Originally Posted by NY Times
Report Says Key Assertions Leading to War Were Wrong
By DAVID STOUT
Published: July 9, 2004
WASHINGTON, July 9 Ñ The Central Intelligence Agency greatly overestimated the danger presented by deadly unconventional weapons in Iraq because of runaway assumptions that were never sufficiently challenged, the Senate Intelligence Committee said today.
In a long-awaited report that goes to the heart of President Bush's rationale for going to war and is certain to intensify political debate on Iraq, the committee said that prewar assessments of Saddam Hussein's supposed arsenal of chemical and biological weapons, and his desire to have nuclear weapons, were wildly off the mark.
"Today, we know these assessments were wrong, and as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence," Senator Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican who heads the panel, said at a briefing on the 511-page report.
The report zeroed in on the crucial October 2002 national intelligence estimate in which analysts concluded that Iraq already had chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program.
"Now, these are very emphatic statements," Mr. Roberts said. "Simply put, they were not supported by the intelligence which the community supplied to the committee."
Mr. Roberts said the committee had found no evidence that intelligence analysts were subjected to overt political pressure to tailor their findings Ñ a conclusion that was not embraced totally by committee Democrats, who offered their own statements asserting that that issue had not been satisfactory resolved.
Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, for example, said, "In my view, this remains an open question and needs more scrutiny." And Senator Ron Wyden of Oregon, another Democratic committee member, said that while "nobody came before the committee and said, `Look, I had my brains beaten in to change my analysis,' " it was nevertheless true that "policymakers made it very clear what information they were looking for."
Mr. Roberts praised the men and women in the intelligence field as "true and dedicated professionals." But he said the committee's investigation of many months had also concluded that intelligence analysis and conclusions about Iraq's weapons had been warped by "a collective group-think" that caused ambiguous evidence to be elevated to the level of conclusive evidence.
"It is clear that this group-think also extended to our allies and to the United Nations and several other nations as well, all of whom did believe that Saddam Hussein had active W.M.D. programs," Mr. Roberts said, using the abbreviation for weapons of mass destruction. "This was a global intelligence failure."
The chairman said the committee concluded that an "intelligence assumption train," in which uncertain early judgments became the foundation for later, more definite conclusions, had contributed to the failure. The report itself said: "The presumption that Iraq had active W.M.D. programs affected intelligence collectors as well. None of the guidance given to human intelligence collectors suggested that collection be focused on whether Iraq had W.M.D."
On one important point, the committee found the C.I.A.'s conclusions reasonable Ñ that there had been no significant ties between Mr. Hussein and Al Qaeda terrorists.
Mr. Roberts said the report was harshly critical of the C.I.A., asserting that it had "abused its unique position" by failing to share information with other agencies. Such sharing, Mr. Roberts seemed to suggest, might have subjected some overblown C.I.A. findings to a probing analysis.
President Bush called the committee document a "useful report" about intelligence lapses. "We need to know," Mr. Bush said on a campaign stop in Kutztown, Pa., according to The Associated Press. "I want to know. I want to know how to make the agencies better." Mr. Bush has yet to nominate a replacement for George J. Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, who has just stepped down.
The campaign of Senator John Kerry, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, reacted cautiously to the Intelligence Committee's findings. Mark Kitchens, the campaign's deputy press secretary for national security, said: "Nothing in this report absolves the White House of its responsibility for mishandling of the country's intelligence. The fact is that when it comes to national security, the buck stops at the White House, not anywhere else."
At the C.I.A. itself, Deputy Director John McLaughlin both defended the agency and acknowledged the criticism. "We get it," said Mr. McLaughlin, who is about to become acting director. "Although we think the judgments were not unreasonable when they were made nearly two years ago, we understand with all we have learned since then, that we could have done better."
Mr. Roberts said the problems with the C.I.A. will not be fixed just by adding more money and more people. The nature of the necessary reforms is not entirely clear, he said, although his remarks implicitly urged a deep cultural change.
Indeed, a written summary of the report points to "a broken corporate culture and poor management" in the intelligence community. The C.I.A. is perhaps the best-known intelligence agency, and its director heads the overall intelligence-gathering effort, to which many lesser-known agencies contribute.
Whatever changes are eventually adopted, Mr. Roberts said, must be based on sound judgment rather than "expediency or media-generated momentum."
The committee's ranking Democrat, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, said one idea that had been advanced in intelligence circles is fixing a set term for the C.I.A. chief Ñ say, five or six years Ñ to insulate him from political influences.
Mr. Roberts and Mr. Rockefeller praised each other's energy and dedication. But even a cursory examination of Mr. Rockefeller's remarks made it clear that the report will be hotly debated during the presidential campaign.
"There is simply no question that mistakes leading up to the war in Iraq rank among the most devastating losses and intelligence failures in the history of the nation," Mr. Rockefeller said. "The fact is that the administration at all levels, and to some extent us, used bad information to bolster its case for war. And we in Congress would not have authorized that war Ñ we would NOT have authorized that war Ñ with 75 votes if we knew what we know now."
The West Virginian went so far as to assert that in some ways the intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq were worse than those that preceded the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. "Leading up to Sept. 11, our government didn't connect the dots," he said. "In Iraq, we are even more culpable because the dots themselves never existed."
Mr. Rockefeller went on to challenge one of the Bush administration's basic positions: that the war to topple Mr. Hussein had made the United States, the Middle East and the world safer, notwithstanding the failure so far to find deadly unconventional weapons that the administration had said were a growing danger.
"Tragically, the intelligence failure set forth in this report will affect our national security for generations to come," Mr. Rockefeller said. "Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower. We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."
That assertion is sure to be debated at length, as is the committee's finding that intelligence analysts were not subjected to political pressure. It is known, for instance, that Vice President Dick Cheney has been a frequent visitor to C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Va.
Although the report summary found no evidence that Mr. Cheney's visits had been intended to exert pressure, Mr. Rockefeller signaled that the question of who, if anyone, might have brought pressure to bear has not been answered to his satisfaction.
"I felt the definition of `pressure' was very narrowly drawn in the final report," Mr. Rockefeller said, noting that the C.I.A.'s ombudsman, who hears employees' complaints, had found more "hammering on analysts" than ever before in his 32 years at the C.I.A.
Mr. Rockefeller said the report issued today, coupled with indications that terrorists may be planning an attack in the United States in an attempt to disrupt the nation's political process, convey a disturbing message: "All of this simply is a way of saying time has run out."
