Oil and defense of Israel are major components that drove the Bush administration's decision to attack Iraq, a former CIA analyst says.

In the lead-up to war, former CIA director George Tenet allowed the intelligence-gathering agency to be compromised because "he wanted to be part of the team and keep good favor with the president," Ray McGovern said in a telephone interview.

McGovern addressed a peace conference in Omaha on Saturday jointly sponsored by Nebraskans for Peace and the University of Nebraska at Omaha's School of Social Work.

President Bush has argued the war with Iraq was justified because Saddam Hussein posed a threat to the United States and his neighbors whether or not he currently held weapons of mass destruction.

A career CIA analyst, McGovern served 27 years from the presidency of John F. Kennedy to that of George H.W. Bush. McGovern's responsibilities included chairing national intelligence estimates and preparing the president's daily brief on intelligence.

The decision to go to war in Iraq was made "if not on 9/11, very shortly thereafter" and was directly tied to U.S. interest in that nation's oil resources, he said.

"Remember that the first major problem confronted by the (current) Bush administration was not al-Qaida, but energy brownouts in the far west and blackouts in New England," he said.

"Their first problem was energy," he said.

Former Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill reported seeing a map in Vice President Dick Cheney's office showing "Iraq carved up by sectors to be awarded to various U.S. and western oil companies," McGovern said.

The Bush administration says Iraq's oil belongs to the Iraqi people.

Global security needs justified the war, Bush has argued. Spreading democracy denies terrorists a base, he has argued.

"Freedom is finding a way in Iraq and Afghanistan — and we must continue to show our commitment to democracies in those nations," Bush said in a September speech at the United Nations.

"Not long ago, outlaw regimes in Baghdad and Kabul threatened the peace and sponsored terrorists. These regimes destabilized one of the world's most vital — and most volatile — regions. … Today, the Iraqi and Afghan people are on the path to democracy and freedom. The governments that are rising will pose no threat to others."

McGovern argued the war's connection to Israel is "a delicate subject."

"The people who run our policy in the Mideast are called neoconservatives," McGovern said. "I am conservative; they are neoradicals who have led us off on a very reckless path."

Many of those policy-makers, including Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and defense adviser Richard Perle, "have considerable difficulty making a distinction between what they perceive to be the security interests of Israel and the security interests of the United States," McGovern said.

They were motivated, in part, by a desire to eliminate the threat to Israel by Iraq, he said.

As a result of the U.S. military attack, McGovern said, "there now are thousands of terrorists in Iraq when there didn't used to be any."

And the perceived threat that could pose to Israel will be "an inhibiting factor preventing withdrawal of substantial numbers of U.S. troops," he said.

The United States quietly is building 14 permanent military bases in Iraq, he said.

During the first Bush administration, McGovern said, CIA analysts and other insiders quietly referred to the neoconservatives as "the crazies," and they were "kept at arm's length" by the first President Bush's White House and foreign policy team.

"Now, the crazies are back," he said, "and this time they're making policy."

The CIA, he said, has been compromised by the new administration.

Cheney bullied CIA analysts in personal trips to the agency's headquarters, attempting to shape intelligence estimates to justify an attack on Iraq, McGovern said.

"The decision to go to war predated any intelligence to justify it," he said. And the intelligence estimates that were shaped to meet the administration's desires were demonstratively wrong, he said.

The CIA should be "the one place in the government without a policy agenda," he said.

Reach Don Walton at 473-7248 or dwalton@journalstar.com.