How do you figure out exactly what the regime is trying to
do, when they're, in fact, deceiving themselves?
- Transcript of Tenet address on WMD intelligence
<full text at link>.....
QUESTION: Good morning, Director Tenet. Let me first say thank you for your last seven years of service.
Nowadays the knee-jerk reaction is to say, "We need more human intelligence," as you referred to. What that reaction seems to overlook is that regimes like Iraq are designed specifically not only to deceive external -- us, our allies -- but internally as well -- the Kurds, the Shiites, whatnot.
So how do you solve that problem? How do you figure out exactly what the regime is trying to do, when they're, in fact, deceiving themselves?
TENET: Well, you settled on one of the greatest problems that we face as intelligence professionals working against a problem of deception and denial, while you're working against a target, whether it's Iraq or any other country.
I can only tell you there's no perfection in this business that we engage in. I can only tell you that our eyes are wide open when we deal with these kinds of regimes, and we recognize that the data that comes to us has to be viewed through a different prism.
Now let me say something about the theory that somehow people were deceiving each other in the regime and lying to each other. I don't know whether it's true or not. And the only way we're going to be able to figure that out is through debriefing of individuals, data that we collect, documents that we believe in and evidence.
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