Wash Post/Woodward: CIA Said Instability Seemed 'Irreversible'

CIA Said Instability Seemed 'Irreversible'

By Bob Woodward
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, July 12, 2007; A01

Early on the morning of Nov. 13, 2006, members of the bipartisan Iraq
Study Group gathered around a dark wooden conference table in the
windowless Roosevelt Room of the White House.

For more than an hour, they listened to President Bush give what one
panel member called a "Churchillian" vision of "victory" in Iraq and
defend the country's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki. "A
constitutional order is emerging," he said.

Later that morning, around the same conference table, CIA Director
Michael V. Hayden painted a starkly different picture for members of
the study group. Hayden said "the inability of the government to
govern seems irreversible," adding that he could not "point to any
milestone or checkpoint where we can turn this thing around,"
according to written records of his briefing and the recollections of
six participants.

"The government is unable to govern," Hayden concluded. "We have spent
a lot of energy and treasure creating a government that is balanced,
and it cannot function."

Later in the interview, he qualified the statement somewhat: "A
government that can govern, sustain and defend itself is not
achievable," he said, "in the short term."

Hayden's bleak assessment, which came just a week after Republicans
had lost control of Congress and Bush had dismissed Defense Secretary
Donald H. Rumsfeld, was a pivotal moment in the study group's
intensive examination of the Iraq war, and it helped shape its
conclusion in its final report that the situation in Iraq was "grave
and deteriorating."

In the eight months since the interview, neither Hayden nor any other
high-ranking administration official has publicly described the Iraqi
government in the uniformly negative terms that the CIA director used
in his closed-door briefing.

Among the 79 specific recommendations the Iraq Study Group made to
Bush was withdrawing support for the Maliki government unless it
showed "substantial progress" on security and national reconciliation.
And it recommended changing the primary mission of U.S. forces from
combat to training Iraqis so that combat units could be withdrawn by
early 2008.

In effect, the report from the bipartisan group -- co-chaired by
former secretary of state James A. Baker III, a Republican, and former
congressman Lee H. Hamilton (D-Ind.) -- was an urgent message from the
old Washington establishment to the Bush administration to change the
direction of its Iraq policy. But Bush did not initially embrace any
of the key recommendations, although bipartisan groups in the House
and Senate have recently introduced legislation that would make them
official U.S. policy.

Instead, the president in January announced that he was sending more
troops to Iraq as part of a "surge," which he said would lead to the
victory that had so far eluded U.S. forces.

Both Bush and Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of U.S. forces in
Iraq, have repeatedly said that there is no military solution to Iraq
and that the sectarian strife and the insurgency can be resolved only
by the Iraqi government.

Hayden's description of Iraq's dysfunctional government provides some
insight into the intelligence community's analysis of Maliki and the
situation on the ground. Five days before his testimony, national
security adviser Stephen J. Hadley had written a memo to Bush raising
doubts about Maliki's ability to curb violence in Iraq, but his
assessment was not as bleak as Hayden's.

Bush's own optimistic statement to members of the study group did not
reflect the viewpoint of his CIA director. But a statement from
another administration official interviewed by the panel the same day
-- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice -- took it into account.

Asked by former Supreme Court justice Sandra Day O'Connor, a member of
the study group, if she was aware of the CIA's grim evaluation of
Iraq, Rice replied, "We are aware of the dark assessment," but quickly
added: "It is not without hope."

A spokesman for the CIA, Mark Mansfield, disputed this account of
Hayden's testimony to members of the study group. "That is not an
accurate reflection of what Director Hayden said at that meeting, nor
does it reflect his view, then or now," Mansfield said.

A senior intelligence official familiar with Hayden's session with the
Iraq Study Group said that Hayden told the panel his assessment was
"somber" and acknowledged that Hayden had used the term
"irreversible." But the official insisted that Hayden instead said,
"The current situation, with regard to governance in Iraq, was
probably irreversible in the short term, because of the world views of
many of the [Iraqi] government leaders, which were shaped by a
sectarian filter and a government that was organized for its ethnic
and religious balance rather than competence or capacity."

But another senior intelligence official confirmed the thrust and
detail of Hayden's assessment, saying that the intelligence out of
Iraq this month shows that the ability of the Maliki government to
execute decisions and govern Iraq remains "awful."

Hayden, 62, a four-star Air Force general and career intelligence
officer, has a reputation as a candid briefer. Since 2003, the CIA,
which has more than 500 personnel in Iraq to assist in providing
intelligence and analysis, has offered the most pessimistic view of
any intelligence agency of both the Iraqi government's performance and
the situation on the ground there.

Testifying publicly before the Senate Armed Services Committee two
days after meeting with the study group, Hayden was more cautious in
his conclusions. He said that there were serious problems in Iraq but
that the government was "functioning."

Former defense secretary William J. Perry, one of the five Democrats
on the Iraq Study Group, confirmed that Hayden told them the Iraqi
government seemed beyond repair.

"That was what we'd been hearing everywhere," Perry said. "He just
said it a little more clearly and more explicitly than other people."

O'Connor, a Republican, also confirmed Hayden's assessment. She said
she did not agree with his conclusion that it was irreversible, but
she said she was pessimistic.

"It is a dire situation," she said. "I don't think it has gotten any
better. It just breaks your heart. . . . Iraqi people are dying,
American soldiers are dying. So far it does not seem we have achieved
any kind of security there."

Arriving at the White House on the morning of Nov. 13, members of the
study group spent the day interviewing almost every key figure
involved in Iraq policy. In addition to Hayden, Bush and Rice, they
also questioned Rumsfeld; Gen. Peter Pace, then chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff; Zalmay Khalilzad, then U.S. ambassador to Iraq; and,
by videoconference from Baghdad, Gen. George W. Casey Jr., then the
top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Bush was joined in the interview by Vice President Cheney, White House
Chief of Staff Joshua B. Bolten and Hadley, but they did not speak.
"We thought with that whole group there, we were going to get
briefings, we were going to get discussions," said Perry. "Instead the
president held forth on his views on how important the war was, and
how it was tough."

In his meeting with members of the study group, Hayden described a
situation in which the Iraqi government either would not or could not
control the violence consuming the country and questioned whether it
made sense to strengthen its security forces. He depicted the United
States as facing mainly bad choices in the future.

"Our leaving Iraq would make the situation worse," Hayden said. "Our
staying in Iraq may not make it better. Our current approach without
modification will not make it better."

According to the written record and others in the room, Hayden at one
point likened the situation in Iraq to a marathon. He said there comes
a point in each race when the runner knows he can complete the
challenge. But Hayden said he could see no such point in Iraq's
future.

"The levers of power are not connected to anything," he said, adding:
"We have placed all of our energies in creating the center, and the
center cannot accomplish anything."

Numerous U.S. generals already had told the study group that success
in Iraq could not come without national reconciliation between the
Sunnis and Shiites. Hayden agreed, saying: "The Iraqi identity is
muted. The Sunni or Shia identity is foremost."

But he clearly saw no end to sectarian killings. "Given the level of
uncontrolled violence," Hayden said, "the most we can do is to contain
its excesses and preserve the possibility of reconciliation in the
future."

He compared the Iraq situation to the prolonged warfare in the
Balkans. "In Bosnia, the parties fought themselves to exhaustion,"
Hayden said, suggesting that the same scenario could play out in Iraq.
"They might just have to fight this out to exhaustion."

Hayden catalogued what he saw as the main sources of violence in this
order: the insurgency, sectarian strife, criminality, general anarchy
and, lastly, al-Qaeda. Though Hayden had listed al-Qaeda as the fifth
most pressing threat in Iraq, Bush regularly lists al-Qaeda first.

Members of the study group said Hayden's stark assessment of the Iraqi
government dovetailed with what they had heard in September during
their visit to Iraq. There, they met with a senior CIA official who
held an equally unenthusiastic view. "Maliki was nobody's pick," the
CIA official had said, according to written notes from that meeting.
"His name came up late. He has no real power base in the country or in
parliament. We need not expect much from him."

Given the constant threats and persistent violence, the official had
said, it was remarkable that Iraqi government employees showed up for
work.

"We continue to be amazed that the Iraqis accept such high levels of
violence," he told the study group. "Maliki thinks two car bombs a
day, 100 dead a day, is okay. It's sustainable and his government is
survivable."

But the government itself was responsible for some of that violence,
the CIA official said. "The Ministry of Interior is uniformed death
squads, overseers of jails and torture facilities," he said. "Their
funds are constantly misappropriated."

In his testimony, Hayden said that the United States had fundamental
disagreements with Maliki's Shiite-dominated government on some of the
most basic issues facing Iraq.

"We and the Iraqi government do not agree on who the enemy is," Hayden
said, according to the written record. "For all the senior leaders of
the Iraqi government, Baathists are the source of evil. There is a
Baathist behind every bush."

Several participants in the interview described Hayden as dismayed by
the startling level of violence in the country but skeptical of the
ability of Iraqi forces -- either the military or the police -- to do
anything about it.

"It's a legitimate question whether strengthening the Iraqi security
forces helps or hurts when they are viewed as a predatory element," he
said. "Strengthening Iraqi security forces is not unalloyed good.
Without qualification, this judgment applies to the police."

In one bit of qualified good news, he said that the training of the
Iraqi army had produced better results than that of the police. "The
army is uneven," he said, adding: "Uneven, in this case, is good."

Hayden's frustration with Maliki provides a context to the
administration's continuing efforts to pressure the Iraqi leader into
finding a political settlement between Sunni and Shiite factions in
Iraq. During one week last month, three senior administration
officials visited Baghdad to try to speed up the political process.

In her testimony Nov. 13, Rice recounted her discussions with Maliki
in which she bluntly told him the importance of making progress on
national unity and reconciliation. Rice said she had told the prime
minister, "Pretty soon, you'll all be swinging from lampposts if you
don't hang together."

Brady Dennis and Evelyn Duffy contributed to this report.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/11/AR2007071102451.html

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