The Big Lie

"If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it", said Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's minister of propaganda. To justify its invasion of Iraq, the administration tried hard to link Saddam Hussein to the terrorist group al-Qaida and the attacks of September 11. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, who with his top security clearance is presumably among the best-informed Americans on this particular subject, said Tuesday he had no reason to believe Mr. Hussein had anything to do with the attacks. But the administration's propaganda campaign was so successful that a recent Washington Post poll showed 69% of Americans still believe Mr. Hussein probably had a hand in the hijackings. How can it be that the Secretary of Defense is in the minority of public opinion?

"I think it's not surprising that people make that connection", said Vice President Dick Cheney, emerging from hiding for a rare Sunday appearance on Meet the Press. Asked point blank by host Tim Russert whether the connection existed, Mr. Cheney said "We don't know", then went on to cite a number of intelligence reports about al-Qaida operatives receiving chemical and biological war training in Iraq. But current and former intelligence officials told reporters the CIA has dismissed these reports as baseless. They expressed incredulity that Mr. Cheney would recycle the claim of a meeting between chief hijacker Mohammed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April 2001. Two intelligence officials told the Boston Globe that not only do American records place Mr. Atta in Virginia at the time, the official in question, Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani, is now in U.S. custody and has refuted the claim.

It is rare, perhaps even unprecedented, for American spies to break protocol and speak to the press, even anonymously, to challenge an assertion by a high official of the U.S.government. It can only be seen as an indication of the intelligence establishment's alarm at the administration's ongoing misuse of intelligence to justify a predetermined policy.

Mr. Cheney's Meet the Press appearance was a masterpiece of obfuscation and deceit. By saying "We don't know", he inoculates himself against accusations that he is lying. But by recycling these discredited prewar scare stories, he scores points with the millions of Americans who watch TV but don't read the newspapers.

Mr. Cheney is also speaking to the Republican base. Millions of Americans don't want to believe their government would lie to them about a matter serious enough to provoke a war. For the purposes of the 2004 election, the more the Democrats are outraged, the better. If the White House is compelled to issue a clarification later, that's all right too, it'll be buried in the newspaper. The Vice President got his media hit. Now he can go back to working the phones from his secure undisclosed location.