Meaningless Majority: How the CIA Rigged the NIE Vote to Take Us to War in Iraq

"It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard — is what makes it great!"

Richard W. Memmer

Nov 20, 2024

Speaking of Oak Ridge

What's wrong with this picture?

Hmm . . .

Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium.

— Colin Powell

HOUSTON WOOD: I thought, when I read that, there must be some other tubes that people were talking about. I just was flabbergasted that people were still pushing that those might be centrifuges.

SCOTT PELLEY: Flabbergasted?

HOUSTON WOOD: Yeah, yeah — so it just didn’t make any sense to me. . . . Science was not pushing this forward. Scientists had made their evaluation and made their determination. And now we didn’t know what was happening. . . .

Most experts are located in Oak Ridge, and that was not the position there.

My surgical specificity in this clip puts this lie in its place in 5 minutes alone. I’m not out to “DESTROY” Sowell, but lemme put it in terms you’ll understand: If he stepped into a debate with me on this matter, the beating he’d take would be biblical.

If you think you can challenge me on that, I invite you to try. I’ve been inviting you for a really long time.

Trillion Dollar Tube

To take a story this complex and convoluted and boil its essence down to a few minutes was no small feat:

Imagine what I did with 160:

“There is no skimming over the surface of a subject with [Hamilton]. He must sink to the bottom to see what foundation it rests on.”

— Major William Pierce (Ron Chernow, Alexander Hamilton)

Wouldn’t it be absurd to share that quote if my clip contained nothing but trite talking points? Some circles are not burdened by squaring their walk with their talk. They seem to think that advertising virtue equates to embodying it.

Case in Point:

Following Facts Where They Lead

“Said so and so”? . . . that’s one helluva trip you took there, Mr. Sowell.

Stirring Defense!

Hmm . . .

People who talk glibly about “intelligence failure” act as if intelligence agencies that are doing their job right would know everything.

— Thomas Sowell

DOE’s standard is to spin a tube at 20% above 90,000 RPM before failure — so 48,000 short is a pretty loose definition of “rough indication.” . . . Out of 31 tubes in subsequent testing, only one was successfully spun to 90,000 RPM for 65 minutes — which the CIA seized on as evidence in their favor.

One DOE analyst offered a superb analogy of that contorted conclusion: “Running your car up to 6,500 RPM briefly does not prove that you can run your car at 6,500 RPM cross country. It just doesn’t. Your car’s not going to make it.”

In an industry where fractions of a millimeter matter, these guys were playing horseshoes with centrifuge physics . . .

— Richard W. Memmer: Act II

Between Sowell’s Words and Mine — Which Ones Strike You as Glib?

Looking for intelligent life:

As in — not this! . . .

Hmm . . .

The Russians said so. The British said so. Bill Clinton said so. Leaders of both political parties said so.

“The British said so”?

What Bill Clinton said is entirely irrelevant to the tubes. So there’s that — and this: The Right ripped Bill Clinton to shreds and seemingly lives to assail democrats — and yet Sowell cites their word as solid gold.

That — is a magician’s maneuver:

Well, if they “said so” — it must be true.

So when people you despise ostensibly agree with you — it’s gotta be true, because they’d never do such a thing if it weren’t.

That’s it? . . .

Who cares about mathematical certainty in centrifuge physics when you’ve got the word of people who lie for a living? It couldn’t possibly be that your enemy has ulterior motives themselves? Nobody nails Democrats better than Glenn Greenwald’s gold-standard from a 2008 article on Salon:

Here we have a perfect expression of the most self-destructive Democratic disease which they seem unable to cure. More than anything — they fear looking weak. To avoid this, they cave, surrender, capitulate — and stand for nothing.

Flagrantly failing to account for motive in Sowell’s “Said so and so” in the environment below — is as insulting to your intelligence as it gets. Never mind it’s all meaningless in the context of the tubes.

George W. Bush was one of the last to say so. Yet he alone is accused of lying.— Thomas Sowell

I don’t play those games, Mr. Sowell:

They all lied . . .

Some circles call that evidence:

I call it cowardice!

And don’t you find it suspicious that someone of Sowell’s caliber is gonna come right out of the gate with something so weak as:

What are the known facts about Saddam Hussein’s chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons? We know that, at one time or other, he was either developing or producing or using such weapons.

Immediately followed by:

“Back in 1981″

Take note of the trite & trendy language that follows: Strikingly in sync with Sowell’s, don’t ya think?

CIA is not the all knowing God of the Bible. The CIA could do everything 100% correct but still not know everything.

There’s another reason why they wouldn’t know everything: Nuclear scientists don’t work there — they work at the Department of Energy: And that — is what this is all about. You’d know that had you watched Trillion Dollar Tube instead of trying to educate me on things you know nothing about.

And on that note:

Mr. Sowell:

Could you tell me why the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) — got an equal say on the aluminum tubes for the NIE vote?

An agency that does imagery analysis of the Earth . . .

Same for NSA and other agencies that had no expertise in centrifuge physics. And why wasn’t JAEIC allowed to weigh in?

What’s JAEIC? Allow me!

DAVID ALBRIGHT (RWM): An alternative method to resolve this conflict would have been for the DCI to ask for the judgment of the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee (JAEIC for short) which is officially part of the [National Intelligence Estimate] process. JAEIC has been a standing DCI technical intelligence committee for several decades.

Note:

I modified the Intelligence Community image below by overlaying CIA on top of Director of National Intelligence — to show how the IC effectively operated pre-9/11 and before DCI took center stage.

WASHINGTON POST (April 1st, 2005): The CIA refused to convene the government’s authoritative forum for resolving technical disputes about nuclear weapons. JAEIC proposed twice — in the spring and summer of 2002 — to assess all the evidence. The CIA’s front office replied that the CIA was not ready to discuss its position.

RICHARD W. MEMMER: For a year and a half the CIA was ready enough to shovel its certitude to the White House. Turner was ready enough to arrogantly dismiss the conclusions of all the world’s top centrifuge scientists. And yet somehow the CIA was never ready enough to openly debate the issue.

DAVID ALBRIGHT (RWM): This polarized debate was formalized, but not resolved, in October 2002 with the NIE. In this process, roughly ten intelligence agencies each had one vote, which pitted one agency against the other in a drive for a majority, vote.

RICHARD W. MEMMER: Only DOE and INR dissented. The CIA won a majority vote with agencies that had no business being involved in the discussion — which is where Colin Powell’s empty assertion of “most U.S. experts” came from. What does satellite surveillance and phone tapping have to do with centrifuge science? Even the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency got an equal say on the aluminum tubes — an agency that does imagery analysis of the Earth.

Hmm . . .

Bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant.

— Blurb to On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt

A lot of that goin' around!

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"And the Vision That Was Planted in My Brain Still Remains — Within the Sound of Silence"

Then tell me how he was wrong about one thing that he has no expertise in.

Lemme get this straight:

A layperson with limited resources and no connections:

Can do countless hours of research & writing
Interview a world-renowned nuclear scientist
Correspond with Colin Powell’s chief of intelligence — along with a key physicist
Spend $15,000 of his own money to write & produce the most detailed documentary ever done on WMD (taking both parties to task for it)

Qualifying me to exhaustively explain how half the country could not be more wrong on this issue of world-altering consequence. But it’s all good . . . that Sowell cranked out this crap that any Iraq War cheerleading jackass could issue in chain-letter lies — topped off with smug sloganeering.