A blanket indictment of our human intelligence around the world is dead wrong - Transcript of Tenet address on WMD intelligence
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To be sure, we had difficulty penetrating the Iraqi regime with human sources. <font size=4>And I want to be very clear about something: A blanket indictment of our human intelligence around the world is dead wrong. We have spent the last seven years rebuilding our clandestine service. As director of central intelligence, this has been my highest priority.<font size=3>
When I came to the CIA in the mid-'90s, our graduating class of case officers was unbelievably low. Now, after years of rebuilding, our training programs and putting our best efforts to recruit the most talented men and women, we are graduating more clandestine officers than at any time in the history of the Central Intelligence Agency.
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It will take an additional five years to finish the job of rebuilding our clandestine service, but the results so far have been obvious.
A CIA spy led us to Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11th attacks.
Al Qaeda's operational chief Nashiri, the man who planned and executed the bombing of the USS Cole, was located and arrested because of our human reporting.
Human sources were critical to the capture of Hambali, the chief terrorist in southeast Asia, who organized and killed hundreds of people when they bombed a nightclub in Bali.
So when you hear pundits say that we have no human intelligence capability, they don't know what they're talking about.
It's important that I address these misstatements because the American people must know just how reliable American intelligence is on the threats that confront our nation.
Let's talk about Libya, where a sitting regime has
volunteered to dismantle its WMD program. Somebody on
television said we completely missed it. Well, he
completely missed it. This was an intelligence success.
Why? Because American and British intelligence officers
understood the Libyan programs.
Only through intelligence did we know each of the major
programs Libya had going. Only through intelligence did we
know when Libya started its first nuclear weapons program
and then put it on the back burner for years. Only through
intelligence did we know when the nuclear program took off
again. We knew because we had penetrated Libya's foreign
supplier network.
And through intelligence last fall, when Libya was to
receive a supply of centrifuge parts, we worked with the
foreign partners to locate and stop that shipment.
Intelligence also knew that Libya was working with North
Korea to get longer-range ballistic missiles.
And we learned all of this through the powerful
combination of technical intelligence, careful and
painstaking analytic work, operational daring and, yes,
the kind of human intelligence that people have led the
American people to believe we no longer have.
This was critical when the Libyans approached British and
U.S.intelligence about dismantling their chemical and
biological and nuclear weapons programs. They came to the
British and American intelligence because they knew we
could keep the negotiations secret.
And in repeated talks, when CIA officers were the only
official Americans in Libya, we and our British colleagues
made clear just how much insight we had into their weapons
of mass destruction and missile programs.
When the Libyans said they would show us their Scud-Bs, we
said, "Fine. We want to examine your longer range Scud-Cs."
It was only when we convinced them that we knew Libya's
nuclear program was a weapons program that they showed us
their weapons design.
As should be clear to you, intelligence was the key that
opened the door to Libya's clandestine programs.
Let me briefly mention Iran, and I will not go into detail. I want to assure you of one thing: that recent Iranian admissions about their nuclear programs validate our intelligence assessments. It is flat wrong to say that we were surprised by reports from the Iranian opposition last year.
And on North Korea, it was patient analysis of difficult-to-obtain information that allowed our diplomats to confront the North Korean regime about their pursuit of a different route to a nuclear weapon that violated international agreements.
One final spy story. Last year in my annual worldwide threat testimony before Congress in open session, I talked about the emerging threat from private proliferators, especially nuclear brokers. I was cryptic about this in public, but I can tell you now that I was talking about A.Q. Khan. His network was shaving years off the nuclear weapons development timelines of several states, including Libya.
Now, as you know from the news coming out of Pakistan, Khan and his network have been dealt a crushing blow and several of his senior officers are in custody. Malaysian authorities have shut down one of the network's largest plants. His network is now answering to the world for years of nuclear profiteering.
What did intelligence have to do with this? First, we discovered the extent of Khan's hidden network. We tagged the proliferators, we detected the networks stretching across four continents offering its wares to countries like North Korea and Iran.
Working with our British colleagues, we pieced together the picture of the network, revealing its subsidiaries, its scientists, its front companies, its agents, its finances and manufacturing plants on three continents. Our spies penetrated the network through a series of daring operations over several years.
Through this unrelenting effort, we confirmed the network was delivering such things as illicit uranium enrichment centrifuges. And as you heard me say in the Libya case, we stopped deliveries of prohibited material.
I welcome the president's commission on proliferation. We have a record and a story to tell and we want to tell it to those willing to listen.
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