Big Joe Turner's name has been tarnished by Little Joe Turner. Little Joe, a "
junior"[1] CIA analyst responsible for pushing the aluminum tube story, must live the rest of his life knowing he's significantly responsible for the Iraq war and the "accumulated evil of the whole."[2] This includes abuses to be committed in 30-years by the children of the children of returning Iraq veterans who will themselves be abused by war-tramatized fathers.
Maybe Little Joe Turner fantasized about being the Robert Redford character in
Three Days of the Condor. The scoop on Turner is starting to get attention. Back in August 2003, word was coming out via the Washington Post about
Joe Turner.[3] But, by then, it was too late.
Recently, Mel Goodman, a 24-year veteran as a CIA analyst on the Soviet Union, with 18 years experience on the faculty of the National War College, commented on Turner's central role in misleading the American Public into the Iraq debacle, starting with Joe's boss:
George Tenet is an apparatchik. I'm not impressed with George Tenet. He should never have been CIA Director. But how did Colin Powell, a military officer, a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, get taken in by the aluminum tubes, which was driven by a kid, a young kid engineer by the name of Joe Turner, at the CIA, who stood up somehow to all of the PhD scientists of the weapons labs, and Department of Energy, because [CIA WINPAC[4] Director Alan] Foley wanted this argument out there to make the case for war. I think Powell could have stopped this.
Larry Johnson, former Defense Intelligence Agnecy (DIA) Middle East chief, puts Turner's role into the context of intelligence briefing material development:
... anything that gets written like this, it's not just because somebody is sitting there on their own saying, "Boy! I've got a great idea for a story!" It is overseen, it is supervised; ... So the fact that someone like this analyst Joe Turner, in WINPAC, was able to run amok, it was not Joe Turner on his own: He was running amok with the witting cooperation of senior CIA officials, with Jamie Miscik, the DDI, with the people of Alan Foley who was in his chain of command. These people participated in that, willingly. These are not ignorant, stupid people.
Apparently, Little Joe need not feel alone in his sense of deep guilt for unleashing the dogs of war and the accumulated evils thereof.
Sources:1.
See April 2001 entry.
2. During the Nuremberg trials, the chief American prosecutor, Robert H. Jackson, stated:
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.
3. August 10, 2003, Washington Post,
Depiction of Threat Outgrew Supporting Evidence, by Barton Gellman and Walter Pincus.
4. WINPAC: Weapons Intelligence and Non-Proliferation and Arms Control division of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).
Climate Justice
