Hewitt Interviews Douglas Feith

Hugh Hewitt had a great interview today with Douglas Feith, who headed up the group that took the CIA to task for spinning intelligence to fit their view of the world.

Here a few of the questions and answers to wet your appetite:

HH: Do you believe, as opposed to your staff, that the CIA was filtering its own intelligence, Mr. Feith?

DF: Yes, I think that there were people, there were people in the CIA who had a theory that the Baathist secularists would not cooperate with the religious extremists in al Qaeda. And because they had that theory, when they looked at information that was, that showed, or that suggested that there was cooperation, they were inclined not to believe that information. And so what they were doing is they were preparing reports about the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship in the year 2002, that were either excluding altogether, or downplaying older intelligence reports that suggested that there were contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda.

[...]HH: Now there has been for some time speculation that there is a war against the war inside of the CIA. Is that fair?

DF: Well, we know now quite clearly from people who were in the CIA at the time, and who have since left, and have written books and articles, and given interviews, that there were a substantial number of people, including some analysts at very high levels, who were fundamentally at odds with the President’s policy. And that’s…I mean, that’s okay in principle, as long as they are doing professional work. The problem is that some of these people, I think very unprofessionally, were leaking stories, making allegations, one of the standard techniques is using former intelligence officials as a vehicle for leaking stories about what’s going on within the administration, and a lot of those stories that came out were very harmful, very false, and have had a lasting effect in hurting the President.

And the whole 30 minute interview here: