My stepping down -- along with volunteering for various shifts, out-of-town and holiday assignments, all-night surveillances and odd jobs that no one wanted like "informant coordinator" -- got me through the next 22 months to retirement eligibility albeit with a pension accordingly reduced for having given up one GS-level.
Nearly a decade later, I find it's still painful to remember and recount. I've blocked a lot of it out. In all fairness, there were probably many reasons that nothing from the canisters and canisters of film produced from that painful interview ever aired on 60 Minutes at the start of that war-fevered week (which was about 10 days before Bush ordered the attacks to begin).
But there are also lots of unanswered questions for me. The significant investment of time and resources that Scott Pelley ended up wasting on my warnings about launching war on Iraq less than 48 hours from their Sunday night show time was itself evidence of the bit of open-mindedness the show's producers obviously retained even at that late date.
It would be interesting, if the tapes of the interview still exist somewhere at 60 Minutes, to listen to them now. Maybe I just didn't sound authoritative enough. A guy like Cheney not only had all the power but he always spoke in the most authoritative way as if he knew everything for sure.
How much was due to the fact I was "a GS-14 nobody" on a straight path to "GS-13 nobody"? But credibility isn't exactly the same thing as status and power. I had been proven correct about the mistakes leading to 9/11 and the fact that 9/11 might have been prevented. My concerns about invading Iraq would all prove pretty much correct too (unfortunately).
It's impossible to overstate how powerful the deceptions by those in control of the government could be. Certainly much of what I observed and disclosed was available for many others to see and say but almost nobody did.
The 9/11 Experience
I probably wouldn't have gone to these lengths either had I not witnessed and suffered through what happened on 9/11. I reproached myself for not having done more then, even if it meant acting above my pay grade. Did the effort at "perception management" by those in power simply trump reality and substance?
The Iraq War lead-up presented an unusual situation because most of the mainstream media was duped, self-censoring or actively helping the Bush administration to sell the deception. The media had most of the facts or access to most of the facts themselves. But only a small segment, a really small segment of reporters, was reporting the facts.
Bill Moyers has since interviewed a number of national journalists involved, including the late Tim Russert, longtime anchor of NBC's "Meet the Press," for a program called "Buying the War." The stories by the small handful of news reporters who got it right were either buried or did not get wide circulation.
Only a few people with the credibility and the ability to get a bit of air time and/or get an Op-Ed published were speaking out, like former weapons inspector Scott Ritter, former U.S. Ambassador Joe Wilson and ex-President Jimmy Carter.
It was a classic "Emperor Has No Clothes" situation, but there was just no little boy who could yell loud enough. The 9/11 lapses had allowed Bush to wield more power over his government -- including the FBI, CIA and other national security agencies -- so they too were forced to applaud their naked emperor's march.
What's worse is that the trends toward perception dominating substance did not end with Bush (and Karl Rove's) departure. Powerful neoconservative columnists, like William Kristol at the Weekly Standard (and formerly at the New York Times) and Charles Krauthammer at the Washington Post never looked back. The neocons still frame most of the leading national news coverage despite having been wrong on just about everything. In other words, they are still selling their invisible garments.
I think it would be good for 60 Minutes to save the tapes of my interview (if they still exist) and give them to historians who may try at some future point to figure out how such a naked emperor was able to continue into a disastrous war despite some of us who tried to yell.
[Scott Pelley is now the anchor and managing editor of "CBS Evening News," a seat formerly held by Walter Cronkite and Dan Rather.]
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