"New" WMD report Smells like C.I.A. "Team B" ver.2.0

[Up2Late]

(All material here comes from: "Think Again: Team 'B' by Eric Alterman October 30, 2003 at <http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=11003> Click link for the full article)

Think Again: Team 'B'

by Eric Alterman
October 30, 2003

...But to fully understand the nature of the crisis imposed on the CIA and other intelligence professionals by the Bush administration, journalists need to study up on a little history, as we have all been to this movie before. As American Progress fellow Lawrence Korb told a gathering I hosted at the World Policy Institute at New School University in New York last week, “the agency has never recovered from ‘Team B.’”

Many of the very same people who deliberately created the misimpression about Iraq to goad the American people into supporting a war had already executed a run-through of the same strategy in the 1970s. Back then, establishment hardliners associated with the now defunct “Committee on the Present Danger” heaped scorn upon the professional intelligence services for their alleged underestimation of Soviet military capabilities. They succeeded in convincing then-CIA Director, George H.W. Bush, to appoint a now infamous "Team B" to go through the same material and come up with an answer that would justify a vast increase in U.S. defense spending. With the powerful political patronage of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, its members, including Paul Wolfowitz, came up with astronomical numbers for alleged Soviet military spending and capabilities. As Newsweek’s Farred Zakaria, a moderately conservative war supporter, has observed, “In retrospect, Team B’s conclusions were wildly off the mark.” It argued, for instance, that back in 1976, the Soviets enjoyed "a large and expanding Gross National Product." It credited them with double the number Backfire bombers the nation could actually produce. It turns out that even the CIA’s much pilloried estimates for Soviet military capabilities were far too generous. Sounding very much as if he were talking about Iraqi WMD capabilities 30 years later, Rumsfeld claimed, “No doubt exists about the capabilities of the Soviet armed forces.”

In fact, in 1989 the agency admitted that, contrary to the Team B analysis, it had "substantially overestimated" the Soviet threat in almost every aspect. And these same Neoconservatives proved extremely critical of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush’s efforts to join with Mikhail Gorbachev to end the Cold War and frequently advised the president and public that both "glasnost" and "perestroika" were "just a trick" to lull the West into subservience. For instance, as late as November 1987, when the rest of the world was extremely eager to take advantage of the chances Gorbachev offered, the United States was hobbled in its efforts to recognize the new reality by neoconservative commentators who, like Charles Krauthammer, complained, "We don't know if Gorbachev is sincere. If he is, we don't know whether he will succeed in winning over his bureaucracy. If he does, we don't know if he will last."...

[realFedUp]

1. Good questions from reporters today in this press hearing

Too bad they can't just boil it down to:
Bush and Cheney, through the Office of Special Plans,
made up the information, made Tenet agree to it
and lied to the Congress and American people
about the threats of Saddam Insane.

[HereSince1628]

2. Absolutely, the Bush admin is riddled with old Team B members

History will comment on the remarkable similarities of bad judgement displayed by Team B players in the 1970's and the same persons late in their careers as players in the Bush II administration.

Their mantra is "If you can imagine a threat the enemy has already done it."

[BlueIris]

6. Too true. It's like some kind of scary dynasty.

Was true of his father's admin as well.

[Up2Late]

3. Here's another "Team B" article from "CounterPunch"

Smells Like Team Spirit

February 9, 2004

Bush's B-Boys Replay Their Greatest Hits

By CHRIS FLOYD

The confession by the Bush Administration's chief arms investigator that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction before the war has sent a thunderbolt of puzzlement through the pundits and politicians of the Anglo-American elite. "How could the intelligence reports have been so wrong?" they cry, wringing their hands in consternation. "Independent" commissions filled with Establishment worthies are now in the offing, as the architects of the war -- and their media sycophants -- pledge to resolve this disturbing mystery.

But of course there is no "mystery." Anyone with a passing acquaintance of recent history knows exactly how, and why, the intelligence data concerning Iraq's non-existent WMD came to be used as a justification for military aggression. Indeed, this history is so open, so transparent and so widely available -- in news reports, unclassified government documents, think-tank publications, etc. -- that a cynic might suspect that these government-appointed "investigations" are actually designed to obscure the already evident truth.

It began in 1976, when CIA Director George Bush established a new intelligence analysis unit called "Team B." Championed by top White House officials Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld, the Bush unit was packed with hardcore ideologues -- including Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle -- bent on "proving" a predetermined conclusion: that regular CIA assessments of the Soviet Union were "too soft," ignoring the "imminent threat" of Soviet aggression and the Kremlin's ever-increasing political and economic might. At every turn, the B-teamers cooked and distorted intelligence data to fit their agenda. Scare stories were regularly leaked to credulous journalists to whip up public fear; legislators were plied with "top-secret" briefings to win Congressional support for massive increases in military spending. During the Reagan-Bush years, the B-Teamers and their acolytes spread throughout the corridors of power, where they launched covert operations and proxy wars around the world, always citing "credible evidence" of "imminent threats" -- such as Ronald Reagan's famous warning that tiny Nicaragua, then besieged by a U.S.-backed terrorist army, could invade the sacred American heartland of Texas "in a matter of hours."

(more at link above)

[Up2Late]

4. This one from Newsweek, June 16, 2003

Newsweek
June 16, 2003, U.S. Edition

Exaggerating The Threats
Iraq is part of a pattern. Saddam was assumed to be working on a vast weapons program to the end because he was an evil man

By Fareed Zakaria

...It all started with the now famous "Team B" exercise. During the early 1970s, hard-line conservatives pilloried the CIA for being soft on the Soviets. As a result, CIA Director George Bush agreed to allow a team of outside experts to look at the intelligence and come to their own conclusions. Team B--which included Paul Wolfowitz--produced a scathing report, claiming that the Soviet threat had been badly underestimated.

In retrospect, Team B's conclusions were wildly off the mark. Describing the Soviet Union, in 1976, as having “a large and expanding Gross National Product,” it predicted that it would modernize and expand its military at an awesome pace. For example, it predicted that the Backfire bomber "probably will be produced in substantial numbers, with perhaps 500 aircraft off the line by early 1984." In fact, the Soviets had 235 in 1984.

The reality was that even the CIA’s own estimates--savaged as too low by Team B--were, in retrospect, gross exaggerations. In 1989, the CIA published an internal review of its threat assessments from 1974 to 1986 and came to the conclusion that every year it had "substantially overestimated" the Soviet threat along all dimensions. For example, in 1975 the CIA forecast that within 10 years the Soviet Union would replace 90 percent of its long-range bombers and missiles. In fact, by 1985, the Soviet Union had been able to replace less than 60 percent of them...

(more at link above)

[Up2Late]

5. kick for the Night Owls

I know this is a tough issue, but theirs gotta be more than 3 DU who understand this.:kick:

[seabeyond]

7. lets remember way back when. cheney had his government

installed. he was the one getting the reports, if it wasnt what he wanted to make the case, he sent it back and had cia do it again. and he visited cia often to pressure them. we know this. we knew it then