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Editor’s Note: Recognizing the life-and-death importance of honest intelligence analysis, an organization of former intelligence professionals gives an annual intelligence integrity award named after Sam Adams, a CIA analyst who told uncomfortable truths about the Vietnam War. This year, the award is going to former State Department official Larry Wilkerson, who told the inside story of how the Bush administration manipulated the contents of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s deceptive speech to the United Nations in support of invading Iraq: This year's award -- the 7th one given by the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence -- could not be more timely with regard to the wars being waged in Afghanistan-Pakistan and will be presented to former Chief of Staff at the State Department, Col. Larry Wilkerson, USA (ret.) this Wednesday, Oct. 21, at American University in Washington DC.
The lengthy introductory remarks that I reposted here about last year's SAAII award to Danish intelligence officer, Army Maj. Frank Grevil, did not include the background of the award which has been given annually since 2002. Most of the recipients since 2002 have risked or sacrificed their careers, and some have even faced prosecution-imprisonment for their devotion to truth in the intelligence profession. In fact, Maj. Grevil had just been released from four months in prison when he received last year's award. His offense? Giving to the Danish press documentary proof that the Danish Prime Minister (who is now Secretary General of NATO) was being untruthful about WMD in Iraq. The challenge of knowing and then telling the truth about intelligence matters are greatly heightened during periods of war. Sam Adams' unique history during the Vietnam War is described in the following Atlantic review of his book, War of Numbers, that was published after his death. CIA analyst Sam Adams fought the intelligence establishment about its Vietnam policy like David fought Goliath. War of Numbers is an insider's account of the battles that went on in the U.S. intelligence community during the Vietnam War, written by a young CIA analyst who single-handedly discovered massive fraud and political maneuvering on the part of the CIA, the military and the White House. Adams discovered, in short, that the numbers were being cooked and that U.S. troops were actually fighting a much larger army than they suspected. Outraged, Adams battled the CIA and the military bureaucracies to get the real numbers acknowledged -- and thus to save lives. Adams's efforts eventually cost him his job. Adams wrote an account of his experiences in a Harper's cover story in May, 1975, and after that helped CBS put together a documentary on the topic, for which the station was sued (unsuccessfully) by General Westmoreland. That suit led to the declassification of reams of formerly secret intelligence documents from the Vietnam era, and Adams in the 1980s was preparing to work through it all to write a definitive account of the numbers question. In 1988, however, he died of a heart attack at the age of 55. Although Adams was never able to tell his full story, he did leave behind a gripping personal account of his time at the CIA, which Thomas Powers and Steerforth Press published in 1994 as War of Numbers. Sam Adams wrote about intelligence in a way that nobody has ever done before. The level of seriousness and the richness of detail in the book are unique in the literature of studies about intelligence matters. But the book also has a charming, friendly, open quality to it; it's a very personal account. Adams writes with a remarkable level of candor and almost Boy Scout-like enthusiasm for finding out the truth, getting it right and telling what really happened. I'm talking about understanding the war. At the top of any nation's war-making capacity there's got to be a brain -- something that understands what the policy is, what the country is trying to do, what the tools are at its disposal, and how it's going to make things work. The intelligence business is right at the heart of that. Our whole problem in Vietnam from beginning to end was a failure fully to understand what we were trying to do. We didn't know what the situation was really like, or what the forces really were that were opposing us. War of Numbers is about all that -- and about how we got it all wrong. There's no way you can understand how things went so badly without having some feel for the way in which policy makers on high deliberately ignored reality because they were having political trouble in Washington. That's what this book is about: the truth. IraqAfPakisNam? Déjà vu? The answer is undoubtedly yes when it comes to truth being the first casualty of these wars. As it turns out, another great Vietnam era truth-teller, Daniel Ellsberg (subject of a new film documentary The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers) will also be on hand to make remarks, along with a former CIA colleague of Sam Adams (and Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity co-founder) Ray McGovern and prior recipients of the SAAII award including myself. (For my part, I plan to briefly discuss the factors that work to keep officials and the public from "knowing the truth" in these situations.) Wilkerson has stood by his earlier description of Cheney and Rumsfeld as having formed a cabal to hijack the decision-making process: "I'm worried and I would rather have the discussion and debate in the process we've designed than I would a diktat from a dumb strongman... I'd prefer to see the squabble of democracy to the efficiency of dictators." "National security policy has long been the province of a small, self-perpetuating, self-anointed group of specialists...dedicated to the proposition of excluding democratic influences from the making of national security policy. To the extent that members of the national security apparatus have taken public opinion into consideration, they have viewed it as something to manipulate." Historically elections have done little to end wars. The need for exposing official lies and revealing more truth about strategic national interests and security and about the reality on the ground is undoubtedly at the same high level as it was when Sam Adams fought the "War of Numbers" during Vietnam. So you're invited to come hear what Colonel Wilkerson and others have to say. The SAAIA award event is open to the public. AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, IRAN, IRAQ, VIETNAM: EXPOSING OFFICIAL LIES Ward Circle Building, Room 2, American University The late Sam Adams, in calculating the number of Vietnamese Communists under arms, came up with more than twice the number Gen. William Westmoreland, Commander of U.S. forces, would allow the Army to acknowledge. The country-wide offensive at Tet in January-February 1968 proved Sam right. (Sam Adams pressed for honesty and accountability but stayed “inside channels”—and failed. He was not able to see that the supervening value of ending unnecessary killing trumped the secrecy agreement he had signed as a condition of employment. Nagged by remorse, he could not shake the thought that, had he not let himself be diddled, the entire left wall of the Vietnam memorial would not exist. There would have been no new names to chisel into such a wall.) To comment at Consortiumblog, click here. 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