U.S. intelligence under Bush is a "mess"
The top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee calls for reform of the system -- and wants answers from the White House about Iraq's missing WMD.
Editor's note: Following is the full text of Rep. Jane Harman's prepared remarks for a speech at the Los Angeles World Affairs Council on Jan. 16. Harman, D-Calif., is Ranking Member on the House Intelligence Committee.
Jan. 16, 2004 | In four days, the President will deliver his annual State of the Union address before both houses of Congress, his Cabinet, the Ambassadorial Corps, the Supreme Court, and a worldwide television audience.
Almost one year ago, on January 28th, 2003, the President devoted one-third of his State of the Union address to what he described as "a serious and mounting threat to our country" posed by Iraq's possession of weapons of mass destruction. He spoke, in those famous 16 words, about efforts by Iraq to secure enriched uranium from Africa. He talked about aluminum tubes "suitable for nuclear weapons production." He described stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and said, "we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs."
One week later, on February 5th, Secretary of State Colin Powell, with Director of Central Intelligence George Tenet sitting behind his right shoulder, used charts and photographs to elaborate on the Administration's WMD case. "These are not assertions," Powell said, "these are facts corroborated by many sources." Among Powell's claims were:
Powell has subsequently said that he spent days personally assessing the intelligence. He included only information he felt was fully supported by the analysis. Hence, no mention of enriched uranium from Africa, no claim that al Qaeda was involved in 9-11.
The effect was powerful. Veteran columnist for the Washington Post, Mary McGrory, known for liberal views and Kennedy connections, wrote an op-ed the following day entitled "I Am Persuaded". Members of Congress, like me, believed the intelligence case. We voted for the resolution on Iraq to urge U.N. action and to authorize military force only if diplomacy failed. We felt confident we had made the wise choice.
But as the evidence pours in ...
... we are finding out that Powell and other policymakers were wrong, British intelligence was wrong, and those of us who believed the intelligence were wrong. Indeed, I doubt there would be discussions of David Kay's possible departure if the Iraq Survey Group were on the verge of uncovering large stockpiles of weapons or an advanced nuclear weapons program.
Let me be clear. There were good reasons to support regime change in Iraq -- which was the policy of the Clinton Administration and was supported by an overwhelming vote in Congress in 1998. It is also true that Iraq violated 16 UN resolutions by failing to prove it had dismantled its WMD and continuing efforts to deceive UN inspectors.
But if 9/11 was a failure to connect the dots, it appears that the Intelligence Community, in the case of Iraq's WMD, connected the dots to the wrong conclusions. If our intelligence products had been better, I believe many policymakers, including me, would have had a far clearer picture of the sketchiness of our sources on Iraq's WMD programs, and our lack of certainty about Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear capabilities.
Let me add that policymakers -- including members of Congress -- have a duty to ask tough questions, to probe the information being presented to them. We also have a duty to portray that information publicly as accurately as we can.
A far clearer picture of the true nature of the intelligence information could have led to more policy options -- more time for diplomacy to work, and more time to build international support for military action, which was likely inevitable given the ruthless, deluded characters of Saddam and his sons.
With more time, there would have been a greater ability to learn the lessons for the post-war from five prior nation-building efforts in the last decade -- more time to prepare a careful strategy and build an effective budget for the real costs of winning the peace.
Finally, if the threat from Iraq was less urgent, we could have continued to focus more heavily on the threat from Osama Bin Laden and al Qaeda. Instead, we diverted attention and resources to a war in Iraq in the midst of our hunt for the true villains of September 11.
The October 2002 NIE on Iraq's WMD Programs
The intelligence community communicates its judgments to senior officials in many ways -- in verbal briefings, in short memos, and in longer reports. The cornerstone document on Iraq's WMD before the war was the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's WMD published in October 2002. NIEs are the most carefully written, methodically coordinated products of the intelligence agencies.
Having studied the 19 volumes of source materials that went into the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, and having read that NIE carefully, my conclusion is it was a significantly flawed document.
While the Intelligence Community has portrayed that NIE as consistent with judgments throughout the 1990s, in fact, it included at least two important new statements:
These were centerpieces of the NIE and of the case for war and it appears likely that both were wrong.
Recently, I met with the senior analysts who wrote the October 2002 NIE. Describing their mind-set at the time, they believed the decision to go to war had already been made. They wrote as if they were advising the military commanders on the likely status of Iraq's weapons as they prepared for a war. It was a mind-set that, according to the analysts, focused on "making the case" and "making the tough calls." They felt they had to come down on one side or the other -- did Saddam have chemical and biological weapons or didn't he? Would he use them on our troops?
I think the intelligence community misunderstood its audience and its role. Let's remember that this NIE was requested by Congress -- by my colleague Senator Bob Graham, then head of the Senate Intelligence Committee -- in order to inform Members' decisions about the timing and need for military action. It was published a few days before the key vote in the Senate to authorize the use of force. This is a very different audience -- and purpose -- than the military commander preparing to fight.
Almost twelve years ago, departing DCI [CIA Director] Robert Gates, a Rebublican who served in the first Bush Administration, articulated standards to ensure intelligence analysts and managers stayed free from political pressure or personal bias. Gates said it is not the analyst's job to make the tough calls. Their job is to describe as accurately as possible what is known, "make explicit what is not known, and clearly distinguish between fact, inference, and judgment."
Gates insisted that dissenting views receive prominence: "we must not dismiss alternatives or exaggerate our certainty under the guise of making the tough calls'. We are analysts, not umpires, and the game does not depend on our providing a single judgment ..."
Next page: Unanswered questions regarding U.S. intelligence have left the nation in a precarious position