Testimony of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
Cont'd.....
....LEVIN: ....What you've said here, however, I want to put in the record something relative to the alleged continuity of intelligence between the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. I'm going to put in the record three tables that were produced by the Carnegie Endowment.
Table three compares pre-2002 intelligence assessments with October NIE assessment in 2002 -- so I'm going to go down the list and put these tables into the record -- comparing pre-October intelligence with post-October 2002 intelligence.
Iraq reconstituted its nuclear program after 1998: pre-2002, probably not; October, 2002, yes.
Iraq attempted to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons: pre-2002, maybe; October, 2002, yes.
Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from abroad: pre-2002, no; October, 2002 NIE assessment, yes.
Now, on the chemical weapons programs: Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons: maybe, maybe; October, 2002 NIE, yes.
Iraq had covert chemical weapon production facilities: before 2002, not sure; October, 2002, yes.
On and on, the differences -- significant differences in the intelligence between before and after October 2002 laid out in this Carnegie Endowment study. I would ask that these be made part of the record.
<font size=4>
RUMSFELD: ....I will say this: George Tenet was the director of central intelligence in the last administration and this administration, and he has indicated repeatedly that there are, as I said, threads of the intelligence that are consistent and provide continuity over a sustained period of time. And he's the DCI.....
....On reflection, Senator Levin mentioned a Carnegie report. I don't know and I've never seen it, but I suspect it's unclassified. And if it came from open sources, one ought not to be surprised that there might be a difference between an open-source document and what the director of central intelligence has told me..... ...
....ENSIGN: I actually do want to go along that line of questioning, though, simply because I want to point out something that everybody is saying, and that is that we basically know we have an intelligence failure. We think we know we have an intelligence failure, but yet members of the panel are saying it like it's fact.
And the reason that I'm bringing that out is because, to their best guess, they're saying it like it's fact, just like when you were before this committee, just like you said today, we know because in all probability we should know whether or not there were weapons of mass destruction and things like that.
We should be a little more careful, but it certainly was not the intent of anybody on this committee to mislead the American public -- hopefully it wasn't -- just like I don't believe it was your intent on the "We know" comments.
And so I think that that's really important.
But when we're doing these intelligence investigations, I think the most important part for all of us to keep in mind, this should not be a witch hunt to find somebody -- to find a scapegoat. It's important if people did something wrong, or if they purposely did something that misled people, then they should be held accountable.
<font size=3>
But the purpose, it seems to me, for the investigation, just like we did an intelligence investigation after the missiles of October, the purpose was so that we could improve our intelligence-gathering capabilities.
We know right now that we have some problems. We've known that actually maybe for quite some time, and some people have been arguing that we need to improve the human intelligence instead of relying so much on our high-tech stuff.
And I guess I'd just like maybe your comment on where the focus should be into the future. You put up that satellite photo of North Korea -- you know, how -- OK, we identify, but how do we get into the future? How do we really improve our intelligence capabilities into the future?....
<font size=4>
....I guess one of the other comments that I want to make
of us going forward, because of the media attention that's
been focused on intelligence and possible intelligence
failures, is that it will stop us from doing the right
thing in the future, because some people might use this as
a, "Well, we can't trust our intelligence community."....
....I mean, I think what Dr. Kay said has to be emphasized
more than we can possibly emphasize it in that, yes, there
were probably some intelligence failures. But it does not
take away from the fact that it may have been more
dangerous than we thought and this idea of protecting
America in this very volatile world -- I'm hoping that it
doesn't change the administration's policy on forward
leaning, the idea of preemption, the idea of, you
know, "If we could have prevented September 11th, wouldn't
we have done everything that we possibly could?"
Well, I think what we did in Iraq was preventing more
September 11ths. And I'm hoping that this revelation does
not change administration policy.
RUMSFELD: Senator, I think you're on a very important
point. We have to know that there are always going to be
intelligence failures and there also are going to be
intelligence successes and there have been a lot of
successes and they've saved people's lives.
Second, there is a risk that policy-makers would hesitate
to make decisions or that analysts would hesitate to
explain what they thought.
But one thing that's important that worries me about the
discussion here this morning, it's critically important
that there be interaction between users of intelligence
and suppliers of intelligence. Each informs the other.
And the implication that if there's an interaction between
a policy-maker and a supplier of intelligence, that
somehow or other that's pressure or that's manipulation or
that's not right or fair to them is wrong, because we each
learn from each other. And I think that inattentive users
of intelligence have a responsibility to interact with
suppliers, and the suppliers learn from that -- of
intelligence -- and the user of intelligence learns
because they end up talking to each other in a very open
way. And I think that's a healthy thing, not a worrisome
thing.<font size=3>
SESSIONS: It may be in terms of spending money in Congress, "Congress" means Senator Ted Stevens. I don't know, but, if I recall, it was his belief that we should do it by supplemental.
It certainly gives those few in the Congress who opposed the war a readily available number to claim how much we're spending as justification for their opposition from the beginning.
You know, the intel issue will roll along. I do know that the truth always generally comes out.
It was interesting that Dr. Kay, in his testimony the other day before us, indicated that the Republican Guard commanders in Iraq thought they had weapons of mass destruction. Only they would say, "No, I didn't have it, but my fellow commander had it," and they would interview him and he'd say, "I don't have it but Commander Such-and- such has it." And they all thought they had it, but apparently it hasn't been found yet.....
<font size=4>
....GRAHAM: Number one, my big fear, after listening to this debate and discussion, is that we're going to rush to get out of Iraq before the job's done. I know you won't do that.<font size=3>
So I wanted to let you understand that there are some of us up here know that predicting the future is a very hard thing to do; what it costs is what it costs. And what good have we done if we leave before the job's done?
<font size=4>
I'm very hopeful that in the long term Iraq will become more stable. There's one less dictator to give money to suicide bombers in the Mideast. I think we are better off. And if we want to have that discussion politically, as Senator Kerry says, bring it on....<font size=3>
....RUMSFELD: First, Senator, I agree completely. The president has said that we should stay in Iraq as long as is necessary and not a day longer. And there's no suggestion of a premature departure.....
<font size=4>
....BAYH: ....I'd like to touch upon just a couple of things I hear frequently from the public.
First, dealing with the quality, the adequacy and the quality of the intelligence we receive. And I'm interested in your opinion as a consumer of intelligence. I agree with all the things you said at the beginning: It's a tough and thankless assignment. We have a lot of good men and women trying to deal with circumstantial evidence, gaps in the evidence, contradictory evidence, denial and deception, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
And it's possible that good people get a lot of things right but occasionally make some mistakes.
So with that as a preface, I think many Americans would be interested in your opinion as a consumer of intelligence. On a scale of 1 to 100, 100 being omniscience, 1 being clueless, how would you characterize the quality and the adequacy of the intelligence?
RUMSFELD: In between.
(LAUGHTER)
BAYH: Well, can you try and quantify it a little better? I just -- many Americans I think right now they look at perhaps the failure that we've experienced in Iraq, they look at the fact that we maybe under-assessed Libya and Iran and they wonder, "Gee, we're having to make decisions of great import; just how adequate and reliable is this information?"
RUMSFELD: Want to put that chart back up?
This is the problem. We're dealing with closed societies, dictatorial regimes. There is North Korea -- not a light there. It's enormously difficult. So the reality is, we have had some wonderful successes and some of them are not public. I hope George Tenet will make some of them public this week or next week, because I think he ought to.
The failures are very visible, and that's always the case.
BAYH: I'm not trying to...
RUMSFELD: I can't give it a grade. It would vary depending on the collection source. It would vary depending on the target. One has to live with that in this world of ours. So you end up making the best policy judgments you can off of that.
BAYH: Perhaps this is a job for this commission, because I think many Americans -- when we make decisions about going to war or other things based upon understandably imperfect information, many people wonder, "Well, just how imperfect is it? Is this an aberration, or is this more the normal course of events?"
My second question, just very briefly, has to do with priorities, Mr. Secretary. And I hear from a number of people, not man or woman on the street, but from people who follow these things more regularly -- they look at the situation in North Korea with their capabilities, their experimentations with long-range missiles, the belligerent and erratic nature of that regime; they look at Iran with their well-known connections to terrorists and the fact that their program is further advanced than we thought; and they now look at what we do know about Iraq, and they say that perhaps Iran and North Korea constitute even greater threats, and yet we're spending over $100 billion to address Iraq.
We obviously have used force to liberate that country and trying to introduce democracy in that part of the world.
And they wonder, "Is this an appropriate ordering of priorities? Should we not be devoting more to trying to address the problems of Iran and North Korea, given now what we know?"
RUMSFELD: Well, they're each being addressed in a different way. North Korea is being addressed in a diplomatic way, in the relatively early stages since they made the announcements of their capabilities.
Iraq had been addressed in a diplomatic manner through 17 resolutions of the United Nations over a period of a decade and a half.
Iran has just been revealed to have more advanced nuclear activities than they had indicated.
On the other hand, if you look at North Korea, they've lowered the height requirement to go in the army to under 5", to 4'10", because so many people were starved. There's abuse of the food distribution system at the present time. So it's hard to know what's actually going on in there.
We do know there are concentration camps. We do know that there are a lot of people that are trying to flee the country.
We have imperfect knowledge in this world of ours. We do
today and we will into the future.
I personally believe that the president made the right
decision with respect to Iraq. I think he's making the
right decision to try diplomacy with respect to North
Korea and to work those problems with the neighbors in
China, in Russia and South Korea and Japan.
And with respect to Iran, there's obviously ferment and
turmoil going on with the young people and the women and
the people who want reform in that country -- going on as
we meet today. And each is going to play out in a way that
I suppose is different.
WARNER: Thank you, Mr. Secretary. They're very clear responses to an important question.
<font size=3>
Cont'd.......
washingtonpost.com |
