Garbage in, garbage out

Frank Gaffney

The announcement last week that the Obama administration would turn over the job of preparing National Intelligence Estimates to a man whom Saudi Arabia, China, Iran and Hamas surely consider an agent of influence calls to mind an old axiom about Charles "Chas" Freeman's new line of work: "Garbage in, garbage out."

The expression captures an immutable reality. The quality of the output of intelligence collection and analysis is only as good the inputs. So, if you have a spymaster who unwittingly relies on double agents feeding the CIA enemy disinformation rather than accurate intelligence, conclusions drawn from such data will be erroneous, possibly dangerously so.

Similarly, if the chairman of the National Intelligence Council (NIC) - the organization responsible for producing the National Intelligence Estimates (NIEs) that are supposed to reflect the best insights of the intelligence community as a whole and that usually guide U.S. government security decision-making - has a well-established and anti-American policy agenda, he will likely try to discount or exclude insights from NIEs that conflict with his biases. Such a politicization of intelligence would have far-reaching implications for American interests and security.

Could this happen? In fact, it did in 2007 under the Bush administration. In December of that year, the National Intelligence Council - then under the leadership of another product of the State Department, Thomas Fingar - produced an NIE that declared "with high confidence" that the Iranian mullahs had halted their nuclear weapons program in 2003. An unclassified summary of that estimate was made public with much fanfare, and with a transparent political purpose: To deny President Bush grounds for attacking Iran so as to prevent the regime there from getting the bomb.

At the time, many intelligence and defense experts challenged the Iran NIE's much-ballyhooed conclusion as preposterous and misleading. It was even belied by findings elsewhere in the estimate. Today, however, no sentient being thinks this National Intelligence Estimate's principal finding was accurate.

Indeed, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, declared in recent days that the mullahs now have enough enriched uranium to produce a nuclear weapon and are working to do so. Maybe that development would have occurred in the absence of a flawed NIE. Given Tehran's announced ambition to "wipe Israel off the map" and bring about "a world without America," though, it was entirely predictable once such a skewed estimate was publicly released with the desired effect.

Unfortunately, the December 2007 NIE may look like the gold standard compared with what we can expect from a NIC process run by Chas Freeman. Like his boss, Director of National Intelligence Dennis Blair, and CIA Director Leon Panetta, Freeman has long been a consumer of intelligence, but not a professional in the spy business. In fact, in the course of a long career in the Foreign Service, Freeman served in capacities - notably as ambassador to Saudi Arabia and as the number two man in Embassy Beijing - where the job often is seen as representing the host government to his own, rather than the other way around.

Worse yet, in the years since he left government service, Freeman has repeatedly espoused policy views that are profoundly troubling in their own right and that should simply be disqualifying for the position of objective arbiter of the most sensitive national intelligence assessments.

For example, Freeman has view the Middle East through the prism of one of Foggy Bottom's most successful Arabists. He justifies Arab enmity towards us on the grounds that we are associated with Israel. He decries the liberation of Iraq for having "catalyzed anarchy, sectarian violence, terrorism, and civil war in that country." He makes excuses for "democratically elected" Hamas and urges its embrace by the United States.

Worse yet, through his organization, the Middle East Policy Council, he has been a paid shill for Saudi Arabia - from whence millions of dollars have flowed to pay for Freeman's excuse-making for the Saudis. Freeman has also served on the board of the Chinese National Offshore Oil Corporation (CNOOC), a notorious state-owned arm of Chinese colonialism in Africa and Asia - a vantage point from which he could and did flak for Communist China.

Then, as is made clear in a paper by Clare Lopez about what Tehran calls "the Iran Lobby" in America released by the Center for Security Policy last week, Amb. Freeman has been a frequent apologist for Iran, as well. Like others who make up that "lobby," Freeman has repeatedly and in numerous forums parroted the mullahs' party line, insisting that the United States must engage diplomatically with Iran, not attack it.

It strains credulity that a man with such pronounced - and anti-American - policy views can serve effectively, let alone objectively, as the arbiter of National Intelligence Estimates. Perhaps they are not really his views and that he was simply what amounted to a paid lobbyist for deeply problematic causes and countries. The evidence suggests that he is what he appears to be: an aggressive partisan in the service of many of America's most dangerous actual or potential adversaries.

Either way, it is malfeasance to entrust the National Intelligence Council to him. It speaks volumes about Barack Obama's judgment and policy proclivities that he would even consider such an appointment.

After all, this is a vital post at the very pinnacle of the U.S. national security establishment. It is not a job for a garbage collector - or purveyor.

Frank J. Gaffney, Jr. is President of the Center for Security Policy and a columnist for the Washington Times.


Pennsylvania Tobacco Settlement Fund to invest terror-free; Policy prohibits investments from going to foreign companies tied to Iran and Sudan

Center for Security Policy
Feb 27, 2009

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
For more information, contact
Christopher Holton
christopherh@securefreedom.org

February 27-- The Pennsylvania Tobacco Settlement Investment Board (TSIB) adopted a resolution this week sponsored by State Rep. Josh Shapiro, D-Montgomery, that would prohibit Tobacco Settlement Investment fund monies from being invested in foreign companies tied to Iran and Sudan.

The TSIB was created in 2001 to manage the $11 billion settlement that Pennsylvania received from the national tobacco settlement. Settlement funds are reserved for health-related programs. The TSIB invests a portion of the funds. Shapiro was appointed to the TSIB in May 2008.

"With TSIB's action, the message is clear: we will not use Pennsylvania's tobacco fund dollars to prop up terrorist regimes and promote genocide. Instead we will invest terror-free and deliver a better return for Pennsylvania taxpayers. This is both morally and fiscally the right thing to do," Shapiro said.

The Center for Security Policy's Divest Terror Initiative has worked closely with Rep. Shapiro and his staff in promoting terror-free investing policies in Pennsylvania. Christopher Holton, the director of Divest Terror, commended Rep. Shapiro's success and the decision of the TSIB to go terror-free:

"Everyone at Divest Terror congratulates Pennsylvania in taking this groundbreaking step to see to it that funds which are invested to promote the good health of the people of Pennsylvania are not used to provide corporate life support for our enemies who are killing U.S. G.I.s in the war on terrorism."

"I commend the work of the Rep. Josh Shapiro and his colleagues in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives as well as the work of members of Congress and other state legislatures which acknowledges that repression of civil rights and violence toward innocent civilians must be checked not only in the policies of government but by the business decisions that affect the flows of private capital," added Secretary John Blake of the Department of Community and Economic Development who serves as chairman of the TSIB. "Yesterday, the Tobacco Settlement Investment Board sent a message to Pennsylvania taxpayers that the resources entrusted to our care will focus on business activities that improve quality of life - not threaten it."

Shapiro has been leading the effort to divest Pennsylvania's pension funds from companies doing business with state sponsors of terror. Beginning in 2007, Shapiro introduced divestment legislation. Yesterday's resolution is similar to H.B. 1086 which he sponsored last legislative session. House Bill 1086 passed overwhelmingly in the House by a 185-15 vote and would have required the Public School Employees' Retirement System and State Employees' Retirement System to divest from companies doing business in Iran and Sudan. Unfortunately, the bill stalled in the Senate as time ran out in the session.

Iran is the world's foremost sponsor of Jihadist terrorism with ties to Al Qaeda, Hezbollah and HAMAS, three of the largest Jihadist terrorist organizations in the world. Two of them, Al Qaeda and Hezbollah, are responsible for the deaths of more Americans than all other terrorist organizations in the world combined. In addition to their terror sponsorship, Iran also has a nuclear program operating in violation of international treaties and an active ballistic missile program.

Sudan's genocidal activities are well known. Less well publicized is the fact that that genocide is but the byproduct of the Islamist regime in Khartoum's campaign to impose Shariah law and the fact that Sudan is a major state sponsor of terrorism. In fact, Sudan was the host country for both Hezbollah and Al Qaeda in the 1990s and facilitated an alliance between the Shia and Salafi terrorist organizations. Moreover, the government of Sudan was found liable by a US federal judge in the deaths of 17 U.S. Navy sailors in the Al Qaeda terrorist attack on the USS Cole in Aden Harbor in 2000. The plot was hatched and planned in Sudan.

Terror-free investing is gaining support across the country. In 2007, the U.S. Congress approved a measure to authorize states to take divestment action on companies with ties to Sudan. A similar bill targeting Iran also was passed by the U.S. House of Representatives. Eighteen states and 23 cities have adopted divestment and terror-free legislation and policies of one sort or another. Wall Street has responded to the divestment movement by creating terror-free index funds that are even now outperforming funds with links to terror.

For more information on terror-free investing initiatives, contact Christopher Holton at (202) 302-1974 or at christopherh@securefreedom.org