The First 3 Things A CIA Spy Learned About Iraq In 2003 Say It All

AFP

A former CIA spy has written a commentary for Politico in which she slams the agency for being dysfunctional and lying to the public about Iraq.

Lindsay Moran, who left the CIA in 2003 after five years there and later wrote a book about her experiences, wrote that she wishes she'd "written a braver kind of book" that exposed the wrongdoing she saw at the agency.

One interesting tidbit from her article is what she learned from Iraqi experts when she was transferred into Iraqi Operations at CIA headquarters.

She wrote:

1)  We didn't have any viable recruited human sources in Iraq, or even Iraqi agents elsewhere, as we led up to the invasion.

2)  We had no evidence of Weapons of Mass Destruction.

3)  There was no link whatsoever between Iraq and Al-Qaeda. Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden were both evil, maniacal men, yes, but there was no love lost between them. And of the two, Bin Laden, whom we had yet to find, posed the far graver threat to America.

Moran accuses the government of "lying to the American public about Iraq," and she has a strong point. 

In the lead-up to the 2003 invasion, the American people were led to believe that the US found evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

And President George W. Bush linked Hussein to Al Qaeda, telling Americans that "you can't distinguish between Al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror." These factors were billed as the entire premise of us going to war.

The war on terror eventually devolved into what seems like an unwinnable conflict, partly hobbled by the agency's lack of human intelligence (HUMIT) on the ground.

CIA agents have reportedly been discouraged from speaking out about apparent wrongdoings at the agency, according to Moran.

She wrote that a certain passage of the US Senate report on the CIA torturing detainees "saddened me as it reminded me of the many dedicated professionals at the Agency, some who no doubt tried to question the efficacy, morality and/or legality of the program, but who were cowed into silence."

"It also brought to mind an occasion when the person who recruited me to join the CIA said: 'If you ever see anything you think is just plain wrong, you need to tell your superiors,'" she wrote. "He should have added: 'So that we can make sure the Office of Security has its eye on you.'"

Moran eventually became disillusioned and left the CIA. She wrote: "I knew that to stay with the Agency would be to end up on the wrong side of history."

Read her full account at Politico >