The Scum at the Top
Commentary on the Rats in Washington
CIA Boss: Iraq Never an Imminent Threat
By Katherine Pfleger
Associated Press
© February 5, 2004
WASHINGTON (AP) - In his first public defense in the growing
controversy over intelligence, CIA Director George Tenet
said Thursday that U.S. analysts never claimed before the
war that Iraq was an imminent threat. The urgency of such
a threat was the main argument used by President Bush for
going to war.
In a speech clearly aimed at protecting the CIA from becoming
a scapegoat, Tenet said analysts held varying opinions about
whether Iraq possessed chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons before the war. Those differences were spelled out
in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate given to
the White House, he said.
"They never said there was an imminent threat," Tenet said
of the analysts. "Rather, they painted an objective
assessment for our policy makers of a brutal dictator
who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build
programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten
our interests."
"No one told us what to say or how to say it," Tenet said.
In the months before the war, Bush and his top aides
repeatedly stressed the urgency of stopping Saddam Hussein.
In a Sept. 12 speech to the United Nations, the president
called Saddam's regime "a grave and gathering danger."
The next day, he told reporters that Saddam was "a threat
that we must deal with as quickly as possible."
In an Oct. 7, 2002, speech in Ohio, Bush said "the danger
is already significant and it only grows worse with time."
On Thursday, Bush repeated that "America confronted a
gathering threat in Iraq. The dictatorship of Saddam
Hussein was one of the most brutal, corrupt and dangerous
regimes in the world. For years the dictator funded
terrorists, and gave reward money for suicide bombings."
Speaking in Charleston, S.C., Bush said Saddam is today
"sitting in a prison cell, and he will be sitting in a
courtroom to answer for his crimes." But, he conceded,
"As the chief weapons inspector has said, we have not yet
found the weapons we thought were there.'' Bush added that
inspectors have found possible evidence of weapons programs.
"Knowing what I knew then and knowing what I know today,
America did the right thing in Iraq," he said, in a line
that drew long applause from an audience of military
personnel and cadets.
The failure to find weapons of mass destruction is turning
into a major political issue ahead of the presidential
election, calling into question Bush's justification for
the war as U.S. casualties mount.
Tenet said U.S. intelligence accurately reported to Bush
before the war that Saddam's regime posed a danger. He
revealed that two sources with high-level access to Saddam's
regime told the CIA in the fall of 2002, shortly before
the war, that production of biological and chemical
weapons was going on inside Iraq.
Those sources "solidified and reinforced ... my own view
of the danger posed by Saddam's regime," Tenet said,
taking direct responsibility for what was passed on to
Bush.
Yet he acknowledged no such weapons have been found, and
that many of the agency's prewar estimates of weapons of
mass destruction have not been borne out so far. He insisted
the search isn't over.
"We are nowhere near 85 percent finished," he said, in
a direct rebuttal to statements made by his former chief
adviser on Iraq's weapons, David Kay that sparked the
intense debate over prewar intelligence.
Tenet spoke a day before Bush was expected to name a
commission to examine intelligence problems.
On specific matters, Tenet acknowledged that U.S.
analysts believed that Saddam's regime was trying to
reconstitute its nuclear weapons program but have found
no evidence of that.
On chemical and biological weapons, Tenet said analysts
believed that Saddam had ongoing programs and perhaps
stockpiles and have found no evidence of such weapons
production.
Tenet outlined the sources of the CIA's prewar estimates
with a public detail that intelligence agencies usually
shy from. He said they were based on years of U.N.
weapons inspections. Once the inspectors left in the
late 1990s, the estimates were based mostly on informants -
some he acknowledged as suspect - and on technical
intelligence, he said.
On one key point that is befuddling weapons inspectors,
Tenet said he did not know at this point whether it was
possible Saddam's own officials had lied to the Iraqi
leader about what his regime had in the way of weapons.
Republicans in Congress have increasingly been citing
poor intelligence and Tenet, who was appointed by President
Clinton, in the growing controversy over why no weapons
have been found. Democrats have said intelligence agencies
deserved only part of the blame and have accused the White
House of cherrypicking intelligence that bolstered the
case for war, while ignoring dissenting opinions.
Even as Tenet acknowledged some intelligence shortcomings
in Iraq, he cited other work that he said represented
great successes. He credited U.S. intelligence on Iran
and Libya's nuclear programs, for example, with recent
decisions by those countries to cooperate with international
arms inspectors.
Tenet also said CIA spies provided the tips that led to
the arrests of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, purported mastermind
behind the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and of Asia's leading
terror suspect, Hambali.
02/05/04 15:21
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