Tenet Says Analysts Never Painted Iraq as Imminent Threat
By DAVID STOUT
WASHINGTON, Feb. 5 — The head of the Central Intelligence Agency delivered a passionate and wide-ranging defense of the C.I.A. today, asserting that its analysts never claimed that Iraq posed an "imminent threat" and insisting that they never tailored their findings for anyone.
George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, said the people in his agency acted with great integrity and professionalism before the war with Iraq. He said any errors or shortcomings in their work were a result of the fundamental nature of the spy business, which involves trying to make sense out of deliberate deception and obfuscation.
"The question being asked about Iraq in the starkest terms is, were we right or were we wrong?" Mr. Tenet said in a speech at Georgetown University, his alma mater. "In the intelligence business, you are almost never completely wrong or completely right."
When all the facts are known about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, he said, "we will neither be completely right nor completely wrong."
Mr. Tenet acknowledged that United States had never been able to penetrate "the inner sanctum" of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq, and he said weapons hunters and analysts need much more time in postwar Iraq.
"We are nowhere near the end of our work," he said.
And in perhaps the most sensitive section of his remarks — on whether Mr. Hussein had chemical, biological or nuclear weapons — the director alluded to the intelligence community's summary that was drawn up in the fall of 2002.
"We concluded that in some of these categories Iraq had weapons, and that in others where it did not have them, it was trying to develop them," Mr. Tenet said in his 40-minute speech.
"Let me be clear," he went on. "Analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs, and those debates were spelled out in the estimate. They never said there was an imminent threat. Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests. No one told us what to say or how to say it."
The director's speech, putting forth his first public defense of prewar intelligence, came at an especially sensitive time.
David A. Kay, who until recently was Mr. Tenet's top adviser in the hunt for deadly weapons in Iraq, told Congress late last month that the weapons probably did not exist at the time of the American-led invasion last March. Dr. Kay's remarks have ignited a furor on Capitol Hill and have become a hot issue in the presidential campaign, with several Democratic critics of the war accusing President Bush of manipulating intelligence and taking the United States to war over false pretenses.
Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, the current front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, issued a statement today accusing Mr. Bush and his top aides of "playing politics with our national security." The senator said that Mr. Tenet's words notwithstanding, Mr. Bush and his aides told the country that "Iraq posed a mortal threat, an urgent threat, an immediate threat, a serious threat, and, yes, an imminent threat to the people of the United States."
Several inquiries into prewar intelligence and its supposed findings are already under way. President Bush announced on Monday that he would name an independent commission that would examine the entire intelligence community.
Mr. Bush, appearing today in Charleston, S.C., said again that removing Mr. Hussein was right for the Iraqi people, right for other countries in the region, right for the cause of world peace. The president spoke cautiously on the issue of Iraqi weapons. "We know Saddam Hussein had the intent to arm his regime with weapons of mass destruction, because he hid all those activities from the world until the last day of his regime," Mr. Bush said.
The Senate Intelligence Committee was to hold a closed meeting this afternoon to study a voluminous report compiled by its staff on prewar intelligence. The panel's chairman, Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas, is a Republican. But his party affiliation has not stopped him from publicly questioning the validity of the prewar intelligence.
In his Georgetown speech, Mr. Tenet said the members of his agency "fear no fact or finding, whether it bears us out or not." The director, who has headed the C.I.A. since 1997, said its people perform "courageously, often brilliantly, to support our military and stop terrorism."
Mr. Tenet said American intelligence, gathered by brave human beings as well as satellites and electronic intercepts, had enabled American diplomats to deal much more effectively than they could have otherwise with problem countries like Iran, North Korea and Libya.
Mr. Tenet said the C.I.A. had helped to cripple the Al Qaeda terrorist network. He chose not to mount a defense against criticism of the agency on its performance before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Many critics of the agency have accused it, and the Federal Bureau of Investigation and other law-enforcement agencies, of failing to pick up on clues, or "connect the dots," soon enough to avert the attacks.
"We have a record and a story to tell," Mr. Tenet said today, making it clear that he was proud of both.
But is has become abundantly clear that the multifaceted debate over intelligence findings on Iraq will not dissipate soon. The debate involves motives, and it involves subtle word distinctions.
Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, insisted on Jan. 27 that President Bush had never said that Iraq posed an "imminent" threat. Rather, Mr. McClellan said, the president saw a "grave and growing" threat.
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