Jim Lobe: serious journalism

Chas Freeman: independent intelligence

IPS Journalist Jim Lobe interviewed Chas Freeman recently – providing readers with a fascinating insight into the kind of views that scare the most entrenched vested interests that retain an inordinate amount of power in Washington DC, even under the new Obama Administration.

Mr Freeman was proposed by the US Director of National Intelligence, Admiral Blair, as the new Chair the National Intelligence Council (NIC). Freeman’s nomination was subjected to a vicious, sustained attack from the Zionist lobby and he ultimately withdrew – but landed some punches of his own on the way out.

Intelligence agencies in the western world have been largely hijacked by special interests, with the Israel Lobby and closely-related financial and military-security interests at the top of the foodchain. Freeman shows there are still practioners of the real Art of Intelligence in the USA.

Below are two extracts I found especially interesting. The whole interview is well worth a read.

On ‘Intelligence’

In general, I would’ve tried very hard to encourage members of the intelligence community to use classified information as a form of corroboration for information that is not classified, or is not terribly sensitive even if it is classified. In other words, I would urge analysts to write down rather than write up terms of levels of classification. The theory here is that, whereas many people in the (NIC) have tended to see the value of intelligence as directly proportional to its level of classification, this, in fact, misunderstands the nature of intelligence. Intelligence is simply information that is relevant to statecraft or decision-making. If it’s on the front page of the (Financial Times) or Inter Press or has been stolen out of the Kremlin safe, the key question is what is its reliability and how much can you rely upon it in understanding the situation you confront and in forming policies to deal with that situation.

In other words, I would have liked to have tried to change the culture to value lower levels of classification rather than higher in terms of output – obviously, to take advantage of all of the secret information one has, but to use it basically to corroborate (or test) what alert minds in the open-source world have been able to figure out. The purpose of this would be to build some checks and balances into the system and reduce the chances of sycophancy and the trimming of intelligence to fit the politically correct or politically convenient conclusions.

I must say much of the criticism of my appointment focused on the apparently horrifying possibility that I might actually produce intelligence that might not conform to political convenience or correctness but reached some other conclusion – intelligence that wouldn’t fit the preconceptions or policy preferences of its consumers. And that would be unacceptable. In other words, instead of being simply a supply of ammunition for political polemics and argumentation in favor of policies that have been cooked up without regard to the facts, intelligence might actually be a guide to decision-making. This notion is apparently very threatening.

The Future of the Dollar

At Bretton Woods, the dollar became the global reserve currency, backed by gold. A quarter century later, Nixon eliminated the gold backing for our currency. Dollar hegemony has been central to our ability to basically go off the tracks fiscally and financially here. It has enabled us to avoid addressing all sorts of problems with which we’re now afflicted, and it has enabled us to avoid having financial discipline being imposed on us of the sort we have insisted be imposed on every other country under IMF (International Monetary Fund) guidelines.

The role of the dollar as a universal currency for reserve and trade settlement purposes is absolutely central to our international power and reach. (…) Furthermore, we have used the fact that the dollar is an extension of our sovereignty to impose unilateral sanctions all over the place and to manipulate the global banking sector to enforce our policies, even when those policies — say, with respect to Iran — are not supported by others. So we have a big stake in this, and when we get the dollar into trouble, as we have done, this is very, very fundamental. We now have China, Russia, Brazil, India, South Korea, at least, and very likely others, calling for the gradual elimination of the dollar as a reserve currency and its replacement by stages with something else — in the case of the Chinese proposal, with special drawing rights under the IMF. I’ve seen this coming for well over a year, and have been talking about it. It’s now upon us, and it is not a problem you can send the fleet to solve. In the end, if you create a situation where people don’t want dollars, there’s nothing you can do about that…

See also China is right: we need a Global Currency.