Neocon Quote?

December 18, 2005 2:35 PM

Political Memory Hole Filter: Can you help me find the quote? Before the Invasion, some neocon (?Wolfowitz?) was quoted in a major paper complaining how the CIA was always wrong because they were too conservative in their estimates... My google-fu has failed me. Anyone have the link or the quote?
posted by INFOHAZARD to Law & Government (2 answers total)

A Google search finds a Telegraph article with the line:

"Cheney and Wolfowitz thought the CIA far too conservative," said a Pentagon adviser.
posted by scottreynen at 3:08 PM on December 18, 2005

This might help—from p. 158 of America Unbound by Daalder and Lindsay, a 'serious' book (ie. one with a scholarly tone and footnotes etc.) about Bush's foreign policy:

The administration's willingness to ignore dissenting views within the intelligence community also reflected a conviction, borne out of historical experience, that intelligence agencies typically underestimate threats to the United Sates. Paul Wolfowitz had come to this view early as a young analyst in the Team B exercise. Donald Rumsfeld shared it. Their work on a 1998 congressional commission that examined the ballistic missile threat to the United States only hardened their conviction that intelligence agencies regularly missed threats. Just weeks after the commission released its report, North Korea fired a long-range missile that the intelligence community said it was years away from developing.

posted by Firas at 5:05 PM on December 19, 2005