14Feb04-Majority of Iraqi exiles slanted stories
Posted on Sat, Feb. 14, 2004
INTELLIGENCE
Majority of Iraqi exiles slanted stories
U.S. officials have concluded that almost all Iraqi defectors provided questionable information in the run-up to war with Iraq.
BY WARREN P. STROBEL AND JONATHAN S. LANDAY
wstrobel@krwashington.com
WASHINGTON - U.S. intelligence officials have concluded that almost all of the Iraqi defectors whose information helped make the Bush administration's case against Saddam Hussein exaggerated what they knew, fabricated tales or were ''coached'' by others on what to say.
As investigations expand into the intelligence used to justify the war in Iraq, questions are growing about the defectors' role in building the momentum toward last spring's invasion.
Most of the former Iraqi officials were made available to U.S. intelligence agencies by the Iraqi National Congress, a coalition of exile groups with close ties to the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney's office. The INC had lobbied for years for a U.S. military operation to oust Hussein.
The defectors claimed, among other things, that Hussein had built mobile biological weapons facilities, was rapidly rebuilding his nuclear weapons program and had trained Islamic warriors at a camp south of Baghdad.
None of those allegations has been borne out so far.
At least one defector provided by the INC -- an Iraqi engineer named Adnan Ihsan Saeed al Haideri -- provided valuable information on Hussein's underground military facilities, U.S. officials said.
But most of the information provided by the INC's defectors ''was shaky'' at best, said a senior Bush administration official. He and others spoke on condition of anonymity because of the classified information involved.
The Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, which handled the INC-supplied defectors, has since concluded that they provided little worthwhile information on Hussein's weapons programs or alleged ties to Islamic terrorism, a defense official said.
'COACHING' SIGNS
The officials said some of the defectors showed signs of ''coaching'' because they used similar language. That raised suspicions that the INC had prepped them before their debriefings.
Much of the defectors' testimonies were discounted in the run-up to the war by analysts at the CIA and State Department, which soured on the INC and its leader, Ahmad Chalabi, during the 1990s.
Nonetheless, some of the information found its way into the most critical prewar intelligence assessment on Iraq's illicit weapons program, known as a National Intelligence Estimate; media reports; statements by top U.S. officials and, in one instance, Secretary of State Colin Powell's watershed presentation to the U.N. Security Council in February 2003.
'PERSISTENT' EXILES
Senior U.S. officials said that despite doubts about the defectors' reports, they continued to be sought by top civilians in the Defense Department and other officials eager to make the case for war.
''These guys were persistent,'' the senior administration official said of the Iraqi exiles.
Defectors were one of several sources of information on Hussein's Iraq. Their reports were combined with those from human spies, satellite photographs and electronic snooping.
Cheney and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, two principal advocates for a U.S.-led invasion, underscored the importance placed on defectors and other human sources.
In a January 2003 speech, Wolfowitz said, ``For a great body of what we need to know, we are very dependent on traditional methods of intelligence -- that is to say, human beings who either deliberately or inadvertently are communicating to us.''
Cheney, opening the administration's drive for public support for Hussein's ouster, said in an Aug. 26, 2002, speech that ''firsthand testimony'' from defectors had disclosed that Hussein had resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons.
Those defectors, Cheney said, included Gen. Hussein Kamal, Hussein's son-in-law, who fled to Jordan in 1995 and was murdered when he returned to Baghdad in 1996.
Cheney's assertion, however, conflicts with Kamal's comments in an interview conducted by Rolf Ekeus, the then-head of a U.N. weapons inspection program.
''All weapons -- biological, chemical, missile, nuclear -- were destroyed,'' Kamal said, according to an official U.N. transcript of the Aug. 22, 1995, session.
Cheney's office did not explain the apparent discrepancy.
Instead, Cheney's spokesman Kevin Kellems referred Knight Ridder on Friday to an interview earlier this month with St. Louis radio station KMOX, in which Cheney stood by his comments about Iraq's nuclear weapons program.
`NEVER PERFECT'
''The fact is that if you look at the statements I made, they track almost perfectly with the National Intelligence Estimate'' on Iraq's weapons programs, Cheney told the interviewer. Intelligence is never perfect, Cheney said, adding, ``This is a business where you don't have absolute proof on these subjects.''
In addition, a report issued by the White House on Sept. 12, 2002, said former Iraqi military officers described how Iraq had been training Iraqis and non-Iraqi Arabs in ''hijacking planes and trains, planting explosives in cities, sabotage and assassinations'' at a secret terrorist facility in Iraq, Salman Pak.
No information has surfaced since the war to support those claims, defense and intelligence officials said.
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