The Truth Will Make You Safe (Or At Least Safer)

by Ambassador Thomas Graham (Retired) and David Bernell

In the midst of what seems to feel like a “politics of outrage” in the United States involving topics such as gerrymandering in Texas, renaming the Kennedy Center, or “Alligator Alcatraz,” a number of other important policy matters tend to command relatively little attention. One of these critical issues involves the role of intelligence and its importance in American foreign policy. This is particularly salient in thinking about the topic of Iranian nuclear capabilities, which the United States sought to destroy in June, alongside the attacks by Israel on Iran’s nuclear and other military capabilities.

While the news cycle in the Trump presidency tends to move from issue to issue at a dizzying pace, it might seem like ancient news to revisit the topic of the United States bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities, but this happened only six and a half weeks ago, on June 22. Considering that the deployment of nuclear weapons has been a major and ongoing concern since the end of World War II due to their catastrophic potential, the possibility of an enemy of the United States deploying such weapons warrants consideration beyond the typical attention span of the American president and the media that report on him.

One of the key elements of U.S. airstrikes against Iran, and also a controversy that surrounded the issue at the time, involved estimates by intelligence analysts about the level of destruction caused by the airstrikes. These assessments are significant, and important. The country needs good intelligence to carry out and determine the impact of its policies, and when political leaders can trust that they are getting reliable information from their intelligence services, decision making is better informed.

There are several ways, however, in which the goals of clear understanding and good decision making can be undermined. First and foremost, the gathering and analysis of intelligence can miss big developments. An oft-cited example is that no intelligence agencies foresaw the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe. This has been considered a major failure of the CIA and other such organizations around the world. Another challenge to decision making is that intelligence experts might be in possession of sound information, but they still might offer poor judgements based on that information. For example, American intelligence agencies often came to the conclusion that many political leaders around the world during the Cold War were communists and inclined to align with the Soviet Union simply because they didn’t fall in line behind U.S. foreign policy objectives, or they pursued policies such as land reform that seemed by definition to be too “communist” for comfort.

Equally problematic in terms of unreliability, but far worse in terms of motive, are the times when those producing or transmitting intelligence information to their leaders (government, military, civic) will tell their leader what the person wants to hear, rather than telling the truth. This could be for a variety of reasons, including to curry favor, steer policy in the direction the briefer or the intelligence agency wants to go, being persuaded to do so by other interests, or by strong political pressure to fall in line with the leader’s wishes. These are instances in which intelligence is deliberately slanted or falsified to meet an outcome that is not fully (or at all) supported by the available information. If a government leader wants an intelligence community to produce misleading or fake information, or sets clear expectations about what conclusions it wants to hear regardless of the facts, or encourages cherry-picking facts favorable to a particular political objective that hoodwinks the public into supporting the leader’s policy, this is likely to foster failure and maybe even disaster.

This politicization of intelligence seems to be a practice in the Trump administration, particularly with respect to Iran and the extent to which Iran’s nuclear program has been impacted as a result of U.S. airstrikes. Soon after the attacks, the Trump administration disclosed that seven B-2 bombers, based in Missouri, took off from their base, flew across the Atlantic and the Mediterranean, while refueling in midair three times, before entering Iranian airspace, where each plane dropped two 30,000 pound “bunker buster,” ground penetrating bombs on the underground uranium enrichment sites at Fordow and Natanz. At the same time, twenty-four cruise missiles were fired from a submarine in the Persian Gulf, bombing the nuclear weapons storage facility at Isfahan.

However, after that information was relayed, facts quickly gave way to politics. President Trump immediately claimed that Iran’s nuclear program was “completely and totally obliterated” by the strikes. This claim was described as “a typically Trumpian, made-for-the-cameras declaration of victory,” but it was “at best premature.” News reports in the immediate aftermath, citing a leaked Defense Intelligence Agency report that was based on an initial bomb damage assessment, stated that the U.S. attacks did not completely destroy the targeted sites and likely only set back the Iranian nuclear program by a few months. Nor was Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium believed to be destroyed.

These reports were promptly attacked by Trump who called them “unpatriotic” and claimed that such coverage disrespected troops involved in the mission. He threatened to sue CNN and The New York Times for weakening his credibility and integrity in the eyes of the public. The White House press office labeled the report by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency “flat out wrong,” and said that the report was leaked by a “low-level loser in the intelligence community” in a “clear attempt to demean President Trump.” The administration followed up with a statement from CIA Director John Ratcliffe saying that the strikes “severely damaged” Iran’s nuclear weapons program. In addition, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth held a press conference disparaging critical press reports, saying that the airstrikes were “the most complex and secretive military operation in history.” (This is on point with the typical bombast of administration claims, though perhaps the Secretary forgot or never learned about D-Day, which involved more than a million allied soldiers engaging in the battle that set the stage for victory in World War II.)

Rather than making a more measured case that the United States carried out a massive attack, and that assessments were being made to fully determine the extent of the damage, the administration sought to establish the idea that there was a clear conclusion that had been reached and to use it as a political weapon to make a maximalist claim unwarranted by available facts, while disparaging information that hinted of anything short of their claim that the Iranian nuclear program was completely destroyed. Considering that ongoing reports continued to provide information that challenged the administration’s account, that the complete eradication of the nuclear program from a single airstrike was unlikely, and that there was really no way to fully determine the level of damage so quickly, the entire effort by Trump appeared as little more than cherry picking favored information, making up a claim entirely, or the president repeating information given to him by appointees eager to give him what he wanted to hear.

This example of exaggerating or selectively drawing on intelligence reports draws parallels to one of the costliest and most damaging episodes in American foreign policy: the invasion of Iraq by the George W. Bush administration. In 2003 Secretary of State Colin Powell was chosen by the president to argue the case against Saddam Hussein. Powell made an extensive statement to the United Nations Security Council, saying that the Iraqi leader possessed weapons of mass destruction, including chemical weapons, bioweapons, and a nuclear program, all of which represented a significant threat. Powell provided numerous examples of what he said was proof of such weapons being developed, and he said that multiple intelligence sources provided the damning information. In the end, however, after the United States invaded Iraq based upon its claims of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, no such weapons were ever found. The supposedly reliable intelligence was anything but. The Bush administration wanted so much to invade Iraq they were willing to exaggerate claims and to accept only information and assessments that confirmed their biases to arrive at a “truth” they wanted to hear and believe. (One of the sources about Iraqi weapons came from an informant to the German intelligence services, who told the Americans that the information he provided might not be reliable. But the U.S. government ignored the warnings and chose to believe what the informant said, because that’s what the White House wanted to hear. The informant’s nickname was “Curveball,” which should have been enough to raise suspicions. An investigation concluded in 2004 that Curveball’s allegations were false, and he admitted a few years later that his claims were lies.)

In the end, a widely accepted conclusion of the U.S. invasion has been that the Bush administration exaggerated and cherry-picked intelligence about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and this justified the US invasion in 2003. Hans Blix, the then head of the United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspections Commission, which was formed to disarm Iraq and ensure it was not building weapons of mass destruction, said months before the invasion that the CIA gave him a list of where the weapons were located. Blix visited every place on the list, some several times, and found nothing. In his book Disarming Iraq Blix wondered how some officials could be certain of the existence of weapons of mass destruction in the hands of Iraq but completely ignorant of where they were located. Even Colin Powell himself came to a similar conclusion in later years, regretting his presentation to the United Nations as a “great intelligence failure” and a “blot” on his career, saying that the intelligence he cited was “inaccurate and wrong and in some cases deliberately misleading."

In considering the example of the Iraq war soon after the airstrikes in Iran, a Washington Post article argued that, “Presidents have an obligation to be honest with the American people, but they also have a personal interest in receiving unvarnished assessments from nonpolitical analysts to make the best possible decisions.” The Bush administration was not honest with the American people, or with itself, and the result was a failure that cost many lives, great sums of money, and American power and credibility.

Now that the United States has once again involved itself in military action in the Middle East, with a potentially nuclear armed country, it can be of great consequence if the United States government fools itself or the American people about what Iran is capable of doing and what it is in fact doing. Three months prior to the Iran bombings, the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, gave testimony to a Congressional committee and she stated the opinion of the intelligence community, which she said, “continues to assess that Iran is not building a nuclear weapon, and Supreme Leader [Ali] Khamenei has not authorized the nuclear weapons program that he suspended in 2003.” This has been a consistent conclusion reached by U.S. intelligence for many years, even considering the high level to which Iran has enriched uranium in its expanding nuclear program. However, when Donald Trump was asked about this shortly before he ordered the bombing of Iran, he said about Gabbard, his own appointee as Director of National Intelligence, “She’s wrong,” and “I don’t care what she said. I think they were very close to having one [a nuclear weapon].”

The Iranians are certainly closer than they ever have been to having the capability to produce nuclear weapons, and the Iranian government’s actions do little to give anyone reason to believe the things they say about their peaceful intentions. And of course, a president has the prerogative to reject the views and recommendations of the intelligence community. After all, intelligence is always a nuanced collection of guesses based on the inflow and collection of information from secret human sources, open-source public material, interception of communications, and satellite surveillance. Still, a fair-minded conclusion based on the material is what the intelligence committee is committed to deliver, and that is what Gabbard was delivering to Congress as her job required. When the president publicly and arrogantly dismisses the U.S. intelligence community, he undermines trust and credibility within his own government and with the American people. This feeds the idea both inside and outside government that the most important element of intelligence reporting is making sure the president hears what he wants to hear, and that it helps the president politically. It also bolsters the perception reported by news organizations that Trump acted because Fox News praised the Israeli attacks on Iran and Trump wanted to look good on Fox as well.

This behavior must not be allowed to discourage the intelligence community from delivering its informed best assessments to the president about national security issues, nor should they allow themselves to be intimidated into self-censorship. The community owes the country its best understanding of what the truth is, and the nature and seriousness of any threat. This is essential to our continued security. As for American leaders, they can ignore the truth or not agree with the outcome of the reviews of the intelligence community, but suppressing or distorting the truth to serve their own political ends and popularity will only bring disrepute to them, and potential danger to the country. Recognizing the truth is absolutely crucial to good government.