None.

[A Black Falcon]

David Kay... good article, think I'll post it. :)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/02/intern...02KAY.html

Ex-Arms Inspector Now in Center of a Political Maelstrom
By CHRISTOPHER MARQUIS

Published: February 2, 2004

ASHINGTON, Feb. 1 — David A. Kay, the arms inspector who changed his mind about the existence of unconventional weapons in Iraq, is perplexed by all the fuss he has caused. The weapons are simply not there, he says; it is empirical.

Yet since he went public with his findings in recent days, Dr. Kay, a plain-spoken technocrat, has been in the center of a political maelstrom. The C.I.A. is fighting for its reputation, and the Bush administration is battling accusations that it went to war on the basis of false information.

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Contending that he has the facts on his side, Dr. Kay comes across as a political innocent. He seems genuinely surprised to learn that some members of the Central Intelligence Agency are furious at him for criticizing the agency that hired him. He dismisses lawmakers who call him biased as practitioners of "gotcha politics."

His testimony has stunned official Washington. Such independence is rarely witnessed in a city where "mistakes are made" — note the passive voice — but almost never by one's bosses, and controversial or unpopular findings are muddied up with double talk.

At 63, Dr. Kay is an unlikely celebrity. He is short, with wire-rimmed glasses and a brush mustache, as nondescript as any bureaucrat, scientist or spy. But now, everyone is noticing the man who seemed destined to be overlooked.

He almost seems to be enjoying himself.

He chats amiably and doles out corny wisecracks, saying his wife, a retired teacher, who has banished him to a basement office at home in Leesburg, Va., "has threatened to send me to an undisclosed location." He recalls how his first granddaughter was born while he was in Iraq, and he had to rely on e-mailed photographs. Photography is his hobby.

"People probably think it's been more painful to me than it has," he said.

He is puzzled by the administration's response to his testimony. Senior officials have clung to statements that the inspections are continuing and therefore inconclusive.

"I'm sort of mystified," Dr. Kay said. "Quite frankly, the easier political strategy would be to say, `Look, everybody agrees that we're better off with Saddam Hussein gone, but on the other hand, it's clear that not all our advance information was good.' "

In an hourlong phone conversation on Thursday, Dr. Kay said he had been taking calls from old high school chums and several intelligence officers who are friends, but had not heard a peep from the White House or from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

He described the intelligence breakdown as a systems failure and said only an independent investigation would be able to set things right. He warned of "the difficulties we have of closed orders in secret societies to reform themselves."

Despite all the commotion he has caused — in an election year, no less — Dr. Kay sees an opportunity to overhaul an intelligence service that has stumbled badly for years.

For some, Dr. Kay's candor makes him nothing short of a hero.

"Not only does he say he was wrong, but he is willing to tackle the institutional questions of being in error," said Frank J. Gaffney Jr., the president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington. Mr. Gaffney urged President Bush to swallow any annoyance he might feel and ask Dr. Kay to replace Mr. Tenet in his job.

Yet for others, Dr. Kay's honesty stopped short of the White House gates. Administration critics have accused the president and his advisers of exaggerating intelligence reports, cherry-picking data that was most helpful to their war strategy and pressuring analysts to view Iraq as an imminent threat. Dr. Kay holds that, based on the information provided to the administration, "it was reasonable to conclude that Iraq posed an imminent threat."

Senator Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat who keeps a long list of administration claims made to justify the Iraq war, accused Dr. Kay of trying to shield the president.

"He is trying quite clearly to put the responsibility on the intelligence community and deflect it from the administration," Senator Levin said in an interview. "He obviously supports the president."

Dr. Kay, who calls himself a political independent, does not see it that way. "I think from the record it's the intelligence community that abused the president," he said. "In general the flow of intelligence turned out not to be true."

Nowhere, perhaps, are Dr. Kay and his findings more of a topic for discussion than at the C.I.A.

Melvin A. Goodman, who served 20 years in the C.I.A. and now teaches at the National War College, said intelligence officers were complaining that Dr. Kay had bowed to political pressures.

"They feel the way he aimed his remarks at the C.I.A. exclusively — and let the administration off the hook — was totally one-sided and unfair," said Mr. Goodman, who insists that analysts felt pressured to provide the most dire data to the policy makers. "He caved."

Yet many administration defenders, including some of the staunchest supporters of the war, say Dr. Kay got it right. "The president is a consumer of intelligence, not a producer of it," said Richard Perle, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and an ardent proponent of the war. "I have long thought our intelligence in the gulf has been woefully inadequate."

Dr. Kay said he had received a number of supportive calls from members of the intelligence agencies. He said an e-mail message arrived from one officer, who had served as station chief in five countries, "saying, `You said exactly what needs to be said.' "

Once the dust settles over this issue, Dr. Kay and his wife want to take a vacation — somewhere warm. Then, he will set about writing a book or two. Unlike in 1991, when he was flooded with book offers, this time no publishers have approached him. He would probably disappoint them. He wants to write a scholarly tome on suppressing
weapons proliferators, he said. "Look," he said, "I don't do kiss and tells."

Interesting... shielding the president is hardly surprising from a Bush apointee, but even so he has been pretty blunt and even with that has definitely shaken things up. :)