Bush Officials Debate Release of Iraq Secrets
nytimes.com
WASHINGTON, Jan. 29 — President Bush's top national security aides are debating whether to declassify satellite photographs of suspected Iraqi weapons sites and truck convoys — along with telephone intercepts and interviews with defectors and detainees — to demonstrate that Iraq is defying inspections.
The rush to declassify comes as officials search for a way for Secretary of State Colin L. Powell to make a credible argument at the United Nations next Wednesday, without harming the sources of the intelligence.
They need to prove not only that Iraq is blocking the inspections but also that it has active links to Al Qaeda — and without compromising the sources of the intelligence.
All day today, officials from the National Security Council, the Pentagon, the State Department and intelligence agencies sifted through information that might be declassified in coming days. It ranges from satellite photographs suggesting that Iraq is trying to "sanitize" sites before inspectors arrive, to reports that "scientists" interviewed by the United Nations were actually Iraqi intelligence agents. The evidence — built as it is on telephone intercepts of discussions among Iraqi officials and the accounts of defectors and detainees — is never entirely reliable, which adds another layer of uncertainty. Nevertheless, it still may constitute the most powerful part of Mr. Powell's case.
According to senior administration officials, Mr. Powell has said he wants to be armed with a brief containing a few select, vivid items of solid evidence, not a mosaic of murky material that could be discounted by skeptical allies and critics of the Bush administration. He plans, officials said, to catalog discrepancies between Iraq's recent weapons declaration and previous findings of biological and chemical weapons and agents during past inspections, and to offer more details of links between Iraq and Al Qaeda.
A crucial part of his case, officials said, will center on continuing Iraqi obstructions, including the fact that Iraq has so far made it impossible for United Nations inspectors to fly U-2 surveillance aircraft over the country. A senior White House official today called Iraq's refusal to allow the flights "the biggest material breach of all, so far."
But some officials here and many abroad say new, convincing evidence is hard to come by. One senior official warned against expecting the kind of vivid pictures that Adlai E. Stevenson, the American representative to the United Nations during the Cuban missile crisis in 1962, famously offered of Soviet missiles in Cuba.
"Those moments don't exist anymore," the official said, "precisely because they were so effective when Adlai Stevenson did it."
For instance, the administration today was still debating the credibility of intelligence about a Christmastime Iraqi truck convoy that some American analysts say could have been transporting weapons of mass destruction or scientists to Syria, where they would be safely out of United Nations inspectors' view.
"The convoy was unusually well protected," a senior official said. But after weeks of research, the contents of the shipment are still unclear. Complicating the issue, the Central Intelligence Agency doubts that there was a suspicious convoy at all, noting that there is a constant parade of trucks moving across the border.
Such disputes — nothing out of the ordinary in the intelligence world, where evidence is always incomplete and analysts from different agencies rarely come to the same conclusion — are plaguing the debate over how to best arm Mr. Powell.
"I worry about this one," said a foreign diplomat familiar with the intelligence. "Powell has one shot to do this right, and he's careful, so I'm sure his standard of evidence will be high. But expectations are high, and there's naturally a tendency to throw in everything you've got and ask hard questions later."
The competing views on what to declassify and how to build the case are being adjudicated by the National Security Council. The material is initially being reviewed by groups reporting to Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, but his boss, Condoleezza Rice, has also been deeply engaged. The final decisions, officials said, will probably be made by Mr. Bush and Mr. Powell himself, who, as one official said, "has to be comfortable with the material."
Mr. Powell was cautious today, acknowledging the tension over what he could release at the United Nations. "We will be as forthcoming as we can next week," he said, "but mindful of sources and methods." He told ZDG Television of Germany, a nation that has opposed military action of any kind, that the United States would "illustrate some of the things they have done to deceive the inspectors."
"We will also show information concerning the programs they have had over the years to develop chemical weapons, biological weapons and nuclear weapons and why it is so important that the world must insist that Saddam Hussein disarm," he added.
Mr. Powell and Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld briefed some members of Congress today, and a few Democrats who emerged from the meeting said they were impressed with links that the two men had drawn between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda. Mr. Bush cited that threat in his State of the Union address on Tuesday night, but administration officials said today that most of the evidence had come from detainees who have been imprisoned for nearly a year.
Today, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain said intelligence gathered by his country showed links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. But British officials said he had based his comments largely on evidence that had been available for some time, and that Mr. Blair was careful not to overstate the connections.
Debate has enveloped even the seemingly easy decision to declassify satellite photographs showing that Iraq was moving machinery, rocket parts and other matérial away from areas that would be inspected.
A Pentagon official said the administration was torn over how to release classified imagery, for fear of what other countries might learn about United States technical capabilities. The official noted that trained imagery analysts could learn a lot from any photograph, including the location of the spy satellite and the time of day it flew over its target.
"When you let out this stuff, you give it up to China, Russia and other countries," the official said. "That's the sensitivity."
Even more sensitive is evidence gleaned from sources still in Iraq, who could be in grave danger if any their information was made public.
Another debate concerns how to deal with suspicions that the weapons inspection teams may have been penetrated by Iraqi spies.
Asked about the issue today, Mr. Rumsfeld said: "It's a dictatorial regime that attempts to assert control over everything. And there is every reason to know that the inspectors have a very difficult time arriving any place that it wasn't expected. They have a very difficult time talking to anybody that hasn't been programmed to talk to them. How that happens, certainly one possibility is penetration." |
