He didn't have them:
Ex-CIA director says administration stretched facts on Iraq
By John Diamond
USA TODAY
Wed Jun 18, 7:28 AM ET
story.news.yahoo.com.
WASHINGTON -- Former CIA (news - web sites) director Stansfield Turner accused the Bush
administration Tuesday of ''overstretching the facts'' about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in
making its case for invading that country.
Turner's broadside adds the retired admiral's name to a list of former intelligence professionals
concerned that the CIA and its intelligence reports were manipulated to justify the war. Since
Baghdad fell April 9, U.S. forces have been unable to find chemical and biological weapons the
White House said were in Iraq (news - web sites).
Turner, who headed the CIA under President Carter, paused for a long moment when asked by
reporters whether current CIA Director George Tenet should resign. ''That's a tough one,'' Turner
said. The problem did not appear to lie with the CIA, he said, but Tenet should consider resigning if
he lost the confidence of President Bush (news - web sites) or the American people. A CIA
spokesman declined to comment.
Turner suggested Tenet should tread cautiously because CIA directors ''can be made the fall guy''
by administrations when policy judgments based on intelligence go wrong.
Turner said, ''There is no question in my mind (policymakers) distorted the situation, either because
they had bad intelligence or because they misinterpreted it.''
Public criticism of an administration's handling of intelligence is rare from former CIA directors, who
typically give the benefit of the doubt to those with full access to classified information.
President Bush has given no indication he is having second thoughts about his decision to invade
Iraq.
''We made it clear to the dictator of Iraq that he must disarm,'' Bush said in a speech Tuesday at
Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale. ''He chose not to do so, so we disarmed him.
And I know there's a lot of revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain. He is no longer a
threat to the free world.''
Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) was known to have chemical and biological
weapons in the early and mid-1990s. Late last year, Iraq claimed to have none left, though it offered
no proof of having disposed of them. At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer (news - web
sites) called it ''fanciful'' and ''a fit of imagination'' to believe that Saddam would have destroyed his
arsenal but neglected to tell the world. Seeking to counter partisan criticism about the intelligence
used to justify war, Fleischer said Democrats, including President Clinton (news - web sites), flatly
asserted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the late 1990s.
''The president has every confidence in the intelligence and that weapons will be found,'' Fleischer
said. ''The president has full faith in Director Tenet.''
British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites) has been battling similar criticism about alleged
misuse of intelligence. Robin Cook, who resigned from Blair's Cabinet on the eve of the U.S.-British
invasion of Iraq, said Tuesday that searchers in Iraq had found no sign either of equipment or a
workforce for making weapons of mass destruction.
''It is inconceivable that both could have been kept concealed for the two months we have been in
occupation of Iraq,'' Cook told a parliamentary inquiry into Iraq intelligence matters.
Turner's comments come a month after a group of retired U.S. intelligence officers wrote President
Bush to ''express deep concern'' over alleged misuse of intelligence to justify the war.
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