Source: Global Research.caRobert Parry
The
U.S. press corps and “independent” American weapons experts got almost
everything wrong about Iraq’s purported WMD before the U.S. invasion in
2003. Now, much the same cast is returning to interpret dubious
intelligence about Iran’s nuclear program, reports Robert Parry.
The American public is about to be inundated with
another flood of “expert analysis” about a dangerous Middle Eastern
country presumably hiding a secret nuclear weapons program that may
require a military strike, although this time it is Iran, not Iraq.
In the near future, you will be seeing more satellite
photos of non-descript buildings that experts will say are housing
elements of a nuclear bomb factory. There will be more diagrams of
supposed nuclear devices. Some of the same talking heads will
reappear to interpret this new “evidence.”
You might even recognize some of those familiar faces
from the more innocent days of 2002-2003 when they explained, with
unnerving confidence, how Iraq’s Saddam Hussein surely had chemical and
biological weapons and likely a nuclear weapons program, too.
For instance, back then, former United Nations
weapons inspector David Albright was all over the news channels,
reinforcing the alarmist claims about Iraq’s WMD that were coming from
President George W. Bush and his neocon-dominated administration.
Today, Albright’s Institute for Science and
International Security (ISIS) is issuing a flurry of alarmist reports
about Iran’s nuclear bomb progress, often accompanied by the same kind
of satellite photos and diagrams that helped persuade many Americans
that Iraq must possess unconventional weapons that turned out to be
fictitious.
For instance, in the run-up to war in Iraq, Albright co-authored a Sept. 10, 2002, article – entitled “Is the Activity at Al Qaim Related to Nuclear Efforts?”
– which declared, “High-resolution commercial satellite imagery shows
an apparently operational facility at the site of Iraq’s al Qaim
phosphate plant and uranium extraction facility (Unit-340), located in
northwest Iraq near the Syrian border. This site was where Iraq
extracted uranium for its nuclear weapons program in the 1980s. …
“This image raises questions about whether Iraq has
rebuilt a uranium extraction facility at the site, possibly even
underground. … Unless inspectors go to the site and investigate all
activities, the international community cannot exclude the possibility
that Iraq is secretly producing a stockpile of uranium in violation of
its commitments under Security Council resolutions. The uranium could be
used in a clandestine nuclear weapons effort.”
Albright’s nuclear warning about Iraq coincided with
the start of the Bush administration’s propaganda campaign to rally
Congress and the American people to war with talk about “the smoking gun
in the form of a mushroom cloud.”
Though Albright eventually grew skeptical about the
alleged resurrection of an Iraqi nuclear program, he remained a firm
believer in the Bush administration’s claims about Iraq’s supposed
chemical and biological weapons programs as justification for the March
2003 invasion.
Gullibility Exposed
In summer 2003, after the promised WMD caches proved
non-existent, the journalism watchdog group FAIR published a study by
Seth Ackerman looking at the American press corps’ gullibility and
citing the role of weapons experts like Albright.
Entitlted “The Great WMD Hunt,”
the article said, “In part, journalists absorbed their aura of
certainty from a battery of ‘independent’ weapons experts who repeated
the mantra of Iraq concealment over and over. Journalists used these
experts as outside sources who could independently evaluate the
administration’s claims. Yet often these ‘experts’ were simply repeating
what they heard from U.S. officials, forming an endless loop of
self-reinforcing scare mongering.
“Take the ubiquitous David Albright, a former U.N.
inspector in Iraq. Over the years, Albright had been cited in hundreds
of news articles and made scores of television appearances as an
authority on Iraqi weapons. A sample prewar quote from Albright (CNN,
10/5/02): ‘In terms of the chemical and biological weapons, Iraq has
those now. How many, how could they deliver them? I mean, these are the
big questions.’”
FAIR added: “But when the postwar weapons hunt
started turning up empty, Albright made a rather candid admission (L.A.
Times, 4/20/03): “If there are no weapons of mass destruction, I’ll be
mad as hell. I certainly accepted the administration claims on chemical
and biological weapons. I figured they were telling the truth. If there
is no [unconventional weapons program], I will feel taken, because they
asserted these things with such assurance.’”
Albright’s official biography
at ISIS, which he founded and still heads, also boasts about his media
influence: “The media frequently cite Albright, and he has appeared
often on television and radio. A National Journal profile in 2004 called him a ‘go-to guy for media people seeking independent analysis on Iraq’s WMD programs.’”
The list of media outlets that relied on Albright is indeed impressive, as the bio reports:
“The New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today,
Los Angeles Times, Newsweek, Time, Washington Times, Boston Globe,
Chicago Tribune, London Sunday Times, Guardian, Die Zeit, Ashi Shimbun,
Der Spiegel, Stern, and Times of India and by Reuters,
Associated Press, AFP and Bloomberg wire services. Albright has also
appeared many times on CNN, FOX, MSNBC, ABC World News Tonight, NBC
Nightly News, CBS Evening News, Newshour with Jim Lehrer, 60 Minutes,
Dateline, Nightline and multiple National Public Radio shows.”
Forgetting Iraq Fiasco
Yet, when the Washington Post cited Albright on Monday, as the key source of a front-page article
about Iran’s supposed progress toward reaching “nuclear capability,”
all the history of Albright’s role in the Iraq fiasco disappeared. The
article by Joby Warrick stated:
“Beginning early in the last decade and apparently
resuming — though at a more measured pace — after a pause in 2003,
Iranian scientists worked concurrently across multiple disciplines to
obtain key skills needed to make and test a nuclear weapon that could
fit inside the country’s long-range missiles, said David Albright, a
former U.N. weapons inspector who has reviewed the intelligence files.
“‘The program never really stopped,” said Albright,
president of the Washington-based Institute for Science and
International Security. The institute performs widely respected
independent analyses of nuclear programs in countries around the world,
often drawing from IAEA [International Atomic Energy Agency] data.
“‘After 2003, money [in Iran] was made available for
research in areas that sure look like nuclear weapons work but were
hidden within civilian institutions,’ Albright said.”
The Post reported that key elements of this
foreboding analysis come from a soon-to-be-released IAEA report, but the
Post relied on Albright for emphasis and interpretation. The article
said:
“Some of the highlights were described in a
presentation by Albright at a private conference of intelligence
professionals last week. PowerPoint slides from the presentation were
obtained by The Washington Post, and details of Albright’s summary were
confirmed by two European diplomats privy to the IAEA’s internal
reports. …
“Albright said IAEA officials, based on the totality
of the evidence given to them, have concluded that Iran ‘has sufficient
information to design and produce a workable implosion nuclear device’
using highly enriched uranium as its fissile core. … ‘The [intelligence]
points to a comprehensive project structure and hierarchy with clear
responsibilities, timelines and deliverables,’ Albright said, according
to the notes from the presentation.”
The Post cited Albright as describing a key
breakthrough for Iran when it obtained the design for an R265 generator,
“a hemispherical aluminum shell with an intricate array of high
explosives that detonate with split-second precision. These charges
compress a small sphere of enriched uranium or plutonium to trigger a
nuclear chain reaction.”
The Post reported that the IAEA had received
intelligence claiming that a former Soviet nuclear scientist, Vyacheslav
Danilenko, explained to Iranian scientists how to develop and test an
explosion needed to detonate a nuclear warhead. However, one source told
the Post that Danilenko’s work was limited to civilian engineering
projects.
The Post doesn’t spell out where the new IAEA intelligence originated, but the New York Times reported
that “some of that information came from the United States, Israel and
Europe.” Israeli leaders have been trying to rally public support for a
bombing campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities, while Iran remains
deeply unpopular with U.S. and European officials.
A Different IAEA
The IAEA also is not the same organization that
bucked the Bush administration’s intelligence regarding Iraq’s supposed
nuclear weapons program.
As former CIA analyst Ray McGovern wrote
on Feb. 21, 2010, the new IAEA chief, Japanese diplomat Yukiya Amano,
had “huge shoes to fill when he took over from the widely respected
Mohamed ElBaradei, [who] had the courage to call a spade a spade and,
when necessary, a forgery a forgery — like the documents alleging that
Iraq had sought yellowcake uranium in Niger.”
Citing the contrast between ElBaradei’s expertise and
reputation and that of the less known Amano, McGovern added, “lacking
gravitas, one bends more easily. It is a fair assumption that Amano will
prove more malleable than his predecessor — and surely more naïve.”
Now, it appears that Amano’s IAEA has accepted
intelligence information from Israel and other enemies of Iran in
preparing a report that is sure to add fuel to the fire for a
possible military confrontation with Iran. Republican presidential
hopefuls are already lining up to beat the war drums and accuse
President Barack Obama of softness on Iran.
CIA analysts are sure to come under new pressure to
back away from an important National Intelligence Estimate from 2007
which concluded that the Iranians had halted work on a nuclear weapons
program in 2003. President Bush said the NIE tied his hands when he was
considering a military attack on Iran before he left office.
Official Washington’s animus toward Iran also
continues to be reflected in the intense interest over Iran’s nuclear
program, which Iranian officials insist is only for peaceful purposes,
compared to the usual silence over Israel’s actual nuclear-weapons
arsenal.
Not only do the Washington Post and New York Times
routinely leave out the existence of the Israeli arsenal of possibly
hundreds of atomic bombs when writing stories about Iran conceivably
building its first, but experts like Albright also largely ignore the
former while obsessing on the latter.
Albright’s ISIS has published 36 reports about Iran
in the past 12 months alone, compared to only three items on Israel over
the past decade, according to the ISIS Web site.
It is that sort of even-handedness that Americans can
expect in the next days and weeks as the U.S. news media again consults
with its favored “experts” as both groups reprise their pre-Iraq War
role on WMD, this time on Iran.
Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, Neck Deep: The Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush, was written with two of his sons, Sam and Nat, and can be ordered at neckdeepbook.com. His two previous books, Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from Watergate to Iraq and Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press & ‘Project Truth’ are also available there.
