The Feith Controversy

The Inspector General of the Pentagon released a report last week criticizing Douglas Feith's office of policy analysis for disseminating alternative intelligence, and Feith has gone on an all-out offensive ever since claiming that he did nothing wrong and that his office improved the intelligence product. He claims the CIA was blinded by its own ideological belief that a secular regime like Iraq wouldn't cooperate with Al Queda. (In an op-ed in today's Washington Post Feith has the gall to claim that the coexistence of Al Queda elements and Ba'athists in Iraq today proves his point. Yes, since Feith and his friends destroyed effective authority in Iraq, Al Queda is free to operate there.) Oddly, the executive summary of the IG report--all that has been released--focused on a briefing one of Feith's underlings gave at the White House, but said nothing about a memo that Feith wrote himself to the heads of the Senate Intelligence Committee, and which some one (?) then linked to the neoconservative Weekly Standard, which promptly published a summary and excerpts on November 24, 2003. Readers may judge for themselves whether this represented new intelligence analysis. Why the major media has said nothing about this memo, as far as I can see, is beyond me. Here's the link:
www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/003/378fmxyz.asp


The conclusion of the memo was rejected by CIA at the time, rejected by the 9/11 Commission later, and is no longer believed, so far as I know, by anyone--but Feith insists he did nothing wrong.