Testimony of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld
Cont'd.....
....LEVIN: Thank you.
On the WMD issue, In September of 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency produced a classified study called, "Iraq, Key WMD Facilities: An Operational Support Study."
Part of that study has now been declassified. It included the following statement: "There is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has or will establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities."
That's September, DIA, which was classified until recently.
Now, on September 19th of 2002, the same month of that classified DIA assessment, you publicly stated that Saddam has, quote, "amassed large clandestine stockpiles of chemical weapons and that we know he continues to hide biological and chemical weapons, moving them to different locations as often as every 12 to 24 hours and placing them in residential neighborhoods."
How do you explain the contrast between the DIA-reported intelligence that said there was no reliable information about production or stockpiling of chemical weapons and your public statements that you knew that Saddam has such weapons? What explains the discrepancy there?....
<font size=4>
....RUMSFELD:.... I don't -- needless to say, I'm sure I never saw that piece of intelligence. And whether or not it was the DIA's view overall or an analyst's view, I can't tell from the way you've presented it.
I have relied not on any one single intelligence entity, like the DIA or the CIA. I've relied on the intelligence community's assessments. And the intelligence community's assessments were what they were. And they were as I stated them.....
....RUMSFELD: There was something that the press has characterized as an intelligence cell in the Office of Policy: Mr. Feith's office. It had two people in it. At any given time, the people changed and there may be two more or maybe there were four or five at some point.
And all they did was to try to -- as I understand it, and I talked to Mr. Feith about this -- their task was simply to read the intelligence, not to gather intelligence -- to read the intelligence that existed and to assist him in developing policy recommendations in his role as undersecretary for policy.
At one moment, you're quite right: He -- two people who'd been looking at this, thought they had an interesting approach to it. He asked me to be briefed. I sat there and listened to them. I said, "Gee, that's interesting. Why don't you brief the people at CIA?" They did.
LEVIN: And the vice president.
RUMSFELD: I didn't say that. I said exactly what I said. I asked them to brief the people at the CIA and they did that. I do not know if they briefed anyone else besides that, but they did do what I asked.
And the implication that this two-person -- or four or five over time -- was gathering intelligence or doing something unusual is just not correct, as I understand it.
LEVIN: But my question, though, was: Was it intended that they look at intelligence through a different prism?
RUMSFELD: No, as I understand it, just what I said. Their task was to take the intelligence that existed and look at it and see what they could figure out about it, just as I do when I read it and you do when you read it.
And in this case, Doug Feith asked a couple of people -- there's mountains of this stuff. And it is a big task to integrate it in your mind. And so he had this small group doing that. And they looked at terrorist networks, which seems to me to be a perfectly logical thing to do after September 11.....
KENNEDY<font size=3>:....Mr. Secretary, as the U.S. Iraqi weapons inspector, <font size=4>David Kay, made it clear<font size=3> in the recent days, that his exhaustive postwar inspection leave little doubt <font size=4>that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction at the time the war began. And his conclusion is a devastating refutation of the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq and I think seriously undermines our credibility in the world. <font size=3>
Until now, the administration has resisted the independent investigation of the issue, but now it's proposing investigation by committee hand-picked by the administration, with findings to be made only after 2004 election.
<font size=4>
So I think the White House agenda is clear, is to blame the failure of the administration's case for war on the intelligence community, rather than the administration's manipulations and misrepresentations on the available intelligence.<font size=3>
So the debacle cannot all be blamed on the intelligence community. Key policy-makers made crystal clear the results they wanted from the intelligence community.
Mr. Kay said, "We were all wrong"; he's wrong. Many in the intelligence community were right.
And so there are clear warnings from the intelligence community. But to sense within the intelligence community that many of the positions taken by the administration were not noted or glossed over.
<font size=4>
As Senator Levin pointed out, your own Defense Intelligence Agency, in September of 2002, said, "There's no reliable information" -- no reliable information, Mr. Secretary -- "whether Iraq is producing, stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has or will establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities." <font size=3>
KENNEDY: The State Department Bureau of Intelligence concluded, "The activities we have detected do not add up to a compelling case that Iraq is pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated, comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment."
Department of Energy intelligence disagreed that the famous tubes were a nuclear weapons program. State Department Intelligence Bureau also concluded that the tubes were not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapons.
Greg Thielmann, a retired career State Department official, had served as director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said it all last July: "Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community. Most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided." He said, "They surveyed the data, picked out what they liked. The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defense had this huge Defense Intelligence Agency and he went around it."
Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, recently retired Air Force intelligence officer, served in the Pentagon during the buildup to the war, said, "It wasn't intelligence, it was propaganda. They take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, usually by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."
We've seen in the examples that were mentioned this morning, for example, just on the issues of stockpiling on chemical weapons, as mentioned by Senator Levin, 2002, DIA said no reliable information on whether producing and stockpile. You said in 2002, before this committee, "We do know that" -- "We do know that." I understand the intelligence community never says, "We know," but you said in September, "We do know that."
In October, the NIE said, "We have 100 metric tons -- 500 metric tons of chemical weapons. We found that out in the last year."
Secretary Powell says, in February, "That's a conservative estimate, the stockpile 100 to 500 tons. That's a conservative estimate."
KENNEDY: And then you say in March '03, "We know where they are. We know where they are."
That is an extraordinary leap, and that extraordinary leap was wrong. Don't you think that that independent commission ought to be really reflective of men and women that can look hard and fast at not just what the intelligence was, but how it was manipulated, and interrogate career individuals in the intelligence community that believe that to be the case?
<font size=4>
RUMSFELD: Senator Kennedy, you might not have been here
for my opening statement on the intelligence piece, but
there was not a single thing in there that blamed the
intelligence community or put any cast on it even slightly
like you suggested.
Second, I never have gone around the intelligence
community. The intelligence community doesn't always
agree, and you have hundreds of people and they have
footnotes and they have different opinions, and you
develop a consensus.....
....KENNEDY: Aren't we entitled to hear what the dissent was as well?
RUMSFELD: Absolutely....
....RUMSFELD: I'm not in the intelligence community. I don't deal with the intelligence committees in the Congress. I am saying that within the executive branch, when intelligence is circulated it includes footnotes, it includes differing opinions, as it always has for the last 30 years to my certain knowledge.
Next, you've twice or thrice mentioned manipulation. I
haven't heard of it. I haven't seen any of it except in
the comment you have made.
Third, I am told by Dr. Cambone, sitting behind me, that
the document you read from and possibly the same document
that Senator Levin read from also has a paragraph in it
that says the following, and I quote: "Although we lack
any direct information, Iraq probably possesses CW agent
in chemical munitions, possibly including artillery
rockets, artillery shells, aerial bombs, ballistic missile
warheads. Baghdad also probably possesses bulk chemical
stockpiles, primarily containing precursors, but that also
could consist of some mustard agent and stabilized VX."
That's in the same document, I am told. <font size=3>
KENNEDY: Well, the -- you said, "probable and possible." "Probable and possible," rather than, "We know." It's a big difference.
RUMSFELD: I'm coming to "We know."
I could be wrong. I'm asked a lot of questions. I use a lot of words. And I'm sure from time to time I say something that, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't.
However, I remember -- I think I remember the moment I said we know something, and it was this: The forces had gone in out of Kuwait into Iraq, and they were moving up, and they had gotten in a day or two, possibly, and they were a long way from Baghdad. And as everyone on this committee will remember, the suspect sites for -- which is what they generally call them -- for WMD that the intelligence community produced, the suspect sites tended to be north, and they tended to be in the Baghdad and north area.
Our troops were a long way from even Baghdad, and I was asked, "Where's the weapons of mass destruction?" And I may have said -- I think I said, "We know where they are. They're up north. They're not down here." And I was referring to the suspect sites.
And you're quite right, shorthand "We know where they are" probably turned out not to be exactly what one would have preferred in retrospect.
<font size=4>
But let me say one other thing: General Pace, would you please describe what the United States Armed Forces did every day by putting on chemical weapons <suits>? They believed, we believed, everyone believed they had chemical weapons. These people didn't get in these MMOPs (ph)?
KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.
I'd just say that in your September 19th, 2002, testimony to the committee, you said five times that "Iraq has," or "We know they have weapons of mass destruction."
RUMSFELD: I'm not going to go back and quote the comments from the previous administration and President Clinton and Vice President Gore... Secretary Cohen and all of that the way you have.
I can just say that the stream of intelligence over a period of a long time in both administrations led the same people in similar jobs to the same conclusions.....
.... WARNER: But you're quite correct on that, Mr. Secretary. And there is a continuity between the manner in which these facts were brought to the attention of the American public by the succession of the Clinton and the Bush administration.
ROBERTS:.... Senator Kennedy has indicated that we need somebody to take a hard look at the intelligence that's hard and fast.
Senator Kennedy, if I could have your attention?
KENNEDY: Excuse me.
ROBERTS: I am hard, I am fast. I'm from Dodge City and I am chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence.
We have, under Senate Resolution 400, marching orders to investigate or to make an inquiry in regards to the timeliness and the credibility of the prewar intelligence, in reference to WMD and any terrorist activity, the atrocities that were committed in Iraq, which are obvious, and also regional stability.
I want people to know that in this committee, with its hard and fast and tough chairman from Dodge City, that we have had a seven- month, 24/7, 10 staff member -- just tremendous overtime effort. We have a working draft, over 300 pages long, that will be presented to the members of the Intelligence Committee as of tomorrow.
We have interviewed over 200 analysts, including critics,
including people mentioned by Senator Kennedy. I must say
that after repeated interviews by our staff, to date we
still have yet to find any coercion or intimation on the
part of analyst to change their analytical product.
It is the most comprehensive inquiry in intelligence in at
least a decade. <font size=3>
After this Thursday, we will meet again, after a week, I have members of the Intelligence Committee are able to digest and educate themselves to what's in this report. We hope to agree on a report. That may be a little tough, but we're going to get that job done.
We'll be making some recommendations, as opposed to simply pointing fingers of blame. We will redact the classified material. We will work with the agency to get that done. We will have deadlines. We will make a republic report and I hope we can do it in March.
If there are any egregious policy decisions that we find in this report, we will look into it.
ROBERTS: Assistant Secretary Feith will again appear before the Intelligence Committee, along with his subordinates.
CIA Director Tenet will also appear, and I can't emphasize enough how aggressive, how strongly I feel that we will let the chips simply fall where they may.
<font size=4>
Over the course of the inquiry that we hope to complete soon in the Intelligence Committee, we have found a large and consistent body of analysis, as you have indicated, Mr. Secretary, over 10 years in regards to Saddam Hussein, in reference to his WMD capability.
This intelligence was used -- the famous word "used" -- by the executive, by President Clinton, by President Bush, and also by those of us in the Congress. It was used on the no-fly zones, on sanctions, on the targeted bombing attacks, and finally in regards to military action.
I'd just like to quote the president when he indicated that: "We simply cannot allow our adversaries to build arsenals of nuclear, chemical and biological weapons and missiles to deliver them. There is no more clear example of this threat than Saddam Hussein.
<President Clinton said>
"The UNSCOM inspectors believe that Iraq still has stockpiles of chemical and biological munitions, a small force of Scud-type missiles, and the capacity to restart quickly its production program and build many, many more weapons.
"Let me be clear, a military operation cannot destroy all the weapons of mass destruction, but it can and will leave him significantly worse off than he is now in terms of the ability to threaten the world with these weapons or to attack his neighbors. And he will know that the international community continues to have the will to act when he threatens again."
That statement was made by President Clinton. And I'm not trying to point out President Clinton or President Bush. I think the key question is, did you find this intelligence to be true and consistent prior to the military action? And I think your answer is going to be yes. I think that's going to be stressed all the way through this hearing and your answer.
And so, I will leave that to you to answer that question.....
ROBERTS:...There are at least six or seven panels now
doing investigation on the systemic reform that must take
place because of the mistake in regards to the stockpiles.
I hope to hell there's somebody left down at the CIA to
actually conduct the global war on terrorism with all of
these activities.
But I guess my question to you is, we will have Tenet up again, we will have Secretary Feith up again, we will get our work done. I trust that you are committed to really trying to find out how we can do this better, because, as the senator has indicated -- and I'm talking about Senator Kennedy now -- many strong statements were made.
I believed that we'd find the weapons of mass destruction. Dr. Kay believed that. Dr. Duelfer even still believes that. And still there was a failure in regards to intelligence.
Would you have any comment?
RUMSFELD: Well, I think Dr. Kay is probably correct when he said that we're not completed. We're 85 percent down the road and there's more to be looked at. And we'll know ground truth before it's over. And the Iraqi Survey Group and Dr. Duelfer have a big task to finish it up.
I agree completely: The country, the president of the United States is determined to get to the bottom of this question. Your committee is determined. The Congress is determined. And I sure we will, as a country, get the answers as to what took place.<font size=3>
I personally believe that the independent commission that the president's proposed is a good thing to do. I agree with you that there are a great many people looking at this. But I think it's a big subject, it's an important subject, and as we go into the 21st century and look at the challenges and threats we face, we've got to have a high degree of confidence that we understand them and we understand what we know about them and what we don't know about them.
ROBERTS: As we say as individual senators -- I know my time has expired, but <font size=4>I do want to quote Dr. Kay in regards, "The world is far safer with the disappearance and removal of Saddam Hussein. I think when we have the complete record, they're going to discover that after 1998, it became a regime that was totally corrupt. Individuals were out for their own protection.
"And in a world where we know others are seeking the WMD, the likelihood at some point in the future of a seller and a buyer meeting up would have made that a far more dangerous country than even we anticipated with what may turn out to be not fully accurate estimating.".... <font size=3> |
