Iraqi war

CIA Analyst to Iraq Tribunal: Wolfowitz Pushed Multiple Investigations of “Pure Fiction”

I retired in 2010 after a 27-year career with the CIA and for the first 20 years of my career, I was a senior political and media analyst with the CIA’s open source arm. That department monitors and translates speeches by foreign leaders, newspaper editorials and other foreign news of interest to US policymakers.

Our job was to analyze the speeches of foreign leaders and the political spin of foreign media content and help the policymakers we worked with understand the implications for US policy and interests. It was exciting, challenging and very interesting work.

In early 2003, just prior to the launching of the US attack on Iraq, I was the senior analyst in charge of Iraqi media at the Open Source Center. The political atmosphere around the Beltway had become very charged amid allegations that Saddam Husayn possessed WMD and there were active efforts afoot to link him to al-Qa’ida and the events of 9-11. The drumbeat for war was in full swing.