The former Chief of European Operations for the CIA official blows the whistle on bogus intelligence, covert kidnappings and the alleged torture of terror suspects in an interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine.
Some excerpts:
…never before have I seen the manipulation of intelligence that has played out since Bush took office. As chief of Europe I had a front-row seat from which to observe the unprecedented drive for intelligence justifying the Iraq war.
The administration wanted to make the case for war with Iraq. They needed a tangible thing — they needed the German stuff. They couldn’t go to war based just on the fact that they wanted to change the Middle East. They needed to have something threatening to which they were reacting.
From the perspective of the White House, it was smart to blur the lines about what was acceptable and what was not in the war on terrorism. It meant that whenever someone was overzealous in some dark interrogation cell, President Bush and his entourage could blame someone else. The rendition teams are drawn from paramilitary officers who are brave and colorful. They are the men who went into Baghdad before the bombs and into Afghanistan before the army. If they didn’t do paramilitary actions for a living, they would probably be robbing banks. Perhaps the Bush administration deliberately created a gray area on renditions.