Paul R. Pillar

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Paul Pillar

Paul R. Pillar is a 28-year veteran of the CIA. He became chief of analysis at the Agency's Counterterrorist Center in 1993. By 1997 he was the Center's deputy director. But in summer 1999 he suffered a clash of styles with the new director, J. Cofer Black. Soon after, Pillar left the Center. From 2000-2005, Pillar worked as the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia division 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.

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.

Terrorism and Foreign Policy

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"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."

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."

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..."

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."

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.

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."

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."

Thomas Joscelyn, in the Weekly Standard, writes that "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." 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.

External links

• Strategic Studies Institute: Dr. Paul Pillar United States Army War College
• Paul R. Pillar, "Intelligence, Policy,and the War in Iraq," Foreign Affairs March/April 2006.
• Walter Pincus, "Ex-CIA Official Faults Use of Data on Iraq," Washington Post 10 February 2006 p. A1.
• Scott Shane, "Ex-C.I.A. Official Says Iraq Data Was Distorted," New York Times 11 February 2006.
• Scott Ritter, "Still Cherry-Picking the Facts on Iraq," Alternet 14 February 2006.
• "Ex-CIA official says war was goal from the start," Chicago Tribune and Washington Post 11 February 2006.
• Tom Regan, "Ex-CIA officer accuses White House of 'misusing' data on Iraq" Christian Science Monitor 10 February 2006.
• Julian Borger, "Bush ignored CIA advice on Iraq, says former spy," The Guardian 11 February 2006.
• "Editorial: Was this sale a con job?" Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, 13 February 2006.
• Robert Parry, "Why U.S. Intelligence Failed, Redux," Consortium News 13 February 2006.
• "Pillar of the Intelligence Community" April 25, 2006 The Brian Lehrer Show
• Terry Gross , "CIA Terror Expert Charges Politicized Intelligence" February 16, 2006 Fresh Air
• Gideon Rose, "Interview: Intelligence, Policy, and the War in Iraq" (Video) March 30, 2006 Council on Foreign Relations
• Interview with Paul Pillar June 20, 2006 Frontline: The Dark Side

Conference presentation by Pillar

• Foreign and Domestic Publics and the Counter-terrorism Effort (Duke University, 21-2 March 2003).

Articles critical of Pillar

• Thomas Joscelyn, Rogue Bureaucrat Weekly Standard February 23, 2006
• Guillermo Christensen, Un-Intelligence WSJ.com February 17, 2006
• Stephen F. Hayes, Paul Pillar Speaks, Again Weekly Standard February 10, 2006
• Robert Novak, CIA vs. Bush Townhall.com September 27, 2004
• The CIA's Insurgency WSJ.com September 29, 2004
• White House-CIA breach Washington Times October 1, 2004
• It's no secret: The CIA plays politics L.A. Times February 21, 2006