The midnight ride of James Woolsey

The former CIA director presents himself as the Paul Revere of the terrorism age, trying to waken America to its greatest threat -- Saddam Hussein. Should we be listening?

By Asla Aydintasbas

Dec. 20, 2001 | If the United States finally decides to extend its war on terrorism all the way to Baghdad, it will be thanks in no small part to former CIA Director James Woolsey. While the Bush administration must speak circumspectly about a possible war with Saddam Hussein, Woolsey has become its unofficial point man in the growing war of words with the Iraqi dictator. In the past few weeks, Woolsey has been dispatched to London by the Pentagon to investigate possible links between Saddam and the Sept. 11 blood bath and has popped up on nearly every TV news program to argue the hawks' position on Iraq. While Secretary of State Colin Powell, leader of the administration's dovish faction, has tried to keep Woolsey at arm's length, his views are increasingly influential in the Bush White House.

Woolsey has not held government office since leaving the CIA in 1995, but this consummate Beltway insider has worked effectively over the years in Washington's shadow government. A conservative Democrat (or a liberal conservative, depending on where you stand), Woolsey has served on every commission and board that matters in the world of defense and national security, such as the Defense Policy Board and the Rumsfeld Commission on missile defense. He is widely respected in a town riven by spiteful feuds.

The former intelligence chief has not always been associated with the more hawkish wing of Washington's foreign policy elite. After numerous stints in top-level national security posts, Woolsey was appointed by President Clinton in 1993 to head the CIA. But Woolsey failed to penetrate Clinton's inner circle, which was overwhelmingly focused in the early years on domestic issues. After a disturbed man crashed a plane on the White House grounds in 1994, a joke made the rounds in Washington that it was Woolsey trying to get in to see the president. Disillusioned by Clinton's disregard for intelligence matters, Woolsey left the agency after a brief tenure and returned to civilian life as a partner at the powerful Washington law firm Shea and Gardner. (Under the terms of the United States' Foreign Agents Registration Act, the firm is registered as a foreign agent for the Iraqi National Congress.) He spent the rest of the Clinton presidency as something of a maverick, criticizing the administration on foreign policy and defense and even taking on the CIA itself by defending six Iraqi opposition members facing deportation to Iraq on national security grounds.

A longtime advocate of regime change in Iraq, since Sept. 11 Woolsey has been focusing on one thing and one thing only: making the case against Saddam Hussein.

Isn't the recent bin Laden tape a setback for those who want to shift the focus of the war against terrorism toward the removal of Saddam Hussein -- on the tape, the al-Qaida leader clearly boasts about his leadership in Sept. 11?

That's a particularly stupid conclusion. There is no sole-source contracting requirement for terrorism. Just because bin Laden was involved doesn't mean some state intelligence service was not involved.

So you still think that the U.S. should be concerned about Iraqi involvement in Sept. 11?

Certainly. First of all involvement in Sept. 11, or in the anthrax scare, should not at all be necessary for anyone to regard Iraq as a terrorist state that is a danger to its neighbors and the United States. Iraq was clearly responsible for the attempt to assassinate former President Bush in 1993. That's the reason President Clinton shot cruise missiles in the middle of the night into the empty buildings in Baghdad. Second, any objective observer is going to admit that Iraq has been working hard in weapons of mass destruction, particularly biological and nuclear, for the last number of years. That's the reason they cheated in the inspections before 1998 and that's the reason they have worked so hard to be freed from the inspections since then. Innumerable defectors and U.N. inspectors say that. I know of no objective observer who doesn't believe that.

We know the administration is split into two factions on Iraq. The more dovish wing, including many senior officials at the State Department, is critical of your position and the idea of waging a war on Iraq. Any clues on who is winning the internal debate?

I have no idea. I intentionally asked friends in the administration that they give me no feedback on any internal debate, so as not to be influenced. I have no idea and no idea what the president thinks.

But why should we go after every bad guy in the neighborhood?

I never said we should go after every bad guy. That is a straw man thrown up by those who don't want to confront the reality of what Iraq has been doing. With respect to a number of other countries, such as Iran, that are working on weapons of mass destruction, there are reasons to believe that there may be other ways to see a change in the government or regime. There have been mass demonstrations by young people recently against the Iranian regime, chanting "Death to Taliban in Kabul and in Tehran." There are many ways to skin a cat.

We may see a change in position by some former terrorist sponsoring states. For example [Libyan leader Moammar] Gadhafi sounds very much like Tony Blair since Sept. 11. It's only the people who've made the decision from the beginning that they are not willing to deal with Iraq; they make the argument that if we deal with Iraq, we have to deal with everybody who may be working with weapons of mass destruction the same way.

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