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Neglecting
Intelligence, Ignoring Warnings
A chronology of how the Bush Administration repeatedly
and deliberately refused to listen to intelligence agencies that
said its case for war was weak
January 28, 2004
Updated January 29, 2004
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Former weapons inspector David Kay now says Iraq probably did not
have WMD before the war, a major blow to the Bush Administration
which used the WMD argument as the rationale for war. Unfortunately,
Kay and the Administration are now attempting to shift the blame for
misleading America onto the intelligence community. But a review of
the facts shows the intelligence community repeatedly warned the
Bush Administration about the weakness of its case, but was
circumvented, overruled, and ignored. The following is year-by-year
timeline of those warnings.
2001: WH Admits Iraq Contained; Creates
Agency to Circumvent Intel Agencies
In 2001 and before, intelligence agencies noted that Saddam
Hussein was effectively contained after the Gulf War. In fact,
former weapons inspector David Kay now admits that the previous
policy of containment – including the 1998 bombing of Iraq –
destroyed any remaining infrastructure of potential WMD programs.
OCTOBER 8, 1997 – IAEA SAYS IRAQ FREE OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS:
"As reported in detail in the progress report dated 8 October
1997…and based on all credible information available to date, the
IAEA's verification activities in Iraq, have resulted in the
evolution of a technically coherent picture of Iraq's clandestine
nuclear programme. These verification activities have revealed no
indications that Iraq had achieved its programme objective of
producing nuclear weapons or that Iraq had produced more than a few
grams of weapon-usable nuclear material or had clandestinely
acquired such material. Furthermore, there are no indications that
there remains in Iraq any physical capability for t he production of
weapon-usable nuclear material of any practical significance."
[Source: IAEA Report,
10/8/98]
FEBRUARY 23 & 24, 2001 – COLIN POWELL SAYS IRAQ IS
CONTAINED: "I think we ought to declare [the containment
policy] a success. We have kept him contained, kept him in his box."
He added Saddam "is unable to project conventional power against his
neighbors" and that "he threatens not the United States." [Source:
State Department,
2/23/01
and 2/24/01]
SEPTEMBER 16, 2001 – CHENEY ACKNOWLEDGES IRAQ IS CONTAINED:
Vice President Dick Cheney said that "Saddam Hussein is bottled up"
– a confirmation of the intelligence he had received. [Source: Meet
the Press,
9/16/2001]
SEPTEMBER 2001 – WHITE HOUSE CREATES OFFICE TO CIRCUMVENT
INTEL AGENCIES: The Pentagon creates the Office of Special
Plans "in order to find evidence of what Wolfowitz and his boss,
Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, believed to be true-that Saddam
Hussein had close ties to Al Qaeda, and that Iraq had an enormous
arsenal of chemical, biological, and possibly even nuclear weapons
that threatened the region and, potentially, the United States…The
rising influence of the Office of Special Plans was accompanied by a
decline in the influence of the C.I.A. and the D.I.A. bringing
about a crucial change of direction in the American intelligence
community." The office, hand-picked by the Administration,
specifically "cherry-picked intelligence that supported its
pre-existing position and ignoring all the rest" while officials
deliberately "bypassed the government's customary procedures for
vetting intelligence." [Sources: New Yorker, 5/12/03; Atlantic
Monthly,
1/04;
New Yorker,
10/20/03]
2002: Intel Agencies Repeatedly Warn White
House of Its Weak WMD Case
Throughout 2002, the CIA, DIA, Department of Energy and United
Nations all warned the Bush Administration that its selective use of
intelligence was painting a weak WMD case. Those warnings were
repeatedly ignored.
JANUARY, 2002 – TENET DOES NOT MENTION IRAQ IN NUCLEAR
THREAT REPORT: "In CIA Director George Tenet's January 2002
review of global weapons-technology proliferation, he did not even
mention a nuclear threat from Iraq, though he did warn of one from
North Korea." [Source: The New Republic,
6/30/03]
FEBRUARY 6, 2002 – CIA
SAYS IRAQ HAS NOT PROVIDED WMD TO TERRORISTS: "The
Central Intelligence Agency has no evidence that Iraq has engaged in
terrorist operations against the United States in nearly a decade,
and the agency is also convinced that President Saddam Hussein has
not provided chemical or biological weapons to Al Qaeda or related
terrorist groups, according to several American intelligence
officials." [Source: NY Times,
2/6/02]
APRIL 15, 2002 – WOLFOWITZ ANGERED AT CIA FOR NOT
UNDERMINING U.N. REPORT: After receiving a CIA report that
concluded that Hans Blix had conducted inspections of Iraq's
declared nuclear power plants "fully within the parameters he could
operate" when Blix was head of the international agency responsible
for these inspections prior to the Gulf War, a report indicated that
"Wolfowitz ‘hit the ceiling’ because the CIA failed to provide
sufficient ammunition to undermine Blix and, by association, the new
U.N. weapons inspection program." [Source: W. Post,
4/15/02]
SUMMER, 2002 – CIA WARNINGS TO WHITE HOUSE EXPOSED:
"In the late summer of 2002, Sen. Graham had requested from Tenet an
analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he
received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view
that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting,
for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to
Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also
received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same
cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when,
midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the
threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and
consigned skepticism to footnotes." [Source: The New Republic,
6/30/03]
SEPTEMBER, 2002 – DIA TELLS WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE OF
CHEMICAL WEAPONS: "An unclassified excerpt of a 2002 Defense
Intelligence Agency study on Iraq's chemical warfare program in
which it stated that there is ‘no reliable information on whether
Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or where Iraq
has - or will - establish its chemical warfare agent production
facilities.’" The report also said, "A substantial amount of Iraq's
chemical warfare agents, precursors, munitions, and production
equipment were destroyed between 1991 and 1998 as a result of
Operation Desert Storm and UNSCOM (United Nations Special
Commission) actions." [Source: Carnegie Endowment for Peace,
6/13/03; DIA report,
2002]
SEPTEMBER 20, 2002 – DEPT. OF ENERGY TELLS WHITE HOUSE OF
NUKE DOUBTS: "Doubts about the quality of some of the
evidence that the United States is using to make its case that
Iraq is trying to build a nuclear bomb emerged Thursday. While
National Security Adviser Condi Rice stated on 9/8 that imported
aluminum tubes ‘are only really suited for nuclear weapons
programs, centrifuge programs’ a growing number of experts say that
the administration has not presented convincing evidence that the
tubes were intended for use in uranium enrichment rather than for
artillery rocket tubes or other uses. Former U.N. weapons inspector
David Albright said he found significant disagreement among
scientists within the Department of Energy and other agencies about
the certainty of the evidence." [Source: UPI, 9/20/02]
OCTOBER 2002 – CIA DIRECTLY WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The
CIA sent two memos to the White House in October voicing strong
doubts about a claim President Bush made three months later in the
State of the Union address that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear
materials in Africa." [Source: Washington Post,
7/23/03]
OCTOBER 2002 — STATE DEPT. WARNS WHITE HOUSE ON NUKE
CHARGES: The State Department’s Intelligence and Research
Department dissented from the conclusion in the National
Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that Iraq was
reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. "The activities we have
detected do not ... add up to a compelling case that Iraq is
currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and
comprehensive approach to acquiring nuclear weapons." INR accepted
the judgment by Energy Department technical experts that aluminum
tubes Iraq was seeking to acquire, which was the central basis for
the conclusion that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons
program, were ill-suited to build centrifuges for enriching uranium.
[Source, Declassified Iraq NIE released
7/2003]
OCTOBER 2002 – AIR FORCE WARNS WHITE HOUSE: "The
government organization most knowledgeable about the United States'
UAV program -- the Air Force's National Air and Space Intelligence
Center -- had sharply disputed the notion that Iraq's UAVs were
being designed as attack weapons" – a WMD claim President Bush used
in his October 7 speech on Iraqi WMD, just three days before the
congressional vote authorizing the president to use force. [Source:
Washington Post, 9/26/03]
2003: WH Pressures Intel Agencies to
Conform; Ignores More Warnings
Instead of listening to the repeated warnings from the
intelligence community, intelligence officials say the White House
instead pressured them to conform their reports to fit a
pre-determined policy. Meanwhile, more evidence from international
institutions poured in that the White House’s claims were not
well-grounded.
LATE 2002-EARLY 2003 – CHENEY PRESSURES CIA TO CHANGE
INTELLIGENCE: "Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips
to CIA headquarters in the run-up to the war for unusual,
face-to-face sessions with intelligence analysts poring over Iraqi
data. The pressure on the intelligence community to document the
administration's claims that the Iraqi regime had ties to al-Qaida
and was pursuing a nuclear weapons capacity was ‘unremitting,’ said
former CIA counterterrorism chief Vince Cannistraro, echoing several
other intelligence veterans interviewed." Additionally, CIA
officials "charged that the hard-liners in the Defense Department
and vice president's office had 'pressured' agency analysts to paint
a dire picture of Saddam's capabilities and intentions." [Sources:
Dallas Morning News, 7/28/03; Newsweek, 7/28/03]
JANUARY, 2003 – STATE DEPT. INTEL BUREAU REITERATE WARNING
TO POWELL: "The Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR),
the State Department's in-house analysis unit, and nuclear experts
at the Department of Energy are understood to have explicitly warned
Secretary of State Colin Powell during the preparation of his speech
that the evidence was questionable. The Bureau reiterated to Mr.
Powell during the preparation of his February speech that its
analysts were not persuaded that the aluminum tubes the
Administration was citing could be used in centrifuges to enrich
uranium." [Source: Financial Times, 7/30/03]
FEBRUARY 14, 2003 – UN WARNS WHITE HOUSE THAT NO WMD HAVE
BEEN FOUND: "In their third progress report since U.N.
Security Council Resolution 1441 was passed in November, inspectors
told the council they had not found any weapons of mass
destruction." Weapons inspector Hans Blix told the U.N. Security
Council they had been unable to find any WMD in Iraq and that more
time was needed for inspections. [Source: CNN,
2/14/03]
FEBRUARY 15, 2003 – IAEA WARNS WHITE HOUSE NO NUCLEAR
EVIDENCE: The head of the IAEA told the U.N. in February
that "We have to date found no evidence of ongoing prohibited
nuclear or nuclear-related activities in Iraq." The IAEA examined
"2,000 pages of documents seized Jan. 16 from an Iraqi scientist's
home -- evidence, the Americans said, that the Iraqi regime was
hiding government documents in private homes. The documents,
including some marked classified, appear to be the scientist's
personal files." However, "the documents, which contained
information about the use of laser technology to enrich uranium,
refer to activities and sites known to the IAEA and do not change
the agency's conclusions about Iraq's laser enrichment program."
[Source: Wash. Post,
2/15/03]
FEBURARY 24, 2003 – CIA WARNS WHITE HOUSE ‘NO DIRECT
EVIDENCE’ OF WMD: "A CIA report on proliferation released
this week says the intelligence community has no ‘direct evidence’
that Iraq has succeeded in reconstituting its biological, chemical,
nuclear or long-range missile programs in the two years since U.N.
weapons inspectors left and U.S. planes bombed Iraqi facilities. ‘We
do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since
Desert Fox to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction
programs,’ said the agency in its semi-annual report on
proliferation activities." [NBC News,
2/24/03]
MARCH 7, 2003 – IAEA REITERATES TO WHITE HOUSE NO EVIDENCE
OF NUKES: IAEA Director Mohamed ElBaradei said nuclear
experts have found "no indication" that Iraq has tried to import
high-strength aluminum tubes or specialized ring magnets for
centrifuge enrichment of uranium. For months, American officials had
"cited Iraq's importation of these tubes as evidence that Mr.
Hussein's scientists have been seeking to develop a nuclear
capability." ElBaradei also noted said "the IAEA has concluded, with
the concurrence of outside experts, that documents which formed the
basis for the [President Bush’s assertion] of recent uranium
transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic." When
questioned about this on Meet the Press, Vice President Dick Cheney
simply said "Mr. ElBaradei is, frankly, wrong." [Source: NY Times,
3/7/03: Meet the Press, 3/16/03]
MAY 30, 2003 – INTEL PROFESSIONALS ADMIT THEY WERE
PRESSURED: "A growing number of U.S. national security
professionals are accusing the Bush administration of slanting the
facts and hijacking the $30 billion intelligence apparatus to
justify its rush to war in Iraq . A key target is a four-person
Pentagon team that reviewed material gathered by other intelligence
outfits for any missed bits that might have tied Iraqi President
Saddam Hussein to banned weapons or terrorist groups. This team,
self-mockingly called the Cabal, 'cherry-picked the intelligence
stream' in a bid to portray Iraq as an imminent threat, said Patrick
Lang, a official at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The DIA
was "exploited and abused and bypassed in the process of making the
case for war in Iraq based on the presence of WMD," or weapons of
mass destruction, he said. Greg Thielmann, an intelligence official
in the State Department, said it appeared to him that intelligence
had been shaped 'from the top down.'" [Reuters, 5/30/03 ]
JUNE 6, 2003 – INTELLIGENCE HISTORIAN SAYS INTEL WAS HYPED:
"The CIA bowed to Bush administration pressure to hype the threat of
Saddam Hussein's weapons programs ahead of the U.S.-led war in Iraq
, a leading national security historian concluded in a detailed
study of the spy agency's public pronouncements." [Reuters,
6/6/03]
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