Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction
Statement by Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet
....Building upon ten years of analysis, intelligence
reporting, and inspections that had to fight through
Iraq’s aggressive denial and deception efforts, including
phony and incomplete data declarations to the UN and
programs explicitly designed with built-in cover stories,
the Intelligence Community prepared the NIE on Iraq’s
weapons of mass destruction. In it <font size=4>we judged that the
entire body of information over that ten years made clear
that Saddam had never abandoned his pursuit of weapons of
mass destruction.....
Biological Weapons
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All agencies of the Intelligence Community since 1995 have
judged that Iraq retained biological weapons and that the
BW program continued. <font size=4>In 1999 we assessed Iraq had
revitalized its program. New intelligence acquired in 2000
provided compelling information about Iraq’s ongoing
offensive BW activities, describing construction of mobile
BW agent production plants—reportedly designed to evade
detection—with the potential to turn out several hundred
tons of unconcentrated BW agent per year.<font size=3> Thus, it was not
a new story in 2002 when all agencies judged in the NIE
that Iraq had biological weapons—that it had some lethal
and incapacitating BW agents—<font size=4>and was capable of quickly
producing and weaponizing a variety of such agents,
including anthrax. We judged that most of the key aspects
of Iraq’s offensive BW program were more advanced than
before the Gulf war.
Chemical Weapons
....As early as 1994, all agencies assessed that Iraq
could begin limited production of chemical agents almost
immediately after UN sanctions, inspections and monitoring
efforts were ended. By 1997, the Intelligence Community
judged that Iraq was protecting a breakout capability to
produce more weapons and agent quickly. We further
assessed in 1997, that within months Iraq could restart
full-scale production of sarin and that pre-Desert Storm
agent production levels—including production of VX—could
be achieved in two to three years.....
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