Mike Levin: “the most important quality I am looking for in a Director of Central Intelligence is someone who can be relied upon to…”

“the most important quality I am looking for in a Director of Central Intelligence is someone who can be relied upon to provide objective intelligence assessments independent of the policy and political agenda of the White House. Too often we haven't had that. The massive intelligence failures before the Iraq war were, to a significant degree, the result of the CIA shaping intelligence to support administration policy. The CIA's errors were all in one direction, making the Iraqi threat clearer, sharper and more imminent, thereby promoting the administration's decision to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Nuances, qualifications and caveats were dropped; a ``slam-dunk'' was the assessment. The CIA was saying to the administration, to the Congress, and to the American people what it thought the administration wanted to hear. The problem of intelligence being manipulated and politicized is not new. Forty years ago, Secretary of Defense McNamara used classified communications intercepts, later proved to be very dubious, to push for passage of the Gulf of Tonkin resolution, which was then used by President Johnson as the legislative foundation to expand the war in Vietnam. Intelligence was manipulated by then-DCI William Casey during the Iran Contra period.”