NPR talk show host, Diane Rehm, interviewed former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on Monday, January 9, during the first hour of The Diane Rehm Show. It was an enlightening, even disturbing, hour of airtime. I am not an Albright scholar, nor am I even a partially bright scholar (to some of you), so I stipulate that I am not qualified to pronounce judgment on Ms. Albright's role and position in American history and foreign affairs.
I have taken the time, a considerable amount really, to listen to that interview, transcribing it directly from audio (the interview can be listened to here). I beg your indulgence for the rather lengthy excerpt which follows, but it is important.
The topics discussed of interest to us were Iraq, the Iraq War, and the Bush Administration's handling of intelligence regarding Iraq. Leading up to the part of the interview excerpted below, which happened more than 13 minutes into the broadcast, were such comments as Ms. Albright's self-congratulatory and defining pronouncement––"I probably said more terrible things about Saddam Hussein than any other American official and I did it for eight years"––or that the Iraq invasion was a "war of choice" and not one "of necessity" (I digress, but is any war one of "necessity," or is there such a thing as a "choiceless" war?); or that the Clinton Administration would have chosen a "diplomatic course" rather than a military one with Iraq.
For purposes of my analysis (which will follow), I am highlighting in bold words and phrases throughout the excerpt. Please note them as you read along. Also, I have placed [sic] in those places where things that seem either odd or misstated are nonetheless directly quoted from the original conversation.
As a point of reference, Ms. Rehm's questions and Albright's answers followed this statement by Ms. Albright regarding the Clinton Administration's use of military force in Iraq and intelligence: "We were not adverse to using force. But we felt very strongly about using an international approach. I would have advised very strongly against going in [Iraq] in 2003. We had a very collegial approach to how we dealt with all of this, and a President who wanted to listen to a variety of advice." The phrase "collegial approach" is the keystone to my analysis.
Here is the excerpt:
(1)Diane Rehm: Had President Clinton decided to invade Iraq, put troops on the ground, with your strong feeling that that was not the way to go, what do you think your own action would have been?
Madeleine Albright: That is so hypothetical because, President Clinton, I know where he was on a variety of things, and I know where you are going with this, but I think that it’s very difficult to decide how one would act in a hypothetical situation like that, and I think we would not have been in this kind of position, and I have thought a lot about what would have happened with President Gore [sic]. I think what this was based on was faulty intelligence, or confusing intelligence, and one of the things that I think people need to understand what intelligence [sic] really means in terms of these terms [sic]. I would come into my office in the morning and read the State Department intelligence booklet for the day and then the CIA person would come in and give me the, now everybody knows, this PDB, the President’s Daily Brief, and then a longer version of it, and what would happen frankly, Diane, was that they never were flat out black-and-white so it was all speculative, and to a great extent it’s like a Rorschach test, the intelligence is a product and the decision-maker is the consumer and I think President Clinton and President Gore would have seen this intelligence in a different way.
(2)DR: And President Bush apparently chose not to take into account the intelligence coming from the State Department. How does that intelligence which comes from State Department researchers differ from that which comes from intelligence sources [sic]?
MA: First of all I do not know what it was like during the Bush Administration, but in our time, first of all, they operate off the same intelligence takes, but the thing that is very good about the State Department intelligence daily brief is that it’s within a diplomatic context, it has much more of a kind of a historical overlay and diplomatic overlay and how other countries might react to it. I know President Clinton very much appreciated the State Department take, um, but what I found interesting was the combination of all of these because they all said something slightly different and, um, it was very interesting to compare the different views, but mostly the State Department is known for putting the intelligence within a diplomatic context, but they’re operating off the same source material to a great extent though obviously sources also come from the ambassadors and people on the ground.
(3)DR: So the President, President Bush, chose to put aside that which was coming from the State Department as opposed to that flawed intelligence that was coming from the CIA, I mean can we divide those?
MA: I don’t think we know - I mean I think honestly at least I don’t know. All I know is the various books I’ve read and articles and things like that so I don’t know what the thought process was but there clearly were a variety of different views and I think even, as I understand it, even the CIA take on it or the Defense Intelligence take or whatever was not totally black-and-white. And I think -- that’s why I say Rorschach test, I think you see in it what you think you want to see or what you see [sic] -- but I can’t speak to how the decision making actually happened in the White House beyond the books that I’ve read.
Let us first note the evolution of Ms. Rehm's questions. Note question #2. She begins with "President Bush apparently chose not to take into account intelligence coming from the State Department." Ms. Albright, apparently giving only lip-service to what she claims she does not know, suggests that she in fact does know what the thought processes were in the White House, gleaned from the tea-leaves found in sundry books she's read. Then comes question #3: "So, the President, President Bush chose to set aside intelligence..." Please notice that Ms. Albright has not at all shown this to be the case in her answer to question #2. She has said that she is ignorant, she admits that the questions are "hypothetical", and yet she augurs an interpretation, posits a scenario, and casts a spell on listeners, leaving us with the impression that she knows what she cannot know.
But there is something even more telling here, and I hope you discerned it. Let's just look at the highlighted statements that Ms. Albright offers regarding intelligence sources coming before her in the Clinton Administration: "...the State Department intelligence booklet for the day and then the CIA person would come in and give me the, now everybody knows, this PDB, the President’s Daily Brief, and then a longer version of it and what would happen frankly, Diane, was that they never were flat out black-and-white" and, "so it was all speculative." Ms. Albright informs us that the intelligence reports sent up from the State Department, the Pentagon, and the CIA, "[all] operate off the same intelligence takes" and that "they all said something slightly different."
OK. Let's get our bearings for a second. Ms. Albright wants us to believe that Bill Clinton and his cabinet maintained a "collegial approach", that he was particularly fond of Ms. Albright's State Department contributions to intelligence briefings, that each brief submitted by each department was dependent on the same source material and were thus only "slightly" different and never black-and-white, and that the Clinton Administration would have interpreted the Rorschach inkblot (aren't they black and white?) differently. Perhaps she is right. And yet(!) we have to reconcile all that she has said with her unbelievable indictment of the Bush Administration:
"...but there clearly were a variety of different views [in the Bush White House] and I think even, as I understand it, even the CIA take on it or the Defense Intelligence take or whatever was not totally black-and-white. And I think -- that’s why I say Rorschach test, I think you see in it what you think you want to see or what you see [sic] -- but I can’t speak to how the decision making actually happened in the White House beyond the books that I’ve read."
An astute interviewer would have jumped all over Ms. Albright's absurdity, for it appears that Ms. Albright has actually said nothing intelligible. A variety, Ms. Albright? I thought you just said the various intelligence views were not really various. Of course, an astute interviewer would also have been more circumspect, maintaining some self-awareness that her questions were loaded and leading. But we must ask how Ms. Albright is not alarmed with herself, failing, as she did, to reconcile her assertions that intelligence reports come from the same source material and are only slightly different from brief to brief. And yet President Bush, by her insinuation, ignored a "variety" of intelligence, a "variety" Ms. Albright just admitted doesn't even exist.
A Collegial Myth
Of course, Ms. Albright and Ms. Rehm are parishioners in that church which holds to the political myth that President Bush is utterly incurious about a multiplicity of views (though Ms. Albright claims not to know what the "thought process" was); that the President listens only to what he wants to hear, that he heeded Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Rice and ignored Secretary Powell; that Bush is not at all "collegial." Of course, one might wonder why Mr. Bush would at all be collegial when the intelligences from these various representatives are based on the same bland sources and vary only slightly. But in the church of this myth, mysteries abound: To Albright, a singularity for her is a "variety" for President Bush.
But here's the rub, and let us shatter these religious delusions. In Ms. Rehm's interview with Ms. Albright in 2000 on the same NPR program, when Ms. Albright was still in the Clinton White House, Ms. Rehm confronted Ms. Albright (read transcript) with this truly curious question about a press speculation regarding the aforementioned collegiality (which is followed by Ms. Albright's curious answer):
DR: Why do you think the press has taken up this issue as to whether Madeleine Albright is making foreign policy or whether it's [National Security Advisor] Sandy Berger who has the President's ear?
MA: Well, I think it's one of those kind of who's up, who's down, who plays what game in Washington. And it changes all the time. Sandy and I have a lot of laughs over it, frankly.
And just before this exchange, Ms. Albright offered us this insight into the inner collegiality of the Clinton White House:
"...the President expects us to have differences. That's what we're paid for. If we all agreed, I think there would be something wrong. But, basically, when there is a disagreement, then it goes to the President, and he needs the benefit of a lot of different opinions.
"And partially also what happens is when we meet -- and we all meet constantly -- it is everybody's job to see a foreign policy perspective or a national security perspective from the perspective of the department that you represent. And if I didn't do that or Secretary Cohen didn't do that, we wouldn't be doing our jobs. So this is how foreign policy is made in the United States in terms of people looking at it from different vantage points, presenting their best judgment to the President of the United States."
Ahh. So the various voices in the White House were "paid" to "have differences." I see. So the Clinton White House was not singular in mind and purpose; it was not entirely collegial. And yet, alas, are you suggesting, Ms. Albright, that the Bush White House is too singular, and, simultaneously, that it also ignored a different viewpoint that, by your own admission, was only "slightly" different from the others? Or are you again only referencing what you know from "various books?" What books, Ms. Albright?
I am not overreaching when I say that Mss. Albright and Rehm have participated in passive sedition. This is not to pass judgment on them or their patriotism. I am judging their words, not their characters, hearts or souls. Of course, Jesus once said that "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaks." But I will stick merely with the words. And the words are awful.
Contratimes
©Bill Gnade 2006/Contratimes - All Rights Reserved
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