Paul R. Pillar

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Paul Pillar

Paul R. Pillar is a 28-year veteran of the CIA. From 2000-2005, he worked as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia where he was considered the agency's lead analyst in counterterrorism. He now works at Georgetown University as a visiting professor for security studies and as a member of the Center for Peace and Security Studies. ^[1]

Prior to joining the CIA, Pillar served as a U.S. Army officer in Vietnam. He earned an A.B. degree from Dartmouth College, and received the B.Phil from Oxford University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from Princeton University.

In a book about the Valerie Plame scandal, David Corn of The Nation magazine and Michael Isikoff of Newsweek "found a hero" in Paul Pillar, according to syndicated columnist Robert Novak.^[2]

1 Terrorism and Foreign Policy
2 Criticism of Bush Administration
3 Commentary about Pillar
4 References
5 External links
- 5.1 Conference presentation by Pillar
- 5.2 Articles critical of Pillar

[edit] Terrorism and Foreign Policy

"Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy" by Paul R. Pillar

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 gulde 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." ^[3]

The Washington Times wrote: "[Pillar] offers a valuable overview of the dimensions of terrorism and counterterrism.... Mr. Pillar's recommendations for improving U.S. counterterrorism policy, such as paying attention to the full range of terrorist threats, as opposed to solely focusing on WMD terrorist warfare, and disrupting terrorist infrastructure worldwide, should be closely read by all those involved in the counterterrorism effort."

[edit] Criticism of Bush Administration

In early 2006, he wrote an article for Foreign Affairs criticizing the Bush Administration for cherry picking intelligence to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Pillar wrote that the Administration went to war in Iraq "without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq. It has become clear that official intelligence was not relied on in making even the most significant national security decisions, that intelligence was misused publicly to justify decisions already made, that damaging ill will developed between [Bush] policymakers and intelligence officers, and that the intelligence community's own work was politicized."

Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus called Pillar's critique "one of the most severe indictments of White House actions by a former Bush official since Richard A. Clarke" and noted that this article was "the first time that such a senior intelligence officer has so directly and publicly condemned the administration's handling of intelligence."

He describes the pre-war situation as "...intelligence was misused to justify decisions already made..." [2]

[edit] Commentary about Pillar

Right before the 2004 Presidental election, The Wall Street Journal editorial page criticized "CIA insurgents", including Pillar, for "engaging in a policy debate" and were "clearly trying to defeat President Bush and elect John Kerry." [3]

The piece asserted that Pillar had a "lousy track record" in assessing the terrorist threat and that he rejected the "war" metaphor for counterterrorism, comparing it instead to "the effort by public health authorities to control communicable diseases." The editorial also asserted that Pillar commented in a public lecture at Johns Hopkins University that "secular" Baathists in Iraq would never cooperate with fundamentalists like al-Qaeda. The editorial writer asserted, "Tell that to Abu Musab al Zarqawi and the Baathists now cooperating in Fallujah."

Conservative columnist Robert 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. [4]

Novak wrote in 2006 that two years before, Pillar "was delivering off-the-record briefings to citizens groups around the country, and was highly critical of the president seeking a second term."^[2]

The New York Times editorial page wrote in Pillar's defense, noting that the Bush Administration did not even ask the CIA for an assessment of the consequences of invading Iraq until a year after the invasion.

"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."[5]

Thomas Joscelyn, in the Weekly Standard, writes "Pillar demonstrates that he himself is a master of the art of politicizing intelligence. Far from being a dispassionate analyst, Pillar practices the very same 'manipulations and misuse[s]' he claims to expose."[6] In this article of March 2006, Joscelyn tries to discredit Pillar by reasserting 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.

[edit] References

^ Center for Peace and Security Studies Georgetown University
^ ^a ^b [1]Novak, Robert, "Who Said What When: The rise and fall of the Valerie Plame 'scandal'", The Weekly Standard, October 16, 2006, book review of "Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War," by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, accessed October 8, 2008 "In their tirade against the Bush White House, Isikoff and Corn found a hero: Paul Pillar, then the CIA officer in charge of the Middle East."
^ Philip Zelikow, "Terrorism and U.S. Foreign Policy" (Review) September/October 2001 Foreign Affairs