Dubious claims erode US credibility
By John Donnelly and Elizabeth Neuffer
Boston Globe Staff
3/16/2003
WASHINGTON -- Questionable US and British intelligence assertions about purported Iraqi weapons of mass destruction have undercut the Bush administration's credibility in building a case before the UN Security Council, according to analysts and some diplomats.
The most serious blunder, put forth by British intelligence and cited by President Bush in his State of the Union address, involved an assertion that Niger, the West African country, had sold tons of uranium to Iraq. The Central Intelligence Agency, as well as Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, acknowledged late last week that the documents were forged, six days after top UN nuclear weapons inspector, Mohamed ElBaradei, said his team had found the documents to lack authenticity.
Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, asked the FBI on Friday to investigate whether the US government had been involved in the creation of the Niger documents to build support for administration policies. An investigation, Rockefeller said in a letter to the FBI director, Robert S. Mueller III, should ''at a minimum help to allay any concerns.'' Powell has denied any US involvement.
But other US charges -- on Iraq's use of aluminum tubes for a nuclear program, drones that might be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons, mobile biological labs, and chemical bunkers -- have come under sharp attack among UN officials or diplomats. In addition, Bush's report of a poison plant in northeast Iraq was found by numerous reporters visiting the site to have been a dilapidated collection of buildings.
At the Security Council, some are questioning the veracity of any US claim regarding Iraq.
''When you hear anything that Iraq is not cooperating, I suggest you double-check it,'' said Russia's ambassador to the United Nations, Sergei Lavrov.
Doubt about US interpretations of intelligence is one of the reasons that Security Council members have been clamoring for a set of ''benchmarks,'' or tests, by which to measure Iraqi disarmament, diplomats say.
Two US officials, however, defended in interviews the government's claims that Iraq was busily building secret programs for chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. On the discredited Iraq-Niger uranium connection, one senior US official said the CIA never fully trusted the report, which was given to the United States and Britain by an agency from an unidentified third country.
And the officials could not explain why Bush said on Jan. 28, ''The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''
In his next sentence in the State of the Union address, Bush made another assertion since disputed: ''Our intelligence sources tell us that he has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production.''
ElBaradei says his teams have found no evidence that those tubes were used for anything but missile production.
Still, a US official said, speaking on condition of anonymity: ''Those points individually, even if all true, fall far short of exonerating the Iraqi regime. We have reams and reams of documents on unaccounted-for biological or chemical materials.
''There's still the regime's defiance of 17 UN resolutions, its brutal treatment of its people, its threatening posture toward its neighbors -- all of it still stands,'' the US aide said. But former US military and intelligence officials say the challenged US claims have hurt the administration's case. The analysts said the administration probably pushed forward some unproven intelligence because of public pressure to make its case.
''They want it too badly,'' said Jay C. Farrar, a former senior Pentagon and National Security Council official. '' `Intel' is not evidence. Intel is information, and it's information that is the best available. But it is not foolproof.''
Patrick G. Eddington, a CIA analyst on Iraq in the 1990s, said the United States may be depending too much on the word of senior Iraqi defectors. He said the Niger claim was the most damaging. ''It looks like they are trying to set up Iraq,'' he said. ''I think there is enough information there to make their case. You never need to embellish.
''I think it's a matter of the administration's desperation to make some kind of a case.''
Four other allegations have been questioned, including the following:
US officials said that in his report of March 7, the UN weapons chief, Hans Blix, should have emphasized the discovery of a drone aircraft that the United States says could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons. On Wednesday Iraqi officials wheeled out a drone that a reporter said was ''more like a large school science project than a vehicle capable of delivering chemical and biological weapons.''
A US official, however, said that the drone represented only ''what the Iraqis chose to show.'' Previous UN weapons inspectors, the official said, had discovered drones that might possibly fly for up to 300 miles.
In his March 7 report, Blix rebutted Bush administration assertions on mobile biological labs. ''Several inspections have taken place at declared and undeclared sites in relation to mobile production facilities,'' he wrote. ''No evidence of proscribed activities have so far been found.''
But the US official said that mobile labs, by definition, would be difficult to find. ''We have first-hand descriptions of these small factories,'' the official said.
On underground laboratories, Blix said: ''Inspection teams have examined building structures for any possible underground facilities. In addition, ground-penetrating radar equipment was used in several specific locations. No underground facilities for chemical or biological production or storage were found so far.''
The US official again cited first-hand reports: ''Can anybody be confident that anyone would find an underground lab?''
Powell, in his presentation to the council on Feb. 5, offered several satellite images that he said showed decontamination trucks outside alleged munitions plants. Blix, in oral testimony to the Security Council, expressed doubt.
''We have noted that the two satellite images of the site were taken several weeks apart,'' Powell said. ''The reported movement of munitions at the site could just as easily have been a routine activity as a movement of proscribed munitions in anticipation of imminent inspection.''
There is a key difference between intelligences services and UN inspectors, Blix said: ''Governments have many sources of information that are not available to inspectors. Inspectors, for their part, must base their reports only on evidence, which they can, themselves, examine and present publicly.''
He then added, pointedly, ''Without evidence, confidence cannot arise.''
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Donnelly reported from Washington, Neuffer from the United Nations. Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com
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