Intel Chiefs Use Global Threat Report to Uphold US War Machine
(L-R) FBI Director Christopher Wray, CIA Director Mike Pompeo, Director of
National Intelligence Dan Coats and other intelligence community officials
testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee in the Hart Senate Office
Building on Capitol Hill, February 13, 2018, in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
By Gareth Porter, TruthoutPublished February 3, 2019
The corporate medias reporting on the testimonies of Director of National
Intelligence Dan Coats and the directors of CIA, NSA and FBI on their annual
assessment of worldwide threats emphasized the fact that they contradicted
President Donald Trumps viewson Iran, North Korea and Russia.
Trump foolishly criticized the intelligence chiefs as naïve for refusing
to support his unfounded accusation that Iran is systematically cheating on
the nuclear deal. His remarks buttressed the media narrative of a struggle
between an objective intelligence apparatus and a patently dishonest
president who may even have colluded with Russia.
But the medias emphasis on this narrative has obscured a more important
story: The intelligence chiefs used the annual presentation of their global
threat assessment to protect key policies and programs that provide their
massive organizations with enormous power and budgetary resources.
The corporate media never discuss the fact that these annual presentations,
far from being politically neutral, are used to defend the interests of the
intelligence agencies themselves and their main customers the Pentagon and
the military.
The history of major CIA intelligence estimates is proof. During the Vietnam
War, the CIA succumbed to pressure from the militaryand lied about the size
of the Vietnamese Communist forces in South Vietnam in order to preserve
Gen. William Westmorelands claim that the US was winning that war. And in
late 2010, the CIA again yielded to pressure from the field commander this
time Gen. David Petraeus in Afghanistan and concluded, despite evidenceto
the contrary, that Taliban military strength had not increased during that
year.
The New Main Worldwide Threat? Russia!
The 2019 Worldwide Threats Assessment, like its annual predecessors,
approaches central policy issues in ways that protect the interests of the
powerful institutions served by intelligence agencies. The result is that
the line between intelligence assessment and propaganda is often impossible
to discern.
That much is clear from the first paragraph of the introduction to the
document:
Threats to US national security will expand and diversify in the coming
year, driven in part by China and Russia as they respectively compete more
intensely with the United States and its traditional allies and partners.
This competition cuts across all domains, involves a race for technological
and military superiority, and is increasingly about values.
The elevation of Russia and China to the leading position among global
threats reflects the primordial interests of the Pentagon, which announced a
major shift in January 2018from fighting terrorism to competing with Russia
and China as the primary basis for planning and justifying more spending.
Before that announcement, the intelligence community and the FBI had created
an unprecedented climate of fear concerning Russias supposed ability to
shape the outcome of the 2016 election. So it is no surprise that the
assessment includes an entire section on the threat it calls online
influence operation and election interference. It leads with a remarkably
specific speculation: Our adversaries and strategic competitor, meaning
Russia probably already are looking to the 2020 US elections as an
opportunity to advance their interests.
This statement might have appeared more like an objective assessment and
less like propaganda had Coats and the other intelligence chiefs not made an
a similar albeit more categorical predictionin 2018 about alleged
Russian intentions to interfere in the 2018 midterm. In the end, despite
astatement on election day 2018that Russia had carried out propaganda during
the campaign, Coats and his colleagues never offered any evidence of real
interference in that election.
Nevertheless the intelligence chiefs didnt hesitate to stoke fears that
Russia might attack the US electoral infrastructure in 2020. Adversaries
and strategic competitors, they warn, also may seek to use cyber means to
directly manipulate or disrupt election systemssuch as by tampering with
voter registration or disrupting the vote tallying processeither to alter
data or to call into question our voting process.
The report repeats the claim that in 2016 Russiaconducted cyber activity
that targeted US election infrastructure. The Department of Homeland
Security created a sensational story in September 2016 that Russian hackers
tried to break into election-related sites in 21 states. But an in-depth
investigation of that claim revealed that it was blatantly fraudulent, and
that there was no evidence of any state-based effort to penetrate state
electoral infrastructure only the usual hacking attempts that occur on any
state database in the country every day. The adoption of this line by the
entire intelligence community marks its descent further into propaganda on
the alleged threat of Russian interference in US politics and elections.
The intelligence report attributes vast powers of manipulation on US society
and politics to the Russian state. It suggests the Russians are now
becoming more adept at using social media to alter how we think, behave and
decide. This characterization of Russian social media efforts, taking
advantage of media hype, represents extreme hyperbole when considered in
light of the actual limitations of the Russian Internet Research Agencys
efforts.
From that stance, it is only a small step for the report to claim that, US
adversaries and strategic competitors almost certainly will use online
influence operations to try to weaken democratic institutions, undermine US
alliances and partnerships, and shape policy outcomes in the United States
and elsewhere.
The rhetoric about weakening democratic institutions is only a slight
variation on a central theme of US and NATO propaganda. Secretary of State
Mike Pompeo saidin July 2018 that he had great confidence that the Russians
will try and undermine western democracy in 2017, 2018, 2019 and for an
awfully long time.
The notion that Russia is scheming to weaken US democracy goes well beyond
even normal propaganda in its extreme degree of hyperbole. It requires that
one deny the obvious fact that the patterns of American political behavior
observed in the 2016 election were the result of domestic socio-political
developments, not manipulations of brilliant Russian strategists. But the
fear that the CIA and FBI in particular have pushed very hard has eased the
Pentagons task in seeking a big increase in spending in operations against
Moscow.
Familiar Propaganda Themes on Iran
Although Iran has been demoted by the intelligence community as a threat in
relation to Russia and China, it remains one of the four key adversaries,
along with North Korea. The threat assessment restates some hoary themes in
US propaganda on Iran over many years. It begins with the decades-long US
accusation that the Iranian ballistic missile program poses a threat to
countries across the Middle East.
This is one of most obvious examples of straightforward propaganda being
presented as intelligence analysis in the entire litany of alleged threats.
Even Israels top expert on the Iranian missile program, Uzi Rubin, who
directed Israels missile defense program through the entire decade of the
1990s, long ago analyzed Irans ballistic missilesas its only deterrent
force (since it had no air force), and noted that it was based on the
premise that it would be armed with conventionally-armed missiles not
nuclear weapons.
The report goes on to suggest that Irans development of a missile, the
Simorgh, to launch satellites, implies that it is working on an
Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, because the two vehicles use similar
technologies. But the leading American expert on Iranian missiles, Michael
Elleman, has thoroughly debunked that claim, pointing out the technological
experience acquired in developing the Simorgh has only limited application
to a long-range missile.
A notable departure from past US propaganda formulations on Iran is the
absence of the claim, included in the 2018 report, that Iran is the worlds
most prominent state sponsor of terrorism.
The document nevertheless states that Iran almost certainly will continue
to develop and maintain terrorist capabilities as an option to deter or
retaliate against its perceive adversaries. And it refers to what it calls
a probable Iranian Intelligence Ministry plot to set off an explosive
device last summer at an opposition group gathering in Paris a reference
to a rally of the Mujahideen I-Khalq the anti-regime cult-like Iranian
exile organization organization used by both the United States and Israel
for operations against Iran.
But the brief mention of the incident fails to mention that the alleged plot
remains highly suspicious. Belgian police were led to the Iranian couple
allegedly involved by Israels Mossad. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu immediately exploited the discoveryof the plot to demand that EU
states call off a meeting with Iran to preserve the JCPOA that was planned
for later in the week. And the evidence that there was such a plot consists
of the presence of 500 grams of explosive and an initiation mechanism found
in a small toiletry bag in the couples car.
The CIAs sleuths might have offered a more objective analysis of that
alleged plot, but despite support for the now endangered nuclear agreement,
the larger official narrative on Iran remains focused on Iran as a threat to
US allies and interests.
North Korea: Fending off an Agreement With Kim
The documents treatment of North Korea and the negotiations on
denuclearization reflects another significant political intervention by
intelligence community and their Pentagon allies in a highly sensitive
presidential diplomatic effort. Trump began pursuing talks with North Korea
last year on denuclearization, and it is no secret that senior intelligence
officials have opposed that move. During 2008 the media frequently carried
stories citing the CIAs assessment that Kim Jong Un would never give up
Pyongyangs nuclear weapons a finding that was often cited to suggest that
Trump was being duped by Kim Jong Un. The new annual threat report states
openly for the first time that the intelligence community continues to
assess that [North Korea] is unlikely to give up all of its WMD stockpiles,
delivery systems, and production capabilities.
It asserts that North Korean leaders view nuclear arms as critical to
regime survival and that it has for years underscored its commitment to
nuclear arms, including through an order in 2018 to mass-produce weapons and
an earlier lawand constitutional changeaffirming the countrys nuclear
status.
But as Joel S. Wit, who dealt with North Korean officials for years as the
State Departments manager of the 1994 US-North Korea Framework Agreement,
has pointed out,the North Korean statements about nuclear weapons cited by
the report dont prove that Kim would never pursue denuclearization, because
they came after Donald Trumps 2017 threat of war. What else would they say
just coming off a fire and fury confrontation with the Trump
administration? Wit writes.
Wit was also involved in US-Soviet arms control negotiations, and recalls
that during those negotiations both the United States and the Soviet Union
continued to produced new weapons that were to be covered by the agreement.
We were hedging against failure and increasing our negotiating leverage,
Wit recalls, just as the North Koreans are doing today.
The constitutional provision pronouncing North Korea a nuclear state was
promulgated in 2012 only a few months after Kim Jong Un took power. Wit
observes that there is no reason why Kim could not simply change it when,
and if, a final agreement is reached with the United States.
The global threats document obscures the fact that intelligence chiefs
oppose negotiations for a denuclearization deal not because it isnt
feasible, but because, in order to achieve it, the United States would have
to accept an end to the North-South conflict in Korea as well a major change
in the role of the US military if not the withdrawal of its troops from
the peninsula. As the New York Times reported last August, For some
American officials, the troop presence in South Korea is not just a
deterrent toward North Korea. It also helps the United States maintain a
military footprint in Asia and a grand strategy of American hegemony.
The annual exercise in describing worldwide threats before Congress has
long been presented solemnly as the Olympian assessments of the top
intelligence professionals, as though the CIA and Director of National
Intelligence were insulated from the self-interested inside politics of a
war complex. But it is all part of the elaborate process of perpetuating
dangerous falsehoods that support unnecessary military confrontations with
the Pentagons chosen adversaries.
Yes, Ill chip in
