Yeah, right:

In a discussion about the intelligence used to support claims that Iraq had WMD's, this was said on the News Hour:

RICHARD PERLE: [The charge is that] There were a lot of mistakes made including among intelligence analysts who ignored whole bodies of material because they were pursuing a theory, and the material was inconsistent with the theory. And this charge of politicization which is aimed at the Department of Defense is totally without merit.

What I think we're talking about here is the fact that four people -- four people in the Defense Department -- were asked to review material that had been collected by other intelligence organizations with a view to seeing whether there were connections in there that had been missed in previous examinations. That is not politicization. That is not pressure. And the fact is that they established beyond any doubt that there were connections that had gone unnoticed in previous intelligence analysis. And the analysts who had failed to notice those connections went to the press and started complaining about politicization, and there was none.

---

JUDITH YAPHE (CIA analyst who specialized in the Middle East): Politicization is when a policy maker, a policy prescriptive office does its own intelligence analysis. To me that is politicization.

RICHARD PERLE: That's complete nonsense. I mean you're saying that senior officials can't, if they're not satisfied with the product they're getting, go out and look for other intelligence.

JUDITH YAPHE: Why aren't they satisfied with the product?

RICHARD PERLE: Because it was deficient. That's why.

We spent the requisite 30 minutes paging through Henry Kissinger's book Diplomacy to look for his statement that "intelligence conforms to what the policy leaders want," but were unable to find it. But it's in there somewhere. Honest.

posted by Quiddity at 5/29/2003 08:18:00 PM