April 23, 2004

MEMORANDUM TO: OPINION LEADERS

FROM: GARY SCHMITT

SUBJECT: "Slam Dunks" & "Rockstars"

President Bush has recently stated that it may be "time to revamp and reform our intelligence services." Indeed, it is - as suggested by two revelations contained in Bob Woodward's new book, Plan of Attack.

In Woodward's book, he recounts a key briefing held on December 21, 2002 in the Oval Office. CIA Director George Tenet and his deputy for intelligence John McLaughlin were there to brief the president, the vice president, NSC advisor Condoleezza Rice and Chief of Staff Andrew Card on the status of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. At the end of the briefing, Tenet told the group "it's a slam dunk case" that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction. But Woodward writes that the president "pressed" Tenet on the wmd issue: "George, how confident are you" that Saddam has weapons of mass destruction? Tenet, as head of the US intelligence community and chief intelligence advisor to the president under the National Security Act of 1947, told the president: "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk."

Woodward also writes on the intelligence behind the president's decision to start the air campaign two days earlier than planned and before all aspects of the military operation were ready to go. On March 19, 2003, the CIA told the president that one of its "assets" in Iraq had located the place where Saddam and his sons were staying that night. The information, Director Tenet told the president, was "as good as it gets." The asset was one of about 90 Iraqi agents, code-named DB/ROCKSTARS, tasked with providing the CIA first-hand intelligence on what was going on inside Saddam's regime. But the most consequential piece of intelligence produced by the ROCKSTARS network - Saddam's bunker - apparently turned out to be bogus. There was no bunker and, of course, Saddam was not killed. It now looks like a significant portion, if not most of the ROCKSTARS, were working either for themselves or Saddam.

The evidence is that President Bush was not well served by either the DCI or the intelligence community's lead agency, the CIA. Despite that, calls for reforming the intelligence community almost always include proposals to centralize even more authority under the DCI and/or give the CIA even more resources. Before heading down that road, Congress and the White House should think seriously about the performance of both in recent years.