Tenet Defends Iraq Intelligence
CIA Chief Rebuts Allegations of Pressure From Administration Before the War
By Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, May 31, 2003
washingtonpost.com
CIA Director George J. Tenet took the unusual step yesterday of publicly defending the agency's intelligence on Iraq's possession of chemical and biological weapons, amid growing criticism that the Bush administration exaggerated what it knew about Iraqi weapons programs to advance the case for going to war.
The statement by Tenet was a rarity for a director of Central Intelligence, who normally does not react publicly to criticism about intelligence matters except during testimony before Congress. It underscored the ferment building within intelligence agencies because U.S. forces in Iraq so far have not uncovered any proscribed weapons.
Three complaints have been filed with the CIA ombudsman about the administration's possible politicization of intelligence on Iraq, an intelligence official said. He would not describe the substance of the complaints.
One senior administration official said CIA analysts have complained they felt pressured by administration policymakers who questioned them before the war about their assessment of Iraq's arms programs.
"Our role is to call it like we see it, to tell policymakers what we know, what we don't know, what we think, and what we base it on," Tenet said in a statement released by the CIA. "The integrity of our process was maintained throughout and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong."
Tenet's statement came in response to the release on Thursday of a "memorandum" to President Bush posted on several Internet sites by a group of retired CIA and State Department intelligence analysts. The analysts said there is "growing mistrust and cynicism" among intelligence professionals over "intelligence cited by you and your chief advisers to justify the war against Iraq."
The group, which calls itself Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, said the failure to find weapons of mass destruction after six weeks of searching "suggests either that such weapons are simply not there or that those eventually found there will not be in sufficient quantity or capability to support your repeated claim that Iraq posed a grave threat to our country's security."
The group called on the president to allow United Nations inspectors to return to Iraq, saying, "If the U.S. doesn't make undisputed discoveries of forbidden weapons, the failure will feed already widespread skepticism abroad about the motives for going to war."
It added that intelligence in the past had been "warped for political purposes but never before has such warping been used in such a systematic way to mislead our elected representatives into voting to authorize launching a war."
A senior intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity, defended the intelligence agencies' estimates on Iraq, saying, "We were careful about language, and it's not fair to accuse the analysts for what others say about our material."
But he added that only Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's Feb. 5 speech at the U.N. Security Council, in which Powell made the administration's case for going to war, was reviewed by the intelligence agencies in detail and backed by detailed intelligence. "We can't police what others [in the administration] say," the official said.
Asked about the controversy yesterday, Powell urged patience while the CIA and Congress look into the matter. "There are always people who come after the fact to say this wasn't what was presented to you, or this was politicized or this wasn't," he said. "Let people look into it, let people examine it."
Speaking as he arrived in Krakow, Poland, yesterday, the president dismissed charges that the administration has not proved its case that Iraq had proscribed weapons programs. He cited the discovery last month of two trucks in Iraq that U.S. intelligence officials said appeared to be designed as mobile biological weapons production facilities.
"For those who say we haven't found the banned manufacturing devices or banned weapons, they're wrong. We found them," Bush said.
The House and Senate intelligence panels have called for reviews of the administration's handling of information on Iraq's weapons programs. Tenet, at the urging of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, also launched just before the war an internal CIA review of how the prewar intelligence stands up to what U.S. teams in Iraq discover in their weapons searches, reviews of Iraqi documents and interviews with Iraqi weapons scientists.
In the months leading up to the war, senior administration officials, including Bush, Vice President Cheney, Rumsfeld and Powell, cited Iraq's alleged possession of biological and chemical weapons, and its nuclear weapons development program, as a central justification for unseating by force the government of Saddam Hussein.
But opponents of the war -- some from inside the government, others from outside -- expressed concern that the administration failed to make its case about Iraq's weapons programs, as well as the country's alleged ties to al Qaeda. Opponents focused much of their criticism on a Pentagon intelligence analysis unit established last year by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz, who was among the administration's most prominent advocates for invading Iraq.
Tenet's statement yesterday suggested that he is concerned the criticism is getting out of hand, and could threaten the credibility of the country's intelligence system.
A senior administration official said that during the run-up to the war, the CIA's Iraq analysts had been questioned by administration policymakers, including Cheney. But the official added, "There is nothing wrong with them sitting down with analysts and asking them questions about how they know this or that."
Over the past year, Cheney has made "multiple trips to the CIA on many different subjects, including several times on Iraq," Cathie Martin, a Cheney spokeswoman, confirmed yesterday.
Cheney, in an Aug. 26, 2002, speech that launched an intensive administration campaign to build support for going to war, said, "Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein has weapons of mass destruction."
Lt. Gen. James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, added a new voice to the mystery of Iraq's weapons yesterday when he said that he, too, is surprised that no chemical weapons have yet been found.
Speaking in a teleconference call from Baghdad to reporters in Washington, Conway said he "truly thought," based on intelligence he had been given before the war, that chemical weapons had been distributed to Iraqi Republican Guard units whose commanders had authority to fire them. "It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered weapons . . . in some of the forward dispersal sites," he said.
Conway said that U.S. military commanders, at the tactical level, used their best guess that chemical weapons might be used against them, and "we were simply wrong."
"But, he added, "whether or not we're wrong at the national level, I think, still very much remains to be seen."
The Pentagon has dispatched a 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group to Iraq to take over the weapons search and intelligence analysis that have been carried out by specially trained military units associated with the Army and Marines. Those units are being incorporated into the survey group or being withdrawn.
Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, the group's leader, told reporters yesterday he believes weapons will be found. "This is not necessarily going to be quick and easy, but it's going to be very thorough," said Dayton, who leaves for Baghdad on Monday.
In another development, Brent Scowcroft, chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, has begun an inquiry into how the charge that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium oxide for nuclear weapons from Niger -- based upon apparently forged documents -- got into a presidential speech last year.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence last week asked the inspectors general of the CIA, Pentagon and State Department to investigate the matter. |
