is more important than any one of those three.
He said we've been faced with a perfect storm of
collection problems, analytical problems, and I think
implementation problems or something like that.
What I want to get to in a minute, but I don't want
to forget to draw attention to it right from the start.
I think we've been asking the wrong questions,
which is one of the reasons we've come up with the wrong
intelligence.
I graduated from
college 53 years ago and spent 26-and-a-half years in the
CIA and then spent an equal amount of time since then.
So, exactly half of the time I've been in the
workforce, if you will, for 53 years, I've been on the
production side of intelligence and involvement in it.
I've been more or less a consumer of it since then.
I've certainly been an observer of it.
On the peripheral sense, I've been a participant of
it and either a beneficiary or a victim of bad
intelligence. So,
I've developed a lot of impressions about what role
intelligence should play in our national life, and
particularly in policymaking.
I've come to a distressing conclusion in the last
few months, particularly, that intelligence is beginning
to be used for the wrong purposes.
It's beginning to be conceived of wrongly in terms
of its place in the process.
I've noticed, and
I wonder if you share this feeling, that intelligence now
is becoming sort of a monster in itself.
It's suddenly developed a capital "I."
If you listen to the deliberations of the various
commissions that been investigating 9/11 and so forth, you
keep hearing intelligence referred to in some sort of awe,
as if intelligence with a capital "I" was
somehow going to truth with a capital "T."
Forgetting that it is information, it's nothing
more than what you need to do.
It's the gas you put in your car.
It's not telling you where to go.
I worry about that because it means, I think .. I'm
worried because given an Administration we have now, which
has the tendency to be dogmatic or to be doctrinaire about
things -- the creation of this intelligence czar is going
to lead to the institutionalization of the very thing that
I'm worried about -- that intelligence with a capital
"I," that big gorilla sitting at the table.
A subparagraph of that by the way is my concern
about something called "actionable
intelligence," which by its very name implies that
the person who is in possession of it is somehow endowed
with not only the authority but sort of the responsibility
to act on it without the information going through the
regular process that it needs to go through.
Does this make any sense?
Are we doing what we're supposed to be doing?
Or, because we have actionable intelligence, we've
got to get on the ball and do something?
I worry about that.
That's bad culture.
| Of
course, Iraq is the example that we have to
think about right now.
It's overwhelming us -- the whole
question about where the intelligence went wrong
and why. I
suggest to you two examples that illustrate the
point -- and I'm concerned about right now about
asking the right questions.
I remember two particular reports that
the CIA issued just before we started that war
that attracted a lot of attention.
One was, I think, in late November or
possibly early December of 2002, three or four
months before it started, in which they
announced their conclusion, published their
conclusion that Saddam Hussein would use weapons
of mass destruction almost exclusively if he
were attacked.
In other words, it would take an attack
from us to trigger his use of them.
The wisdom of the intelligence community
was that these were not things that he would use
just for the hell of it.
He would use them only in self-defense
and in extremis.
A very important question; a very
important answer.
One that never seems to have had much
effect on a decision on whether we should go to
war or not.
I want to draw your attention to the fact
that the answer was an answer to the question
"What will Saddam do if we attack
him?" |
..reports
that the CIA
issued just before
we started that war..
..their conclusion that
Saddam Hussein
would use weapons
of mass destruction
almost exclusively if
he were attacked..
..Nobody
got around
to asking the question,
"How are the Iraqis
going to react to this?"..
|
The second
question was the famous "slam dunk" expression
of George Tenet when he said, "Don't worry boss, it's
a slam dunk." Now,
I ask you what question he had asked that would evoke that
answer? The
question was, "If I go ahead and invade, will you
produce the information that justifies what I've just
done?" Nobody
got around to asking the question, "How are the
Iraqis going to react to this?"
To having their doors kicked down and their country
invaded and occupied by a couple of hundred thousand
blue-eyed Christian kids from North America and from
England, who don't know what they're doing or why they're
there, or what they're supposed to be accomplishing when
they get there. Nobody
ever asked, "What are the Iraqis going to think about
this? What's
the Muslim world going to think about this?
What's the whole world going to think about
this?" Nobody
asked that question, and nobody gave them the answer.
Now, since we're
talking about intelligence, I ask where is the answer to
that question supposed to come from?
Who's going to answer that kind of question?
Not people, I don't think, whom Condoleezza Rice
referred to so derisively as those people in the bowels of
the agency. It
takes people like you.
It doesn't have to be intelligence officers running
off and stealing people's secrets.
The truth of this question comes from guts, from
people who have lived in the countries for a long, long
time, who know the language, who know the culture, who
know the people, and whose instinct tells them,
"Look, you can't kick down that man's door and expect
him to respect you."
You're not going to end up with the results that
your policy wants.
Now, that's a
huge intelligence failure, and nobody's identified it, and
not only that, but it's continuing.
We're doing the same thing today.
Every judgment we make in Fallujah, for example --
Well, we can't go in there and clean it out door by door,
so just some more of that nifty guided smart bombs that
made the whole winning of the war so easy and so quick to
begin with. But,
they're not solving the problem.
They're making it a lot worse.
And, somebody someday is going to write the history
of this era, and they're going to condemn the intelligence
community for not standing on its own two feet and saying
what it believed, finding out what it believed, and by
asking people like you.
One of the
problems with this intelligence czar thing that is going
on now -- it's going to have the effect eventually of
diluting the value of other people who should be
contributing to national intelligence.
I'm talking about the academic community who talk
to each other, and they all agree and are unanimous that
they thought this whole thing was a bad idea, but they're
not standing up, talking it, shouting it.
I'm talking about the business community, like a
lot of you people, who have lived out there, who know the
country, who knew intuitively and instinctively that this
was going to be a bad idea, and it was going to work
against your interests.
You didn't say anything about it.
Were you really doing something, or were you just
sitting and complaining in front of your television sets?
|
And,
the military -- I know any number of retired
officers, including Richard Meyers of all things
-- I found an old copy of Defense News, an issue
of several months before the war in Iraq
started, and he said under no circumstances
would we go into Iraq in any idea of a
preemptive war.
He was very emphatic about it and gave
all kinds of reasons for it.
Brent Scowcroft has done the same thing.
George Herbert Walker Bush said the same
thing. Colin
Powell has said the same thing.
But, when it came right down to it,
everybody was too gutless to stand up and say,
"This is stupid.
Don't do it.
It's not going to achieve what you want.
It's going to cause us a lot of harm and
we'll be much worse off."
Okay,
I'm running out of time here.
I promised him I would talk 10 minutes,
and I've probably already gassed on for another
15. I
want to get to the real point, and I've got to
take a minute to do this.
The thing I'm concerned about is the
inability of this community of ours, this
fraternity of people who know about the Middle
East, to speak up on the issue of linkage to the
Palestinian question.
We've all known this for 50 years, 60
years, more than that.
If we didn't establish once and for all,
the earnest and sincere concern of the United
States for justice for the Palestinians, that
all the other problems that we were seeking in
the Middle East were not going to get solved.
That's the simple truth.
|
I'm
concerned about
the inability of this
community of ours, this
fraternity of people who
know about the Middle
East, to speak up on the
issue of linkage to the Palestinian question.
If
we didn't establish
once and for all, the
earnest and sincere
concern of the United
States for justice for
the Palestinians, that
all the other problems
that we were seeking
in the Middle East were
not going to get solved.
That's the simple truth.
|
In all of my
career in the agency, every time any of us, myself
particularly, spoke out about this question, we were
always told, "Oh, come on, get off it.
That's a bore.
That's not our part.
We're not supposed to be involved in that."
I want to give you a particular example.
I want to read from notes that I took
contemporaneously at the time when linkage was keenly
important. It's
been important up and down at different times.
It was very important back in the early 1970s.
It was very important again after 1991.
The United States began to take serious concern
about linkage, and the whole Madrid Conference was a sign
of that. George
Bush 41 understood this.
I'm going to read
from notes here because I want to be sure I don't say
anything wrong. These
are exact notes that I wrote. Starting in late 1972,
about 10 months before the outbreak of the 1973 war, the
late King Faisal began warning President Nixon that other
Arab states, led by Iraq and Libya, were beginning to put
pressure on him to join them in utilizing what became
known as the "oil weapon" against the United
States unless the Nixon Administration took a more active
interest in resolving the Palestine question.
These warnings from Faisal were earnest, and they
were urgent, but we ignored them.
Faisal never gave up.
He sent his Oil Minister Yamani and others to
Washington several times over the next few months to
convey that message to everyone who would listen inside
and outside of government.
The warnings were ignored.
|
On
April 17, 1973, several months before the Yom
Kippur War began, I was informed by my official
Saudi intelligence counterparts that Anwar Sadat
had reached his decision to begin preparing for
a major military assault across the Suez Canal.
He had informed King Faisal of this
decision in a letter received that day, the 17th
April 1973.
Sadat acknowledged unashamedly in this
letter that he did not expect to win a war
against Israel, but he explained that only by
restoring Arab honor and displaying Arab courage
on the battlefield could he hope to capture the
attention of Washington and persuade Henry
Kissinger to support a peace process.
The letter was read to me with King
Faisal's expressed permission.
In reporting this information, I included
news that Prince Saud Al-Faisal, the King's son
and present foreign minister, was being sent to
Washington to convey the same message again of
his father's deep concern, made much more urgent
by the letter from Sadat that only a vigorous
American peace initiative, urgently undertaken,
could avert a regional Middle East war that
would inevitably include the imposition of an
oil embargo.
On that
occasion, King Faisal considered including this
message again in written form of a personal note
to Richard Nixon but thought better of that
idea. He
was tired of writing letters to the American
president, he explained, recalling the last time
he had done so, it had been three months before
he received an answer.
Prince Saud was, therefore, instructed to
convey the message verbally.
Again, as usual, Washington paid no heed
to the sad monition from a wise and dignified
gentleman, a proven friend of our country for
many many years.
It was no surprise then that when the
time that the dire predictions finally came true
six months later, Faisal stood resolutely
shoulder-to-shoulder with his Arab brothers.
Washington had again failed through
arrogance and ignorance to appreciate the
significance of the term " linkage."
|
On
April 17, 1973, several
months before the Yom
Kippur War.. ..I was
informed by my official
Saudi intelligence
counterparts that Anwar
Sadat had reached his
decision to begin preparing
for a major military assault
across the Suez Canal..
..only
a vigorous American
peace initiative, urgently
undertaken, could avert
a regional Middle East war
that would inevitably
include the imposition of
an oil embargo..
..as
usual, Washington
paid no heed..
..Washington
had again
failed through arrogance and ignorance to
appreciate the significance of the term "
linkage."
|
There is one
other example that just took place a few weeks after the
end of the Yom Kippur War, but while the oil embargo was
still very much in effect.
In a personal letter to King Faisal, dated December
3, 1973, Nixon included the remarkable following passages:
| "Looking
back over recent years, I recall the many times
Your Majesty has written to me of your concern
and of your conviction that we should do more to
resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.
You have always given me wise council,
and in retrospect, your advice should have been
heeded. The
latest war and the shadow it has cast over our
relations with many of our friends in the Middle
East has demonstrated beyond any doubt that the
situation, which has existed for so long, can no
longer be permitted to remain unresolved.
The American people, while they feel a
strong commitment to the security and survival
of Israel, also harbor friendly feelings toward
the Arab world and are well disposed to give
responsible Arab views the attention they need.
The American people have even understood
in the heat of the recent war, the need to
demonstrate solidarity with your Arab
compatriots led Your Majesty to institute
certain measures with respect to the production
and supply of oil."
Richard Nixon is saying I understand why
you imposed that embargo.
"With Your Majesty's cooperation, I
am prepared to devote the full energies of the
United States to bringing about a just and
lasting peace in the Middle East based on full
implementation of Security Council resolutions
242 and 338 in the adoption of which my
government played a major role.
You have my total personal commitment to
work towards that goal." |
Now, that last
sentence is written in his handwriting, President Nixon's
own handwriting. The
word total was underlined three times, and to give it a
little touch of personal things, he misspelled the word
commitment. He
put two "T's" in it.
| Nothing
came to pass of these glowing promises from the
President of the United States to the King of
Saudi Arabia.
By his words, Richard Nixon showed that
he understood the direct connection, the
linkage, between American dedication to peace
and justice for the Palestinians and the
achievement of America's own national
objectives.
By his following actions, he demonstrated
the hollow spirit of his commitment to uphold
America's half of the bargain.
Now,
Shibley Telhami told us this morning a very wise
statement.
He said, "We're just simply not
going to recover our credibility after this Iraq
War unless we do something dramatic to get the
attention of these people out there in that part
of the world and to persuade them that somehow
we care enough about their problems, so that
they can believe that we are honest -- what we
tell them and what we try to do comes from the
heart."
|
"We're
just simply not
going to recover our
credibility after this Iraq
War unless we do
something dramatic to
get the attention of these
people out there in that
part of the world and to
persuade them that
somehow we care enough
about their problems, so
that they can believe that
we are honest -- what we
tell them and what we try
to do comes from the heart."
|
I'm sick and
tired of being told as it's been going on for 35 years, 50
years, who cares. We're
never going to do it.
The Palestinians can't produce enough leaders.
It's up to us to take them by the scruff of the
neck and shake them until they all start behaving
themselves. We've
got to step in there and suggest some solutions and stand
by them and do something about it.
Otherwise, we're never going to have credibility,
and we're never going to get the problems solved.
So, my time is up, twice over.
The following is an
excerpt from the question and answer session, which
followed the panel discussion.
Dr. Max Gross,
Chair: Do
you think intelligence failed the President in Iraq by not
having the courage to tell the truth, or did the President
not care about the intelligence because he wanted to wage
a war in Iraq?
Before you try to
answer that Ray, let me add this one that just came.
It's for you.
Mr. Close said that the failure of intelligence is
asking the wrong questions, and then states that the
U.S.-British war in Iraq was wrong, a bad idea that
didn't, wouldn't, couldn't achieve the desired goal or end
state. The
question is, considering the fact that sanctions were
failing and had minimal international and regional
support, what questions should have been asked, and what
do you believe the answer should have been to the
questions that should have been asked?
Mr. Raymond
Close: A
perfectly legitimate question.
I don't know exactly how to answer that, frankly,
because I'm so firmly convinced that the whole concept of
going in there was wrong and was going to be
counterproductive. Now
that we are in as far as we are and as deep of trouble as
we're in, I feel a little injured being asked what we
should do now to get us out of the problem.
When you go into
something for entirely the wrong reasons, not knowing why
you are doing it and you keep changing the reasons once
you're there, how can anybody advise you what to do?
I know perfectly well now that there's no interest
whatsoever -- there never was any interest or any
misconception that by removing that one man, you were
going to change the whole Middle East.
That's a problem.
So, I have to start from the assumption that
answering the question that was asked to Frank, basically,
the intention was, the plan to go into Iraq and invade
that country and kick down his front door and change it
around was made long before the intelligence really began
to be evaluated carefully.
I think it was all a done thing.
[Inaudible
question off microphone].
I think our
alternative was that he wasn't a problem.
People have said that Saddam was a huge threat to
us because he had these weapons of mass destruction.
But, you forget that when he did have them in 1991,
he positively had them -- all kinds of weapons of mass
destruction -- and we offered him that opportunity.
We invaded his country then, and he didn't use it
then. He
didn't use it then. Why
didn't he use it then?
Well, he was either afraid of retaliation -
deterrence was working obviously.
He was certain, I guess, that if he tried it, he
would get [inaudible]. If he developed them, he was
going to be discovered.
There were all kinds of reasons on why he didn't
want to do those things that we had dire concerns about.
I think logically, he wasn't the danger that
everybody says he was.
People continue to say that he was.
I really don't think so.
I don't think that's a question that can be
answered necessarily by stealing people's secrets.
That's one of those questions that come from just
really sitting down and thinking about it, thinking about
the logic of it. He
didn't do it in 1991, why would he do it now?
Why aggravate him and poke him?
Well, I went up
to the United Nations in the mid-1990s at the time that
the sanctions were being questioned, and everybody was
talking about let's get smart sanctions and let's figure
out a way or at least change the nature of the sanction on
the regime so that it didn't hurt the children, but it
prevented him from developing weapons.
I remind you that Madeline Albright was the
Secretary of State and Holbrook was the Ambassador to the
United Nations. I
asked the question at a very high level office, and I
won't mention who it was I asked to.
I said, "Why can't you figure us out something
like this? This
is not an insolvable problem.
Figure out a way to keep them from getting the
weapons that we're worried about and try to bring them
out. Let's
try to do something with these people."
He said, "Ray, you don't understand the
instructions I'm under.
My instructions are to keep this guy in a box, and
to make sure that every time he gets a gleam of light,
we're going to slam it down on him and make sure he
doesn't do that."
Well, how would
you react under those conditions?
It was a deliberate, conscious, determined move to
put him in a corner and torment him and to prove to him
what a bad guy he was.
I'm not saying he was a good man.
For heaven's sake, I'd be the last person in the
world to say that. But,
I do think there were other ways to do it.
By all means, there was a different attitude to
bring to the table that would have changed the problem and
handled it better. I
feel very strongly about that.
Mr.
Raymond Close comes from a family with deep roots in
the Middle East. Many of his immediate relatives
have been teachers, diplomats, or businessmen in the Arab
Middle East for four generations, since his maternal
great-grandfather arrived in 1853 and began establishing
schools in southern Lebanon. Mr. Close's father was
a professor and later Dean of Arts and Sciences at the
American University of Beirut from 1910 until 1955.
His mother's brother, Colonel William Eddy, served as the
interpreter between President Franklin Roosevelt and Saudi
Arabian King Abdulaziz bin Abdelrahman Al-Saud at their
historic meeting aboard a U.S. Navy cruiser in the Suez
Canal immediately following the Yalta Conference in
February 1945. Eddy later became the first U.S.
Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
After graduating from
Princeton University in 1951, Mr. Close served for 26
years as a Middle East specialist with the Operations
Directorate of the CIA's Clandestine Services.
During his career, he served under cover as a political
officer at American Embassies in Lebanon, Egypt, Pakistan,
and Saudi Arabia. For seven years before his
retirement in 1977, he was the CIA's senior representative
in Saudi Arabia.
After leaving government
service, Mr. Close remained in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
for an additional seven years, serving as a private
consultant to several American and European corporations.
Since returning to the United States in 1984, he has
continued to act as an international business consultant
and editor of an intelligence newsletter for private
clients.
Mr. Close and his wife,
Marty, moved to Princeton in August 2001. Mrs. Close
is the daughter of Presbyterian missionaries in India,
where she was born and lived for many years.
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