Interview with Greg Thielmann, Ret. State Dept INR

July 27th, 2004
Transcription by Volunteer Citizen Journalist Sue Mitchell

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So why don’t you go ahead and introduce yourself? Then what you used to do.
GREG THIELMANN: My name is Greg Thielmann. And I retired in 2002 from a 25-year career in the U.S. Foreign Service. And the job from which I retired was the Director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation in Military Affairs in the Intelligence Bureau of the State Department.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And -- Talk a little bit about one of your last months, August, when you started to see a lot of this public relations campaign start to drum up, and your some of your reactions were to that.
THIELMANN: My office was responsible, among other things, for analyzing all of the intelligence coming into the US on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. So that was really a constant of the job during my entire tour in the Intelligence Bureau. But there was definitely -- after 9/11 and in the latter part of 2001 -- there was an intensification of high-level interest in how we would characterize the developments in Iraq of unconventional weapons programs. And we did a number of reports doing our best to characterize Iraqi military capabilities and their programs in nuclear biological chemical and missile programs. What was really marked for me was the way Vice President Cheney’s August speech to the VFW constituted what was for me really a Declaration of War. And it was characterized by language which was, I would say, almost completely unrelated to what the actual intelligence coming in said about Iraqi conditions. It was hyped and expressed in an alarmist way that was really not an accurate and faithful rendering of what the professional intelligence analysts were saying. But it was a signal -- at least to me, as a retiring government worker -- that the administration had decided to go to war. And had therefore dispensed with an effort to educate the American people about the realities of what was happening in Iraq. And instead was interested in so inflating and distorting what was happening in Iraq, as to make it appear that the gravest threat to the United States -- more grave than, for example, the nuclear weapons program of North Korea or the evolving nuclear weapons program of Iran -- and it was that total lack of perspective and distortion of what was really going on that alarmed me greatly in August. Now, we had assumed that there was a lot of -- There were a lot of high-level discussions going on and that. And that Secretary Colin Powell was representing the forces of reason in an administration that had a very strong, ideological bent. And obviously, a group of people represented by Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz and Richard Pearl and others who have been lobbying for war against Iraq for some time. But we did not have an indication -- or at least I did not have an indication -- or feel -- until that Cheney speech of how far advanced the planning and thinking about war against Iraq was. We were in the Intelligence Bureau, and our job was to analyze incoming foreign intelligence. So we were not – we were not in the best position to know all the twists and turns of evolving U.S. policy. But that was to me the warning flag about what was to come. Then it was quickly followed by a number of things, which distressed me greatly. In my last month of government service, the President introduced what had been top-secret, compartmented information on the interception of aluminum tubes bound for Iraq. And he presented in a way, which again, I thought was a completely inaccurate distortion of the state of analysis within the U.S. Government on the meaning of those tubes. At the same time, Condoleezza Rice and President Bush starting using the image of the mushroom cloud to imply that Iraqi nuclear capability were much more advanced than the professional analysts were reporting. So there was really one thing after another. And then, I guess, one of the last and most dramatic things in this series of exaggerated and alarmist reports was the President’s statement about the uranium from Africa in his January 2003 State of the Union message. And this, hit me as a particular thunderbolt because once I realized that what he was referring to was something that we had assured the Secretary was a very dubious report back in March of 2002, and the Intelligence Bureau’s comment on this issue. I realized that not only was the President conveying sensitive intelligence from foreign intelligence services, which was highly unusual to quote a British report as if we had no comment on it other than to present it as fact, but beyond that to put the kind of weight that he did on that report combining it with the aluminum tube story distortion to address the most worrisome of all of the categories of weapons of mass destruction -- that is the nuclear account -- I thought was simply unjustified and in light of the use of this kind of comment to build a case for war was really a crime against the American people.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: During this time period, are you looking at – reading both the Washington Post and -- after -- you know -- starting in August up until the War Resolution was passed in October -- are you reading the newspapers and seeing --? And how would you kind of characterize how the press was performing in that time period?
THIELMANN: I was not happy with the way press was performing, but obviously the press was trying to report on a subject that dealt with official secrets. It was a very difficult thing to report on. And I can say with some pride, I guess, that that the people in the government who were sworn to safeguard those secrets were basically doing that. And most people were not talking to the press about classified matters. The unfortunate thing was, of course, that the leadership of the government was talking about these matters, and doing it in a way which was dishonest. And that puts the members of the bureaucracy in a very odd position. And you find a press that really has to dig things out, and read official reports very carefully to look for words that are changed to try to find out from sources -- get some idea from sources what they need to apply additional scrutiny to. And I am afraid that my overall judgment is that the press did not do a very good job. The classic instance of that is the way they treated the aluminum tube story. The President, in commenting on these aluminum tubes that Iraq was procuring, gave everyone the impression that the only use for these tubes could possibly be the nuclear weapons program of Iraq. And that was the impression he left by the words in his address to the United Nations General Assembly in September. But just in case anyone did not get it, Condoleezza Rice his National Security Advisor, said that explicitly, ‘This is the only thing that these tubes could be used for.’ Now this is being said publicly at the very time that there was a deep division of opinion within the U.S. Government. The agency that had the most expertise to apply to this issue, The Department of Energy, said exactly the opposite -- that these tubes were not suited for use in centrifuges to enrich uranium. And my Bureau, the State Department’s Intelligence Bureau, after listening to a long debates and a lot of analysts of the actual metal that had been intercepted, found the Department of Energy analyst to be very convincing. We went to the experts directly at Oakridge National Laboratory, for example, listened to their explanations. We looked at the alternative explanations for why Iraq was importing so many aluminum tubes. And in fact, there was a plausible explanation, which we now know was, in fact, the case. They were importing these aluminum tubes to be used for the casing of conventional artillery rockets. So we not only had expert witness that this kind of high-strength aluminum was not what was needed for uranium centrifuges, but we had a plausible explanation of what was being done. So that was the background within the government for those who knew these things, but the press simply took almost verbatim what the President had said and accepted without much analysis that this was going into the nuclear weapons program. When they did get wind of the disagreements inside the government, they basically bought off on this senior CIA’s leadership’s explanation that the disagreements about the majority opinion were really kind of eccentric -- an eccentric minority point of view -- giving the public no idea that the real expertise in the government happened to be part of this dissenting opinion. So -- That the press did not really pick up on this in a timely way allowed the public to be deceived by the government. And -- For a strong impression to be formed -- which was very hard then to disabuse the public of -- that the most important category of weapons of mass destruction programs was being actively pursued by the Iraqi government, but the program that had been dismantled in the 1990s was being reconstituted. And that line on the part of the senior CIA leadership -- and even more on the part of the politic leadership of the U.S. -- was adhered to throughout, including in February when Secretary Powell gave a speech to the United Nations Security Council, all the way up to the March 17th speech by President Bush. Again and again they implied that there was an acute nuclear danger here when -- as the UN inspectors returning to Iraq gained more and more evidence -- we knew was not the case. And more and more doubts were raised about the government’s account, but the press was very slow to pick up on those doubts -- very slow to pick up on what the UN inspectors were finding on the ground. And that spurious case made by the government was basically accepted by most of the press throughout the lead up to the war.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And if you look on October 4th when the CIA released this declassified document they acknowledged that there was a debate -- some reporters like Jonathan Landay of Knight Ridder and Julian Borger picked up on that and followed it up, and were able to talk to Department of Energy officials. So can you speak to -- It seems like there were some people reporting on it, but not a critical mass, New York Times, Washington Post --
THIELMANN: That’s right. And I think Jonathan Landay and those --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I’m sorry -- I am going to be not including my questions so --
THIELMANN: Yeah. Jonathan Landay and several others did report on this in an impressive and a responsible journalistic fashion, and that actually makes everyone else looks worse. Because they showed that even though you have a great difficulty in getting sensitive information that is relevant to a highly important public debate, they were able to basically crack the story. That raises the question then, "What happened to the rest of the press? What happened to television journalists for not following up on those leads? For not understanding the significance of what they were writing in these stories?" It actually became part of the television press coverage of this matter in the summer of 2003 after the invasion -- After we were occupying the country and Americans were dying every day, then the television news sort of picked up on that story that they could have followed in the fall of 2002 when it would have played -- or could have played a major role in the nation deciding whether or not it had to go to war when it did.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And you look at the time period after October 11th, and a lot of the journalists I’ve talked to kind of take this real politik attitude of ‘We knew they were going to go to war anyway. It was just a matter of how many allies we were going to have.’ So you have this ignoring of Armitage saying, you know, that there was a debate -- and Peter Jennings had a 20 to 30 word sound bite. But you also had on March 7th El Baradei coming out with these tubes -- that was the same day they gave the 10 day ultimatum. So, I mean -- Do you see that generally a lot of this evidence that was coming out at the UN -- after the UN inspectors were on the ground -- that a lot of these leads were not being followed up on as well, even the ones in the public domain.
THIELMANN: I very much believe that the intelligence committees of both houses of Congress had access to the entire intelligence community after the National Intelligence Estimate was released at the beginning of the month. There was both a classified version and an unclassified version. It was possible for them to talk about this in open sessions, in front of cameras. And what basically happened was that the -- this all important document that had been requested by the Congress and hurriedly put together by the Administration, was given very quick and not very comprehensive scrutiny by the Congress before the Congress fulfilled its Constitutional obligation to in effect declare a war -- or give the President -- delegate to the President the issue of going to war. So -- I think it is very revealing that when you had, for example, my Intelligence Bureau in writing -- in a very conspicuous and comprehensive way -- disagreeing with one of the most important contentions of that National Intelligence estimate -- That as far as I know, no one from my Bureau was ever called by any member of Congress to explain or elaborate on that that position. To me that -- that is a prima facie case that the Congress -- just as the press did -- failed to really delve into the issue to the degree that they should have given the gravity of the issues concern.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And -- When you have this Administration driving the news cycle saying Iraq is the biggest threat. Could the press have dug in and see well no actually North Korea or Iran may be a bigger threat?
THIELMANN: This is something I don’t think you need a lot of sources to explore. I mean --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I’m sorry, what --
THIELMANN: You do not need to get government intelligence analysts to reveal classified information to make some comparative statements about Iran and Iraq and North Korea. These three countries were labeled as the "Axis of Evil" by President Bush. The U.S. Government had made a lot of statements about concerns concerning Iran and North Korea -- public statements. They had said that the United States Government believes that Iran is building -- is working on a nuclear weapons program. And it was doing so without the constraints that Iraq was under -- without nearly the constraints that Iraq was under. Likewise, it was the official position of the U.S. Government that North Korea already had sufficient nuclear weapons – or I’m sorry -- sufficient fissile material for some number of nuclear weapons -- at the same time that we were talking about Iraq might have sufficient fissile material within seven to nine years for a nuclear weapon. One does not have to dig very much there, one just has to put statements side by side and say, "If in fact," -- and North Korea had just told us a few days before the Congressional vote that ‘Yes, they were using uranium enrichment to work on nuclear weapons.’ They admitted that to us, which was certainly contrary to the spirit of an agreement the U.S. had with the North Koreans in 1994. So -- And that, by the way, was not shared by the Executive Branch with the Congress of the United States until a day or two after the vote on Iraq. But the statements of the official U.S. Government assessments about what was going on in Iran, what was going on in North Korea were all publicly available. All one had to do was to look at those statements, look at the degree of concern about Iraq, and put in perspective where the most imminent and immediate and uncontrolled threats to U.S. security were. It really wasn’t done.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Now if you put your -- yourself in the shoes of the press, and you hear statements like, ‘This is the only possible use for something.’ It seems to be kind of a flaw in critical thinking. Can you think of any times if you were a journalist, and have your science background -- without your knowledge -- that you would have been able to point out, ‘Well that just doesn’t make logical sense – on the face of it’?
THIELMANN: It’s hard for journalists, most of whom do not have technical backgrounds, to make that judgment. In fact, even for --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I’m sorry -- What judgment?
THIELMANN: It’s hard for journalists to make technical judgments about matters like ‘Is this kind of high-strength aluminum suitable for a nuclear weapons program or not?’ It is actually even difficult for people who are working professionally on the issue to know easily about these programs. But when there are indications, as there were in this case, that even in the unclassified version -- while it was a little bit misleading the way they put it -- it said, ‘Most analysts believe that this is going into the nuclear weapons program.’ Well, I think a skeptical journalist should then ask, ‘Well, what do the other analysts believe? And why do they not agree with the majority?’ Because most of the opinions in the National Intelligence Estimate are consensus opinions. Everyone basically sees things in this way. When you see a formula like ‘Most analysts believe,’ then there is a different view by other analysts. And that should be always be a prod to journalists -- and members of Congress for that matter -- to try to dig into the reasons that some did not see it that way. This did not trigger the right kind of journalist suspicions at the time that they were being played with. And that is in fact I think what happened.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And another sense that I see -- In journalism, the reporting events day-to-day without looking at patterns of behavior or even patterns of rhetoric. And as an intelligence analyst when you look at the patterns of behavior and patterns of rhetoric, what type of things do you see in the motivation of the Bush Administration?
THIELMANN: I felt that the pattern of rhetoric of the Bush Administration was very revealing. For example, they very skillfully and deceptively referred to Iraq and al Qaeda in the same sentence, again and again in talking about the threats facing the United States. Different faces of the same evil. President Bush claimed after our invasion of Iraq that we had defeated an ally of Saddam Hussein. Again and again, the association -- there was a merging -- a morphing of Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden. ‘These are two evil figures. These are two enemies of the United States.’ And ‘Fighting against al Qaeda and Afghanistan is like fighting against Saddam Hussein and Iraq.’ It was this juxtaposition and the skill with which the public was essentially confused and mislead about this connection that one can chart in looking at speech after speech, talking point after talking point of President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Secretary Rumsfeld, Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz. Again and again they were using this slight of hand to give the public the impression that we went to Iraq because of 9/11, and because of that -- war against terrorism. Polls for a long time -- and maybe even to this day still show that the -- the public bought into this deceit. They basically -- The majority believe that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Now we know, of course, that the bi-partisan reporting from the 9/11 commission, from the Senate Select Intelligence Committee -- Everytime there is a bipartisan group that exhaustively looks at this issue, they conclude -- as did the 9/11 commission -- that there was no evidence of collaborative, operational relationship between these two organizations. President Bush, himself, has acknowledged that Saddam Hussein was not involved in the 9/11 attacks. But now, of course, the damage has been done. The public had that impression. It was a very important part of the public’s willingness to send its sons and daughters into war. And that to me is one of the classic cases of the way rhetorical patterns have mislead people. On the specific issues of weapons of mass destruction one can find it again and again as well -- The raising of the mushroom cloud to associate in the public mind a nuclear danger with Iraq. When, in fact, the nuclear weapons program that the Iraqis had been working on prior to the first Gulf war had been very effectively dismantled by the UN during the 1990s. And we had gained a great deal of information about who the people were responsible for that program, how they had done these things, which kind of approaches they had used, and that allowed us to track this fairly closely -- even when the inspectors were not in the country. Once the inspectors had returned, we were able to resolve some of the remaining ambiguities that had started to fester with the absence of the inspectors. But those resolutions of doubt -- the removal of ambiguous information -- had no affect on the administration at all. They never referred -- or shared with the public -- the kind of information that the UN inspectors were providing to the U.S. and other countries once they had returned to Iraq in November of 2002. And again you see this pattern -- you see a pattern of -- from the first week that the inspectors returned, the administration was denigrating the effectiveness of the inspectors. If you look at Secretary Rumsfeld, he is particularly scathing of the fectlessness of the inspectors. And nothing -- you know, ‘They won’t work. It will be ineffective.’ They’d just hit the ground and already the U.S. Government was condemning their lack of effectiveness. Whereas, in fact, it was the inspectors who could check up on some of the concerns that we legitimately raised. ‘What is the new construction we see at facilities formerly associated with nuclear weapons? Where are those aluminum tubes going?’ I mean interestingly the -- When the inspectors hit the ground, they were already to offer the tentative judgment in January the tubes were not going into the nuclear weapons program. And then they delivered their final conclusions about it early in March -- again, before we invaded. But those conclusions were completely ignored by the U.S. Government, because we weren’t interested in that information. It appears evident now from some of the things released by the press, that we were already informing countries like Saudi Arabia of the details of our intention of going to war in January. So obviously, as the UN inspectors were coming up with important information later in January, in February and in March, it made no difference to the U.S. Government.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Couldn’t you just look at the public statements of the Bush Administration and see patterns of them just using the UN as a pretext – or a multilateral cover to go in? And what’s your sense – did they really even wanted inspectors to got back into work?
THIELMANN: Well, it is very interesting to look at the pattern of rhetoric about the UN voiced by this administration. For one thing, the first two years of the Bush Administration was one example of contemptuous attitude about the United Nations as an institution, and about international treaties from Kyoto to the International Criminal Court to Arms Control Treaties -- the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, the Anti-Personnel Land Minds Treaty. In one instance after another, the administration showed that it was contemptuous about multilateral efforts -- about international law. And so it was rather odd -- and one might say refreshing -- to see a new interest in UN Security Counsel Resolutions being carried out in the case of Iraq, and a willingness of the U.S. to enforce those resolutions militarily if necessary. Of course, one did not have to dig very deeply to find out that that this was basically Secretary Powell convincing the President that he had to go to United Nations if, in fact, he wanted to pursue this issue successfully in the end. You at least had to make an effort to go to the United Nations to get international support for it. So there was a -- There was a window there in which the U.S. was actually playing as a member of the UN and playing the UN game. Of course, we were not able to convince a majority of the Security Counsel members to authorize military action in March when we wished to take it, so we did it anyway.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Do you think that the press should have seen sort of hypocrisy of disdain towards the UN, and then all of sudden ‘Let’s use the UN to get this authorization.’
THIELMANN: Well that I think press did see --
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I’m sorry, what did the press --
THIELMANN: I think the press was aware of the hypocrisy of the administration. The press, I don’t think, believed that the administration had already -- had suddenly seen the light on the importance of international action. But I don’t think the press really used their skepticism to energize their pursuit of what was going on underneath the surface. And particularly television media gave too much credence to the surface story of the administration – that this administration was so interested in UN Security Counsel Resolutions being fulfilled -- unlike, let’s say, Security Counsel Resolutions regarding Israel and Palestine -- that we had to send the nation to war in order to enforce them. I think the press should have taken the contradictions, and used that to ask the difficult questions about what’s really going on here. And provide some analysis of what’s really going on.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: I see {MISSING TEXT} using the scientific method – of forming your own hypothesis, and then asking those questions so – If you were to form a hypothesis, and then -- how would -- What questions would you have wanted to ask to this administration regarding international law -- or their treatment of the UN?
THIELMANN: Well, I think the administration could have been asked more energetically ‘Why the UN Security Counsel Resolutions on Iraq were different in terms of their impact and importance than other UN Security Counsel Resolutions?’ ‘Why non-proliferation efforts were so important in the case of Iraq, but it was permissible to basically sabotage efforts to get a verification protocol to the biological weapons convention that the U.S. torpedoed after many years of international efforts to get that?’ Or ‘Why if we were so concerned about the image of mushrooms clouds and so forth, we would just let the comprehensive nuclear test band treaty sit in the Senate and not even ask for reconsideration of -- ratification of that treaty?" Those kind of questions didn’t seem to be really pursued. Or to get -- to use another example – ‘If we were so concerned about nuclear weapons and the possibility that Iraq could get a nuclear weapon within the decade, where was our concern about the 10,000 nuclear weapons that the U.S. and the Russians had?’ ‘Why did we -- in just negotiating the Moscow Treaty, an agreement that would have no verification mechanism to it -- an agreement that would, on the second it was implemented, go out of effect?’ I mean all of those fatal flaws of the Moscow Treaty were not examined in the context of an administration that was allegedly obsessed with the nuclear threat.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So, go back to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, where there -- My understanding is that there were actually provisions in there for the United States and everyone who has nuclear weapons to eventually get rid of them. And are we even doing that?
THIELMANN: The Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty was essentially a deal between two categories of countries. Those countries which already had nuclear weapons in 1968, and there were five countries, and those which did not. The trade off was a very simple one. For those countries that did not have nuclear weapons, their commitment was not to develop them -- not to enable other countries to develop them. And for the countries that had nuclear weapons, their commitment was to move expeditiously to get rid of those nuclear weapons. And so it was that latter commitment -- that Article VI commitment of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty -- for nuclear weapon states to move expeditiously to get rid of their nuclear weapons. That is what other countries in the world look at the United States and say, "You’re not keeping your end of the bargain. You’re spending all this time talking about ‘The importance of no other country getting nuclear weapons.’ But there you sit -- more than a decade after the Cold War is over -- with 5000 to 6000 nuclear warheads that can quickly be used to attack other countries, and inherently contain the possibility of ending human life on the planet earth."

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: There seems to be almost this cover story of "Stockpile Stewardship" at the Department of Energy. Is it your sense that’s really intended to develop bunker busters and mini-nukes? And is there also a hypocrisy of the United States that ‘Here we are actually developing new nuclear weapons’?
THIELMANN: The stockpile stewardship program of the Department of Energy is basically a program to spend a lot of money that allows the United States to retain high confidence in the reliability of its nuclear arsenal without nuclear testing. But in a way now, we have the worst of all possible worlds. We have -- We’re spending a lot of money on the -- on this program to assure the reliability of nuclear weapons so we don’t have to test. But we’re refraining from ratifying the treaty that says we won’t test. And at the same time, we are researching new programs to develop new nuclear weapons that presumably would require testing at some future point. So we are undermining -- in the worst possible way -- the effort to persuade other countries not to develop nuclear weapons by saying, ‘The United States -- which has already detonated well over 1000 nuclear weapons in the atmosphere, under earth, in virtually every environment -- has to for its own security, retain the right to do this at some time in the future.’ What could possibly be worse for -- in an effort to convince other countries that they do not need to aspire to nuclear weapons tests?

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So when you look at also the rhetoric of calling our nuclear weapons "Nuclear Deterrence" versus "Weapons of Mass Destruction" -- Can you talk about using -- even the rhetoric difference?
THIELMANN: Well there is a lot of games played by the rhetoric of nuclear deterrence. Nuclear deterrence is an honorable and a legitimate mechanism that we nuclear powers use. But if any non-nuclear powers aspire nuclear weapons, it cannot be for deterrence or cannot be for defense, it must be provocative and destructive of international tranquility and order. I would much prefer an approach by the United States in which -- which said, ‘We cannot turn history back. We have, in effect, created a monster in the nuclear arms race. And we’re doing out best to get a grip on that monster to eventually make it go away. And it is in this knowledge of the terrible potential of these weapons that we are pursuing nuclear non-proliferation so other countries don’t make the same mistakes that the U.S. and the Soviet Union made.’ And that – ‘We’re doing everything we can to reduce the number of weapons, and to make them less readily accessible to the control the material that goes into the weapons. And that we urge other countries to join us in this planetary imperative to get a grip on the nuclear dangers.’ That’s what our posture should be. But instead we use a very ambiguous signal by in effect saying that ‘There are rules for us -- and because we are good and just -- those rules only apply us. And everyone else is suspect. And they have to have more effective constraints on them.’

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And when you look at the context of Iraq and Israel -- Was there a motivation of Saddam Hussein to produce defensive weapons because of Israel?
THIELMANN: Well, I think it’s really a statement of the obvious to point out that since Israel has nuclear weapons -- and probably chemical and biological weapons as well. Since Israel has every category of weapons of mass destruction, that is something in which Israel’s neighbors have legitimate concerns about. And one can justify Israeli weapons however one wants -- in terms of the Israeli insecurity about living in a very dangerous neighborhood, and other states which don’t recognize Israel’s right to exist and so forth. But the point is, if we say that countries that have not signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty are on the wrong side of the law, and in somehow a ‘rogue category’ if they have nuclear weapon’s program, then it is pretty hard for us to say, ‘Except for Israel, who hasn’t signed the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, and has a great number of nuclear weapons. But somehow that’s over here, and that that’s all right.’ That kind of a double standard is seen as gross hypocrisy by most countries in the world.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. Now when you talk in terms of non-proliferation of weapons of mass destruction – and there seemed to be this connection that’s being made that ‘If we have a military intervention -- that’s going to disarm Iraq.’ And in the context of what the Pentagon has been saying about Gulf War Syndrome, that we hit these chemical weapons bunkers and then there’s a plume of smoke that causes the Gulf War Syndrome. There seems to be a lack of connection there. Like, how -- When you listen to military intervention for disarming, what do you think?
THIELMANN: I think it’s -- It’s pretty clear to me that military intervention for disarmament is the worst possible way to do it. There are times when perhaps that is the only alternative we have. But it’s very startling to realize that in the case of the first Gulf war -- Desert Storm -- that it was the UN inspectors -- in the years after the war -- that destroyed far more weapons and far more effectively dismantled the programs for weapons of mass destruction, than that vast armada of military forces that was utilized in Desert Storm. And of course, when the UN inspectors did it -- when under UN supervision, the Iraqis destroyed these weapons themselves -- or the UN destroyed them with Iraqi cooperation -- you do not have the same kind of side effects and toxic release and other things that happened in some cases during the war. Trying to get rid of programs of concern and weapons of concern by violence is a very bad and dangerous way to do it. It doesn’t mean that that sometimes one does not have to either threaten military force or utilize nuclear force when other countries are in violation of international commitments, but it has to be realized that that’s a very undesirable and high-cost way to find a solution to the problem.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And when you have the Bush Administration saying that ‘The UN inspectors are totally ineffective, and fectless and whatnot. Was there intelligence even within the United States Government proving the effectiveness that Iraq was such-and-such percent disarmed of their capabilities – were disarmed and destroyed?
THIELMANN: I think the line of argumentation used by Secretary Rumsfeld in particularly about the fectlessness of the UN inspectors was completely contrary to the majority view inside the U.S. Government about people who were familiar with the experience of UN inspectors during the 1990s. There were unresolved issues. There were opened issues about biological weapons and chemical weapons -- that we could not account for gaps in records -- When we knew of everything had been destroyed -- There were questions about things that we knew had been created, but we couldn’t prove that they had been destroyed. So -- To say that the efforts of UN inspectors were incomplete should not be confused with a judgment that the UN inspectors were very effective at understanding what the Iraqis did, and dismantling -- effectively -- the most dangerous programs. And I would site the nuclear weapons program in particular. I think the majority position, not only internationally, but even inside the U.S. Government in the mid-1990s was that the nuclear account could basically be closed -- which didn’t mean that Iraq had lost interest in nuclear weapons. But we were quite confident in the mid-1990s that this program had been contained -- that we could detect significant activities -- particularly in the nuclear weapons program that had such a -- demands such extensive infrastructure, and has such a high profile. This judgment was simply not reflected in a way that the senior officials in the Bush Administration discussed the issue. And it’s quite curious now that if one looks back at the statements made by Hans Blix, who was head of the UN inspection effort during those months leading up to the war, those are the statements which stand well the test of time. Blix was the one who was very careful to state what we knew and what we did not know, and very careful not to jump to conclusions about what the other side had. He presented the facts, and he marshaled the new information to revise the facts as we went along -- to revise our reporting of the facts as we went along. To compare now what Hans Blix said week after week and what the senior U.S officials said week after week, made it very clear who was credible and who was trustworthy, and who was basically for political reasons providing a misleading and inaccurate account of what was going on.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And do you think that the media could have or should have recognized that there was disconnect there? Or that they should have been challenging the effectiveness of the UN inspectors?
THIELMANN: I think the media -- Some members of the media were doing their job -- I mean, certainly the UN inspectors were accessible. Their reports were readily available. But I think the U.S. media and press was not particularly energetic at taking what the inspectors said and highlighting that to the public -- Pointing out what the inspectors said in terms of what the political leadership of the U.S. administration was saying and reconciling the difference. Just to give one example of how the press seemed to be asleep, when Secretary Powell addressed the UN Security Counsel on February 5th, 2003, and provided an extensive elaboration of the U.S. case against Iraqi malfeasants and continued weapons of mass destruction program efforts -- He did not mention a word about uranium from Africa. This had been stated by the President of the United States -- in effect, highly sensitive information, declassified -- eight days before Powell’s speech. It was one of only two real components that the President presented to the public to argue that Iraq is again reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. That Powell did not address at all one of the two pieces of evidence that the President cited in his State of the Union message, one would think that would send a very loud signal. And it would prompt the press to both point that out to the public and ask why Secretary Powell was not elaborating on one of the issues that was apparently so important that the President needed to declassify this in front of the nation and the world. As far as I remember at the time, no one from the press pointed that out. There was a lot of salivating about how persuasive Secretary Powell was. And what a tremendous performance it was to present in great detail all this information. But not a word to mention the non-barking dog -- so to speak -- the obvious absence of something, which one would think would raise questions about the President’s credibility. That was before, of course, information came in on the documents being forged, and before the eventual retraction of the information by the President and his cabinet. Where was the press? What were they doing? Were they all so busy -- so busy imbedding themselves in the U.S. military? Were they all so caught up with the marshall promos for the coverage of the upcoming war that they couldn’t read that report and read it next to statements the President made eight days before?

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And not only that, on March 7th when El Baradei came out and said they were forgeries, the U.S. at the same time said, ‘We have a 10-day ultimatum.’ And that totally wiped out all the coverage. So when you see -- Do you see any other public relation tactics that the administration was doing in a way to control the press?
THIELMANN: It’s hard to know what the right term is for the way that the administration manipulated the press. It was a very successful effort. The press was spending most of energies covering this issue as if it were the upcoming Super Bowl. ‘Who’s going to win? What are the U.S. military plans?’ There was the overriding assumption -- I mean, all of us had the assumption that Saddam Hussein was a tyrant -- someone who had violated international law, committed human rights atrocities, and so forth. But that background so overwhelmed the coverage of this issue that the real hard analysis about what the facts are -- and what the actual danger being posed would be of continuing the UN inspections without actually invading the country -- that the press played right into the administration’s game plan -- except the urgency of the threat – "Don’t really ask too many questions about why this is so dangerous for the United States. Why this is more dangerous for the United States than North Korea or Iran." Or one might say, "The war on terrorism," which I believe was weakened. Our pursuit of terrorists was weakened by going into Iraq. Al Qaeda was not a threat in Iraq. It wasn’t then. It’s more of a threat now in Iraq. Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan. Diverting soldiers and effort and translators and attention from Afghanistan weakened the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden in Afghanistan. So where was -- Where was the press analysis of the negative effect on the pursuit of the perpetrators of 9/11 by the invasion of Iraq? I didn’t see much of it -- analysis in that area.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: When you look at -- You were trying to submit an Op-Ed in January -- Can you talk a little bit about your attempts to reach out to the press to try and correct the record.
THIELMANN: In January, I submitted an Op-Ed to the Washington Post. And the theme of that Op-Ed was to try to raise warning flags about the way senior administration officials were using the term "Weapons of Mass Destruction." By using it as a mantra, again and again, what they were doing was encouraging the public to see nuclear weapons -- to see mushroom clouds -- to focus on the one weapon of mass destruction that truly threatened our national security and viability. But the evidence in Iraq was not in the nuclear field. The evidence -- which was really more legitimate concerns, than it was hard evidence of inventories. The evidence was in the biological and chemical fields. So I was trying to point out in this Op-Ed that "Weapons of Mass Destruction" as a term is very dangerous. It’s more dangerous than -- It’s dangerous in a way that it doesn’t imply -- It’s dangerous because it misinforms the public about what’s being done. So I was trying to focus on manipulation of public fears and harnessing the anxiety and the anger of 9/11 in a direction that did not logically follow. I had no success in -- The Washington Post didn’t have time for this piece. I wrote another Op-Ed in February immediately after Secretary Powell’s speech, pointing out the absence of any mention in his 85-minute elaboration of the uranium from Africa story. That Op Ed was also rejected. I wrote members of Congress. When Senator Warner said on television that ‘We have to trust the President of the United States.’ I sent a letter to him reminding him that Ronald Reagan said, ‘Trust but Verify.’ You can trust the President of the United States Senator Warner, but verify what he is saying, and what the National Intelligence Estimate says. Dig into it. It made no impact. So these are modest efforts, of course. And I don’t presume that I had an automatic -- that I should have an automatic entry into this dialogue -- Except the fact that I was someone who had seen all the relevant intelligence. And I was retired from government, and I was willing to share my view that that intelligence was being distorted, which I thought was a newsworthy -- a newsworthy matter. And indeed the press did find it to be a very newsworthy matter, once the invasion had occurred, and they found no weapons of mass destruction.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: So what did they tell you? Why did they not want -- Why weren’t they interested in these storylines?
THIELMANN: Just other things were more important.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Who said other things were --
THIELMANN: Well, the manager of the editorial page -- I can’t provide a direct quotation. But, you know, it was along the lines of what anyone would say if you don’t have room for – or other things are more timely.
ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: And so --
THIELMANN: I mean, I don’t want to make -- be too presumptuous in this. I mean, I have no idea what other great Op Eds were written at the time. But my feeling was that it was a voice -- an informed voice about what the intelligence said and how manipulation was occurring -- that unfortunately it wasn’t just me. I just didn’t see it appearing, which was one of the things that motivated me to write the piece at the time.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: Okay. And when you at -- in taking a step back, and one of the failings of the press I see is this big question of "Why? Why are we going war? Why now?" From your sense, what is the answer -- "Why did the United States go to war in Iraq? "
THIELMANN: The why of the war is one of the hardest questions to answer, and I’m afraid that the fact that I’m even saying it is a terrible comment. Nations should always understand why they are going to war. The only thing we really know is that the reason stated was an inaccurate reason. And we know that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction, and that its most serious -- that the most threatening program, nuclear weapons, have not really been reconstituted. So -- If we know that the causis beli that had been announced was inaccurate, then what was it? I think it was combination -- It was partly this crusading zeal on the part of Wolfowitz and Pearl to create a new paradigm in the Middle East -- to introduce democracy. That’s the more high-minded of the ideals. It was partly to do Israel a favor -- to remove one of the serious security concerns of Israel. It was partly the real politik concern about the world’s second largest oil reserves being held by a government which is hostile to the United States. It was partly a personal animosity between George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein. As Bush said, ‘This is the guy who tried to kill my father.’ So it was partly personal, and partly vendetta. It was a combination of many issues. It’s impossible for me to really say what percentage was more important than others. It’s only possible for me to say -- since a lot of the lobbying by the faction of neoconservatives that was ultimately successful had started long before 9/11. In fact, it started even before the Bush Administration was elected -- to believe that those are the real reasons for going to war rather than WMD and the weapons, which I think more or less was admitted by Wolfowitz -- that this was the one common denominator that everyone could agree on that the administration should present to the public.

ECHO CHAMBER PROJECT: When you look back now –the whole – with the Senator report – the people on the right are trying to frame this as being the CIA’s fault. It’s all the CIA’s fault—or with the intelligence community, ‘It was a failure.’ From your sense did the intelligence that you saw really indicate a threat?
THIELMANN: I see two failings in this whole sorry story of intelligence scandal involving Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction. The first failing – and I should clarify this. There are two unjustifiable failings the Iraqi intelligence story. The one failing that I am somewhat sympathetic to is the mistakes that all of us made at the time -- assuming for good reasons that Saddam had weapons. Saddam had lied about his programs in the past. We had caught him in those lies. He had produced biological and chemical weapons that were not acknowledged to the United Nations in the early days -- then through defectors we basically caught him the lie. We knew that Saddam Hussein was obstructing the efforts of the UN inspectors, which certainly provided a prima fascia case that he was being uncooperative in order to cover up an ongoing program. So there were reasons -- I think there were understandable reasons to make assumptions about what was happening there. And so I’m a little more charitable in the intelligence community’s failure to understand that Saddam seems to have been playing double game. He was deliberately trying to deceive the West about having weapons to act as a deterrent, while he was trying to convince the rest of the world that the United States was picking on him unjustly, and that the sanctions should be removed. We didn’t really break the code on that -- understand that there was a double game going on. That was regrettable, but I think is somewhat understandable. What is really inexcusable, is what went beyond that -- that the senior leadership of the intelligence community – and I’m thinking here mostly of the Director of the Central Intelligence, George Tenet, but also aided and abetted by the heads of the DIA and the other agencies -- took what the intelligence professionals were saying -- with all of their qualifications, with all of their uncertainties -- and in the packaging of the intelligence estimates, they were putting additional spin on it. They were removing qualifiers. They were saying, "Iraq possesses" -- when in fact, the estimate said, "We assess that Iraq possesses." They were in effect providing a package that mislead the Congress, the public and even the senior administration officials on the actual extent of our knowledge about what Iraq was doing. So part of the blame goes for the leadership of the U.S. Intelligence community. But also, if one looks at the White House, there was first of all no interest manifested by senior political leaders in this administration about what the weaknesses of the information were. When information was presented about doubts about this source or that source, it seemed to have no effect. What the political leadership was very definitely interested in is ‘Give us all the information you have about a connection between Saddam Hussein and Osama Bin Laden.’ They not only represented in an inaccurate way what the senior intelligence officials were saying to them, they even created like rogue intelligence organizations like the Office of Special Plans to cherry pick the information, and use extensively the Iraqi National Congress and other sources that have an obvious motive for putting Saddam Hussein in the worst possible light, and using that information as talking points to make an advocacy argument to the public, rather than using intelligence to try to get at the bottom of what was happening.
[END OF TAPE]