 Dick
Coffman is an international business and security
consultant and media commentator on intelligence,
homeland security and terrorism. He is managing
Director of Odysseus
Group International, which provides risk
management and security solutions to the transportation,
basic infrastructure and manufacturing industries.
Mr. Coffman specializes in ports and maritime
security and homeland defense. He is founder
and President of Coffman
Global Group, which leverages worldwide
networks for business development and marketing
in high technology, basic materials and capital
construction.
Mr. Coffman has conducted assessments of intelligence
operations for the U.S. Customs Service and
the Office of Naval Intelligence and for a
major defense contractor.
Mr. Coffman served 31 years in the Central
Intelligence Agency where he formed and managed
the Agency's first counterterrorism analytic
organization and served as Chief of Station,
chief of staff to the Director of the Clandestine
Service, coordinator of major worldwide covert
intelligence programs and CIA representative
to the NATO Commander.
He also served four years in the U.S. Marine
Corps, including duty in Vietnam in 1965 and
1966. Mr. Coffman remained in the Marine Corps
Reserves retiring in 1992 at the grade of
Colonel. Mr. Coffman is a student of military
history and an authority on the U.S. Civil
War.
Coffman
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July 19, 2004
"...We conclude also that the statement in President Bush's State of the Union Address of 28 January 2003 that 'The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa' was well-founded."
(British review of intelligence on WMD chaired by Lord Butler and released July 15, 2004 by the House of Commons.)
One year ago, anti-Bush politicians and their allies in the politicized media were in frenzy over these sixteen words in the 2003 State of the Union.
Driven by overheated press coverage, the flimsiest of evidence that Iraq did not seek uranium in Africa quickly hardened into unassailable fact, partly fed by an obscure former diplomat, Joseph Wilson.
Wilson - whether or not at the behest of his wife, a CIA officer - traveled to Niger in 2002 to investigate and then returned claiming to have determined that it was "highly doubtful" such an event took place.
With the press and anti-war politicians in full throat, Wilson further stoked the flames with an op-ed piece in the New York Times last July asserting that President Bush had misused intelligence and exaggerated the Iraqi threat in his State of the Union speech.
Anti-Bush politicians and many of the announced democratic presidential candidates took up the cry charging the President deliberately lied or misled the nation in leading it to war in Iraq, a charge so serious as to require an extraordinarily high threshold of proof, which in hindsight was never even approached.
Nor did it matter that much of the rest of the country was disinterested or bewildered by it all and that European intelligence services were warning that the veracity of the President's statement was still an open issue.
Even the Bush White House, normally cool in the face of partisan attack, couldn't quell the fervor. The White House said the passage should not have been in the State of the Union address, trotted out a series of high-ranking officials to acknowledge lapses of oversight and judgment in failing to more rigorously screen the President's speech, and ultimately repudiated the information.
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So, now we have an official British inquiry and a bipartisan report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) concluding that there is indeed evidence that Iraq sought uranium in Africa. What's more, the SSCI report indicated that not only did the Intelligence Community not think that Wilson's trip report disproved the allegation, but that his trip provided an intriguing bit of information that an Iraqi delegation had traveled to Niger in 1999, for what the Nigerian Prime Minister believed was a discussion of uranium sales.
Thus, the 16 words in the 2003 State of the Union were accurate as stated then and now.
The information those words conveyed not only has not been proven inaccurate, but the Lord Butler and SSCI reports concluded that it remains an open, unresolved question whether Iraq did or did not seek uranium in Africa.
Why is this matter now important, and why should we be intent on pursuing it further?
Iraq's interest in African yellowcake seems only of historic interest in the absence of more significant evidence of an active Iraqi nuclear development program.
Certainly, whether Joseph Wilson was right or wrong is of small consequence.
Whether his wife did or did not push his mission inside the CIA would similarly be of small consequence were it not for that fact that her CIA affiliation - heretofore classified - was revealed in a column by veteran journalist Robert Novak last summer. This triggered a wide-ranging criminal investigation by a Justice Department prosecutor to find the leaker, including interviews of the President, Vice President and many of their top aides.
Still open and now before a Grand Jury, this investigation could eventually result in a criminal prosecution.
What is most important is the specter of politicians and the press playing fast and loose with the deadly serious issues of Iraq, US intelligence and WMD.
Nobody should be shocked, especially in contemporary Washington, that partisans and their friends in the press would risk undermining the national will and security of the country in pursuit of narrow and fleeting political gain. It happens all too often, especially in presidential election seasons.
Students of the Civil War will recall how the freewheeling and irresponsible politics of the day - abetted by a similarly outspoken and slanted press - almost unseated Abraham Lincoln in the fall of 1864 with the war only months from successful conclusion. Sherman's success in Atlanta and Sheridan's at Cedar Creek in the Shenandoah Valley saved the election for Lincoln, and perhaps the Union.
Still, with charges about the integrity and leadership of the White House along with the capacity of US intelligence now shown to be hollow, shouldn't those who exploited this matter for narrow gain be held to account?
While the answer is obvious, so also is it unlikely that the outcry about this abuse will even come close to matching the excesses of the past year.
The anti-Bush political crowd has moved on (.org) to new attacks against both the Iraq and White House. The notable exception is that of Howard Dean, the shrillest and most outspoken of the anti-war politicians, whose presidential aspirations were repudiated by his own party. It has been left to Joseph Wilson to fire off memos and letters and shuttle around the talk-show circuit to salvage the wreckage.
The once-breathless press has said very little about this matter. A veteran Washington Post intelligence and national security reporter - and inveterate basher of intelligence - wrote a tendentious article acknowledging nothing, duly published by the Post in its "news" columns. The Post's "ombudsman," presuming to critically examine that paper's coverage, ignored the larger and obvious question of overplaying a thin story line and instead focused on the details of the stories themselves.
It never made sense that the Bush Administration staffed with an experienced and sophisticated national security team - or any Administration - would or even could deliberately lie or mislead the American public about a matter as portentous as war in Iraq.
At the same time, while it may be politically advantageous in the short run to chip away at this Administration's national security stewardship, carefully choosing the grounds and the evidence would seem not only politically smart, but also very much in the larger national interest.
Those that fail to do so deserve repudiation.
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© 2004 Richard Coffman. All opinions expressed in this article
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