inside the glass house

The heavy price paid for incorrect intelligence
NEW YORK-- Tipped off by American intelligence of impending terrorist attacks, several European airlines were forced to cancel their flights to the US last month.

But on every single occasion, the airlines found no potential terrorists or hijackers on the passenger manifest. A Muslim woman of Middle Eastern origin was grilled for hours at the airport but to no avail. The reason for the grilling: she was travelling without her husband or a male relative. And that's a no-no for Muslim women, say American and British intelligence.

The successive US intelligence failures prompted the British Airline Pilot's Association to lambaste the US. "What we are saying to the Americans is it's been proved that the standard of your intelligence is crap, and the whole world knows that now", an Association spokesman was quoted as saying.

Even the apparent reason for the US military attack on Iraq-- predicated on the presence of huge stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (WMD)-- is now being blamed on intelligence failure.

So what happens when the rationale for war is proved dead wrong? As the Gary Trudeau cartoon character Doonesbury says: "What do you say after you invade another country by mistake. Oops, sorry about all the dead people."

President Bush went to war against Saddam Hussein because the Iraqi president was apparently on the verge of building a nuclear weapon-- and was also in possession of biological and chemical weapons.

With no WMDs in Iraq so far, right wing conservatives of the ruling Republican party now think Bush was wrongly advised by his intelligence services.

Surprisingly, Iraqi insurgents seem to have got their intelligence right last week when they hit a military convoy which included the US military commander in the Middle East General John Abizaid, and the local US commander General Charles Swannack.

Abizaid, an American of Lebanese extraction, was unharmed. So was Swannack. But the dramatic attack visibly shook the US military establishment in Iraq. Both military officials were visiting an Iraqi civil defence corps compound in Falluja, west of Baghdad.

Asked if the insurgents had advance knowledge of the presence of senior US military officials, the deputy chief of military operations in Iraq Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt said: "I would challenge your assertion that there was foreknowledge". But he admitted that the US was going "to take a hard look at what happened."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan doesn't seem to have much trust on intelligence either. "I think it's not a question of trust in Washington or Downing Street," he told reporters last week.

"To be quite honest, I've always been a bit suspicious of intelligence. I've always tried to, when we get intelligence, check with several other sources, and it's really an estimate, an assessment of what is likely to happen. It's not a concrete science."

Annan also said he was glad that both the US and Britain are setting up commissions to investigate intelligence failures in both countries. The US keeps spending billions of dollars on intelligence using sophisticated technology, including telephone intercepts and state-of-the-art monitoring by satellites (which can even read license plates in cars in the streets of Colombo).

But where the US failed miserably is in human intelligence. Since Iraq was an authoritarian regime which closely monitored the movements of foreigners, US intelligence was never able to successfully infiltrate the higher political and military echelons in the country.

The human intelligence the US received was mostly from Iraqi dissidents living overseas and who had their own secret agenda to precipitate an American military attack on Iraq so that they can take political power in Baghdad. The US, in short, was taken for a glorious ride.

Meanwhile, the multiple suicide bombings in Iraq last week and the escalating violence against US-led multi-national military forces are styming efforts by the United Nations to return to the war-devastated country.

Annan has come under increasing American pressure not only to mediate the ongoing dispute between the US and the Shiite leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani but also resume full-scale humanitarian activities suspended after the bombing of the UN compound in Baghdad last August.

The blast killed 22 UN staffers, including the Special Representative in Iraq Under-Secretary-General Sergio Vieira de Mello. A second suicide bombing on the UN office killed an Iraqi security guard and wounded 19 others.

"The blue flag of the United Nations does not provide staffers protection any more," says Guy Candusso, vice-president of the U.N. Staff Union. "We don't want the lives of our staff put at risk in the current environment." he said. And the current environment does not show any visible signs of improvement.

Back to Columns