Here's some of the fire, John....Weak spy network hurt hunt for arms
By John Diamond, USA TODAY
Note: Remember when James Woolsey, CIA Director for Clinton couldn't even get an appointment with Clinton for 6 months?? And the CIA funding was being cut?? Yes, there will be some stories here...Wonder if we will ever hear them all??
Posted 6/16/2003 8:09 PM Updated 6/16/2003 9:07 PM
usatoday.com
Weak spy network hurt hunt for arms
By John Diamond, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — Slightly more than a year before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq, the CIA launched a major effort to rebuild its network of Iraqi agents, which had been badly depleted by repeated purges, according to congressional and Bush administration officials with knowledge of the effort.
(Related story: Broad purges wiped out most Iraqis helping CIA)
Despite the commitment of substantial resources, however, the CIA had only modest success in reconstituting its organization inside Iraq. By the end of 2002, Iraqis working for the CIA had begun providing helpful information about Iraq's conventional weapons and other matters relating to the looming U.S. invasion. But the agents had provided no incontrovertible evidence of chemical or biological weapons, the officials said.
The difficulty the CIA had keeping its Iraqi agents alive underscores the challenges U.S. intelligence faced in locating the banned weapons U.S. officials claimed Iraq had. The failure to find those weapons has raised doubts about how much U.S. intelligence really knew about them before the U.S. forces invaded Iraq — and whether the administration was candid about possible weaknesses in its information.
U.S. spy satellites could detect tanks, artillery and other conventional weapons. But finding chemical or biological weapons was much more dependent on spies or defecting scientists, who could point the way to microbes or lethal chemicals that might have been undetectable by virtually any other means.
The CIA's intense effort to rebuild its spy network in Iraq came after it had been almost eliminated by Saddam Hussein's security forces, according to three U.S. intelligence officials. All the officials who gave information for this story spoke on condition of anonymity. All have routine access to classified information and are familiar with the CIA's struggles inside Iraq.
CIA officials outlined a plan to rebuild a base of sources inside Saddam's regime in a series of classified briefings to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees in late 2001 and early 2002, a congressional aide said. A major focus was to collect information on Saddam's alleged weapons of mass destruction programs, but the CIA also sought information that would help the Pentagon plan an invasion. A Bush administration official confirmed this account.
The effort came after at least four years of little intelligence from Iraqi sources within Saddam's regime. The gap in collection was the result, in part, of the difficulty of penetrating a closed and brutal regime and of the CIA's near total focus after Sept. 11, 2001, on the al-Qaeda terror group.
Beginning in 2002, after the defeat of Taliban and al-Qaeda forces in Afghanistan, the CIA gradually developed some sources in Iraq who passed on reports about suspected Iraqi biological, chemical and nuclear programs, according to a senior intelligence official.
But establishing spies within a regime as closed as Saddam's takes time. And by late last year, U.S. intelligence hadn't managed to develop a network that could find banned weapons or production facilities U.S. officials were sure existed. While the CIA disclosed its difficulties to congressional overseers, it did not make the problem public before the war.
Only now are intelligence and congressional officials willing to discuss some of the weaknesses in the prewar effort to gather information on Iraq's suspected weapons. |
