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Scathing
WMD Intel Report Released
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The Full Report: .pdf
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By CBS
03/31/05 - - WASHINGTON
(CBS
In a scathing report, a presidential
commission said Thursday that America's spy agencies were
"dead wrong" in most of their judgments about Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction before the war and that the United
States knows "disturbingly little" about the weapons
programs and threat posed by many of the nation's most dangerous
adversaries.
The commission called for dramatic change to prevent future
failures. It outlined more than 70 recommendations, saying that
President Bush must give John Negroponte, the new director of
national intelligence, broader powers for overseeing the nation's
15 spy agencies.
The main cause, the commission said, was the intelligence community's "inability to collect good information about Iraq's WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence.
It also called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the
bureau's counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a
new office.
- The commission released its final
report, spanning more than 600 pages, Thursday after more than
a year of work that included closed-door sessions with Bush
and other top administration officials.
It is critical of the CIA and other intelligence groups for
concluding in 2002 that Saddam Hussein had secret stock piles
of WMD and was also trying to get uranium for nuclear weapons.
In a classified portion, sources say the report charges U.S.
Agencies have done a poor job of developing sources to get
information on the nuclear programs of North Korea and Iran,
Plante reports.
Numerous government reports have detailed intelligence
failures since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. This
commission is the first formed by Mr. Bush to look at why U.S.
spy agencies mistakenly concluded that Iraq had stockpiles of
weapons of mass destruction, one of the administration's main
justifications for invading in March 2003.
Mr. Bush also asked the nine-member panel to review the
structure of the nation's spy agencies and the major
intelligence overhaul he signed into law in December.
Government officials said the commission levels criticisms
across the 15 agencies that make up the U.S. intelligence
community. The panel dissected the prewar estimates of the
threat posed by Saddam and considered how any shortcomings are
affecting intelligence assessments elsewhere, officials said.
The panel also considered a range of intelligence issues
beyond Iraq, including congressional oversight, satellite
imagery and electronic snooping. Among numerous soft spots,
officials familiar with the findings say "human
intelligence" — the work of actual operatives on the
ground — is lacking.
According to officials, the report:
- Recommends forming a new intelligence center to focus on
weapons proliferation.
- Chastises intelligence agencies for their continued
failure to share information, despite numerous reforms aimed
at improving coordination.
- Stresses the need for ongoing training for analysts and
operatives and new procedures for considering dissenting
intelligence analysis.
- Calls on intelligence agencies to take concrete steps to
ensure information from their sources is valid — a move
prompted in part by an Iraqi defector who provided suspect
information ultimately included in a top intelligence
estimate.
- Proposes updating the FBI's computers and creating a new
national security division within the Justice Department.
- Suggests a formal way for an analyst to file dissenting
views so they're not ignored.
A year ago, Mr. Bush formed the commission led by Republican
Laurence Silberman, a retired federal appeals court judge,
and Democrat Charles Robb, a former senator from Virginia,
as it became clear that U.S. weapons inspectors were not
going to find stockpiles of Iraqi weapons of mass
destruction.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan has said Mr. Bush
would discuss the report with Cabinet members on Thursday,
immediately after the president meets with the full
commission. "Making sure we have the best possible
intelligence is critical to protecting the American
people," McClellan said.
By meeting with his Cabinet right away, the president
intends to send the signal that he's serious about shake up
the way the intelligence agency does business, CBS News
White House Correspondent Bill Plante reports.
Top intelligence officials were already taking steps to
soften the impact of the criticism. The head of the National
Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, which analyzes satellite
imagery, told employees in an e-mail that they should
"take on the lessons learned, and drive on."
"You may find the report difficult to read and you may
not agree with the commission's analysis, opinions, or
recommendations," retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James
Clapper wrote. "I understand that it's much more
difficult to be criticized rather than praised in
public."
© 2005 CBS Worldwide Inc.
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included information for research and educational purposes.
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