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Key Hill Panel Faults Intelligence Community for Flawed Iraq Analysis;
Kay Report Stalled
As the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction (WMD) continues
without any weapons discoveries and the Bush administration steadily
retreats from some of its earlier claims, a key congressional committee
has reportedly issued a harsh critique of the intelligence community’s
Iraq analysis. The administration has been promising for months
that questions surrounding its so far unproven claims about Iraq’s
arsenals would be resolved by a report from a CIA task force headed
by David Kay, a former International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
inspector. But administration officials have recently cast doubt
on whether that report will ever be made public.
“I would not count on [public] reports,” National Security
Adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters during a press briefing
Sept. 22. During a Sept. 28 appearance on FOX News Sunday, Rice
said Kay’s “progress report” is “likely not
to draw...major conclusions.” She added that the administration
“will make known [Kay’s] findings” but did not say
if the report would be released to the public.
Bush officials continue to insist that evidence of programs to produce
prohibited weapons, as well as weapons themselves, will be found.
However, Marine Corps Lt. Gen. James Conway said during a Sept.
9 press briefing that Iraqi weapons “were not at the operational
level.”
The Washington Post reported Sept. 28 that Rep. Porter Goss
(R-Fla.), chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and ranking
member Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) sent a letter Sept. 25 to CIA
Director George Tenet criticizing the intelligence community for
lacking the ability to collect new evidence about Iraqi weapons
capabilities and relying on “past assessments.” The letter
adds that the intelligence community took “the absence of proof”
that Iraq had destroyed prohibited weapons as “proof that they
continued to exist.” CIA spokesman Bill Harlow called the letter’s
findings “premature and wrong,” according to the Post.
Retreating
During the past few months, administration officials have backtracked
from their earlier assertions about Iraq’s weapons. Prior to
the invasion, officials vigorously asserted that Baghdad possessed
weapons of mass destruction. (See
ACT, July/August 2003 and September
2003.) In public statements since June, however, officials have
stressed that inspectors are certain to find evidence of weapons
programs rather than actual weapons.
Two senior administration officials recently corrected claims they
made months ago. During a Sept. 10 press conference, Secretary of
Defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged that his March 30 claim that
“we know where…[Iraq’s WMD] are. They’re in
the area around Tikrit and Baghdad” was inaccurate and said
he should have stated that “our intelligence tells us they’re
in that area.”
Similarly, Vice President Dick Cheney told NBC’s Meet the Press
Sept. 14 that he misspoke when he said during a March 16 interview
that Iraq had “reconstituted nuclear weapons” and that
he merely meant to say Iraq had the “capability” to develop
such weapons—a claim he had repeated earlier in the show.
The vice president then went on to make a number of questionable
charges. For instance, he said an Iraqi scientist came forward with
“full designs” for a gas centrifuge “system,”
as well as the “key parts” to “build such a system.”
That scientist, however, had hidden the parts since 1991 and an
IAEA official said the component set was incomplete and the documents
appeared to contain errors. (See
ACT, September 2003.) Gas centrifuges can be used to
enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons.
Cheney also asserted that Iraq possessed mobile units to produce
biological weapons, citing the discovery of two trailers that, according
to the CIA, were designed for this purpose. A Department of State
memorandum, however, expresses doubts about whether the trailers
were built to produce biological weapons. (See
ACT, July/August 2003 and June
2003.)
Moreover, Cheney stated that he had never seen a 2002 report by
former U.S. Ambassador Joseph Wilson that calls into question intelligence
reports accusing Iraq of trying to acquire uranium in Niger—a
key component of the administration’s nuclear weapons charges
against Iraq. In a Sept. 16 interview, Wilson argued that he believed
the government’s system for getting such information to senior
officials would had to have changed significantly in order for Cheney’s
account to be true. (See
ACT, September 2003.)
As the possibility of finding weapons or significant weapons programs
recedes, officials have continued to stress other motives for the
Iraq invasion. Secretary of State Colin Powell argued during a Sept.
28 television appearance that Saddam Hussein’s appalling human
rights record, along with suspected ties to terrorists and WMD activities,
justified the invasion. In a Sept. 5 interview, Richard Haass, the
State Department’s recently departed director of policy planning
maintained there was “a menu of arguments” for the invasion,
including “the feeling that we had to score a geopolitical
victory” in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
The IAEA Reports
Meanwhile, the IAEA says it had found no evidence of a nuclear weapons
program in Iraq by the time it left the country March 18, according
to a report summarizing IAEA inspection activities pertaining to
Iraq since September 2002 and released during the Sept. 15-19 general
conference. However, the report adds that the agency did not have
enough time to completely resolve questions over whether Iraq’s
capabilities had changed since December 1998, when Iraq stopped
cooperating with inspectors.
The report goes on to say that the IAEA would have been able to
provide “credible assurance” that Iraq had not revived
its nuclear program “within an additional two to three months
of continuing verification activities.”
The document also summarizes the agency’s June 7-23 inspection
of the Tuwaitha nuclear complex following reports that nuclear material
had been looted during the March invasion. (See ACT, July/August
2003). The inspectors estimated that at least 10 kilograms of uranium
compounds could have been dispersed but that the materials are not
a proliferation concern.
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