Music Review: 'Humidity' from Matt Wilson

DATE March 17, 2003 ACCOUNT NUMBER N/A
TIME 12:00 Noon-1:00 PM AUDIENCE N/A
NETWORK NPR
PROGRAM Fresh Air

Interview: Thomas Powers discusses the challenges of building a
democracy in Iraq
TERRY GROSS, host:

This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross.

Assuming we do go to war with Iraq and assuming that we win and accomplish the
Bush administration goal of regime change, what future awaits us in Iraq?
Thomas Powers addresses that question in an article published yesterday in The
New York Times titled The Man Who Would Be President of Iraq. Powers writes,
`When the regime finally changes, 70 years of Iraqi independence will end,
political authority will pass into the hands of George W. Bush, and Western
rule will be planted on Arab soil for the first time since the French and
British left the region in the middle of the last century.'

Powers is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who's an expert on the CIA and
intelligence. His books include "The Man Who Kept the Secrets: Richard Helms
and the CIA." Powers' new book is titled "Intelligence Wars: American Secret
History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda."

You know, your piece is titled The Man Who Would Be President of Iraq.
Assuming we do go to war and accomplish regime change, what would President
Bush's job description be in Iraq?

Mr. THOMAS POWERS (Author, "Intelligence Wars: American Secret History from
Hitler to Al-Qaeda"): It's hard to tell you right now what his job
description will be because no American has really ever had a job description
quite like that; maybe Harry Truman at the end of World War II when we became
the ruling power in Japan. Essentially, he is going to be an unconstitutional
monarch of Iraq. Now he may not choose to behave like a monarch, but he's
going to have unlimited power in the country to do as he sees fit.

GROSS: You say you think President Bush is going to have more power in Iraq
than Queen Victoria had over India. Why?

Mr. POWERS: Queen Victoria had to work through a parliament, but President
Bush, as the commander in chief of the American Army which is occupying Iraq
or will be occupying Iraq, won't have to answer to anybody. That doesn't mean
that the Congress couldn't get mad at him and impeach him, but it seems very
unlikely. And after that, all they can do is ask him to take their views into
account.

GROSS: Now what about the provisional government of Iraqi exiles?

Mr. POWERS: There is no provisional government of Iraqi exiles. There are
Iraqi exiles who would like to create a government or be part of a new
government, but they haven't done it yet. And one reason they haven't done it
is because the United States has tried to prevent them from doing it. We
didn't want to have a government ready to take over.

GROSS: What's your impression of what the long-term goal is of this regime
change?

Mr. POWERS: It's been very difficult to figure out what the government is
really trying to do because all they've talked about is disarming Saddam
Hussein, which is certainly one thing that they want to do. I think the
long-term goal is to fundamentally change the political landscape in the
Middle East. Now Iraq, you know, is one of the two big potentially powerful
countries on the Middle East. The other is Iran, which is right next door.
We're going to be occupying the heart of the Arab and the Islamic world, and
we're going to have a very large military presence there. So we're going to
have a tremendous amount of influence, and I think it's the administration's
belief that that will completely change the politics of the region.

GROSS: How?

Mr. POWERS: Well, in the first place, they will have to listen to us because
we have a big army. You know, going into Iraq has been quite a stunt to get
permission from the various countries surrounding it to let us do it, but I
don't think we're going to need to do that again the next time. We had to ask
Saudi Arabia for permission every time we wanted to fly a plane over Iraq, and
we've had to ask other countries for permission. I think we're going to
establish a presence there where we don't have to ask anybody's permission,
and the rest of that part of the world is going to pay attention to that.

GROSS: Are you saying, in a way, that part of Iraq's function for the United
States is that it will be a big military base that we can operate from in that
region?

Mr. POWERS: I think that's what they've got in mind. I think they will
certainly not depart in any sense without having made some kind of arrangement
roughly like the arrangement we have at the Guantanamo base in Cuba. Now you
remember at the end of the Spanish-American War, we leased the Guantanamo base
from Cuba for 99 years. But when the 99 years ran out, we didn't like the
government in power, which is Castro's, so we just stayed. And I suspect
we're going to have a long-term arrangement in Iraq, too.

GROSS: If Iraq becomes, among other things, a long-term military base for the
United States, it gives the United States military a more advantageous
position in that part of the world. It also makes the military and the United
States more of a target in that part of the world, especially considering
we'll probably be surrounded by countries that are very unhappy about that US
military presence.

Mr. POWERS: I think the countries themselves will find a way to adjust very
quickly; it's the people that may not adjust very quickly. Outsiders have
tried to go into the Islamic world in the past, as you know. The first
efforts back during the Crusades lasted for 100 years, and they was a period
of time there when Europe thought they were in permanent control of Jerusalem,
but it wasn't true. And then they went back again in the 19th century, and
for quite a while, they thought they were permanent control again, that they
were there to stay, but that wasn't true. It's very hard to go into somebody
else's country and really stay; they have to want you. And I don't think
we've been behaving like a country that they want.

GROSS: The stated goal of the Bush administration in going to war with Iraq
is to disarm Saddam Hussein and to accomplish regime change. Assuming that we
accomplish the regime change, how do you think the American military, or
American intelligence, might go about looking for the weapons of mass
destruction that the Bush administration believes Saddam Hussein has now?

Mr. POWERS: Well, I believe they'll go about it in two ways. The first way
is they're going to ask the Iraqis to tell them. And once we're in power
there and occupy the country, I think there's a pretty good chance that Iraqis
at all levels will come forward and say, `Well, here's what there is and
here's where it is.' So that will be the first effort.

The second effort will be to use the intelligence that we do have and go and
look all the places we suspect there might be stuff, and there may be things
there and there may not. I'd be very surprised if the president gives a
speech in six months' time and says, `Well, I guess I was wrong. They don't
have anything.' They're going to find all kinds of things.

So that would be the first way is to ask them to help us find it. And the
second way, I believe, is that we're going to go into the files of all the
relevant agencies in Iraq. The CIA would love to get its hands on the
intelligence files of all the Iraqi intelligence organizations. There are
three or four major ones, and they've been in power for 30 or 40 years.
They've been paying attention to everything, they know all about what's going
on in the Middle East and pretty soon we're going to know all the stuff that
they know.

GROSS: What do you think the odds Saddam Hussein might destroy those files on
the way out?

Mr. POWERS: Probably he would love to do that. But you don't start
destroying the files until the last 10 minutes, because you still hope you
might still somehow win, and the last 10 minutes don't give you enough time.
Maybe you can burn a couple of file drawers full of paper, but we're talking
about rooms, warehouses full of paper. And the people you're going to
actually ask to destroy all this paper? Well, they aren't that interested in
destroying it. That's going to be something they're going to use to get jobs
with the Americans. That's what happens when countries fall; their files stay
behind and the people who keep 'em are the people who show you what's in 'em.

GROSS: Well, you've read a lot of files, intelligence files, over the years.
What are some of the things you think might be in these files that would be of
great interest?

Mr. POWERS: Well, there are going to be plenty of things of interest to the
government and things that would be of interest to the world. There's going
to be a lot of stuff in there about Donald Rumsfeld. There's going to be a
lot of stuff in there about...

GROSS: Wait, wait, stop. What do you mean?

Mr. POWERS: Well, Donald Rumsfeld made a famous trip to Iraq to meet with
Saddam Hussein in the early 1980s, and I believe he was talking with him about
arms exchanges and other military and intelligence relationships. And I'm
sure that Donald Rumsfeld would not like those files to become public, and I
don't think they will be.

GROSS: What else do you think we'll be finding in these files?

Mr. POWERS: Well, we're going to find a lot of stuff in the files about
President Bush's father, of course, and about April Glaspie, the American
ambassador at the time of the first Gulf War, when Iraq invaded Kuwait.
There's going to be a lot of material about that. And there's going to be
material in there about Iraq's relationships with every other country in the
world and with everybody who's ever sold him, you know, a rifle or something
to build atomic weapons with or helped him find fissionable material. I mean,
there's going to be a lot of stuff in those files.

GROSS: What you're suggesting is that there's going to be a lot of
interesting stuff and some of which might be suppressed by countries that
don't want part of their relationship with Iraq revealed to the public.

Mr. POWERS: I'm sure that's true, and I'm sure that will be one way in which
we will secure the cooperation of governments in the region.

GROSS: What are some of the other things that would implicate America in
these files that you think we won't be making public?

Mr. POWERS: Well, we had a long clandestine relationship with Iraq during the
Iran-Iraq War, where we came in on the side of Iraq and provided them with
intelligence to help defeat Iran. And we've never explained what we were
doing. And presumably at that time, there were American officials talking to
Saddam Hussein about why they were doing this and what was the purpose. Those
things would be of interest to the Iranians, for example.

And then there was a lot of financial and military relationships. If you go
back even further still when Saddam came to power, there's a lot of evidence
that the CIA was involved in bringing him to power. So we're very thoroughly
implicated in those files from the beginning. That doesn't mean, I mean, on
its face, that Saddam is not a bad actor who would be better removed from the
stage, but it means that history is quite complicated and that a lot of it is
stuff the Americans don't want the world to know.

GROSS: What the Americans would want the world to know is information about
secret stashes of weapons of mass destruction, information that Saddam Hussein
was lying about. Do you think that information will be in secret files? Do
you think if we get to the secret files that there will be a trail leading us
to those weapons?

Mr. POWERS: I think there will be lots of trails, and I definitely think we
will find evidence of weapons programs that were banned by the United Nations
and that he should have revealed and disbanded. If nothing else, there'll be
a paper record of their first efforts to build atomic bombs, so if they ever
get their hands free they could start and do it again. I think there's going
to be a ton of that stuff in there.

But one thing--I'm very apprehensive about what's happening here because of
the magnitude of the administration's idea. But apprehensive as I am, I've
told myself not to fail to be happy about the liberation of the Iraqi people.
That also is a good that will come from this. There will be evil things to
come from it, but that will be a good thing to come from it. And I believe
when we start going into those files, we're going to find a lot of very dark
stories about things that have happened in Iraq over the years, and I think
those will become public. And I think there will be very little sentiment for
Saddam Hussein in retrospect.

GROSS: Do you think that these files will have a lot of information that will
help us root out terrorists?

Mr. POWERS: I do think they will have a lot of information that will help us
to understand the terror network in the world. Now whether we'll be able to
follow up on it quickly and directly to arrest people I don't know. There's
some chance that will be the case. But typically speaking, people who are
engaged in clandestine activities have got their ear to the ground. And when
they know the CIA is going to talk to people who know where they live, they
move. So I don't think anything will happen that quickly in that sense. But
our knowledge, our broad knowledge of the connections between thousands of
individuals who are involved in various political and terrorist groups, that
we're going to learn a lot about.

GROSS: Do you have any idea what the military's plans are to secure the
buildings that house the records?

Mr. POWERS: I don't have any idea exactly how they'll go about doing that.
The first thing they would probably do--this is a guess now--is not bomb 'em.
I mean, you know where the paper is. You don't want to be destroying it all
yourself before you can get your hands on it. So that would be the first
step.

But where this paper is--those locations are known; all of them. So it's not
a question that they will be hunting blindly through a huge city, you know,
trying to find the warehouse with the files. That won't be the case. They
know the address, or the street address, and they can go directly there as
soon as they've got control of the country.

GROSS: Are there examples you can think of of ways that we were able to use
files that we captured during previous wars and how those files helped us?

Mr. POWERS: Well, files are something that all intelligence agencies love to
get their hands on. And at the end of the Second World War, for example, we
got ahold of the German files on the Russian army, and that was a huge trove
of paper. And the man in charge of it, the German officer in charge of it,
Reinhardt Gehlen, deliberately secreted all those files away until the war was
over, because he knew perfectly well the Americans would want them and he
could work a deal, and he did work a deal. And he was the head of German
intelligence for two decades after being the head of intelligence against the
Russians for Hitler. So files are very useful to everybody.

At the end of the war in Vietnam, the United States was too slow to destroy
its own files in the embassy in Saigon. So when the last helicopter took off
with people clinging to the runners to escape the North Vietnamese army, we
left behind a ton of paper, a ton of files. And the North Vietnamese went
through there and they got the names of hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
people who had been working for us and they rounded them all up. So files are
something that people make frequent use of.

GROSS: My guest is Tom Powers. He's been writing about the CIA and
intelligence for over 20 years. His new book is called "Intelligence Wars:
American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda." We'll talk more after a
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Tom Powers is my guest. He's an intelligence expert, the author of
several books, and his new book is called "Intelligence Wars."

The Bush administration has been using the word `liberation' to describe what
the United States hopes to do in Iraq. Another word that's been used a lot
describing what will happen once we get there is `occupation.' Do you think
liberation and occupation have really different sounds to it?

Mr. POWERS: Well, they have very different sounds and they're different
things. Liberation comes first; occupation comes second. You don't have to
occupy a country you've liberated. You can just go away again and leave some
other government in charge, but that's not what we're going to do. To
liberate it means to remove the party in power; to free it from that
particular oppressive regime, and it is an oppressive regime. The occupation
is what inevitably happens when you take responsibility for a country.

Now we've said, for example, that one of the first things we're going to do is
secure the borders. Well, we're not talking about securing the borders with
Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. We're talking about securing the borders with Iran,
and the border with Iran is 730 miles long. So you can't defend that border
with, you know, a handful of men. That takes a lot of people. And then we've
got to control that border with Turkey. The Turks have a lot of interest in
what Kurds do in the northern part of Iraq. They don't want them crossing the
border into Turkey, and we don't want them doing it, either. And we don't
want them crossing back and forth with Iran. So we're going to have to have
people all over that country, and that's kind of what you mean by occupation;
you're in charge of things, you're in charge of the police to the extent that
there is any police, you prevent looting, you have to keep people from killing
each other, if you can. And occupation brings with it a great many
responsibilities and probably a huge expense.

GROSS: Can you talk a little bit more about that importance of the border
between Iran and Iraq?

Mr. POWERS: The United States, you know, has a 25-year history of conflict
with Iran ever since the revolution that overthrew the shah and the arrival of
the Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran. And not too longer thereafter, relations with
the United States deteriorated at a very radical pace, and the Iranians
actually occupied the American Embassy and held the embassy staff prisoner for
a year. I mean, it was a very painful year, and it was probably the thing
that doomed President Carter when he ran for re-election. That's the
beginning of this history of conflict with Iran.

We do not have diplomatic relations with Iraq. We've had a quasi-military
conflict with Iran on several occasions. President Reagan sent troops into
Lebanon in the early 1980s, and Iran-backed terrorist organizations blew up
our embassy and killed 60 people, and they blew up a Marine barracks and
killed 241 people. Those were Iranian events, in a sense, and we certainly
suspected Iranian involvement; they never admitted it. So we got plenty of
things to be angry about, and those are the kinds of things that a government
never forgets. I mean, our government certainly hasn't forgotten that. And
we've also got suspicions that Iran was involved in the bombing of the Khobar
Towers in Saudi Arabia in 1996. Nineteen Americans got killed there. We're
mad about all that.

Plus, Iran has a big, serious nuclear research program. We say it's a nuclear
weapons program. And just about every objective observer--not just the CIA,
but all kinds of civilian organizations--agree the Iranians are trying to
build nuclear weapons. And they've been trying to build nuclear weapons at
least since the Gulf War. In the Gulf War, the Iranians came to the
conclusion that if you don't have nuclear weapons you can't keep the Americans
out of your country. So they're working on that. And as you know, that's the
one thing that President Bush has vowed he's not going to allow.

So we're going to have a 730-mile border between us and the Iranians. We've
got a history of conflict. We've got no diplomatic relations. We want them
to get rid of their programs for building nuclear weapons, and we want them to
break off all relationships with what we call terrorist organizations. And
that includes Hezbollah and Hamas, which are both deeply committed to getting
Israel out of the West Bank. So that's a lot to ask those Iranians to do.

Now I'm not sure they're going to want to do what we want them to do. I think
they probably think they'll be safer if they actually have nuclear weapons,
then maybe we wouldn't invade their country. So there are many sources of
conflict, and I believe it will begin to heat up rather quickly; not in 10
minutes. It's not like we're going to go into Iraq, next week we're going to
invade Iran. Two years from now, the Iranians are going to be in trouble.

GROSS: In the language of diplomacy, what message are we sending Iran by
invading Iraq?

Mr. POWERS: It's not clear to me, really, how Iran looks at this. You know,
the Iranians had a war with Iraq that lasted for eight years and killed a
million people, and half of those people were Iranians. And they're mad about
it; they're plenty mad about it. So they're doing something that's really
unusual. They're standing aside. They hate Saddam Hussein so much that
they're allowing the world's greatest superpower to come in and establish a
military base next door. Now that's not something countries normally are very
relaxed about. Usually, they put up a hell of a fuss and do whatever they can
to stop it. But the Iranians have done nothing to stop it. They don't trust
Saddam Hussein, either; in that, they share a common position with President
Bush.

But once we're actually there and Saddam is actually gone, that relationship,
I think, is going to transform, and I think it's going to transform not
because the Iranians insist on being in conflict with us, but because
President Bush has said that he has demands that I don't think they're going
to want to admit, or they're going to want to accede to.

GROSS: Tom Powers. He's the author of the new book "Intelligence Wars:
American Secret History from Hitler to Al-Qaeda." He'll back in the second
half of the show.

I'm Terry Gross, and this is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

(Credits)

GROSS: Coming up, the challenges of building a democracy in Iraq. We
continue our conversation with journalist Tom Powers.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: This is FRESH AIR. I'm Terry Gross, back with Pulitzer Prize-winning
journalist Tom Powers. He's written about US intelligence and the CIA for
over 20 years. His new book is called "Intelligence Wars: American Secret
History from Hitler to al-Qaeda."

One of the stated goals of the Bush administration in Iraq is to build
democracy. What do you think are some of the challenges of building a
democracy where there has never been one?

Mr. POWERS: Well, it sounds like a superhuman task, doesn't it? I mean, this
is a country that's had basically dictators going straight back to the days
of Babylon. It's never really had a democracy. They have had periods of time
when they voted for this or that or the other, but there's always been a kind
of an authoritarian central figure in charge of the country, so they're not
used to it.

But looking at it realistically, it's my guess that what the administration
wants really is a plant government, not exactly a client government but a
plant government, one that accedes to our wishes on major issues and allows us
access to military bases and so on that we want. I don't think we're going to
turn the world upside down to try and create a democracy there. We haven't
done it anywhere else, really, lately. And I don't think the administration
has any real appetite for it. I think they want a government that they can
control, and I think they'll probably end up with one that's got a lot of
authoritarian features.

GROSS: Well, somebody recently made the case on the show--Robert Kaplan, a
journalist who covers that part of the world recently made the case on the
show that what Iraq will need is an interim authoritarian government that is a
much kind of friendlier, more benevolent authoritarian government than Saddam
Hussein. But you can't go from tyrannical dictator to democracy overnight,
and a step in between would be a US-supported, you know, more benevolent
authoritarian government.

Mr. POWERS: Well, you know, a benevolent authoritarian government has two
aspects: It's benevolent and it's authoritarian. But you know, as time
passes, it gets less benevolent and more authoritarian, and it gets very
authoritarian when you tell it, `Now is the time to become a real democracy.'
So if you can establish an interim benevolent authoritarian government, I
think you're basically establishing an authoritarian government. And I don't
think we're going to want to overthrow another one in a big hurry, as long as
it doesn't give us any trouble. So the idea of an interim government strikes
me as the inevitable effort, but not promising for success.

GROSS: If we create a new government and if that government is, as you
describe it, more of a client government, do you think that government is
going to be under attack, either by other Iraqis or by terrorists from other
countries?

Mr. POWERS: It's hard to say when the trouble will begin. You know, the
thing that worries me about this whole episode is the magnitude of the grand
scheme that the Bush administration has dreamed up for transforming the
political landscape of the Middle East. You know, big ideas are the ones that
give you the most trouble, and trying to make the world perfect, you know,
just leads to disaster, in my opinion, and I think that's sort of been the
record of human history. And whenever we've engaged in a really big endeavor,
trouble comes.

Now exactly when that is going to happen, I don't know. There's going to be
some kind of a government there. We're going to be there. Eventually, you
know, after the fighting stops, the dust settles and everything's quiet for a
while, and for a time, it looks like, `Gee, this wasn't so hard. You know,
this is going to be a big success.' But you've changed the fundamental
relationships of peoples there, and gradually they realize what the limits of
their action are and they realize, `Well, we can't have any, you know,
military forces with tanks attacking the Americans, but it isn't that hard to
kind of sneak up on them in the streets.'

And I think sort of an endless amount of trouble will slowly begin to bubble
forth. So I figure we're going to have a month of war, and then we're going
to have a month of indecision, and then we're going to have a couple of months
where everything looks pretty good. And then after that, things are going to
start going downhill and it's going to be trouble and it's going to be money
and it'll take a generation to resolve it.

GROSS: You've been covering intelligence for decades. Do you think that the
CIA is in favor of war with Iraq?

Mr. POWERS: The CIA has a director, George Tenet, who has a very close
personal relationship with George Bush. That would impossible if they did not
see eye to eye on this question. So in that sense, no, the CIA does not have
a different view of what's going on, really, than the president has. However,
all the people I've talked to and everything I've read and everything I've
heard suggests that everybody who knows anything about the Middle East is full
of apprehension about the demons we're going to be letting out of the closet
by invading and occupying this country, and I think that includes the CIA
analysts. You couldn't get anybody to go on the show and tell you that, I'm
sure. But I don't believe there are very many people in the analytical
department of the CIA who've spent years looking at Iraq and the rest of the
Middle East who say, `This is the solution to our problems. Everything's
going to go well.' I think they're all full of apprehension.

GROSS: What's some of the speculation about how war with Iraq might affect
the future of terrorism? I mean, one of the reasons the Bush administration
has given for going after Saddam Hussein is that the Bush administration
believes--or at least it's stated it believes that Saddam Hussein has had some
kind of relationship with al-Qaeda.

Mr. POWERS: I believe the Bush administration really and truly thinks that
the greatest danger in the world is terrorists with nuclear weapons or other
weapons of mass destruction, and I think very soon after September 11th, they
decided that terrorists could never get such weapons except from sovereign
states, and that no sovereign state would give them to them or sell them to
them except a rogue state or an outlaw state that was not really a member of
the international community. And that's the whole rationale and logic, I
think, about having to get rid of the government of Iraq at the moment.

So in that sense, I think it'll work, and I think it will keep such weapons
out of the hands of terrorists if they were likely to get them soon. But
otherwise, I don't think there's any relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
We've tried very hard to prove it, and if we had any evidence of it, believe
me, we would have used it while we've been arguing in the UN the last few
months. So I don't think there is anything there. The evidence we've brought
forward is very tenuous, very slender. You know, some guy who's living in
Iraq may or may not be involved with shooting one American in Jordan. I mean,
that's not a huge relationship; I don't think there is one.

I think the effect on the war on terrorism is that it's going to have two
effects. All the people who are in the great pool of disaffected, politically
active, anti-American terrorist types are going to be better identified and
known from the files that we go through. So in that sense, our ability to
track them and control them will be better. However, if you think about it,
what the terrorists really don't like is us there, so what we're doing is
sending a lot of us right there in the middle of them, and it's just bound to
lead to more trouble; it's bound to lead to more anger and more attempts to
commit acts of terrorism against us. That doesn't mean that we'll see another
event like September 11th, but we may begin to see a lot more smaller ones.

GROSS: My guest is Tom Powers. He's been writing about the CIA and
intelligence for over 20 years. His new book is called "Intelligence Wars:
American Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda." We'll talk more after our
break. This is FRESH AIR.

(Soundbite of music)

GROSS: Tom Powers is my guest, and his new book is called "Intelligence
Wars."

You've studied this CIA for many years, and your studies go back to an era
during the Cold War when the United States covertly helped overthrow various
regimes in Latin America and other parts of the world and helped put in new
leaders. What kind of comparisons spring to mind for you between the
difference of this overt regime change in Iraq that we're about to attempt and
the covert regime change of the Cold War era?

Mr. POWERS: Well, the CIA's specialty back in the 1950s and the 1960s, you
know, was to target governments, political movements, countries that we had a
strong interest in and then clandestinely move in and affect the policies of
those countries or overthrow their governments. But it was, generally
speaking, done in a way that was deniable by the United States. We could say,
`Well, you know, we sympathize with the goals of the rebels, but we're not
actually responsible; they're not wearing American uniforms.'

The big difference is we are wearing American uniforms. We're going in there
in the traditional way of great powers in the past which invade and occupy.
And I think the explanation, the biggest and most important explanation for
this willingness to go that huge extra step, is the end of the Cold War.
There is nobody else in the world who can say no. You know, we were cautious
during the Cold War because they were the Russians out there. We were often
mad at governments in the Middle East that were backed by the Russians, and we
didn't go in there openly with armies, because that could have meant war with
Russia. We were careful, we were cautious, and we were restrained most of the
time.

But now that's different. There's no check on American power. The government
has this big idea that by changing governments in the heart of the Arab and
the Islamic world and creating a permanent American presence there, that they
can alter the political landscape, and I think they feel that it's possible
because there's nobody in the world that can just simply say no. And we want
to do it, we can do it and that's the way we seem to be proceeding.

GROSS: Are there differences in what the CIA knows or can do, can accomplish,
differences between the first Gulf War and this war that we're likely about to
enter into now?

Mr. POWERS: I think the CIA has been, in effect, blind on the ground in both
cases. I don't think we had a good intelligence network operating inside of
Iraq before the Gulf War. We certainly were completely caught by surprise
when Saddam Hussein actually invaded Kuwait. He'd been threatening to do
something, but it was our view that it was just a bluff in order to work out a
deal with the Kuwaitis. So we were wrong about that; that's a strong sign
that we didn't really have a good intelligence network inside the country.

And we certainly don't have a very good intelligence network inside Iraq now.
We would love to have had the kind of information that would have allowed us
to go to the UN and cite chapter and verse about where all these weapons for
mass production were, the exact addresses, you know, who were the scientists,
which ones to talk to. We didn't have that kind of information. They've been
working over there for months; they've never found anything, really, that they
didn't stumble across, so it's clear we didn't know where it was.

We have a weakness that's developed over several decades for human sources,
actually recruiting people in hostile governments and in terrorist
organizations. And it's hard to do in both cases; I mean, it's not like it's
easy. But trust me, the Russians were really tough, and over the decades, we
managed to recruit many very high-level, very useful, very effective spies
that worked for us in Russia. So if you can do it in Russia, you can do it in
the Arab world and you can do it in the terrorist world, and we just didn't
put the emphasis on that in the last 20 years that would have allowed us to
know what Saddam was really doing.

GROSS: Say we accomplish regime change in Iraq. We send troops to Iraq; our
troops are there, and this continues through the remainder of the Bush
administration. Say hypothetically that in the next presidential election,
somebody else was elected to the presidency and that new president disagreed
profoundly with the Bush administration policy, thought that the war had been
a mistake, and wants to withdraw from Iraq. How difficult or easy is it to do
something like that?

Mr. POWERS: Well, once the United States has really planted itself in this
country and is locked in a kind of local struggle where there are a lot of
people telling us to get out and wishing we would get out, it becomes very
difficult to do. I mean, we can put a new person in the White House; that can
happen, and it will eventually happen. But he's going to inherit a situation;
it's not one he's created, but it's not one he's going to be able to walk away
from in a minute. It's very hard to leave a government that's yours.

Just think of all the years we hung in Vietnam strictly because we couldn't
abandon the course we were on. We couldn't abandon the people who trusted us.
We couldn't abandon the government we had created. I mean, it just went on
for years and years and years that way and I anticipate it will be very
similar here. It's hard to do. It's a country of 23 million people. It's as
big as Texas. We're going to have troops all over the place. And I think
we're also going to be locked in a growing crisis with Iran. So I don't see
how any new president could easily pull out or walk away from it, even if he
hated the project from the beginning.

GROSS: We've been hearing a lot about the possibility of unforeseen
consequences. In your studies of the CIA during the Cold War era when the CIA
helped covertly overthrow certain governments, did you come across a lot of
unforeseen consequences in those scenarios?

Mr. POWERS: Every time the CIA has done anything in the world, there were
unforeseen consequences. You know, we overthrew a government in Guatemala in
1954 for what seemed like smart reasons at the time, and Guatemala was wracked
by a civil war and wholesale strife and murder on a colossal scale for decades
after that, and it was connected to what we'd done there.

We were very involved in Indonesia at a time where the Indonesians and the
Chinese were in a delicate relationship with each other, and it ended up with
a huge massacre of maybe a million Chinese, a huge number; I forget what the
number actually was. The CIA has always said, `Well, we had nothing to do
with that,' but you can't really say that that easily.

We've been involved in lots of situations where we had a very profound effect.
Most recently, you know, we organized a major resistance to the Soviet Union
in Afghanistan, and the people who were in that mujaheddin army fighting the
Russians, when the dust settled, have turned around and started fighting us.
So that's been a factor as well. That's also been an example of an unforeseen
consequence. It wasn't impossible to foresee, but beforehand it was
discounted.

We also trained a great many Cubans in the arts of terrorism, and one of them
a number of years later blew up a Venezuelan airliner. Well, you know, the
CIA could legitimately say, `That wasn't our idea,' but we're the guy who
trained him.

GROSS: A lot of your work over the years has depended on being able to read
declassified CIA documents. What is the Bush administration track record on
keeping things secret or revealing information from the past and saying, `It's
time for this to be public'?

Mr. POWERS: The Bush administration is very hostile to the whole idea of
opening the records, and they've turned the clock back on lots of different
categories of records that were slated to be declassified and made available
to the public. I think making these things available is important. I agree
with intelligence professionals that you can't do it quickly and you can't do
it lightly; you have to look at what it is you're talking about. Sometimes
people do stick their necks on the line for you and you don't want to lightly
betray them just because some reporter wants to see a piece of paper. But at
the same time, it's our history. This is our country and these things were
done in our name and we pay for them. So we have a right to know eventually
roughly what's been going on there, and that means opening up the documents.

Since September 11th, there have been all kinds of arguments that homeland
security and national security and preventing terrorism make it impossible for
us to release documents in the way that we used to, and it would be hard to
summarize all of those different cases and say if they were all a good idea or
all a bad idea; probably some of both.

GROSS: What are some of the things going through your mind today when we may
be on the eve of actually attacking Iraq?

Mr. POWERS: Well, I'm thinking about my children's generation, which will
have to pay for it over a 20- or 30-year period and I'm also reminding myself
not to forget the Iraqi people who have suffered under this dictatorship for
so long, and if we go to war, I wish us success and I hope that it works out
and that somehow the Iraqi people end up happier and the world does not become
a more dangerous place, but I fear the opposite.

GROSS: Well, Tom Powers, I want to thank you very much for talking with us.

Mr. POWERS: My pleasure. Thank you.

GROSS: Tom Powers is the author of the new book "Intelligence Wars: American
Secret History from Hitler to al-Qaeda."

Let's listen to some new music from the South African composer and pianist
Abdullah Ibrahim. This is from his new CD, "African Magic."

(Soundbite of music from "African Magic" by Abdullah Ibrahim)

GROSS: Coming up, jazz critic Kevin Whitehead reviews a new CD by drummer
Matt Wilson. This is FRESH AIR.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Review: Matt Wilson shows his musical ability as a drummer on
his new CD, "Humidity"
TERRY GROSS, host:

New York drummer Matt Wilson has toured with saxophonists Dewey Redman and Lee
Konitz, among others, and has recorded widely as a sideman since the early
'90s. He also leads two quartets, one with piano or organ and one without.
Jazz critic Kevin Whitehead says he likes the one without, especially as it
sounds on Wilson's new CD.

(Soundbite of music by Matt Wilson and quartet)

KEVIN WHITEHEAD reporting:

Technically dazzling drummers can always get a gig, but even more rare and
valuable are those drummers who are genuinely musical, Matt Wilson, for
example. A good listener who gets a lively sound from the traps, he writes
infectious melodies that bring out the tuneful side of the drum kit. He may
place his licks at the center of the action instead of underneath it, and
sometimes he'll use horns like drums to punch in rhythmic accents. Wilson
does all that on his composition "Swimming in the Trees," which recalls Carla
Bley's repetitive but insinuating jazz tunes.

(Soundbite of "Swimming in the Trees" by Matt Wilson and quartet)

WHITEHEAD: Matt Wilson's quartet, from their CD "Humidity" on Palmetto. As
you can hear, he has a real knack for combining instrumental colors. He also
makes good use of his forces, Andrew d'Angelo and Jeff Laderer on reeds and
bassist Yosuke Inoue, joined here and there by violin, trumpet and trombone.

(Soundbite of music by Matt Wilson and quartet)

WHITEHEAD: Wilson has worked a lot with Ornette Coleman's disciple Dewey
Redman. That helps explain the drummer's attraction to Ornette-style jazz,
with its cheerful melodies, percolating rhythms and shifts between fast and
slow tempos. He's also inspired by Ornette's swinging drummers, Edward
Blackwell and Billy Higgins, with their springy patterns cribbed from parade
beats in Nigerian bata drumming. This is from Wilson's "Thank You Billy
Higgins!"

(Soundbite of "Thank You Billy Higgins!" by Matt Wilson and quartet)

WHITEHEAD: Jeff Laderer on tenor sax. I'd hate to call Matt Wilson's music
happy jazz, a derisive term usually reserved for upbeat elevator music. There
is a feel-good air to Wilson's catchy tunes and exuberant beats, but his music
reminds you that happiness can be a complex web of emotions, allowing for fine
shadings of degree and texture, which means this feel-good music won't leave
you feeling like a dope.

GROSS: Kevin Whitehead writes for the Chicago Reader and the Chicago
Sun-Times. He reviewed Matt Wilson's new CD, "Humidity."

(Credits)

GROSS: I'm Terry Gross.

(Soundbite of music by Matt Wilson and quartet)
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