Return of 'stovepiping'Act of bending facts to fit bias is crude echo of 2003

In the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, journalists covering the preparations for war became familiar with the concept of "stovepiping".

- Peter Beaumont

In the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, journalists covering the preparations for war became familiar with the concept of "stovepiping". The term described the tactic of pushing intelligence to key political decisionmakers, bypassing the system's checks and balances. A more familiar word would be cherrypicking: in the case of the Iraq war, the administration of George W Bush believed Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction and sought to streamline information that confirmed its bias. Conflicting views fell by the wayside.

Because intelligence is ultimately about assessing the likelihood of things that are difficult to know, stovepiping means a finger is put on the scale - and that process of assessment becomes flawed. If all this sounds familiar, it is because Donald Trump and some of his most senior officials - including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the vice-president, JD Vance, the CIA director, John Ratcliffe, and the defence secretary, Pete Hegseth - appear to be stovepiping in the crudest way.