Politicizing Intelligence

For the past few months, it's been public knowledge that the Bush administration has been leaning on its intelligence agencies to produce material that will help justify a war on Iraq. The same thing has been going on in Britain, it seems. The Independent reports on the "war within" the British and American intelligence agencies.

Britain and America's spies believe that they are being politicised: that the intelligence they provide is being selectively applied to lead to the opposite conclusion from the one they have drawn, which is that Iraq is much less of a threat than their political masters claim. Worse, when the intelligence agencies fail to do the job, the politicians will not stop at plagiarism to make their case, even "tweaking" the plagiarised material to ensure a better fit.

"You cannot just cherry-pick evidence that suits your case and ignore the rest. It is a cardinal rule of intelligence," said one aggrieved officer.