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Kay Revives Fracas Over U.S. Intelligence on Iraq
The Bush administration is facing a formidable diplomatic and
political challenge after a key official said that he expected any
weapons hunt in Iraq will prove largely futile.
The CIA announced Jan. 23 that David Kay was stepping down as its
adviser to the Iraq Survey Group (ISG), the task force charged with
coordinating the U.S.-led search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) after the U.S.-led invasion of that country in March 2003.
The same day, Kay began a series of public discussions of his results,
further fueling the ongoing controversy over the failures of prewar
U.S. intelligence and the Bush administration to accurately portray
the status of Iraq’s weapons programs.
Kay said that he did not expect the search to turn up any significant
chemical or biological weapons stockpiles and that he believed Iraq
destroyed its prohibited chemical and biological weapons produced
before the 1991 Persian Gulf War, either unilaterally or under the
supervision of UN weapons inspectors who worked in Iraq from 1991
until 1998. Iraq did not resume large-scale production after destroying
these weapons, and there is no evidence that it reconstituted its
nuclear weapons program, he said.
Kay’s claims run counter to public speculation by President
George W. Bush and administration officials that Iraq may have destroyed
or moved its prohibited weapons just prior to the invasion or that
the weapons remain hidden. The administration has set up an independent
commission to investigate the matter, but critics question whether
it will address some of the most pressing questions about the intelligence,
particularly whether the president and other senior officials distorted
or manipulated the information they were provided by the intelligence
agencies.
Administration officials continue to emphasize that the ISG must
finish its work before any conclusions about Iraq’s weapons
programs can be reached. Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee
Jan. 28 that “85 percent of the major elements of the Iraqi
program are probably known” but that the investigation’s
results likely will be clouded by “an unresolvable [sic] ambiguity”
because post-invasion Iraqi looting and destruction ruined the chances
of recovering important evidence. Former UN weapons inspector Charles
Duelfer has replaced Kay.
The ISG’s resources are not entirely devoted to the weapons
search. Kay said he stepped down in part because the ISG’s
personnel were being diverted to tasks such as combating the anti-U.S.
insurgency in Iraq.
Intelligence Controversy Heats Up
Kay’s resignation and subsequent remarks have ramped up the
nearly year-long debate over the inaccuracy of the administration’s
unequivocal prewar statements that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear
weapons program and possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological
weapons. Both flawed intelligence and officials’ misrepresentations
of the intelligence data appear to be responsible.
Public opinion has shifted against the administration. In a Gallup
poll taken in late January, 43 percent of those survied said they
thought the Bush administration misled Americans about whether Iraq
had WMD, up from 31 percent in a survey from May.
Kay told the Senate committee that U.S. intelligence collection
efforts failed in Iraq because the intelligence community had grown
reliant during the 1990s on information from UN weapons inspectors
and failed to develop their own human intelligence sources. When
inspectors were forced out in 1998 and that source of information
of information disappeared, Kay said, intelligence analysts had
to make judgments about Iraq’s weapons programs based on inadequate
data. In particular, U.S. analysts were left to rely on foreign
intelligence services, as well as on “national technical means,”
such as satellite imagery and communications intercepts. Kay also
pointed out that the intelligence community failed to understand
the magnitude of Iraqi corruption, which led analysts to believe
that Baghdad was more efficient at producing weapons than it actually
was.
In a Feb. 5 speech at Georgetown University, CIA director George
Tenet acknowledged that the intelligence analysis had been conditioned
by Iraq’s past behavior. Specifically, the intelligence community
believed Iraq was continuing to develop nuclear, chemical, and biological
weapons, as well as prohibited missiles, because Iraq had developed
weapons in the past and failed to account for them. The United States
also had communications intercepts and satellite photographs indicating
that Iraq was producing and concealing prohibited weapons, he said.
Tenet acknowledged that the United States did not have enough of
its own human intelligence in Iraq and that it relied on sometimes
unreliable sources, such as defectors, for information.
What Tenet did not discuss is that, in addition to sometimes erring
in its judgments, the CIA also sometimes failed to inform the public
about important internal disagreements regarding Iraq intelligence.
In particular, the classified version of the October 2002 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE)—the most recent on Iraq’s
WMD programs—contained numerous qualifications and caveats,
but the public version omitted many of these. For example, the public
NIE stated that Iraq was developing an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
“that most analysts believe probably is intended to deliver
biological warfare agents” but did not note an Air Force assessment
that stated the UAVs were probably for reconnaissance purposes.
Democrats were also quick to point out that White House officials
also made statements that were apparently unsupported by the intelligence
in either the classified or unclassified versions of the NIE. For
example, Vice President Dick Cheney stated in March 2003 that Iraq
had “reconstituted” its nuclear weapons program even though
the evidence the administration had been using to support this claim
already had been widely discredited. (See
ACT, September 2003.) Also in March, Bush maintained
that Iraq continued to possess “chemical agents,” although
a September 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency study stated that “there
is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling
chemical weapons.” (See
ACT, July/August 2003.) In addition, against the recommendation
of the CIA, White House officials, including the president in his
2003 State of the Union address, claimed on several occasions that
Iraq had attempted to acquire uranium from Africa. (See
ACT, September 2003.)
Investigation Ordered
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The Commission
On Feb. 7, President George W. Bush appointed seven members*
of a bipartisan commission to investigate intelligence failures
used to justify the Iraq war.
Chairs:
Charles S. Robb, former Democratic senator
from Virginia
Laurence Silberman, retired
Republican judge
Other members:
Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.)
Lloyd Cutler, former White
House counsel
Patricia M. Wald, retired
Democratic judge
Richard C. Levin, president of
Yale University
Adm. William O. Studeman (Ret.), former CIA deputy director
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Bush issued an executive order Feb. 6 establishing a commission
to investigate U.S. intelligence capabilities to assess WMD threats.
Although the commission’s task includes comparing U.S. prewar
intelligence on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction with the
ISG’s findings, there is no indication that it will examine
U.S. officials’ public statements regarding Iraq’s weapons.
The White House said the commission is “independent,”
but the White House appointed the members. The commission’s
report is due March 31, 2005.
Congressional investigations regarding Iraq intelligence have been
underway for months, but none have made their conclusions public.
The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence circulated a draft of
its investigation to other committee members Feb. 5. That investigation
has focused on the quality of the intelligence community’s
analysis on Iraq, but the committee announced Feb. 12 that it would
expand the probe to examine whether administration officials’
statements were “substantiated by intelligence.” The committee
will also investigate the intelligence activities of the Office
of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, which reportedly provided
raw intelligence to the White House indicating Iraq had illicit
weapons.
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith said in a June
2003 press briefing that his office’s effort “was not
focused on Iraq” but stated that the Pentagon analysts found
“linkages between Iraq and al Qaeda” and also “looked
at” weapons of mass destruction.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is conducting
its own investigation, but it is still unclear whether the committee
has looked into the administration’s use of intelligence.
The Administration’s Defense
Although Bush concedes that much of the prewar U.S. intelligence
regarding Iraq’s weapons programs was inaccurate and that such
weapons may not have existed, he continues to defend the invasion.
In a Feb. 8 television interview, Bush said that his decision to
invade was made “on the best intelligence possible,” and
he reiterated Tenet’s reasoning for believing Iraq possessed
weapons of mass destruction.
However, UN inspectors who had resumed work in Iraq in November
2002 reported just before the invasion that there was no evidence
that Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction or had reconstituted
its programs. (See
ACT, April 2003.)
Nevertheless, Bush said Feb. 8 that the ISG’s findings prove
Iraq had the “capacity to produce weapons,” and he restated
his belief that the invasion was justified because the risk of Iraqi
WMD acquisition was intolerable in the aftermath of the Sept. 11,
2001, terrorist attacks on the United States. (See
ACT, January/February 2004.)
Kay’s findings, however, provide little support for this argument.
Although Secretary of State Colin Powell testified before the House
International Relations Committee Feb. 11 that Iraq had “dual-use”
factories that could rapidly produce illicit weapons, Kay told the
Boston Globe Feb. 17 that Iraq did not have the ability to produce
weapons on a large scale.
Kay reported in October 2003 that the ISG had discovered evidence
of low-level, dual-use biological and nuclear research efforts and
stated Feb. 5 that Iraq had conducted some chemical research as
well. (See
ACT, November 2003.)
Powell dismissed the role of UN inspectors and sanctions in a Feb.
2 interview with The Washington Post, asserting that “the inspectors
were being deceived” and arguing that the “international
community wouldn’t have kept constraining” Iraq.
Although the sanctions regime was weakening at the beginning of
the Bush administration, that was not the case in March 2003. Several
members of the UN Security Council proposed alternatives to invasion
that would have augmented the inspections regime and continued sanctions.
Additionally, UN Security Council resolutions required Iraq to allow
UN monitoring to prevent future attempts at rearming.
Kay testified Jan. 28 that UN inspectors were more effective than
he had previously thought but cautioned that Iraqi personnel had
concealed material from the inspectors after they returned in 2002
that would likely not have been found.
Kay’s argument is difficult to assess. Demetrius Perricos,
executive chairman of the UN Monitoring, Verification, and Inspection
Commission told the Security Council in December that the inspectors
were already aware of most of the information in Kay’s October
report.
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