Ex-Spies: CIA Workers Outraged

Ex-Spies: CIA Workers Outraged
NEW YORK, July 19, 2003


Before the bombs fell on Baghdad, there were analysts inside the
American intelligence community who were troubled by the U.S. case for
war, reports CBS News Correspondent Jim Acosta.

Raymond McGovern, a former CIA analyst and supervisor, says, "Never
before in my 40 years of experience in this town has intelligence been
used in so cynical and so orchestrated a way."

McGovern is one of several retired intelligence analysts who say they
are speaking out for those who can't inside the CIA.

"The Agency analysts that we are in touch with are disheartened,
dispirited, angry,” he says. “They are outraged."

In other developments in the growing controversy over the intelligence
presented to the public to justify the war in Iraq:

# A British weapons expert apparently killed himself, sending the
government of Prime Minister Tony Blair deeper into crisis. David Kelly
had been put uncomfortably in the spotlight as British officials have
been trying to find someone to blame for accusations they hyped
intelligence about Iraq's weapons threat. Polls show the British public
is losing faith in Blair with a majority feeling they were misled about
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, reports CBS News Correspondent
Richard Roth.

# U.S. intelligence and senior administration officials admit there has
been little new evidence about Iraq's weapons program in the five years
since U.N. inspectors left Iraq, the New York Times reports.

# White House officials said Friday that President Bush and his national
security advisor, Condoleezza Rice, did not entirely read the most
authoritative prewar assessment of U.S. intelligence on Iraq, missing a
State Department claim that an allegation Bush would later use in his
State of the Union address was "highly dubious," the Washington Post
reports.

# Even as the Bush administration concluded Iraq was reviving its
nuclear weapons program, key signs — such as scientific data of weapons
work and evidence of research by Iraq's nuclear experts — were missing,
several former intelligence officials tell the Associated Press.

McGovern says many in the intelligence community feel they're taking the
heat for the failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and for
the uproar over the president's State of the Union speech -- despite
warnings from intelligence officials to some in the administration that
the case against Saddam Hussein's weapons programs was far from air-tight.

Lawrence Korb, former assistant secretary of defense, says, "They were
like lawyers trying to convince a jury. So they took bits and pieces of
evidence to present the best case."

Korb, a former Reagan administration official, says while the president
was presenting a case that appeared crystal clear, intelligence experts
saw a picture that was much more murky.

This is not the first time the United States has gone to war based on
facts that later turned out to be questionable. Almost 40 years ago,
President Johnson pointed to unconfirmed reports of attacks on American
ships in the Gulf of Tonkin to convince the congress to widen the war in
Vietnam."

"There's a little inscription in the marble emblazoned at the entrance
of CIA headquarters that says 'You shall know the truth and the truth
shall make you free'," says McGovern.

For some intelligence veterans, the fear is the truth and the
reputations of the people who must find the truth have become casualties
of this war.