Iraq: What Did Congress Know, And When?
Bush says Congress had the same (faulty) intelligence he did. Howard
Dean says intelligence was "corrupted." We give facts.
November 19, 2005
Summary
The President says Democrats in Congress "had access to the same
intelligence" he did before the Iraq war, but some Democrats deny
it."That was not true," says Democratic National Committee Chairman
Howard Dean. "He withheld some intelligence. . . . The intelligence
was corrupted."
Neither side is giving the whole story in this continuing dispute.
The President's main point is correct: the CIA and most other US
intelligence agencies believed before the war that Saddam had stocks
of biological and chemical weapons, was actively working on nuclear
weapons and "probably" would have a nuclear weapon before the end of
this decade. That faulty intelligence was shared with Congress
along with multiple mentions of some doubts within the intelligence
community in a formal National Intelligence Estimate just prior to
the Senate and House votes to authorize the use of force against
Iraq.
No hard evidence has surfaced to support claims that Bush somehow
manipulated the findings of intelligence analysts. In fact, two
bipartisan investigations probed for such evidence and said they
found none. So Dean's claim that intelligence was "corrupted" is
unsupported.
But while official investigators have found no evidence that Bush
manipulated intelligence, they never took up the question of whether
the President and his top aides manipulated the public, something
Bush also denies.
In fact, before the war Bush and others often downplayed or omitted
any mention of doubts about Saddam's nuclear program. They said
Saddam might give chemical, biological or even nuclear weapons to
terrorists, although their own intelligence experts said that was
unlikely. Bush also repeatedly claimed Iraq had trained al Qaeda
terrorists in the use of poison gas, a story doubted at the time by
Pentagon intelligence analysts. The claim later was called a lie by
the al Qaeda detainee who originally told it to his US interrogators.
Analysis
The latest round of this continuing partisan dispute started Nov.
11, when Bush said in a Veterans' Day speech:
Bush: While it's perfectly legitimate to criticize my decision or
the conduct of the war, it is deeply irresponsible to rewrite the
history of how that war began. Some Democrats and anti-war critics
are now claiming we manipulated the intelligence and misled the
American people about why we went to war. These critics are fully
aware that a bipartisan Senate investigation found no evidence of
political pressure to change the intelligence community's judgments
related to Iraq's weapons programs.
They also know that intelligence agencies from around the world
agreed with our assessment of Saddam Hussein. They know the United
Nations passed more than a dozen resolutions citing his development
and possession of weapons of mass destruction. . . . That's why
more than a hundred Democrats in the House and the Senate -- who had
access to the same intelligence -- voted to support removing Saddam
Hussein from power.
What Was Congress Told?
The intelligence to which Bush refers is contained in a top-secret
document that was made available to all members of Congress in
October 2002, days before the House and Senate voted to authorize
Bush to use force in Iraq. This so-called National Intelligence
Estimate was supposed to be the combined US intelligence
community's "most authoritative written judgment concerning a
specific national security issue," according to the Senate
Intelligence Committee. The report was titled "Iraq's Continuing
Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction."
Though most of the document remains classified, the "Key Judgments"
section and some other paragraphs were cleared and released publicly
in July, 2003. The most recent and complete version available to the
public can be read on the website of George Washington University's
National Security Archive, which got it from the CIA under the
Freedom of Information Act.
The NIE as declassified and released by the CIA says pretty much
what Bush and his aides were saying publicly about Iraq's weapons -
nearly all of which turned out to be wrong:
CIA Release of NIE, October 2002: We judge that Iraq has continued
its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of UN
resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological
weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN
restrictions. If left unchecked it probably will have a nuclear
weapon within this decade.
Chemical Weapons: The CIA document expressed no doubt that Iraq had
large stocks of chemical weapons. "We assess that Baghdad has begun
renewed production of mustard, sarin, GF (cyclosarin), and VX," it
said. "Saddam probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons (MT) and
possibly as much as 500 MT of CW agents much of it added in the
last year." ("CW" refers to "chemical warfare" agents.)
Biological Weapons: The document also said "we judge" that Iraq had
an even bigger germ-warfare program than before the first Gulf War
in 1991. "We judge Iraq has some lethal and incapacitating BW agents
and is capable of quickly producing and weaponizing a variety of
such agents, including anthrax, for delivery by bombs, missiles,
aerial sprayers, and covert operatives," the report said. ("BW"
refers to "biological warfare.")
Nuclear Weapons: The document also said "most" US intelligence
agencies believed that some high-strength aluminum tubes that Iraq
had purchased were intended for use in centrifuge rotors used to
enrich uranium, and were "compelling evidence" that Saddam had put
his nuclear weapons program back together.
On the matter of the tubes, however, the report noted that there was
some dissent within the intelligence community. Members of Congress
could have read on page 6 of the report that the Department of
Energy "assesses that the tubes are probably not" part of a nuclear
program.
Some news reports have said this caveat was "buried" deeply in the
92-page report, but this is not so. The "Key Judgments" section
begins on page 5, and disagreements by the Department of Energy and
also the State Department are noted on pages 5,6,8 and 9, in
addition to a reference on page 84.
Though much has been made recently of doubts about the tubes, it
should be noted that even the Department of Energy's experts
believed Iraq did have an active nuclear program, despite their
conclusion that the tubes were not part of it. Even the DOE doubters
thought Saddam was working on a nuclear bomb.
Connection to terrorism.
On one important point the National Intelligence Estimate offered
little support for Bush's case for war, however. That was the
likelihood that Saddam would give chemical or biological weapons to
terrorists for use against the US.
Al Qaeda: The intelligence estimate said that if attacked and "if
sufficiently desperate" Saddam might turn to al Qaeda to carry out
an attack against the US with chemical or biological weapons. "He
might decide that the extreme step of assisting the Islamist
terrorist in conducting a CBW attack against the United States would
be his last chance to exact vengeance by taking a large number of
victims with him," the NIE said.
The report assigned "low confidence" to this finding, however, while
assigning "high confidence" to the findings that Iraq had active
chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs, and "moderate
confidence" that Iraq could have a nuclear weapon as early as 2007
to 2009.
That was the intelligence available to Congress when the House
passed the Iraq resolution Oct. 10, 2002 by a vote of 296-133. The
Senate passed it in the wee hours of Oct. 11, by a vote of 77-23. A
total of 81 Democrats in the House and 29 Democrats in the Senate
supported the resolution, including some who now are saying Bush
misled them.
A point worth noting is that few in Congress actually studied the
intelligence before voting. The Washington Post reported: "The
lawmakers are partly to blame for their ignorance. Congress was
entitled to view the 92-page National Intelligence Estimate about
Iraq before the October 2002 vote. But . . . no more than six
senators and a handful of House members read beyond the five-page
executive summary."
"Corrupted" Intelligence?
On all key points, of course, that National Intelligence Estimate
turned out to be wrong. No stockpiles of chemical or biological
weapons have been found, nor any evidence that Saddam had an active
program to enrich uranium or make nuclear weapons. The aluminum
tubes turned out to be for use in Iraqi rockets, just as the
Department of Energy experts had argued.
That has led to claims that intelligence was deliberately slanted to
justify the war in Iraq. On NBC's Meet the Press Nov. 13, Democratic
National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said the intelligence given
to Congress was "corrupted" and that Bush withheld information.
Dean: The intelligence was corrupted, not just because of the
incompetence of the CIA; it was corrupted because it was being
changed around before it was presented to Congress . Stuff was taken
out and not presented. All of this business about weapons of mass
destruction, there was significant and substantial evidence . . .
that said, "There is a strong body of opinion that says they don't
have a nuclear program, nor do they have weapons of mass
destruction." And that intelligence was not given to the Congress of
the United States.
NBC's Tim Russert: It was in the National Intelligence Estimate, as
a caveat by the State Department.
Dean: It was, a very small one, but the actual caveat that the White
House got were (sic) much, much greater. And the deputy to Colin
Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson, just said so. He just came out and said
so.
On this point Dean is incorrect . Wilkerson, who was State
Department chief of staff during Bush's first term, actually said
there was an "overwhelming" consensus within the intelligence
community. He said the State Department dissented only regarding a
nuclear program, not about whether Saddam possessed chemical and
biological weapons.
Wilkerson, Oct. 19, 2005: And people say, well, INR (the State
Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research) dissented. That's
a bunch of bull. INR dissented that the nuclear program was up and
running. That's all INR dissented on. They were right there with
the chems and the bios.
. . . The consensus of the intelligence community was overwhelming.
I can still hear (CIA Director) George Tenet telling me, and telling
my boss (Colin Powell) in the bowels of the CIA, that the
information we were delivering . . . (He) was convinced that what we
were presented was accurate.
Wilkerson, it should be noted, is no apologist for Bush. This
excerpt comes from the same speech in which Wilkerson went public
with a well-publicized complaint that decisions leading up to the
war were made by a "cabal" between Vice President Cheney and Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and "a President who is not versed in
international relations and not too much interested in them either."
Previously, two bipartisan commissions investigated and found no
evidence of political manipulation of intelligence.
In 2004 the Senate Intelligence Committee said, in a report adopted
unanimously by both Republican and Democratic members:
Senate Intelligence Committee: The Committee did not find any
evidence that intelligence analysts changed their judgments as a
result of political pressure, altered or produced intelligence
products to conform with Administration policy, or that anyone even
attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to do so. When
asked whether analysts were pressured in any way to alter their
assessments or make their judgments conform with Administration
policies on Iraq's WMD programs, not a single analyst
answered "yes." (p273)
A later bipartisan commission, co-chaired by Republican appeals-
court judge Laurence Silberman and a Democratic former governor and
senator from Virginia, Charles Robb, issued a report in March, 2005
saying:
Silberman-Robb Report: These (intelligence) errors stem from poor
tradecraft and poor management. The Commission found no evidence of
political pressure to influence the Intelligence Community's pre-war
assessments of Iraq's weapons programs. As we discuss in detail in
the body of our report, analysts universally asserted that in no
instance did political pressure cause them to skew or alter any of
their analytical judgments. We conclude that it was the paucity of
intelligence and poor analytical tradecraft, rather than political
pressure, that produced the inaccurate pre-war intelligence
assessments.
Although the Silberman-Robb commission was appointed by President
Bush, it included prominent Democrats and Republican Sen. John
McCain, whom Bush defeated for the Republican presidential
nomination in 2000.
Misleading the Public?
Neither the Senate Intelligence Committee nor the Silberman-Robb
commission considered how Bush and his top aides used the
intelligence that was given to them, or whether they misled the
public. The Senate Intelligence Committee is supposed to take that
up in "phase two" of its investigation and there's plenty to
investigate.
Vice President Cheney, for example, said this on NBC's Meet the
Press barely a month before Congress voted to authorize force:
Cheney, Sept. 8, 2002: But we do know, with absolute certainty,
that he (Saddam) is using his procurement system to acquire the
equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear
weapon.
As we've seen, that was wrong. Department of Energy and State
Department intelligence analysts did not agree with the Vice
President's claim, which turned out to be false. Cheney may have
felt "absolute certainty" in his own mind, but that certainty wasn't
true of the entire intelligence community, as his use of the
word "we" implied.
Similarly, the President himself said this in a speech to the
nation, just three days before the House vote to authorize force:
Bush, Oct. 7, 2002: We've learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda
members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases . And we know
that after September the 11th, Saddam Hussein's regime gleefully
celebrated the terrorist attacks on America.
Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or
chemical weapon to a terrorist group or individual terrorists.
Alliance with terrorists could allow the Iraqi regime to attack
America without leaving any fingerprints.
That statement is open to challenge on two grounds. For one thing,
as we've seen, the intelligence community was reporting to Bush and
Congress that they thought it unlikely that Saddam would give
chemical or biological weapons to terrorists and only "if
sufficiently desperate" and as a "last chance to exact revenge" for
the very attack that Bush was then advocating.
Furthermore, the claim that Iraq had trained al Qaeda in the use of
poison gas turned out to be false, and some in the intelligence
community were expressing doubts about it at the time Bush spoke. It
was based on statements by a senior trainer for al Qaeda who had
been captured in Afghanistan. The detainee, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi,
took back his story in 2004 and the CIA withdrew all claims based on
it. But even at the time Bush spoke, Pentagon intelligence analysts
said it was likely al-Libi was lying.
According to newly declassified documents, the Defense Intelligence
Agency said in February 2002 seven months before Bush's speech
"it is . . . likely this individual is intentionally misleading
the debriefers. Ibn al-Shaykh has been undergoing debriefs for
several weeks and may be describing scenarios to the debriefers that
he knows will retain their interest. . . . Saddam's regime is
intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements.
Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it
cannot control." The DIA's doubts were revealed Nov. 6 in newly
declassified documents made public by Democratic Sen. Carl Levin of
Michigan, a member of the Intelligence Committee.
Whether or not Bush was aware of the Pentagon's doubts is not yet
clear.
Sources
Transcript:"President Commemorates Veterans Day, Discusses War on
Terror," Tobyhanna Army Depot, Tobyhanna, Pennsylvania, The White
House 11 Nov 2005.
Transcript: "Transcript for November 13: Guests: His Majesty King
Abdullah II, Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan; Ken Mehlman, Chairman,
Republican National Committee; and Howard Dean, Chairman, Democratic
National Committee," Meet the Press, NBC, 13 November 2005.
Select Committee On Intelligence, United States Senate, " Report On
The U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments On
Iraq ," 7 July 2004.
The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States
Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, " Report to the President of
the United States ," 31 March 2005.
Dana Milbank and Walter Pincus, " Asterisks Dot White House's Iraq
Argument," The Washington Post , 12 Nov 2005; A1.
Central Intelligence Agency, NIE 2002-16HC, " National Intelligence
Estimate : Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass
Destruction," October 2002. Redacted, declassified version released
under Freedom of Information Act to George Washington University's
National Security Archive, posted 9 July 2004.
Transcript, Remarks of former State Department chief of staff
Lawrence Wilkerson, New America Foundation, Washington DC, 19 Oct.
2005.
Judd Legum, Faiz Shakir, Nico Pitney Amanda Terkel, Payson Schwin &
Christy Harvey, " Bush's Reverse Slam Dunk," The Progress Report,
American Progress Action Fund 14 Nov 2005.
"Vice President Dick Cheney discusses 9/11 anniversary, Iraq,
nation's economy and politics 2002," Transcript, Meet the Press,
NBC, 8 Sep 2002.
Transcript: "President Bush Outlines Iraqi Threat," Remarks by the
President on Iraq, Cincinnati Museum Center - Cincinnati Union
Terminal,Cincinnati, Ohio, 7 Oct 2002.
"Levin Says Newly Declassified Information Indicates Bush
Administration's Use of Pre-War Intelligence Was Misleading," press
release with supporting documents, office of Sen. Carl Levin 6 Nov
2005.
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