Paul R. Pillar
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Paul R. Pillar | |
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Nationality | American |
Alma mater | Dartmouth College, Oxford University, Princeton University |
Occupation | Center for Security Studies |
Paul R. Pillar is an academic and 28-year veteran of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), serving from 1977 to 2005.[1] He is now a non-resident senior fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security Studies,[2] as well as a nonresident senior fellow in the Brookings Institution's Center for 21st Century Security and Intelligence.[1] He was a visiting professor at Georgetown University from 2005 to 2012.[1] He is a contributor to The National Interest.[1][3]
Background
Pillar earned an A.B. degree from
Career
Prior to joining the CIA in 1977, Pillar served as a
At the CIA, Pillar served in a variety of positions, including Executive Assistant to Director of Central Intelligence William H. Webster (1989–1991).[1][4]
He became chief of analysis at the Agency's
His 1990 and early 1991 experience were described in a 2006 interview, in which he spoke of the CIA role in assessing Iraq in preparation for the 1991 war. At that time, according to Pillar, the
He was a Federal Executive Fellow at the Brookings Institution from 1999-2000.[8] From 2000 to 2005, Pillar worked at the National Intelligence Council as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, "responsible for production and coordination throughout the U.S. Intelligence Community of National Intelligence Estimates and other Community assessments".[4] After December 2004, the National Intelligence Council, to which national intelligence officers report, moved from the CIA to the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.
Observations and recommendations about Congressional oversight of intelligence
Paul Pillar, National Intelligence Officer for the Middle East between 2000 and 2005, wrote, in Foreign Affairs, "Intelligence affects the nation's interests through its effect on policy. No matter how much the process of intelligence gathering itself is fixed, the changes will do no good if the role of intelligence in the policymaking process is not also addressed ... But a few steps, based on the recognition that the intelligence-policy relationship is indeed broken, could reduce the likelihood that such a breakdown will recur."
He emphasized the need for "a clear delineation between intelligence and policy", suggesting that the United Kingdom sets an example "where discussion of this issue has been more forthright, by declaring once and for all that its intelligence services should not be part of public advocacy of policies still under debate. In the UK, Prime Minister Tony Blair accepted a commission of inquiry's conclusions that intelligence and policy had been improperly commingled in such exercises as the publication of the "dodgy dossier", the British counterpart to the United States' Iraqi WMD white paper". The National Intelligence Council, and its National Intelligence Officers, act as an intelligence "think tank", and routinely consult with experts outside government. Pillar has been criticized for leaking the NIC's advice to President George W. Bush in the course of such consultations.[9]
Pillar suggested that an American equivalent of the issues "should take the form of a congressional resolution and be seconded by a statement from the White House. Although it would not have legal force, such a statement would discourage future administrations from attempting to pull the intelligence community into policy advocacy. It would also give some leverage to intelligence officers in resisting any such future attempts."
Inadequacies of current practice
Pillar criticized Congress both for not using the intelligence made available to it, as well as not necessarily asking questions about information not provided to them.
The proper relationship between intelligence gathering and policymaking sharply separates the two functions. ... Congress, not the administration, asked for the now-infamous October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's unconventional weapons programs, although few members of Congress actually read it. (According to several congressional aides responsible for safeguarding the classified material, no more than six senators and only a handful of House members got beyond the five-page executive summary.) As the national intelligence officer for the Middle East, I was in charge of coordinating all of the intelligence community's assessments regarding Iraq; the first request I received from any administration policymaker for any such assessment was not until a year into the war.
While there is a CIA "
Recommendation for improved legislative oversight
In the Foreign Affairs article, Pillar said that the legislative branch is the proper place for monitoring
... the intelligence-policy relationship. But the oversight should be conducted by a nonpartisan office modeled on the Government Accountability Office (GAO) and the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). Such an office would have a staff, smaller than that of the GAO or the CBO, of officers experienced in intelligence and with the necessary clearances and access to examine questions about both the politicization of classified intelligence work and the public use of intelligence. As with the GAO, this office could conduct inquiries at the request of members of Congress. It would make its results public as much as possible, consistent with security requirements, and it would avoid duplicating the many other functions of intelligence oversight, which would remain the responsibility of the House and Senate intelligence committees.[10]
Commentary by and about Pillar
There have been a series of press comments, for and against Pillar, starting before the
2004
Before the
In September 2004, Robert Novak wrote, "I reported on Sept. 27 that Paul R. Pillar, the CIA's national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia, told a private dinner on the West Coast of secret, unheeded warnings to Bush about going to war. I learned of this because of leaks from people who attended, but many other senior Agency officials were covertly but effectively campaigning for Sen. John Kerry."[12] Amy Sullivan of the Washington Monthly, wrote that Pillar's remarks had been made at an off-the-record dinner party. Pillar had said, at the party, that the CIA had warned the White House, in January 2003, that war with Iraq "could unleash a violent insurgency in the country". Sullivan wrote "Novak wasn't at the dinner, which was conducted under established background rules—the substance of Pillar's remarks could be reported, but not his identity or his audience. But someone there told Novak about it. So Novak, apparently feeling bound by no rules, outed Pillar by identifying him as the speaker. It's a trick he uses often—others attend off-the-record meetings or briefings, tell him about it, and he reports not just what was said, but fingers those who spoke as well."[13]
In an October 2004 op-ed in the
Another critic of Pillar's speaking against Administration policy, focused around the dinner speech cited by Novak, suggested that CIA management, as a whole, might have been politicized against the Bush Administration.
2005
Pillar was a major participant in a conference "sponsored by the John Bassett Moore Society of International Law,
2006
In early 2006, he wrote an article for
Scott Ritter, writing on his blog in February 2006, agreed with Pillar's assessment of politicization, but suggested that Pillar had mixed motives in limiting "his criticism to the Bush administration during the time period leading up to the invasion in March 2003". Ritter criticizes Pillar for not mentioning "the issue of regime change and the role played by the CIA in carrying out covert action at the instruction of the White House (both Democratic and Republican) to remove Saddam Hussein from power. Because he was the former national intelligence officer for Near East/Middle East affairs, I find this absence both disconcerting and disingenuous. By failing to give due credence to the impact and influence of the CIA's mission of regime change in Iraq on its analysis of Iraqi WMDs, Mr. Pillar continues to promulgate the myth that the CIA was honestly engaged in the business of trying to disarm Iraq".[17]
In an interview with the
2007
In 2007, Novak decried Pillar's alleged leaking to the media of portions of a National Intelligence Estimate he viewed as supporting his policy path, though he acknowledged that Pillar denied leaking the report.
When the administration did finally ask for an intelligence assessment, Mr. Pillar led the effort, which concluded in August 2004 that Iraq was on the brink of disaster. Officials then leaked his authorship to the columnist Robert Novak and to The Washington Times. The idea was that Mr. Pillar was not to be trusted because he dissented from the party line. Somehow, this sounds like a story we have heard before.[21]
A
The author, Guillermo Christensen, agrees Pillar was central in the CIA's analysis of Iraq. Regarding the Foreign Affairs article, Christensen questions if that was the place to publicize that he thought the war was a bad idea and the President and advisors ignored him. He makes the assumption that But Pillar "actually did change his mind about all that work he'd done, and that he really did think the intelligence didn't support the case for war. If that was truly so, no one was better positioned to make the case against war within the government than Mr. Pillar himself". Christensen suggested that Pillar could have sent personal observations, with all relevant classified data, to senior Executive Branch officials. Further, Christensen suggested "that analysis with every single member of Congress by writing less-classified summaries of the conclusions, as is often done".
Joscelyn reasserted the conjecture that Saddam Hussein had a cooperative relationship with al-Qaeda. However, the official conclusions of investigations by the CIA, FBI, NSA, State Department, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and the independent 9/11 Commission have all confirmed Pillar's view that there was no collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.[citation needed]
2011
Pillar's Intelligence and US Foreign Policy: Iraq, 9/11, and Misguided Reform was reviewed by Steve Coll in The New York Review of Books.[24]
Formal publications by Pillar
Books
Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy
Pillar's interest in foreign policy resulted in a book Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy first published in 1999 and updated in 2004. The back cover of the book reads:
Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy is an essential guide to more effective coordination between conventional foreign policy and efforts to prevent terrorist attacks and activities. This paperback edition includes a new, extensive, and provocative post-9/11 introduction, along with the author's in-depth analyses of current terrorist threats, the status of terrorism in world politics, counterterrorism tools available to the United States,
state sponsors of terrorism, and how best to educate the public about terrorist threats and counterterrorism.
A review of the book in Foreign Affairs says: "The book's strength is its nuanced sense of how Washington's counterterrorism policy actually works, day in and day out."[25]
The Washington Times wrote: "[Pillar] offers a unique introspective of the breadth of radical islam and counterterrorism. ... Pillar's documentations involving the improvement of U.S. Homeland Security policy, such as observing the full range of capabilities of terrorist, as opposed to solely focusing on nuclear, biological or chemical warfare, and interrupting radical islamist operations worldwide, should be noted in the counterterrorism effort."[citation needed]
Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy
Pillar's interest in the relationship between intelligence and policy resulted in the 2011 book, Intelligence and U.S. Foreign Policy.
According to the publisher, "Pillar confronts the intelligence myths Americans have come to rely on to explain national tragedies, including the belief that intelligence drives major national security decisions and can be fixed to avoid future failures".
Articles and conference papers
Pillar emphasized that jihadist terror will continue to become more decentralized, but not wane, after the core of al-Qaeda is disrupted and pursued. with Al Qaeda waning, the larger terrorist threat from radical Islamists is not. Al Qaeda-inspired or trained groups will operate locally, and both ad hoc groups (e.g., the organization that had been led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, as well as established groups such as the Iraq-centered Ansar al-Islam and the Southeast Asian Jemaah Islamiya). Even while having local focus, they tend to share anti-Americanism. Individuals may operate with limited help from organizations.[26]
In the past, ad hoc had been deprecated as a term for terrorist organizations, but that grows increasingly true. (See motivations of terrorists and a discussion of the nontraditional clandestine cell system used by such groups.)
Participating in a 2006 conference at the
He described the threat as being generated by three complementary factors:- In any beliefs or similar movements, the most unfortunate and indiscreet are the ones that garner the most headlines. Until a more suitable ideology emerges, jihadism may stay as a major focus of radical Islamist activists.
- It is energized by "energy from friction along the fault line between the Muslim world and the West." Themes causing friction including cultural imperialism, oppression of Muslims, and lack of respect for religion. Controversy accelerates polarization, as seen in the Danish disturbance over cartoons of the Prophet.
- Social, economic and political conditions contribute to terrorism, but there is much confusion here. Pillar argues with those that claim poverty must not (typo ... original quote?) a claim because the 9/11 hijackers, and Bin Laden himself, is wealthy. He argues there is a difference between a lack of wealth that does not generate terrorism, and "frustrated ambition for economic and social advancement, which is." We hear, for example, that economic hardship must not be a root cause of jihadist terrorism because terrorists such as the 9/11 hijackers were not conspicuously poor, and the most prominent jihadist of all, bin Laden, is conspicuously wealthy. In like manner, he argues that authoritarianism is not a cause, because terrorist acts often happen in liberal democracies. And we hear that authoritarian politics must not have much to do with it either because jihadist terrorism takes place at least as often as anywhere else within liberal democracies, in places like New York, Madrid, or London. Pillar's explanation is that it is much easier to stage a terrorist attack in an open society than in the police states in the Middle East.
In an article in the March/April 2008 issue of Foreign Affairs, Pillar is critical of two recently published books on purported systemic failures of the intelligence community and the necessity for organizational reform.[28] In an article in the January/February 2012 issue of Foreign Policy, Pillar similarly cites political leadership, not the intelligence community, for most errors of foresight in policy-making.[29]
References
- ^ a b c d e Brookings Institution, Paul R. Pillar Archived 2016-03-04 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ a b c Georgetown University, Paul R Pillar
- ^ The National Interest, Paul R Pillar
- ^ a b Brookings Institution, Paul R. Pillar CV Archived 2013-11-12 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Coll, Steve, Ghost Wars: The Secret History of the CIA, Afghanistan and Bin Laden, From the Soviet Invasion to September 10, 2001 (Penguin, 2005 revised edition), pp. 257, 375, 451, 457.
- ^ The Darkside: Interview with Paul Pillar, PBS Frontline, June 20, 2006
- ^ Rumsfeld, Donald H. (May 22, 2002), U.S. Department of Defense, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense (Public Affairs), News Transcript, United States Department of Defense
- ^ Members: Paul Pillar, Council on Global Terrorism
- ^ a b Roberts, John B. II (October 1, 2004), "White House-CIA breach", Washington Times
- JSTOR 20031908, archived from the originalon 2007-11-10, retrieved 2007-10-30
- Wall Street Journal. 2004-09-24. Retrieved 2007-02-05.
- ^ Novak, Robert D. (November 18, 2004), CIA: 'Dysfunctional' and 'rogue', Townhall.com[permanent dead link]
- ^ Sullivan, Amy (December 2004), "Bob in Paradise: How Novak created his own ethics-free zone.", Washington Monthly, archived from the original on 2008-03-08
- ^ Hayes, Stephen F. (February 10, 2006), "Paul Pillar Speaks, Again", Weekly Standard
- ^ Beyond the U.S. War on Terrorism: Comparing Domestic Legal Remedies to an International Dilemma, Defense Technical Information Center[dead link]
- ^ Boyne, Shawn; German, Michael; Pillar, Paul R (July 1, 2005), Law vs. War: Competing Approaches to Fighting Terrorism, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College
- ^ Ritter, Scott (14 February 2006), "Still Cherry-Picking the Facts on Iraq", AlterNet
- ^ Pincus, Walter (10 February 2006), "Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq", Washington Post, p. A1
- ^ Bass, Warren (March 7, 2006), Interview with Paul Pillar on "Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq", archived from the original on July 18, 2006, retrieved May 7, 2006
- ^ Novak, Robert D. (December 24, 2007), A Rogue CIA, Creators.com, archived from the original on February 23, 2008
- New York Times. 2006-02-12. p. 13. Retrieved 2007-02-05.
- ^ Christensen, Guillermo (February 17, 2006), Un-Intelligence: Dodgy disclosures from a former CIA officer
- Weekly Standard. Retrieved 2007-02-05.
- ^ Our Secret American Security State February 9, 2012
- JSTOR 20050261, archived from the originalon 2006-04-27
- S2CID 109053957
- ^ "Jihadist Terrorism: The State of the Threat", Second IRRI Conference on International Terrorism, Royal Institute for International Relations, February 13, 2006, archived from the original on October 6, 2007
- ^ Pillar, Paul R. (March–April 2008). "Intelligent Design? The Unending Saga of Intelligence Reform". Foreign Affairs. Archived from the original on 2008-03-02. Retrieved 2008-02-27.
- ^ Pillar, Paul (Jan–Feb 2012). "Think Again: Intelligence". Foreign Policy. Retrieved January 19, 2012.