U.S. withheld Iraq arms details

Mercury News

02/21/04: WASHINGTON - The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged that it did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out by U.S. intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons.

The acknowledgment, in a Jan. 20 letter to Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., contradicts public statements before the war by top Bush administration officials.

Both George Tenet, the director of central intelligence, and Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, said the United States had briefed U.N. inspectors on all of the sites identified as ``high value and moderate value'' in the weapons hunt.

The contradiction is significant because congressional opponents of the war were arguing a year ago that the U.N. inspectors should be given more time to complete their search before the United States and its allies began the invasion. The White House, bolstered by Tenet, insisted that it was fully cooperating with the inspectors, and at daily briefings the White House issued assurances that the administration was providing the inspectors with the best information possible.

In a telephone interview on Friday, Levin said he now believed that Tenet had misled Congress, which he described as ``totally unacceptable.''

Senior administration officials said Friday night that Rice had relied on information provided by intelligence agencies when she assured Levin, in a letter on March 6, 2003, that ``United Nations inspectors have been briefed on every high or medium priority weapons of mass destruction, missile and UAV-related site the U.S. intelligence community has identified.'' Tenet said much the same thing in testimony on Feb. 12, 2003.

UAV's are unarmed aerial vehicles, commonly called drones.

Asked about the contradiction between the CIA's current account and Rice's letter, the spokesman for the national security council, Sean McCormack, said, ``Dr. Rice provided a good-faith answer to Senator Levin based on the best information that was made available to her.''

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