Is CIA employee Paul Pillar Leaking Elements of a Secret Report on Iraq to the New York Times?
Paul Pillar is a CIA employee, and member of the National Intelligence Council. He is opposed to major elements of President Bush’s strategy in the Global War on Terror, as we have previously detailed.
Two days ago, Robert Novak had a column about Pillar’s disclosure of the secret material to a West Coast dinner of private citizens:
[T]he analyst who identified himself as its author told a private dinner last week of secret, unheeded warnings years ago about going to war in Iraq. This exchange leads to the unavoidable conclusion that the president of the United States and the Central Intelligence Agency are at war with each other.
Paul R. Pillar, the CIA’s national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, sat down Tuesday night in a large West Coast city with a select group of private citizens. He was not talking off the cuff. Relying on a multi-paged, single-spaced memorandum, Pillar said he and his colleagues concluded early in the Bush administration that military intervention in Iraq would intensify anti-American hostility throughout Islam.
The reporting in the New York Times is based on the same report as the material disclosed by Mr. Pillar previously:
A classified National Intelligence Estimate prepared for President Bush in late July spells out a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq, government officials said Wednesday.
The estimate outlines three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war, the officials said. The most favorable outcome described is an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic and security terms.
“There’s a significant amount of pessimism,” said one government official who has read the document, which runs about 50 pages. The officials declined to discuss the key judgments - concise, carefully written statements of intelligence analysts’ conclusions - included in the document. The intelligence estimate, the first on Iraq since October 2002, was prepared by the National Intelligence Council and was approved by the National Foreign Intelligence Board.
The Times article carefully skirts the issue of whether the Times has a copy of the report, though the Times does not deny that it had been given a copy, nor does it disclose whether it has been allowed to review the memorandum by Pillar and the National Intelligence Council.
Maybe I missed something along the way, but isn’t leaking secret information illegal? If Pillar is the leaker, here are a couple of questions: Why is this behavior tolerated among active CIA employees? How come this fellow is not being prosecuted? Why does he still have a job handling secrets at the CIA?
ADDENDUM
To read more about the National Intelligence Estimate, try Strategy Page and Tech Central Station.
February 23rd, 2006 at 12:51 pm
IT SEEMS IT IS POPULAR TO CRITICIZE PUBLIC OFFICIALS IF A DIFFICULT BUT NECESSARY WAR IS UNAVOIDABLE EVEN IF YOUR ENEMY HIDES UNDERNEATH EACH ROCK IN A ROCKY PLACE, THERE IS ALWAYS SOMEONE WHO CAN OUTSMART THESE RASKELS BUT HE HAPPENS TO BE IN THE OPPOSITION PARTY. THIS PUTS UNNESECARY PRESSURES ON THE ACTUAL PEOPLE WHO DO THE FIGHTING OFTEN LEADING TO A FUTILE ATTACK LIKE GETTYSBURG OR A QUAGMIRE LIKE VIETNAM. AN EMPLOYEE WHO CRITICIZES THE GOVERNMENT OPENLY EITHER CAN’T SHOULDER BLAME OR HAS A POLICAL STANCE OPPOSED TO HIS SUPERIORS AND CAN’T BE TRUSTED. I.E. PAUL PILLAR