H. W. Bush Ignored CIA Warnings

Former CIA Analyst: President George H. W. Bush Ignored CIA Warnings Before 1990 Gulf War Fiasco

24 February 2011 - President George H. W. Bush and his senior advisors ignored a steadily growing stream of alarms from a key U. S. intelligence agency in the week before Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, a former CIA analyst charges in a new book.

"From July 20, 1990 onward, Bush and his key advisors were warned on a daily basis about the Iraqi military buildup on Kuwait's border," said former CIA analyst Patrick G. Eddington. "But instead of listening to his intelligence professionals, he ignored them."

Eddington makes this and other charges in his newly published book, "Long Strange Journey: An Intelligence Memoir", an account of his nearly nine years at the CIA. Eddington's tenure at the Agency spanned the transition from the Cold War to the new era of American interventionism in the Persian Gulf and the Balkans. The book draws upon Eddington's direct experience reporting on the events described in the book, as well as thousands of pages of previously classified documents secured through litigation he pursued during the last decade with the help of Washington, D.C. attorney Mark S. Zaid. {continued}