Greg Theilmann

Greg Theilmann was the acting director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs at the U.S. State Department. He was the person responsible for analyzing the Iraqi weapons threat for Colin Powell.^[1] Theilmann is a career foreign service officer who spent 25 years as a diplomat and served two different tours in the State Department's Intelligence Bureau, totaling seven years.

Theilmann is a member of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

Bush Administration Critic

Theilmann is an outspoken critic of the rationale for the Iraq War and the George W. Bush Administration. He has said that the Bush Administration repeatedly overstated the Iraqi threat, using evidence that the intelligence community knew was questionable. Theilmann says these overstatements continued despite his repeatedly notifying Colin Powell that the claims were baseless.^[1] He criticized the Bush Administration for what he called "faith-based intelligence":

"There's plenty of blame to go around. The main problem was that the senior administration officials have what I call faith-based intelligence. They knew what they wanted the intelligence to show.

They were really blind and deaf to any kind of countervailing information the intelligence community would produce. I would assign some blame to the intelligence community and most of the blame to the senior administration officials."^[2]

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