CIA Wrong on Iraq 'Mobile Labs,' Powell Says
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Sun May 16, 4:31 PM ET Add Top Stories - Reuters to My Yahoo!
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) was wrong about Iraq (news - web sites)'s purported pre-war mobile biological weapons laboratories, a key part of the case about suspected weapons of mass destruction, Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites) said on Sunday.
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"I'm very concerned," he said in reply to a question on the NBC program "Meet the Press" about having used claims in a U.N. Security Council speech now known to have been "inaccurate and discredited."
"When I made that presentation in February 2003, it was based on the best information that the Central Intelligence Agency made available to me," he said.
Last month, Powell described the assertions he made about the purported labs as "the most dramatic" element of his Feb. 5, 2003, speech. He acknowledged on April 2 the information was suspect but stopped short of drawing any public conclusions.
In his comments on NBC, Powell went further.
"It turned out that the sourcing was inaccurate and wrong and, in some cases, deliberately misleading. And for that, I am disappointed, and I regret it," he said.
As recently as January, Vice President Dick Cheney (news - web sites) cited the discovery of two trucks as "conclusive" evidence of the mobile labs described by Powell. But CIA (news - web sites) Director George Tenet later told Congress he had warned Cheney not to be so categorical about the discovery.
A CIA spokesman declined comment. |
