Le « Bureau des moyens spéciaux », '''''Office of Special Plans''''' ou '''OSP''', actif de septembre unité de renseignement du Département de la Défense des États-Unis, mise en place peu après les attentats du 11 septembre 2001. Créé par Donald Rumsfeld et dirigé par Douglas Feith, pour fournir du renseignement aux hauts responsables de l'administration Bush.

Contrairement aux autres services de renseignement américains, l'OSP était indépendant de l'Intelligence Community et de la Defense Intelligence Community, et était placé directement sous l'autorité du sous-secrétaire à la Défense William Luti. Sa mission officielle était de procurer à l'exécutif américain les renseignements que l'Intelligence Community se révélait incapable de trouver. 

L'OSP était composé d'une dizaine de personnes (analystes et conseillers politiques), qui ont eux-mêmes surnommés l'OSP « la Cabale ». Son directeur était depuis sa création Abram Shulsky. 

Ses travaux s'étaient focalisés sur l'Irak pendant le prélude au déclenchement des hostilités par l'administration Bush.

Une unité similaire, sous le nom de « Directorat iranien » (''Iranian Directorate''), est supposée avoir été créé en 2006 afin de travailler avec le renseignement sur l'Iran.<ref>Larisa Alexandrovna, [http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Pentagon_confirms_Iranian_directorate_as_intelligence_0615.html Pentagon confirms Iranian directorate as officials raise new concerns about war], The Raw Story, 15 juin 2006. </ref>

== Controverse sur l'efficacité et le rôle réel de l'OSP ==
=== Non objectivité et erreurs des analyses de l'OSP ===

Les membres de l'OSP sont critiqués avoir une non objectivité patente qui influencerait largement leurs rapports. Totalement habités par l'idée que Saddam Hussein avait des liens avec Al-Qaida et cachait des armes de destruction massive, ils considèrent la fiabilité des informations dont ils disposent en conséquence et concluent qu'elles sont vraies lorsqu'elles confortent ces suppositions. 
Un officier de renseignement interviewé sous le couvert de l'anonymat par le journaliste Seymour Hersh a ainsi résumé : «J'avais [...] le sentiment que la Cabale n'utilisait les informations de la CIA et des autres agences que lorsqu'elles correspondait à leur propre programme. Quand ils n'aimaient pas les renseignements qu'on leur livrait, ils mobilisaient des correspondants qui leur rédigeaient les rapports dont ils avaient besoin. Ils étaient tellement à l'ouest et si difficiles à raisonner que ça prenait des allures bizarres. Ca sentait le dogme. Comme s'ils tenaient leur mission de la bouche de Dieu... Tout ce qui ne colle pas avec leurs théories, ils le virent. » L'isolement des membres de l'OSP, qui ne travaillent qu'entre eux et jamais avec les autres services, les conforte dans leurs convictions. 
Les sources de l'OSP sur l'Irak sont essentiellement des CIA, car le CNI reste avant tout une organisation politique et non un service d'espionnage, et que ses buts politiques influencent les renseignements qu'il passe aux Américains. Par le passé, de nombreuses informations se sont révélées fausses et exagérées. Malgré cela, l'OSP a considéré que les informations des transfuges étaient des plus fiables. 
Face à ces critiques, l'OSP a réagi par des contre-accusations, soupçonnant ses détracteurs d'être abusés ou complices de l'Irak. Abram Shulsky est entre autres spécialiste de la désinformation soviétique. Dans un article écrit en collaboration avec Gary Schmitt en 1999, il estime que le renseignement américain sous-estime toujours la duplicité des gouvernements étrangers. Ainsi, un mémo du Pentagone est même allé jusqu'à suggérer que les analystes des autres agences auraient délibérément caché ou sous-estimé les liens entre l'Irak et AL-Qaida. 
Les détracteurs de l'OSP ont un argument très fort, qui est la faible valeur des analyses de l'OSP : les recherches d'armes non-conventionnelles en Irak ont été négatives, et l'enquête du Sénat sur le 11 septembre a conclu que l'Irak n'avait joué aucun rôle dans les attentats.

=== Influence politique de l'OSP et perte d'influence des autres services de renseignement ===

The '''Office of Special Plans''' (OSP), which existed from September 2002 to June 2003, was a Pentagon unit created by U.S. Defense Secretary  first=Larisa | last=Alexandrovna | pages= | title=Pentagon confirms Iranian directorate as officials raise new concerns about war | date=[[June 15,  publisher=[[The Raw Story | url=http://www.rawstory.com/news/2006/Pentagon_confirms_Iranian_directorate_as_intelligence_0615.html
|accessdate=2006-06-17}}</ref>

==Allegations of manipulation of intelligence==

In an interview with the Scottish ''Sunday Herald'', former Saddam.  It's a group of ideologues with pre-determined notions of truth and reality.  They take bits of intelligence to support their agenda and ignore anything contrary.  They should be eliminated." (Mackay, 2003)

Wolfowitz and his boss, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true—that Saddam Hussein had close ties to chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear WMD) that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States. [...]  'The agency [CIA] was out to ''disprove'' linkage between Iraq and terrorism,' the Pentagon adviser told me. 'That’s what drove them.  If you’ve ever worked with intelligence data, you can see the ingrained views at C.I.A. that color the way it sees data.'  The goal of Special Plans, he said, was 'to put the data under the microscope to reveal what the intelligence community can’t see.'" (Hersh, 2003)

These allegations are supported by an annex to the first part of Senate Intelligence Committee's Report of Pre-war Intelligence on Iraq published in July 2004.  The review, which was highly critical of the CIA's Iraq intelligence generally but found its judgments were right on the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship, suggests that the OSP, if connected to an "Iraqi intelligence cell" also headed by Douglas Feith which is described in the annex, sought to discredit and cast doubt on CIA analysis in an effort to establish a connection between Saddam Hussein and terrorism.  In one instance, in response to a cautious CIA report, "''Iraq and al-Qa'eda: A Murky Relationship''", the annex relates that "one of the individuals working for the [intelligence cell led by Feith] stated that the June [2002] report, '...should be read for content only - and CIA's interpretation ought to be ignored.'" (Report, 2004)

Douglas Feith called the office's report a much-needed critique of the CIA's intelligence. "It's healthy to criticize the CIA's intelligence", Feith said. "What the people in the Pentagon were doing was right. It was good government." Feith also rejected accusations he attempted to link Iraq to a formal relationship with Al Qaeda. "No one in my office ever claimed there was an operational relationship", Feith said. "There was a relationship."<ref name=feithresponds>Feller, Ben, [http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2866869 "Ex-Pentagon Official Defends Iraq Stance"], Associated Press, February 11, 2007</ref>

In another instance, an "Iraqi intelligence cell" briefing to Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz in August 2002 condemned the CIA's intelligence assessment techniques and denounced the CIA's "consistent underestimation" of matters dealing with the alleged Iraq-al Qaeda co-operation.   In September 2002, two days before the CIA's final assessment of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship, Feith briefed senior advisers to ''The Daily Telegraph'', "Senator Jay Rockefeller, senior Democrat on the [Senate] committee, said that Mr Feith's cell may even have undertaken 'unlawful' intelligence-gathering initiatives." (Coman, 2004)

In February 2007, the Pentagon's inspector general issued a [http://www.npr.org/documents/2007/feb/dod_iog_iraq_summary.pdf report] that concluded that Feith's office "developed, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsisent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers."  The report found that these actions were "inappropriate" though not "illegal."  Senator Carl Levin, Chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee, stated that "The bottom line is that intelligence relating to the Iraq-al-Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high-ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq.  The inspector general's report is a devastating condemnation of inappropriate activities in the DOD policy office that helped take this nation to war."[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802387.html] At Senator Levin's insistence, on April 6, 2007,  the Pentagon's Inspector General's Report was declassified and released to the public. [http://levin.senate.gov/newsroom/supporting/2007/SASC.DODIGFeithreport.040507.pdf]

Feith stated that he "felt vindicated" by the report.[http://www.washtimes.com/national/20070208-105824-1688r.htm]  He told the Washington Post that his office produced "a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance."[http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/08/AR2007020802387.html]

Feith also said the inspector general's report amounted to circular logic: "The people in my office were doing a criticism of the intelligence community consensus", Feith said. "By definition, that criticism varied. If it didn't vary, they wouldn't have done the criticism."<ref name=feithresponds>Feller, Ben, [http://www.abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=2866869 "Ex-Pentagon Official Defends Iraq Stance"], Associated Press, February 11, 2007</ref>

==Allegedly unlawful activities==

Journalist Larisa Alexandrovna of The Raw Story reported in 2006 that the OSP "deployed several extra-legal and unapproved task force missions" in Iraq both before and after the beginning of combat.  The teams operated independently of other operations, occasionally causing confusion on the battlefield.  The teams appear to have had a political rather than military mission; specifically, to find Iraqi intelligence officers willing come up with evidence of WMD in Iraq whether or not such weapons actually existed:

:''"They come in the summer of 2003, bringing in Iraqis, interviewing them", [a source close to the UN Security Council] said. "Then they start talking about WMD and they say to [these Iraqi intelligence officers] that 'Our President is in trouble. He went to war saying there are WMD and there are no WMD. What can we do? Can you help us?'"''<ref name="rawstorysecretivemil"></ref>

According to the UN source, the intelligence officers did not cooperate with the OSP forces because they were aware that forged WMD evidence "would not pass the smell test and could be shown to be not of Iraqi origin and not using Iraqi methodology."