Citizen Smash Weighs In

Citizen Smash weighs in on the Feith memo revealed in Stephen W. Hayes’ Case Closed article published in the Weekly Standard.

Smash has more experience dealing with the type of information revealed in the Feith memo than most of us writing in the blogosphere:

I’m not an intelligence analyst, I have read literally hundreds of intelligence summaries in the course of my military career. When you do this every day, you learn how to separate solid, reliable reporting from rumor and speculation.

Based upon his experience, Smash offers the following analysis of the reliability of the reports of Iraqi-Al Qaeda collaboration:

If a report comes from a single source with little or no history of accurate reporting, it’s generally considered to be “advisory, but not reliable.” What you give the closest attention are similar reports from multiple, independent sources with established histories of accurate reporting.

What struck me most about the memo was this line, which most readers not familiar with intelligence summaries probably glossed over:

Reporting entries #4, #11, #15, #16, #17 and #18, from different sources, corroborate each other and provide confirmation of meetings between al-Qaida operatives and Iraqi intelligence in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Source #4 was described as “a senior Iraqi intelligence officer” who was debriefed in May 2003.

Source #11 was descibed only as “sensitive reporting,” which generally refers to an active source with access to the enemy.

Source #15 was described as “a foreign government service,” probably an intelligence agency.

Source #16 was described as “CIA reporting.” Self-explanatory.

Sources #17 and #18 are not characterized.

Taken alone, these independent reports from six separate sources would generally be considered corroborated and highly reliable. But these meetings were also reported in the mainstream media. Newsweek wrote about the connection between Saddam and Bin Laden in January 1999, and The Guardian reported on it the following month.

Indeed, the evidence was so convincing, that Clinton’s CIA chief James Woolsey, appearing on CNN’s Late Edition this past weekend, described it as a “slam dunk.”

While none of this yet confirms a link between Saddam and the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, it is clear that the Iraqi government was in communication with Usama bin Laden, and it appears likely that they formed some sort of mutually beneficial working relationship.

The allegations of cooperation between Saddam and bin Laden disclosed by Hayes’ article require more analysis like that provided by Smash. The mainstream media need to devote some of their vast resources to acquiring analysis by intelligence analysts of the material revealed in the Feith memo.