"To consolidate that control, Rumsfeld is currently pushing to create an intelligence czar at the Pentagon whose power and influence would rival that of the CIA director's." See: The Pentagon Muzzles the CIA, by Robert Dreyfuss, American Prospect, Dec. 16, 2002
Jason Vest, writing for the American Prospect in 2001 - See: Darth Rumsfeld by Jason Vest, Feb.26.2001.
In 1995 the CIA reported in a national intelligence estimate that a nuclear missile threat from a new foreign power was at least 15 years away. At this point, Rumsfeld acolyte Frank Gaffney, Jr., of the Center for Security Policy (CSP), mounted a campaign against the CIA's estimates; with the aid of right-wing congressional Republicans, he successfully pushed for the establishment of an outside group to provide an alternative assessment to the CIA's--in effect, another Team B.
This time, however, the team--headed by ex-CIA Director Robert Gates--essentially concurred with the national intelligence estimate. So Gaffney prevailed upon the minions of Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich for yet another assessment. Thus the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States was born, with Donald Rumsfeld as chair. Widely characterized as "bipartisan in its conclusions," the final Rumsfeld commission report was, for all intents and purposes, a Team B redux: The CIA, the report concluded, was wrong, and the very real threat of ICBM attack from a "rogue state" was at most five, not 15, years off. Such an event, said the report, could occur with "little or no warning."
The Rumsfeld Report: Jason Vest continued......
The CPD experts, who by this point had come to be known as "Team B," crafted an assessment that, as American University national security expert Anne Hessing Cahn put it, "everywhere saw the worst case," was rife with what we now know was rampant overestimation of Soviet military capability, and led to dire predictions. It's hard to know which is more surprising: that Team B's exaggerated findings were accepted then, or that reporters still accept them today.
[...]
Team B at least looked at data before trying "to discover new and more alarming facts and place the most pessimistic interpretation on them," says Pike. "The Rumsfeld Report basically says, 'We have no interest in examining what's probably going to happen in these other countries.' Rather than basing policy on intelligence estimates of what will probably happen politically and economically and what the bad guys really want, it's basing policy on that which is not physically impossible. This is really an extraordinary epistemological conceit, which is applied to no other realm of national policy, and if manifest in a single human being would be diagnosed as paranoid."
Committee on the Present Danger (CPD) and "Team B":
"In 1951 the CPD launched a three-month scare campaign over the NBC network. Every Sunday night thereafter the group used the Mutual Broadcasting System to talk to the nation about the "present danger" and the need to take action. [...] The revitalization of the CPD grew out of an independent group called Team B. Team B was authorized in 1976 by President Gerald Ford and organized by then-CIA chief, George Bush. The purpose of Team B was to develop an independent judgment of Soviet capabilities and intentions. Team B was headed by Richard Pipes and included Paul Nitze, Foy Kohler, William Van Cleave, Lt. Gen. Daniel O. Graham (ret. ), Thomas Wolf of RAND Corp and Gen. John Vogt, Jr. (ret. ). Also a part of Team B were five officials still active in government: Maj. Gen. George Keegan, Brig. Gen. Jasper Welch, Paul D. Wolfowitz of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, and Seymour Weiss of the State Department."
"Funding: The start-up grant for CPD-II came from David Packard of Hewlett-Packard. (6) In 1984, the $300,000 budget came from 1,100 contributors, with a limit of $10,000 per year per source. (1) Grants given by Richard Scaife (Gulf Oil) from the Carthage Fdn, the Sarah Scaife Fdn and the Trust of the Grandchildren of Sarah Mellon Scaife to CPD between 1973 and 1981 total $300,000."
Bush-41 years, Rumsfeld and the CFW Jason Vest, continues......
During the Bush years, Rumsfeld contented himself with being chairman of the Committee for the Free World (CFW), a repository of right-wing defense hawks. In addition to alerting the nation to the continued red menace in Central America, CFW also sold numerous publications extolling the virtuous brilliance of Reagan's Star Wars program, the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI). Rumsfeld also sat on the board of fellow CPD member Leo Cherne's International Rescue Committee, the antileftist human rights organization effusive in its support of right-wing regimes all over the world. And Rumsfeld joined up with William Bennett's Empower America.
Committee for the Free World (CFW):
"Principals: Officers in 1989 are: Donald H. Rumsfeld, chairman; Midge Decter, exec dir; Neal Kozodoy, sec; Robert B. Glynn, tres. Background: The Committee for the Free World (CFW) was founded in 1981 by Midge Decter who is the executive director. CFW has tax- exempt status under 501(c)(3) and began with funding of $125,000 from individuals and ultra-conservative foundations. Among the original funders were three of the major right-wing foundations: Scaife, John M. Olin, and Smith Richardson."
Rumsfeld in 1998: Jason Vest on Rumsfelds "ballistic missle panel"........
During his confirmation hearings and in the press, there has been hardly any mention of Rumsfeld's participation in a slew of far-right organizations going back to the 1970s. Nor has there been any real acknowledgment that the watershed ballistic missile panel he headed in 1998 was not the levelheaded "bipartisan" effort it claimed to be but, rather, a distressing flashback to one of the most outrageous intelligence manipulations of the Cold War. That the supposedly "moderate" chairman of this commission had an egregious conflict of interest has also escaped attention.
UPDATE - July 2003: See: In Sketchy Data, Trying to Gauge Iraq Threat by James Risen, David E. Sanger, Thom Shanker New York Times, Sunday July, 20 2003. Excerpts follow:
Condoleezza Rice, Mr. Bush's national security adviser, said today that the question of new evidence versus old was beside the point. "The question of what is new after 1998 is not an interesting question," she said. "There is a body of evidence since 1991. You have to look at that body of evidence and say what does this require the United States to do? Then you are compelled to act.
[...]
Richard Kerr, who headed a four-member team of retired C.I.A. officials that reviewed prewar intelligence about Iraq, said analysts at the C.I.A. and other agencies were forced to rely heavily on evidence that was five years old at least. Intelligence analysts drew heavily "on a base of hard evidence growing out of the lead-up to the first war, the first war itself and then the inspections process," Mr. Kerr said. "We had a rich base of information," he said, and, after the inspectors left, "we drew on that earlier base." "There were pieces of new information, but not a lot of hard information, and so the products that dealt with W.M.D. were based heavily on analysis drawn out of that earlier period," Mr. Kerr said, using the shorthand for weapons of mass destruction.
Additional - related link:
"As a rule, both the joint Chiefs of Staff and the Central Intelligence Agency's leadership prefer that Congress stay out of their affairs. Indeed, an ideal Congress for many denizens of this realm would be one that simply holds open the cash spigots while Langley and the Pentagon set their own agendas. That makes it particularly alarming to see that as the Bush administration lays its plans for Iraq, career military and intelligence officers are increasingly -- and desperately -- looking to Congress to help stave off what they fear will be a disaster." Help from the Hill - Military insiders want some to derail Bush's plans for Iraq. by Jason Vest, American Prospect, Aug. 05, 2002.
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