While Bush, Rumsfeld, and Cheney lobbied for war, Powell pointed toward a negotiated future, while avoiding mention of his failure to get a cease-fire. On April 17, the Secretary of State gave his pitch for a negotiated settlement. But there was no breakthrough. The president later thanked him for his contribution. Bush distanced himself from Powell. (Bob Woodward, Bush at War)

In the spring of 2002 -- some 16 months into the Bush presidency – for the first time, Powell requested private time with Bush. He did it through Rice, who sat in on the meetings that took place about once a week for 20 to 30 minutes. Still there were no breakthroughs.

On May 23, Bush flew to Europe to meet with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and French President Jacques Chirac. He told them on May 26 that “I have no war plans on my desk.” Bush lied. This was the third public statement where Bush denied that he was not preparing for war. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

THE SPRING OF 2002: PLANNING COVERT OPS IN IRAQ. During the spring, Tenet met secretly with two individuals who would be critical to covert action inside Iraq: Massoud Barzani and Jalal Talabani, the leaders of the two main Kurdish groups in northern Iraq. The two controlled separate areas of a Kurdish region. The areas were quasi-autonomous from the Baghdad regime, but Iraqi military units were stationed just miles from the Kurdish strongholds. Saddam could easily send them to fight and slaughter the Kurds as he had done after the 1991 Persian Gulf War when they had risen up expecting United States protection, which was not provided. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

Tenet approved the allocation of tens of millions of dollars in $100 bills to pay off informants. The CIA director told Bush that some money was going to be paid on speculation in order to establish relationships and demonstrate seriousness. Although the CIA had covert activities established near Iraq’s borders, the agency needed to be inside.

A CIA operant known as “Saul” was chosen by Tenet to establish ties within Iraq. Saul sent out messages seeking volunteers. He drafted “Tim,” a former Navy SEAL who was fluent in Arabic. Tim was a covert operations officer at a CIA station in the region. Now he was to lead one of two paramilitary teams into northern Iraq. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

Saul issued Tim instructions: “I want Hussein’s military penetrated. I want the intel service penetrated. I want the security apparatus penetrated. I want tribal networks inside Iraq who will do things for us -- paramilitary, sabotage, ground intelligence. Work the relationship with the Kurds. See if it is feasible to train and arm them so they can tie down Hussein’s forces in the north.” (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

In July, Tim and a team of CIA operatives made the 10-hour overland drive from Turkey into Iraq in a convoy of Land Cruisers, Jeeps and a truck to set up base in Sulaymaniyah in the mountainous Kurdish-controlled region of northern Iraq. In October, they returned to the same area carrying tens of millions of dollars in $100 bills stored in heavy cardboard boxes. They set up base in a lime-green building that they christened “Pistachio.” (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

According to Washington Post writer Bob Woodward, in July 2002, Bush secretly approved diverting $700 million meant for operations in Afghanistan into war planning for Iraq. Woodward said that Bush kept Congress “totally in the dark on this.” (60 Minutes, April 19, 2004)

7. WAR PLANNING CONTINUES: THE LAST HALF OF 2002

In June, Bush issued an executive order for the toppling Hussein received support from Republicans on Capitol Hill. The directive directed the CIA to use all available tools to increase support to Iraqi opposition groups and forces inside and outside Iraq including money, weapons, equipment, training, and intelligence information. It expanded efforts to collect intelligence within Iraqi government, military, security service and overall population where pockets of intense anti-Hussein sentiment have been detected. Finally, it made possible the use of CIA and United States Special Forces teams, similar to those that have been successfully deployed in Afghanistan since the September 11 airliner attacks. Such forces would be authorized to kill the Iraqi president if they were acting in self-defense. (Washington Post, June 15, 2002)

Tenet told Bush and his Cabinet that the covert program alone -- without military action or diplomatic and economic pressure -- had only about a 10 percent to 20 percent chance of succeeding. One source told the newspaper “the CIA covert action should be viewed largely as ‘preparatory’ to a military strike so the agency could identify targets, intensify intelligence gathering on the ground in Iraq, and build relations with alternative future leaders and groups if Saddam were ousted.” (Washington Post, June 15, 2002)

But some Democrats were skeptical of the president who had no experience in the international arena. Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle expressed some reservations about the timing of any such effort. “There is broad support for a regime change in Iraq. … The question is how do we do it and when do we do it. … I think the timing of all this is very important but we want to work with the administration and try to find the best way and the best time to do this.” (New York Times, June 17, 2002)

Bush continued to beat the war drums. In July, he said, “It’s the stated policy of this government to have a regime change. … I do firmly believe that the world will be safer and more peaceful if there’s a regime change in that government.” Bush provided the American public and the global community with numerous pieces of misinformation and disinformation in a bid to gain support for his war.

Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee in July that the situation with Hussein would not improve. Rumsfeld said there were “differing views about what one ought to do” but that the relationship between the top civilian and military leaders at the Pentagon was close. One advocate of confronting Hussein said he was concerned that the determined opposition of senior military leaders ultimately would dissuade Bush. (Washington Post, August 1, 2002)

In late August, Cheney once again spelled out the Bush administration’s rationale for ousting Saddam, saying he believed that the dictator would add the nuclear bomb “fairly soon” to his arsenal of weapons of mass destruction. He added, “In the past decade, Saddam has systematically broken each of these agreements.” Moreover, he said, “We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. … Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we cannot really gauge.” (Los Angeles Times, August 27, 2002)

Cheney’s comments came as the president’s lawyers concluded that he could launch a military strike against Iraq without new approval from Congress. But Senate Democrats disputed the White House claim that Bush was not legally bound to seek congressional approval for a military strike against Iraq. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick Leahy said the decision to go to war “should not be treated like a technicality.” (Los Angeles Times, August 27, 2002)

POWELL OPPOSES WAR. Powell added more fuel to the fire when he finally came out publicly and announced his differences with the inexperienced Bush. Before the Bush administration were to launch an invasion of Iraq, Powell called on United Nations weapons inspectors to return to Iraq and to prove that Saddam posed a threat before any action should be taken. (BBC Interview, September 1, 2002)

Powell and Tenet were skeptical about a military campaign that, they maintained, would be long and costly. Similarly, most of the senior uniformed military, with the notable exception of some top Air Force and Marine generals, opposed going to war soon. That position led to frustration among civilian officials in the Pentagon and in the White House. In addition, some suspect that Powell’s stance had produced an unusual alliance between the State Department and the uniformed side of the Pentagon, elements of the government that usually seemed to oppose each other in foreign policy debates. (Washington Post, August 1, 2002)

Bush invited Powell and Rice to the White House on August 5 to discuss Iraq. Powell told Bush needed to think about the broader issues -- about all the consequences of war. War could change everything in the Middle East. Anger and frustration at America would intensify. Powell told the president that he needed to consider what a military operation against Iraq would do in the Arab world. He dealt with the leaders and foreign ministers in these countries as secretary of state. The entire region could be destabilized -- friendly regimes in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and Jordan could be put in jeopardy or overthrown. Powell explained that the economic implications could be staggering, potentially driving up the supply and price of oil – especially at a time when the world was in an economic slump. Powell said the cost of occupying Iraq after a victory would be expensive. He said the economic impact on the region, the world and the United States domestically had to be considered. (Bob Woodward, Bush at War)

Bush continued to prod ahead, as the war drums sounded louder and louder. He ignored Congress and the United Nations. Powell knew that Bush insisted on solutions. Powell told the president, “You can still make a pitch for a coalition or U.N. action to do what needs to be done.” (Bob Woodward, Bush at War)

Powell said inspections should be a first step, but he made it clear it had to be a “very firm inspections regime” because the Iraqi government was still committed to acquiring nuclear weapons and other instruments of mass destruction. Powell said, “The president has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return. Iraq has been in violation of many U.N. resolutions for most of the last 11 or so years. And so, as a first step, let’s see what the inspectors find. Send them back in. Why are they being kept out?” (Washington Post, September 2, 2002)

After months of quarreling with the inexperienced Bush on a wide variety of issues, it appeared as if Powell had had enough. He planned to step down at the end of Bush’s term in January 2005. As one aide suggested, “He will have done a yeoman’s job of contributing over the four year,” a close aide was quoted as saying. “but that’s enough.” The aide stressed that Powell was determined to serve out the entire term, even if the United States launched an invasion of Iraq. (Washington Post, September 2, 2002; Time (September 10, 2002)

EDGING CLOSER TO WAR. Rice claimed that the United States and other nations had little choice but to seek the removal of Hussein from power. She cited “a very powerful moral case” for action. (Washington Post, August 16, 2002) Rice told BBC, “This is an evil man who, left to his own devices, will wreak havoc again on his own population, his neighbors and, if he gets weapons of mass destruction and the means to deliver them, on all of us. There is a very powerful moral case for regime change. We certainly do not have the luxury of doing nothing.”

Rice noted that after 9/11, the most immediate threat was al Qaeda. But she said Hussein posed a looming threat that could not be ignored. “Clearly, if Saddam Hussein is left in power doing the things that he is doing now, this is a threat that will emerge, and emerge in a very big way. … The case for regime change is very strong. This is a regime that we know has twice tried and come closer than we thought at the time to acquiring nuclear weapons. He has used chemical weapons against his own people and against his neighbors, he has invaded his neighbors, he has killed thousands of his own people. He shoots at our planes, our airplanes, in the no-fly zones where we are trying to enforce U.N. security resolutions.” (Washington Post, August 16, 2002)

While Bush had tremendous difficulty drumming up support from the international community as well as from Americans on the homefront, he remained intent on attacking Iraq. In a speech in South Dakota on August 15, Bush said, “And we got a lot of work to do, we’ve got a lot of work to do. And that’s why this budget I submitted is a significant budget. The House passed its version, the Senate passed its version. They’ve now got to get together as quickly as possible, as soon as possible, and get the defense appropriations bill to my desk nearly upon arrival. In other words, as soon as they get back from the recess, I need to sign the bill “so we can go to war.”

Richard Perle echoed the president’s sentiments. According to Perle if Bush did not invade Iraq, it would lead to “a collapse of confidence.” From that, one could infer that Bush was concerned that if he did not topple Hussein, he would be discerned as the biggest wimp since his father. (New York Times, August 16, 2002)

However, not all the former and present high-ranking administration officials were hawkish. Some from the elder Bush’s administration opposed an incursion of Iraq. These included Brent Scowcroft, national security advisor, and James Baker, secretary of state and chief of staff, and Larry Eagleburger. Even the “master” of the Gulf War, General Norman Schwarzkopf, and former hawkish secretary of state from the Nixon administration, Henry Kissinger, criticized Bush’s plans.

Kissinger warned there would be severe international complications of any military campaign. He added that American policy “will be judged by how the aftermath of the military operation is handled politically. … Military intervention should be attempted only if we are willing to sustain such an effort for however long it is needed.” Kissinger also said the challenge was to build a careful case that the threat of proliferation of weapons of mass destruction calls for creation of a new international security framework in which pre-emptive action may sometimes be justified. (Washington Post, August 12, 2002)

Others opposing an Iraqi incursion were Senators Chuck Hagel and Richard Lugar and House majority leader Dick Armey. It took four months of pressure from the White House to convince the influential House majority leader to change his stance and support an attack on Iraq.

Bush’s critics favored the eventual removal of Hussein, but some said they are concerned that Bush was the proceeding in a way that risked alienating allies. They also charged that Bush was creating greater instability in the Middle East, and harming long-term American interests. They added that the administration had not shown that Iraq posed an urgent threat to the United States. (New York Times, August 15, 2002)

Scowcroft dealt another blow to Bush, who appeared determined to avenge his father’s “defeat” in Iraq, because he was virtually a member of the Bush family during the elder Bush’s term and had maintained close relations with the former president. Scowcroft said if the United States “were seen to be turning our backs" on the Israeli-Palestinian dispute "in order to go after Iraq, there would be an explosion of outrage against us. … There is a virtual consensus in the world against an attack on Iraq at this time. So long as that sentiment persists, it would require the U.S. to pursue a virtual go-it-alone strategy against Iraq, making any military operations correspondingly more difficult and expensive.” Scowcroft also warned that “an attack on Iraq at this time would seriously jeopardize, if not destroy, the global counter-terrorist campaign we have undertaken.” According to Scowcroft, an attack might provoke Iraq to use chemical or biological weapons in an effort to trigger war between Israel and the Arab world. (Wall Street Journal, August 12, 2002)

Scowcroft also said, “Saddam is a familiar dictatorial aggressor, with traditional goals. There is little evidence to indicate that the United States itself is an object of his aggression. Rather, Saddam’s problem with the U.S. appears to be that we stand in the way of his ambitions. He seeks weapons of mass destruction not to arm terrorists, but to deter us from intervening.” (Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2002)

Lawrence Eagleburger, who was briefly secretary of state for Bush’s father, charged that unless Hussein “has his hand on a trigger that is for a weapon of mass destruction, and our intelligence is clear, I don’t know why we have to do it now, when all our allies are opposed to it.” Similarly, conservative GOP House leader Dick Armey raised similar concerns. (ABC News interview, August 14, 2002)

Finally, the elder Bush’s Secretary of State James A. Baker III opposed an American invasion. Baker, who said he supported the goal of “regime change,” argued in a column in the New York Times (August 27, 2002), “Seeking new authorization (from the United Nations now is necessary, politically and practically, and will help build international support.”

Even though the White House tried to play down the differences, Bush still maintained a hard-line position, charging that Hussein had failed to show any indication whatsoever that he had disarmed or intended to do so. (Washington Post, September 2, 2002)

On August 14, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Powell, Rice, and Tenet met without the president. Powell said they needed to think about getting a coalition for action against Iraq. The British supported an Iraqi invasion, but their support was tentative in the absence of some international coalition. Most of Europe and the Arabian peninsula also felt Bush should go to the United Nations. Bush’s inner circle finally agreed that the president should not go to the United Nations to ask for a declaration of war. They all agreed that a speech about Iraq made sense. But there was no agreement about what the president should say. (Bob Woodward, Bush at War)

The NSC met with Bush on August 16. The sole purpose of the meeting was for Powell to make his pitch about going to the United Nations to seek support or a coalition in some form. Powell again said that a unilateral war would not be acceptable. Bush finally approved the approach -- a speech to the United Nations about Iraq. (New York Times, November 17, 2002)

Meetings on the drafting continued for days. The speech assailed the United Nations for not enforcing the weapons inspections in Iraq, specifically for the four years since Hussein had evicted UNSCOM inspectors. Powell argued that Bush “can’t say all of this without asking them to do something. There’s no action in this speech. It says, ‘Here’s what he’s done wrong; here’s what he has to do to fix himself,’ and then it stops? You’ve got to ask for something.” Powell hoped to explain his position on an Iraq. Opposing an American incursion, Powell’s proposal was to continue the Clinton administration’s policy of handling Hussein as a public relations problem – to ease economic sanctions on Iraq and to show the Muslim world the United States was an honorable nation. (Bob Woodward, Bush at War)

The CIA separately concluded that reports of Iraqi training on WMD were “episodic, sketchy, or not corroborated in other channels,” according to the agency’s inspector general. He quoted an August 2002 CIA report describing the relationship as more closely resembling “two organizations trying to feel out or exploit each other” rather than cooperating operationally.

The CIA was not alone, the defense report emphasized. The DIA concluded in 2002 that “available reporting is not firm enough to demonstrate an ongoing relationship” between the Iraqi regime and al Qaeda. (New York Times, April 5, 2007)

But the war drums resonated louder and louder. Bush claimed definitively that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons” despite warnings from United States intelligence agencies that there was no solid proof. Similarly, Cheney was even more assertive, claiming without proof in August 2002 “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has WMD.” (White House release, August 2002)

On August 7, Cheney told an audience at the Commonwealth Club in San Francisco: “Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we cannot really gauge.” Cheney also said, “Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” (Dick Cheney, Speech to the VFW National Convention, August 26, 2002)

On August 16, Bush offered another reason for invading Iraq. “There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that this man is thumbing his nose at the world, that he has gassed his own people, that he is troubling his neighborhood, that he desires weapons of mass destruction.”

Ten days later, Cheney said, “Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we cannot really gauge.” Cheney described Hussein as a “sworn enemy of our country” who constituted a “mortal threat” to the United States. He said there would be a time in which Hussein could “subject the United States or any other nation to nuclear blackmail. … We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons. Among other sources, we’ve gotten this from firsthand testimony from defectors, including Saddam’s own son-in-law. (Washington Post, August 10, 2003; Washington Post, August 10, 2003)

Cheney appeared on NBC’s Meet the Press and said, “Increasingly, we believe the United States will become the target” of an Iraqi nuclear weapon. He (Saddam) has reconstituted his nuclear program.”

Rumsfeld commented on CBS’s Face the Nation, “Imagine a September 11th with weapons of mass destruction,” which would kill “tens of thousands of innocent men, women and children.” (Washington Post, August 10, 2003)

Powell eventually convinced the president that he could not march off to war without first gaining support from the United Nations. On September 1, Powell said, “The president has been clear that he believes weapons inspectors should return. Iraq has been in violation of these many U.N. resolutions for most of the last 11 years or so. And so, as a first step, let’s see what the inspectors find.”

But White House hawks continued to push for war. One week later, Cheney gave another reason that justified an American invasion. “We are especially concerned about Iraq because of the developments which we see in respect to his weapons of mass destruction, because he has in the past, for example, had a relationship with terrorist organizations, has provided sanctuary in Iraq for terrorist organizations of various kinds, and because of this continued failure over the years of the international community to be able to cope with this problem.”

THE CIA REFUSES TO CONCLUDE THERE’S WMD.

1. ”Cherry-picking.” The Bush administration continued to “cherry-picked” only the reports that indicated Iraq might have a nuclear program. For example, the National Intelligence Estimate confidently stated that Iraq “is reconstituting its nuclear program.” (James Risen, State of War)

Many CIA officials -- from case workers to senior managers -- knew they did not have evidence linking Iraq to a nuclear program. Tenet and his top lieutenants only used intelligence reports that supported Bush’s allegation that Iraq possessed WMD and was moving ahead in its nuclear program. Tenet told Bush what he wanted to hear. The CIA director either ignored or censored reports that suggested Iraq was not a nuclear threat. He did not want to create a rift between the CIA and the Bush administration. (James Risen, State of War)

However, some CIA officials knew Saddam did not pose a threat.

1. The chief of the Counterproliferation Division (CPD) of the Directorate of Operations was in charge of recruiting spies and collecting intelligence in Iraq and in other countries. He told another CIA officer that the agency “did not have much intelligence on Iraqi WMD.” The officer also said, “There were a lot of people who said we didn’t have enough intelligence.” (James Risen, State of War)

2. Alan Foley, the director of the CIA’s Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) told a colleague on the day that Powell delivered his Security Council speech in February 2003 that the CIA simply did not have the evidence to back up what Powell was saying about WMD. (James Risen, State of War)

3. Two CIA analysts raised doubts when they suggested Iraq did not have a nuclear program. According to another CIA official, they were promptly “smacked down” by senior analysts in WINPAC. (James Risen, State of War)

On the other hand, reports from hawkish junior analysts were welcomed by senior officials in WINPAC – as long as their reports suggested Saddam had WMD. (James Risen, State of War)

At one WINPAC meeting, Deputy CIA Director John McLaughlin said that analysts from the Department of Energy were skeptical that Saddam’s aluminum tubes could be used in a uranium enrichment program. Then a young WINPAC analyst, less than 30 years of age, responded, “No, that’s bullshit, there is only one use for them (aluminum tubes).” Tenet responded, “Yeah? Great.” (James Risen, State of War)

One WINPAC weapons’ analyst, identified as “Joe,” was the only primary advocate who argued that the aluminum tubes were being used in Saddam’s uranium program. The CIA had no other physical evidence. But “Joe” was able to circumvent the chain of command and speak directly with McLaughlin. (James Risen, State of War)

2. The Tawfig case. As the Bush administration was drawing up war plans in 2002, the CIA had only one case officer in Iraq. He posed undercover as a diplomat working in the embassy of another country. The CIA also developed sources within the Iraqi military, largely through the Iraqi National Accord that was an exile group led by Ayad Allawi who eventually became the interim prime minister. But one of the military officers had knowledge about Iraq’s WMD. (James Risen, State of War)

As a result, the CIA turned to the United States to recruit Sawson Tawfig whose brother Saad was identified as a senior figure in Iraq’s nuclear program. Sawson had emigrated from Iraq to the United States several years earlier. Using her married name, the Iraqi government did not know her identity since she used her married name upon returning to Iraq under the pretense of visiting a sick relative. (James Risen, State of War)

The CIA had given Sawson a series of questions to ask her brother. How close were the Iraqis to a nuclear weapon? How much weapons-grade fuel did Iraq have? How advanced is the country’s centrifuge program? What process was Iraq using for isotope separation? Where were the weapons’ factories? What other scientists were involved in the program? (James Risen, State of War)

Saad denied the existence of any such program. Sawson said “he just kept saying there is nothing.” The nuclear program had been dead since the first Gulf War in 1991. Saad said that even before that 1991 war, Iraq was three years away from producing a nuclear weapon and that the program had been abandoned after the war. He added that there was no effort to rebuild the nuclear program. (James Risen, State of War)

When Sawson returned to the United States, she was debriefed by several CIA officials. They thanked her for her efforts, saying that the information was very important to them. (James Risen, State of War)

But the CIA never passed the reports to senior policy makers in the Bush administration. The CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence, responsible for collecting information from spies, ignored the report from Sawson. (James Risen, State of War)

3. The Sabri case. In September 2002, the CIA contacted Naji Sabri, Iraq’s foreign minister and a member of Saddam’s inner circle. At a meeting of the United Nation’s General Assembly, Sabri read a letter from Saddam: “The United States administration is acting on behalf of Zionism.” He announced that there were no weapons of mass destruction and that the United States planned war in Iraq because it wanted the country’s oil. Bush administration officials refused to believe him. (MSNBC, March 21, 2006)

On Sabri’s trip to the United States, a secret contact was brokered by the French intelligence service. In a New York City hotel room, CIA officers met with an intermediary who represented Sabri. All discussions between Sabri and the CIA were conducted through a “cutout,” or third party. Through the intermediary, intelligence sources say, the CIA paid Sabri more than $100,000 in what was, essentially, “good-faith money.” And for his part, Sabri, again through the intermediary, relayed information about Saddam’s actual capabilities. (MSNBC, March 21, 2006)

Sources said Sabri’s answers were much more accurate than his proclamations to the United Nations, where he demonized the United States and defended Saddam. At the same time, they also were closer to reality than the CIA’s estimates that were included in its October 2002 intelligence estimate. (MSNBC, March 21, 2006)

Sabri proved right in his statements:

1. The CIA said Saddam had an “active” program for “R&D, production and weaponization” for biological agents such as anthrax. But Sabri indicated Saddam had no significant, active biological weapons program. Sabri was right. After the war, it became clear that there was no program.

The CIA said if Saddam obtained enriched uranium, he could build a nuclear bomb in “several months to a year.” But Sabri said Saddam desperately wanted a bomb, but would need much more time than that. Once again, Sabri was accurate.

The CIA said Saddam had stockpiled as much as “500 metric tons of chemical warfare agents” and had “renewed” production of deadly agents. Sabri said Iraq had stockpiled weapons and had “poison gas” left over from the first Gulf War. Both Sabri and the CIA were wrong.

One year later, Tenet spoke of a secret Iraqi source. On February 5, 2004, Tenet said, “One source (Sabri) had direct access to Saddam and his inner circle.” The CIA director said Sabri had maintained that Iraq had stockpiled chemical weapons and that equipment to produce insecticides, under the oil-for-food program, had been diverted to covert chemical weapons production. However, Tenet never disclosed that Sabri had disclosed that no biological program had existed under Saddam. (MSNBC, March 21, 2006)

After Sabri was arrested and incarcerated by United States forces after the invasion, he was freed and allowed to live in anonymity in the Middle East. (MSNBC, March 21, 2006)

CIA AGENTS CORROBORATE SABRI’S ACCOUNT. The National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October 2002 did not state categorically that Iraq possessed WMD. No one in Congress was aware of the secret intelligence that Saddam had no WMD. The House of Representatives and the Senate voted, a week after the submission of the NIE, on the Authorization for Use of Military Force in Iraq. The information, moreover, was not circulated within the CIA among those agents involved in operations to prove whether Saddam had WMD. (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

On April 23, 2006, CBS’s 60 Minutes interviewed Tyler Drumheller, the former CIA chief of clandestine operations for Europe, who disclosed that the agency had received documentary intelligence from Naji Sabri, Saddam’s foreign minister, that Saddam did not have WMD. (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

Drumheller said, “We continued to validate him the whole way through. "The policy was set. The war in Iraq was coming, and they were looking for intelligence to fit into the policy, to justify the policy.” (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

Two former senior CIA officers have confirmed Drumheller’s account and provided the background to the story of how the information that might have stopped the invasion of Iraq was twisted in order to justify it. They described what Tenet said to Bush about the lack of WMD, and how Bush responded, and noted that Tenet never shared Sabri’s intelligence with then Secretary of State Powell. (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

According to the former officers, the intelligence was also never shared with the senior military planning the invasion, which required United States soldiers to receive medical shots against the ill effects of WMD and to wear protective uniforms in the desert. (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

Instead, the former officials said the information was distorted in a report written to fit the preconception that Saddam did have WMD programs. That false and restructured report was passed to Richard Dearlove, chief of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6), who briefed Prime Minister Blair on it as validation of the cause for war. (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

Secretary of State Powell, in preparation for his presentation of evidence of Saddam’s WMD to the United Nations Security Council on February 5, 2003, spent days at CIA headquarters in Langley and had Tenet sit directly behind him as a sign of credibility. But Tenet, according to the sources, never told Powell about existing intelligence that there were no WMD, and Powell’s speech was later revealed to be a series of falsehoods. (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

Both the French intelligence service and the CIA paid Sabri hundreds of thousands of dollars (at least $200,000 in the case of the CIA) to give them documents on Saddam’s WMD programs. One of the former CIA officers said, “The information detailed that Saddam may have wished to have a program, that his engineers had told him they could build a nuclear weapon within two years if they had fissile material, which they didn’t, and that they had no chemical or biological weapons.” (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

On the eve of Sabri’s appearance at the United Nations in September 2002 to present Saddam’s case, the officer in charge of this operation met in New York with a “cutout” who had debriefed Sabri for the CIA. Then the officer flew to Washington, where he met with CIA deputy director John McLaughlin, who was “excited” about the report. (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

Nonetheless, McLaughlin expressed his reservations. He said that Sabri’s information was at odds with “our best source.” That source was code-named “Curveball,” later exposed as a fabricator, con man and former Iraqi taxi driver posing as a chemical engineer. (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

The next day, September 18, Tenet briefed Bush on Sabri. One of the CIA officers said, “Tenet told me he briefed the president personally.” According to Tenet, Bush’s response was to call the information “the same old thing.” Bush insisted it was simply what Saddam wanted him to think. (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

One officer said, “The president had no interest in the intelligence.” The other officer said, “Bush didn’t give a fuck about the intelligence. He had his mind made up.” (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

But the CIA officers working on the Sabri case kept collecting information. French intelligence eavesdropped on his telephone conversations and shared them with the CIA. These taps “validated” Sabri’s claims, according to one of the CIA officers. The officers brought this material to the attention of the newly formed Iraqi Operations Group within the CIA . But those in charge of the IOG were on a mission to prove that Saddam did have WMD and would not give credit to anything that came from the French. One of the CIA officers said, “They kept saying the French were trying to undermine the war.” (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

The officers continued to insist on the significance of Sabri’s information, but one of Tenet's deputies told them, “You haven’t figured this out yet. This isn’t about intelligence. It’s about regime change.” (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

The CIA officers on the case awaited the report they had submitted on Sabri to be circulated back to them, but they never received it. They learned later that a new report had been written. It was written by someone in the agency, but unclear who or where, it was so tightly controlled. They knew what would please the White House. One officer said, “They knew what the king wanted.” (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

That report contained a false preamble stating that Saddam was “aggressively and covertly developing” nuclear weapons and that he already possessed chemical and biological weapons. One CIA officer said, “Totally out of whack. The first paragraph of an intelligence report is the most important and most read and colors the rest of the report.” He pointed out that the case officer who wrote the initial report had not written the preamble and the new memo. “That’s not what the original memo said.” (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

The report with the misleading introduction was given to Dearlove of MI6, who briefed the prime minister. One CIA officer said, “They were given a scaled-down version of the report. It was a summary given for liaison, with the sourcing taken out. They showed the British the statement Saddam was pursuing an aggressive program, and rewrote the report to attempt to support that statement. It was insidious. Blair bought it.” The CIA officer said, “Blair was duped. "He was shown the altered report.” (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

The information provided by Sabri was considered so sensitive that it was never shown to those who assembled the NIE on Iraqi WMD. Later revealed to be utterly wrong, the NIE read: “We judge that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs in defiance of U.N. resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions; if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.” (Sidney Blumenthal, Salon, September 6, 2007)

4. The Tahhaddy lab. The Bush administration hoped the allegation that 85 scientists at Tahhaddy laboratory in Iraq were manufacturing biological weapons. The complex reportedly included test chambers, heavy security, and a viral strain code-named “Blue Nile” which resembled the Ebola virus. No such facility was uncovered after the war. (Washington Post, July 31, 2002)

The CIA recruited an Iraqi-American anesthesiologist in 2002 to obtain information from her brother, who was a figure in Saddam’s alleged nuclear program. Sawsan Alhaddad, author of State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration, said her brother was stunned at the Bush administration’s accusation that Iraq was seeking nuclear technology. He said the program had been dead for a decade. This was another case where the Bush administration had its sights on invading Iraq, ignoring information that Saddam had no intention of developing a nuclear program.

Alhaddad flew home in September 2002 and had a series of meetings with CIA analysts. She relayed her brother’s information that there was no nuclear program. A CIA operative later told Alhaddad’s husband that the agency believed her brother was lying. In all, 30 family members of Iraqis made trips to their native country to contact Iraqi weapons scientists. All of them reported that the programs had been abandoned. (Sawsan Alhaddad, State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration)

5. Tyler Drumheller. The Bush administration ignored other information that did not corroborate its claim that Saddam was in possession of WMD. Tyler Drumheller, a CIA liaison officer, said the agency explicitly warned the Bush administration that there was no WMD. He said top White House officials simply brushed off the warning, saying they were “no longer interested” in intelligence and that the decision to march to war already had been determined. (CBS’ 60 Minutes, April 23, 2006)

Drumheller said that the CIA’s conclusion -- that Saddam was not in possession of WMD -- came from former Iraqi foreign minister Naji Sabri, who doubled as a covert intelligence agent for Western services. But when Tenet delivered this report to Bush, Cheney, and other high-ranking administration officials, the information was dismissed. (CBS’ 60 Minutes, April 23, 2006)

BUSH MISUSES THE IAEA’S REPORTS. Bush continued to claim that Saddam was developing nuclear weapons, citing a 1998 International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) report. But the report never said Iraq was six months away from developing a nuclear device. The IAEA said that “based on all credible information available to date ... the IAEA has found no indication of Iraq having achieved its program goal of producing nuclear weapons or of Iraq having retained a physical capability for the production of weapon-useable nuclear material or having clandestinely obtained such material.” (MSNBC, September 9, 2002)

An American intelligence analyst said, “That is just about the same thing as saying that if Iraq gets a bomb, it will have a bomb. We had no evidence for it.” (Washington Post, August 10, 2003)

According to Mark Gwozdecky, the IAEA’s chief spokesman, “There is no evidence in our view that can be substantiated on Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program. If anybody tells you they know the nuclear situation in Iraq right now, in the absence of four years of inspections, I would say that they’re misleading you because there isn’t solid evidence out there. I don’t know where they have determined that Iraq has retained this much weaponization capability because when we left in December ‘98 we had concluded that we had neutralized their nuclear-weapons program. We had confiscated their fissile material. We had destroyed all their key buildings and equipment.” (Washington Times, September 28, 2002)

When shown that Iraq was not six months away from developing nuclear weapons, White House Deputy Press Secretary Scott McClellan said Bush was “referring to a 1991 IAEA report.” McClellan cited two news articles from 1991 -- a July 16 article in the London Times and a July 18 story in the New York Times. However, neither article cited an IAEA report on Iraq’s nuclear-weapons program or stated that Hussein was only six months away from “developing a weapon.” (London Times, July 16, 2002)

Eventually, a senior Bush administration official conceded that the IAEA report drew no such conclusion and that the photograph had been misinterpreted and that it was merely pictures taken by a satellite imaging company. (MSNBC, September 9, 2002; Znet, June 4, 2003)

The misrepresentation of the IAEA did not deter hawks in the White House to continue efforts to win support for war. On September 11, Rice said, “The $25,000 he’s paying to suicide bombers, that he paid to Hamas bombers, one of whom was able to set off a bomb at Hebrew University, and to kill several Americans in the process, how much of a link to you want? When you look at Saddam Hussein and the fact that he tried to assassinate the former President George Herbert Bush, Saddam Hussein has a long history here.”

BEATING THE WAR DRUMS. On September 12, Bush went before the General Assembly and said, “Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving facilities that were used for the production of biological weapons. Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon.”

When Bush returned to the United Nations, he said, “Surveillance photos reveal that the (Iraqi) regime is rebuilding facilities that it had used to produce chemical and biological weapons. Iraq possesses ballistic missiles with a likely range of hundreds of miles -- far enough to strike Saudi Arabia, Israel, Turkey, and other nations -- in a region where more than 135,000 American civilians and service members live and work. We’ve also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We’re concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States. And, of course, sophisticated delivery systems aren’t required for a chemical or biological attack; all that might be required are a small container and one terrorist or Iraqi intelligence operative to deliver it.” (Speech to the United Nations in September 2002; Znet, June 4, 2003)

The classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was released in October. The report was welcomed by the Bush administration, since it made a case for war. The NIE charged that Saddam posed a nuclear threat. In upholding the report, Tenet said it was “the product of years of reporting and intelligence collection, analyzed by numerous experts in several different agencies. … We stand behind the judgments of the NIE. … the soundness and integrity of our process.” (Washington Post, August 10, 2003)

Tenet produced an estimate in which he concluded that the government possessed no specific information on Iraqi efforts to acquire enriched uranium, according to six people who participated in preparing for the estimate. The report said only that Iraq sought to buy equipment of the sort that years of intelligence reports had said “may be” intended for or “could be” used in uranium enrichment. … Although we assess that Saddam does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them. (Washington Post, August 10, 2003)

Most agencies believed that Baghdad started reconstituting its nuclear program about the time that UNSCOM inspectors departed -- December 1998.” Tenet said, “When inspectors were pushed out in 1998, we did not sit.” He cited new evidence on biological and missile programs, but he did not mention Hussein’s nuclear pursuits. (Washington Post, August 10, 2003)

Attempting to justify war, Bush said in his October 5 radio address to the nation: “Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities used to make more of those weapons. We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.”

On October 7, Bush spoke in Cincinnati, Ohio speech: “The Iraqi regime … possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons. It is seeking nuclear weapons. We know that the regime has produced thousands of tons of chemical agents, including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX nerve gas. We’ve also discovered through intelligence that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across broad areas. We’re concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVS for missions targeting the United States. The evidence indicates that Iraq is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his “nuclear mujahideen” -- his nuclear holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites that have been part of its nuclear program in the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes and other equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons.”

Rice, Tenet, and McLaughlin met on December 19. The National Security Advisor asked Tenet and McLaughlin how strong the case was on WMD and what could be said publicly. The agency’s October national estimate had concluded that Hussein has chemical and biological weapons had been out for more than two months. The congressional resolutions supporting war had passed by nearly 3 to 1; and the Security Council, where a weapons inspection resolution had passed 15 to 0, was actively engaged in inspections inside Iraq. Still something was missing. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

Two days later, high-level administrations met in the Oval Office to discuss ‘the Case’ for WMD. Cheney, Rice, Tenet, and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card. attended. Bush told Tenet several times, “Make sure no one stretches to make our case.” Tenet and McLaughlin made it clear they did not want to write a speech for a political appointee or an elected official. That would be crossing the line. They cleared speeches for facts. They also did not want to write a document that had any sales or marketing element. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

Bush turned to Tenet and asked. “George, how confident are you?” Tenet replied, “It’s a “slam-dunk.” But that “slam dunk” case fell apart after United States forces occupied Iraq and failed to find the stockpiles the administration insisted had been there. (60 Minutes, April 19, 2004)

Bush was determined to hand the evidence over to experienced lawyers who could use it to make the best possible case. The document was given to Rice’s deputy, Stephen Hadley and Cheney’s chief aide, Scooter Libby. They visited the CIA and posed a series of questions that the agency answered in writing. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

Bush told aides in December, “Make sure no one stretches to make our case” about WMD. However, records showed it was Bush and Vice President Cheney who, well before this cautionary statement, were aggressively hyping intelligence. For instance, Bush claimed in October that Iraq had “a growing fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons.” (White House release, October 2002)

Bush claimed definitively that Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons” despite warnings from United States intelligence agencies that there was no solid proof. Cheney was even more assertive, claiming without proof, “there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has WMD.” (White House release, August 2002)

Bush told Tenet several times, “Make sure no one stretches to make our case.” Tenet and McLaughlin made it clear they did not want to write a speech for a political appointee or an elected official. That would be crossing the line. They cleared speeches for facts. They also did not want to write a document that had any sales or marketing element. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

The president was determined to hand the evidence over to experienced lawyers who could use it to make the best possible case. The document was given to Rice’s deputy, Stephen Hadley and Cheney’s chief aide, Scooter Libby. They visited the CIA and posed a series of questions that the agency answered in writing. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

Since war with Iraq was now a fait accompli, the most important step was to justify an invasion. Wolfowitz conceded that the Bush administration wrestled over the primary reason to topple the Iraqi regime. Finally in the fall, high-level White House officials agreed that Iraq’s WMD would justify war. (Vanity Fair, May 28, 2003)

TENET SPEAKS OUT AGAINST THE WAR – FOUR YEARS LATER. CIA Director George Tenet waited until April 2007 to lash out against Cheney and another Bush administration officials, saying they pushed the country to war in Iraq without ever conducting a “serious debate” about whether Saddam posed an imminent threat to the United States. (George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm)

Tenet said, “There was never a serious debate that I know of within the administration about the imminence of the Iraqi threat. … There was there ever a significant discussion” about the possibility of containing Iraq without an invasion.” Tenet also admitted making his famous “slam dunk” remark about the evidence that Iraq had WMD. But he claimed the quote was taken out of context and that it had little impact on Bush’s decision to go to war. He also makes clear his bitter view that the administration made him a scapegoat for the Iraq war. (George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm)

Tenet blamed himself for the flawed 2002 National Intelligence Estimate about Iraq’s weapons programs, calling the episode “one of the lowest moments of my seven-year tenure.” He expressed regret that the document was not more nuanced, but said there was no doubt in his mind at the time that Hussein possessed unconventional weapons. Tenet said, “In retrospect, we got it wrong partly because the truth was so implausible.” (George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm)

Tenet said Cheney, Wolfowitz , and Feith, were focused on Iraq as a threat in late 2001 and 2002 even as Tenet and the CIA concentrated mostly on al Qaeda. Tenet described helping to kill a planned speech by Cheney on the eve of the invasion because its claims of links between al Qaeda and Iraq went “way beyond what the intelligence shows.” (George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm)

Tenet described in particular the extraordinary tension between him and National Security Advisor Rice and her deputy, Stephen Hadley, in internal debate over how the president came to say erroneously in his 2003 State of the Union address that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa. (George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm)

Tenet described an episode in 2003, shortly after he issued a statement taking partial responsibility for that error. He said he was invited over for a Sunday afternoon, back-patio lemonade by Secretary of State Powell who described what Tenet called “a lively debate” on Air Force One a few days before about whether the White House should continue to support Tenet as CIA director. (George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm)

Bush said “Yes, and said so publicly. But Colin let me know that other officials, particularly the vice president, had quite another view.” Tenet said the controversy over who was to blame for the State of the Union error was the beginning of the end of his tenure. After the finger-pointing between the White House and the CIA, Tenet said, “My relationship with the administration was forever changed.” (George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm)

Tenet was skeptical about whether the increase in troops in Iraq will prove successful. “It may have worked more than three years ago. My fear is that sectarian violence in Iraq has taken on a life of its own and that U.S. forces are becoming more and more irrelevant to the management of that violence.” (George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm)

Tenet described a detailed account of the episode, which occurred during an Oval Office meeting in December 2002 when the administration was preparing to make public its case for war against Iraq. During the meeting, the deputy CIA director, John McLaughlin, unveiled a draft of a proposed public presentation that left the group unimpressed. Tenet claimed Bush suggested that they could “add punch” by bringing in lawyers trained to argue cases before a jury. (George Tenet, At the Center of the Storm)

8. EDGING CLOSER TO WAR IN 2003

Saudi ambassador to the United States Prince Bandar enjoyed with the Bush family and had easy access to the Oval Office. Bush needed Saudi Arabia as a launching pad for an invasion of Iraq, and he needed approval to use its air space for American warplanes.

On January 11, 2003, Rumsfeld met with Bandar and looked him in the eye: “You can count on this. You can take that to the bank.” Cheney added, “Prince Bandar, once we start, Saddam is toast.” Bandar had easy access to the Oval Office. In a visit to Bush’s ranch at Crawford, Texas, Bandar promised the president that Saudi Arabia would lower oil prices in the months before the election - to ensure the American economy is strong on election day.” Bandar specifically wanted Bush to know that the Saudis hope to “fine-tune oil prices” for the 2004 election. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack; 60 Minutes, April 19, 2004)

On January 25, Libby gave a presentation in the Situation Room to Rice, Hadley, Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, Wolfowitz, White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett, and speechwriter Michael Gerson. White House political director Karl Rove was in and out of the meeting. Libby outlined the latest version of the case against Hussein. He said evidence was being dug up, moved, and buried. No one knew for sure what it was precisely, but the locations and stealth fit the pattern of WMD concealment. He began each section with blunt conclusions -- Hussein had chemical and biological weapons, was producing and concealing them; his ties to al Qaeda were numerous and strong. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

Libby said that Mohammed Atta, the leader of the 9/11 attacks, was believed to have met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer and cited intelligence of as many as four meetings. The others knew the CIA had evidence of two meetings perhaps, and that there was no certainty about what Atta had been doing in Prague or whether he had met with the Iraqi official. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

Wolfowitz, who had been convinced years ago of Iraq’s complicity in anti-American terrorism, thought Libby presented a strong case. He subscribed to Rumsfeld’s notion that lack of evidence did not mean something did not exist. (Bob Woodward, Plan of Attack)

9. BUSH’S EIGHT LIES DURING THE STATE OF THE UNION

Bush’s State of the Union on January 28, 2003 contained distorted and deceptive and false information. He said:

1. “The United Nations concluded in 1999 that Saddam Hussein had biological weapons materials sufficient to produce 25,000 liters of anthrax – enough doses to kill several million people. He hasn’t accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it.”

In making his accusation, Bush cited the 1999 United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) report. But UNSCOM only had given estimates and no facts were ever established.

2. “The United Nations also concluded that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulinum toxin – enough to subject millions of people to death by respiratory failure. He hasn’t accounted for that material. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed it.”

Once again, Bush cited the 1999 UNSCOM estimate. UNSCOM officials were uncertain about the reliability of the estimate. The State Department called this accusation a “fact.” (State Department, “Failing to Disclose and Disarm”)

3. “Our intelligence sources estimate that Saddam Hussein had materials to produce as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard, and VX nerve agent. In such quantities, these chemicals also could kill untold thousands. He ha snot accounted for these materials.”

This is the first time Bush used the term “estimates.”

4. “U.S. intelligence indicates that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 tons of munitions capable of delivering chemical agents. Inspectors recently turned up 16 of them, despite Iraq’s recent declaration denying their existence. Saddam Hussein ahs not accounted for the remaining 29,984 tons of these prohibited munitions. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them”

Bush vaguely cited “U.S. intelligence” for this information. It appeared to have come first from UNSCOM. If this was true, Bush DOUBLED the number of existing munitions that MIGHT BE in Saddam'’ arsenal.

5. “From three Iraqi defectors, we know that Iraq, in the late 1990s, had several mobile biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents and can be moved form place to place to evade inspectors. Saddam has not disclosed these facilities. He has given no evidence that he has destroyed them”

The “three defectors” were never identified. Neither did the president’s hand-picked inspectors explain who they were. The CIA claimed that two labs were located, but Iraqi scientists claimed they were designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. After the invasion of Iraq, experts corroborated the Iraqis claim that the labs were used for peaceful purposes.

Moreover, on May 29, 2003 -- 50 days after the fall of Baghdad -- United States forces seized the trailers. An exalted Bush declared, “We have found the weapons of mass destruction.”

As Bush spoke, United States intelligence officials possessed powerful evidence that it was not true. The two small trailers turned out to be long-sought mobile “biological laboratories.” One day after the seizure of the trailers -- on May 28 -- the CIA publicly released its first formal assessment of the trailers, reflecting the views of its analysts. (Washington Post, April 12, 2006)

Several groups analyzed the suspected mobile labs throughout the spring and summer of 2003. Two teams of military experts, who viewed the trailers soon after their discovery, concluded that the facilities were weapons labs. The Bush administration immediately accepted their analysis. (Washington Post, April 12, 2006)

The Pentagon dispatched a more experienced fact-finding mission to analyze the trailers. The team was comprised of nine United States and British civilian experts -- scientists and engineers with extensive experience in all the technical fields involved in making bioweapons -- who were dispatched to Baghdad by the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) for an analysis of the trailers. (Washington Post, April 12, 2006)

The team concluded that the trailers had nothing to do with biological weapons. The members sent their unanimous three-page findings to the Bush administration in a field report on May 27 -- two days before Bush made the statement. The preliminary report was transmitted in the early hours of May 27, just before its members began boarding planes to return home. Within 24 hours, the CIA published its white paper, “Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants,” on its Web site. (Washington Post, April 12, 2006)

After team members returned to Washington, they began work on a final report. At several points, members were questioned about revising their conclusions. The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report’s conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons? (Washington Post, April 12, 2006)

The team’s final report in September 2004 -- 15 months after the technical report was written -- said the trailers were “impractical” for biological weapons production and were “almost certainly intended” for manufacturing hydrogen for weather balloons. The report was 19 pages with an appendix of 103 pages. (Washington Post, April 12, 2006)

For nearly one year after the mobile labs were seized, White House and intelligence officials continued to publicly assert that the trailers were weapons factories for WMD. These officials repeatedly denied allegations that intelligence was hyped or manipulated in the prelude to the invasion of Iraq. (Washington Post, April 12, 2006)

Throughout 2003 and into 2004, Bush administration officials repeatedly referred to the trailers as “mobile biological laboratories.” In late June, Powell declared that the “confidence level is increasing” that the trailers were intended for biowarfare. In September, Cheney pronounced the trailers to be “mobile biological facilities,” and he said they could have been used to produce anthrax or smallpox. (Washington Post, April 12, 2006)

In October, leaders of the Iraqi Survey Group were publicly expressing doubts about the trailers. David Kay, the group’s first leader, told Congress on October 2 that he had found no banned weapons in Iraq and was unable to verify the claim that the disputed trailers were weapons labs. (Washington Post, April 12, 2006)

In February 2004, Tenet continued to assert that the mobile-labs theory remained plausible. On February 5, he said that although there was “no consensus” among intelligence officials, the trailers “could be made to work” as weapons labs. (Washington Post, April 12, 2006)

6. “The International Atomic Energy Agency confirmed in the 1990s that Saddam Hussein had an advanced nuclear weapons development program, had a design for a nuclear weapon, and was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb.”

Even though the IAEA did provide some information to this effect, Saddam cooperated with its inspectors as well as UNSCOM officials until August 1998. Garry Dillon, head of the IAEA’s inspection team from 1997 to 1999, said, “There was no indications of Iraq having achieved its program goals or producing a nuclear weapon; nor were there any indications that their remained in Iraq any physical capability for production of amounts of weapon-useable nuclear material of any practical significance.” Later, in January 2003, the IAEA reiterated Dillon’s claim.

7. “The British government has learned Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

Bush knew too well that former ambassador to Niger Joseph Wilson had concluded that Saddam had never sought to purchase “yellowcake” uranium from Niger.

8. “Our intelligence sources tell us that Saddam Hussein has attempted to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes for nuclear weapons production.”

Bush was referring to the CIA’s October 2002 report. CIA analysts merely had suggested there was a possibility that Iraq was seeking to buy aluminum tubes to enhance its nuclear program.

Eight days after the State of the Union, the IAEA reported to the United Nations: “The IAEA’s analysis to date indicates that the specifications of the aluminum tubes recently sought by Iraq appear to be consistent with reverse engineering of rockets. While it would be possible to modify such tubes for the manufacture of centrifuges, they are not directly suitable for such use.” (Worse Than Watergate, John Dean)

10. ON THE VERGE OF WAR

ush administration officials continued with their mantra: “Saddam has WMD; Saddam is a threat.” On February 3 -- four weeks before the invasion of Iraq -- Fleischer told the White House Press Corps, “I think the reason that we know Saddam Hussein possesses chemical and biological weapons is from a wide variety of means. That’s how we know.” (Znet, June 4, 2003)

In a February 8 national radio address, Bush said, “We have sources that tell us that Saddam Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field commanders to use chemical weapons -- the very weapons the dictator tells us he does not have.” Bush also said, “Iraq has at least seven mobile factories for the production of biological agents -- equipment mounted on trucks and rails to evade discovery.”

Appearing on Meet the Press on February 9, Powell was asked if the Bush administration knew where certain weapons in Iraq were being stored why not just send the United Nations inspectors in or destroy the facility rather than go to war. Powell responded: “Well, the inspectors eventually did go there, and by the time they got there, they were no longer active chemical bunkers.” (Meet the Press, February 9, 2003)

Powell told the Security Council that a “poison factory” existed in northern Iraq. Two days later, foreign journalists visited the site and found nothing. It turned out to be a dilapidated collection of concrete outbuildings at the foot of a grassy sloping hill. There were broken rocket parts among concrete houses behind barbed wire. (The Observer, February 9, 2003)

In March, Powell said, “Let me ... share with you what we know from eyewitness accounts. We have first-hand descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.” Powell told the Security Council on March 7, “So has the strategic decision been made to disarm Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction by the leadership in Baghdad? … I think our judgment has to be clearly not.”

Despite hyping up accusations about Saddam and WMD, Powell knew better. Three years later -- in April 2006 – Powell broke his silence in an interview with the San Francisco Chronicle (April 12, 2006.) He said that he and the State Department’s top experts never believed that Iraq posed an imminent nuclear threat, but that Bush followed the misleading advice of Cheney and the CIA in making the claim.

When asked why Bush ignored evidence indicating Saddam was not a threat, Powell responded, “The CIA was pushing the aluminum tube argument heavily and Cheney went with that instead of what our guys wrote.”

Powell was asked why Bush included allegations that Saddam was attempting to purchase yellow-cake uranium from Niger, Powell answered, “That was a big mistake. It should never have been in the speech. I didn’t need Wilson to tell me that there wasn’t a Niger connection. He didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know. I never believed it.”

Powell was also asked why Bush emphasized Iraq’s nucklear threat. Powell said it was not the president. “That was all Cheney.” (San Francisco Chronicle, April 12, 2006)

On March 17, Bush went on national television and told the American people, “Intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised.”

Speaking to the White House press corps on March 21, Fleischer said, “Well, there is no question that we have evidence and information that Iraq has weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical particularly . . . all this will be made clear in the course of the operation, for whatever duration it takes.”

On the eve of the American invasion, Cheney declared: “We believe that he (Saddam Hussein) has in fact reconstituted nuclear weapons.” Cheney later said that he meant “program” -- not “weapons.” He also said, “I really do believe that we will be greeted as liberators.” (Newsweek, November 17, 2003)

General Tommy Franks held a press conference on March 22 and said, “There is no doubt that the regime of Saddam Hussein possesses weapons of mass destruction. And . . . as this operation continues, those weapons will be identified, found, along with the people who have produced them and who guard them.”

The following day, Pentagon Spokeswoman Victoria Clark, speaking at a press briefing, said, “One of our top objectives is to find and destroy the WMD. There are a number of sites.”

WAITING TOO LATE TO FORMULATE CONTINGENCY PLANS. Incredibly, senior Bush administration officials waited until February to discuss the probability of something going wrong during and after an American invasion. Eventually, Rumsfeld approved a five-page list.

It included a “concern about Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction against his own people and blaming it on us, which would fit a pattern.” Rumsfeld noted that Hussein “could do what he did to the Kuwaiti oil fields and explode them, detonate, in a way that lost that important revenue for the Iraqi people.” The oil fields were of great concern to the White House, since it was counting on Iraqi oil revenues to help pay for rebuilding the nation. (New York Times, February 18, 2003)

Although administration officials were also concerned about the ultimate number of American casualties, they declined to discuss the issue and it was not known how that risk figured in Rumsfeld’s list. One senior White House official said that a protracted war could lead to increased casualties. He said, “How long will this go on? Three days, three weeks, three months, three years?” (New York Times, February 18, 2003)

The Rumsfeld document also warned of Hussein hiding his weapons in mosques or hospitals or cultural sites, and using his citizenry or captured foreign journalists as human shields. The risks, Rumsfeld said, “run the gamut from concerns about some of the neighboring states being attacked, concerns about the use of weapons of mass destruction against those states or against our forces in or out of Iraq.” (New York Times, February 18, 2003)

Another concern was the uncertainty of how American forces would be received in Iraq. The official asked, “Will it be cheers, jeers or shots? And the fact is, we won’t know until we get there.” (New York Times, February 18, 2003)

BUSH’S SETBACKS BEFORE THE WAR:

1. Bush’s popularity began and continued to slide.

2. The elder Bush lectured his son on his decision to virtually ignore the United Nations.

3. World-wide protests intensified.

4. Bush became increasingly frustrated that United Nations inspector Hans Blix failed to find “weapons of mass destruction.”

5. The Bush administration considered the use of nuclear armaments as a part of the president’s “doctrine of preemption.” (Los Angeles Times, January 26, 2003)

6. Projections of the cost of an Iraqi war began mounting.

7. Iraqi documents linked United States and European corporations to the sale of technology to Baghdad in the 1980s.

8. The world community could not understand why Bush failed to explain plans to rebuild a war-torn Iraq, if an American invasion would materialize.

9. A political counselor at the American Embassy in Athens became the first diplomat to resign over Bush’s Iraq policy.

10. Tensions continued to increase in northern Iraq, as the Kurds feared a Turkish invasion from the west once Hussein was overthrown.

11. Bush said he would probably order Iraqi’s Saddam Hussein’s death “if we had a clear shot” at the Iraqi leader.

12. France, Russia, and Germany balked at Bush’s insistence to give him the green light to wage war.

13. Turkey’s Parliament voted against allowing American troops to stage an invasion from its soil.

14. By Iraq destroying medium-range Al Samoud 2 missiles and empty warheads, Bush had one less reason to launch his war.

15. The Pentagon reluctantly acknowledged that 250,000 faulty battle-dress overgarment (BDO) suits were manufactured by Isratex Inc. Another 800,000 other BDO suits were manufactured correctly. The Pentagon was unable to distinguish between the defective and dependable BDOs.

16. Rumsfeld had business ties to North Korea, and Bush had connections to an accused terrorist.

17. Bush was embarrassed when it was revealed that Sami Amin al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor charged with being the American leader of a Mideast terrorist group, was photographed with the president during the 2000 campaign.

18. The IAEA charged that the United States used faked and erroneous evidence to support the claims that Iraq was importing enriched uranium and other material for the manufacture of nuclear weapons.

19. Powell falsely claimed that Iraq had created a “poison factory” in the northeast part of the country.

20. Bush’s dangerous unilateral approach to global politics triggered a wave of nationalism across the United States, reminiscent of the nationalism that swept across Europe in the nineteenth century.

21. While Bush repeatedly declared that democracy would bring peace to the Middle East, the State Department expressed doubt that installing a new regime in Iraq would foster the spread of democracy.

COVERING FOR BUSH? High-level Bush administration officials wanted to insulate Bush from a White House struggle that revolved around doubts that Saddam had WMD and had the capability to develop a nuclear program.

In mid-2003, Karl Rove cautioned other White House aides that Bush’s 2004 re-election prospects would be severely damaged if it was publicly disclosed that he had been personally warned that a key rationale for going to war had been challenged within the administration. (National Journal, March 31, 2006)

Rove was particularly concerned when the Bush administration was warned that it was not true that Iraq was procuring high-strength aluminum tubes to build a nuclear weapon. (National Journal, March 31, 2006)

Even though the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate said that Iraq’s aluminum tubes were “related to a uranium enrichment effort,” the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research and the Energy Department’s intelligence branch said they “believe that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons.” (National Journal, March 31, 2006)

Stephen Hadley, Deputy National Security Advisor, and other administration realized that it would be much more difficult to shield Bush from criticism for his statements regarding the aluminum tubes for three reasons:

1. Hadley’s review concluded that Bush had been directly and repeatedly apprised of the deep rift within the intelligence community over whether Iraq wanted the high-strength aluminum tubes for a nuclear weapons program or for conventional weapons.

2. Bush and others in the administration had cited the aluminum tubes as the most compelling evidence that Saddam was determined to build a nuclear weapon -- even more than the allegations that he was attempting to purchase uranium.

3. Full disclosure of the internal dissent over the importance of the tubes would have almost certainly raised broader questions about the administration's conduct in the months leading up to war. (National Journal, March 31, 2006)

The President’s Summary was only one of several high-level warnings given to Bush and other senior administration officials that serious doubts existed about the intended use of the tubes. In mid-September 2002, two weeks before Bush received the October 2002 President’s Summary, Tenet informed him that both State and Energy had doubts about the aluminum tubes and that even some within the CIA were not certain that the tubes were meant for nuclear weapons. Even Powell had doubts that the tubes might be used for nuclear weapons. (National Journal, March 31, 2006)

The White House’s damage control was largely successful, because the public did not learn until after the 2004 elections the full extent of Bush’s knowledge that the assessment linking the aluminum tubes to a nuclear weapons program might not be true. The most crucial information was kept under wraps until long after Bush’s re-election. (National Journal, March 31, 2006)

11. THE WAR BEGINS

“MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.” The war was never the “blitzkrieg” that the president had anticipated. There was no dancing in the streets. The United States military may have won the battle in Baghdad, but it lost the war.

So hopeful of victory was Bush, that he decked himself out in a fighter pilot’s uniform and landed on the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in May. The banner, “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED,” was placed on the ship’s highest deck for the television audience to see. Bush strutted to the podium and said, “We’ve begun the search for hidden chemical and biological weapons, and already know of hundreds of sites that will be investigated.” (Washington Post, May 11, 2003)

When it became evident that “mission was not accomplished,” the White House was asked whose responsibility it had been to display the “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED” banner. An administration official lied when he said the captain of the USS Abraham Lincoln had made the decision. The White House later conceded the banner was part of its public relations campaign.

A HIGH-LEVEL CIA OFFICIAL ACCUSES BUSH OF “CHERRY-PICKING.” Paul Pillar, who was the national intelligence officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000 to 2005, accused the Bush administration of “cherry-picking” intelligence on Iraq to justify a decision it had already reached to go to war. In February 2006, Pillar charged that the White House ignored warnings that the country could easily fall into violence and chaos after an invasion to overthrow Saddam. This was the first time that a senior CIA intelligence officer directly and publicly condemned the administration’s handling of intelligence. (Washington Post, February 10, 2006)

Pillar acknowledged that official intelligence on Iraqi weapons programs was flawed, “but even with its flaws, it was not what led to the war.” He claimed the Bush administration “went to war without requesting -- and evidently without being influenced by -- any strategic-level intelligence assessments on any aspect of Iraq.” (Washington Post, February 10, 2006)

Pillar described a process in which the White House helped frame intelligence results by repeatedly posing questions aimed at bolstering its arguments about Iraq. He said the the Bush administration “repeatedly called on the intelligence community to uncover more material that would contribute to the case for war.” That included information on the “supposed connection” between Saddam and al Qaeda, which analysts had discounted. (Washington Post, February 10, 2006)

Pillar also wrote that, despite United States intelligence indicating Iraq’s weapons capacities, “Saddam was being kept in his box by U.N. sanctions,” and that the best way to deal with him was through “an aggressive inspections program to supplement sanctions already in place.” (Washington Post, February 10, 2006)

According to Pillar, the intelligence community concluded that a postwar Iraq “would not provide fertile ground for democracy” and would need “a Marshall Plan-type effort” to restore its economy despite its oil revenue. It also foresaw Sunnis and Shi’ites fighting for power.” (Washington Post, February 10, 2006)

Pillar said the intelligence community “anticipated that a foreign occupying force would itself be the target of resentment and attacks -- including guerrilla warfare -- unless it established security and put Iraq on the road to prosperity in the first few weeks or months after the fall of Saddam.” (Washington Post, February 10, 2006)

12. FAILING TO UNCOVER WMD

The United States Army 75th Exploitation Task Force failed to uncover weapons of mass destruction. Frustrated by its failure, the force began preparing to leave Iraq after seven weeks. It had expected to find hundreds of tons of biological and chemical agents, missiles and rockets to deliver the agents, and evidence of an ongoing program to build a nuclear bomb. (Washington Post, May 11, 2003)

On several occasions, the Bush administration believed they had uncovered WMD:

1. One week into the war, troops discovered hundreds of Iraqi military garments manufactured to protect soldiers in the event of chemical warfare. Then mysterious barrels were uncovered at an industrial site in southern Iraq. Rumors of the discovery of chemical weapons quickly circulated. In both cases, no chemical weapons were discovered.

2. After American tanks stormed Baghdad, the Pentagon thought they had found the smoking gun. American troops uncovered warehouses full of 2,500 barrels of low-grade uranium in what appeared to be part of an active nuclear weapons program. The area had laid unguarded for several days this week as Iraqi mobs swirled around. But once again, the Bush administration was disappointed when it was learned that the troops might have broken United Nations SEALS meant to keep control of the radioactive material. (New York Times, April 11, 2003)

3. American Marines stumbled across dozens of hidden short-range Iraqi missiles. Initial tests at the scene suggested several warheads were laced with chemical weapons. But after further tests were conducted, it was revealed that no chemical weapons had been placed in the warheads.

4. When Lieutenant General Amer al-Saadi, Iraq’s top science adviser, surrendered to United States authorities, the White House hoped he would lead the military to the sites of such weapons. “He knows where the stuff is, and he knows the names of the major players connected with the program,” said a United States intelligence official who requested anonymity. (Los Angeles Times, April 13, 2003) But al-Saadi denied that WMD had existed.

5. The following day, Army troops near Karbala, just south of Baghdad, discovered 11 mobile laboratories designed to build chemical and biological weapons buried in the sand. Brigadier General Benjamin Freakly of the 101st Airborne Division said the laboratories were found near an artillery plant -- but once again, no chemicals were found. (Washington Post, April 14, 2003)

6. New York Times writer Judith Miller reported on April 20, 2003 that an Iraqi scientist claimed to have worked in the country’s chemical weapons program for more than a decade. Miller reported that he told an American military team that Iraq destroyed chemical weapons and biological warfare equipment only days before the war began. They said the scientist led Americans to a supply of material that proved to be part of Iraq’s program to manufacture illegal weapons. The scientist also told American weapons experts that Iraq had secretly sent unconventional weapons and technology to Syria, starting in the mid-1990s, and that more recently Iraq was cooperating with al Qaeda.

The Bush administration said the scientist told them that Iraq had destroyed some stockpiles of deadly agents as early as the mid-1990s, transferred others to Syria, and had recently focused its efforts instead on research and development projects that are virtually impervious to detection by international inspectors, and even American forces on the ground combing through Iraq's giant weapons plants.

The American military team known as the Mobile Exploitation Team Alpha (MET Alpha) found the scientist but declined to identify him. The team said they feared he might be subject to reprisals. But they said that they considered him credible and that the material unearthed over the last three days at sites to which he led them had proved to be precursors for a toxic agent that is banned by chemical weapons treaties.

However, Times’ reporter Miller was not allowed to interview the scientist. Under the terms of the agreement with MET Alpha, even permitted to write about the discovery of the scientist for three days, and the copy was then submitted for a check by military officials.

American military officials asked that details of what chemicals were uncovered be deleted. They said they feared that such information could jeopardize the scientist’s safety by identifying the part of the weapons program where he worked. The MET Alpha team said it reported its findings to Washington after testing the buried material and checking the scientist’s identity with experts in the United States. A report was sent to the White House on Friday, experts said.

To further question the validity of the story, military spokesmen at the Pentagon and at Central Command headquarters in Doha, Qatar, said they could not confirm that an Iraqi chemical weapons scientist was providing American forces with new information.

The Pentagon claimed the scientist was found by a team headed by Chief Warrant Officer Richard Gonzales, the leader of MET Alpha, one of several teams charged with hunting for unconventional weapons throughout Iraq. Gonzales and his team of specialists from the Defense Intelligence Agency tracked down the scientist on April 17 through a series of interviews and increasingly frantic site visits. Gonzales obtained the scientist’s note, which had never been formally analyzed and was still in a brigade headquarters, along with the scientist’s address, military officials said. The next morning, MET Alpha weapons experts found the scientist at home, along with some documents from the program and samples he had buried in his backyard and at other sites. The scientist told MET Alpha members that because Iraq’s unconventional weapons programs were highly compartmented, he only had firsthand information about the chemical weapons sector in which he worked, team members said.

However, the Pentagon said the scientist had given the Americans information about other unconventional weapons activities, as well as about Iraqi weapons cooperation with Syria and with terrorist groups, including al Qaeda.

MET Alpha not only prevented Times’ reporter Miller to interview the scientist, but she was permitted to see him only from a distance at the sites where he said that material from the arms program was buried. Miller was permitted to examine a letter written in Arabic that the scientist had slipped to American soldiers providing them information about the program and seeking their protection.

Military officials said the scientist told them that four days before President Bush gave Hussein 48 hours to leave Iraq or face war, Iraqi officials set fire to a warehouse where biological weapons research and development was conducted. The officials quoted him as saying he had watched several months before the outbreak of the war as Iraqis buried chemical precursors and other sensitive material to conceal and preserve them for future use. The officials said the scientist showed them documents, samples, and other evidence of the program that he claimed to have stolen to prove that the program existed. (New York Times, April 20, 2003)

1. The American military hit another dead-end on April 27. Troops found about a dozen 55-gallon drums in an open field near this northern Iraqi town, and initial tests indicated one of them contained a mixture of a nerve agent and mustard gas. However, further tests proved it was yet another false alarm. (Los Angeles Times, April 29, 2003)

2. The Defense Department’s Direct Support Team examined seven sites associated with Iraq's nuclear program during the first month after the Hussein regime had been overthrown. None of the sites was found to be intact. While searching the Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility, the team found the site heavily looted and said it was impossible to tell whether nuclear had been stolen. The survey, conducted by a U.S. Special Forces detachment and eight nuclear experts from a Pentagon office called the most dangerous technologies beyond anyone’s knowledge. (Washington Post, May 3, 2003)

The Baghdad Nuclear Research Facility contained the remains of reactors bombed by Israel in 1981 and the United States in 1991. It had stored industrial and medical wastes, along with spent reactor fuel. Though not suitable to produce a fission bomb, the highest-energy isotopes here, including cesium and cobalt, had been sought by terrorists interested in using conventional explosives to scatter radioactive dust. (Washington Post, May 3, 2003)

The Tuwaitha Nuclear Research Center was located less than one mile from the Baghdad Nuclear Research. It was the most important looted nuclear site, where United Nations weapons inspectors had catalogued tons of partially enriched uranium and natural uranium. It contained metals suitable for processing into the core of a nuclear weapon. Iraqi civilians have stripped it of computers, furniture and much equipment. (Washington Post, May 3, 2003)

It was impossible to determine if any dangerous nuclear materials were stolen, since the Bush administration had been in conflict with the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency which was not invited back into Iraq. American forces claimed that on April 10 they had found a door unlocked in one of the Tuwaitha’s nuclear storage areas. (Washington Post, May 3, 2003)

3. On April 19, American forces seized two trailers which, they suspected, had operated as a mobile biological weapons laboratory. The discovery occurred near a Kurdish checkpoint at Tallkaya in northern Iraq. Although no proof existed that the two trailers were indeed mobile biological labs, the CIA in a six-page assessment -- entitled “Iraqi Mobile Biological Warfare Agent Production Plants” -- concluded that it was “highly confident” of that judgment. (New York Times, May 7, 2003; May 29, 2003)

The CIA concluded that each trailer could brew enough germs to produce, with further processing, one or two kilograms of dried agent each month. By comparison, the anthrax-tainted letters that killed 5 people and put 30,000 Americans on preventive antibiotics in 2001 each contained about a gram of dried anthrax spores.

Iraqi scientists had said the trailers were used to produce hydrogen for weather balloons. Furthermore, American and British intelligence analysts, with direct access to the evidence, disputed his claims. Experts said they were more likely intended for other purposes and charged that the evaluation process by the Bush administration had been damaged by a rush to judgment. One analyst said, “Everyone has wanted to find the 'smoking gun' so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion. I am very upset with the process.” (New York Times, June 7, 2003)

Experts said the mobile plants lacked gear for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production, peaceful or otherwise. At most, each unit could produce only a relatively small amount of germ-laden liquid, which would have to undergo further processing at some other factory unit to make it concentrated and prepare it for use as a weapon. Also, the trailers have no easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from the processing tank. (New York Times, June 7, 2003)

In late May, the Pentagon launched a “significant expansion” of the hunt for WMD. Major General Keith Dayton was selected to head a new team, the Iraq Survey Group, to seek chemical and biological weapons. The group consisted of 1,300 to 1,400 people from the United States, Britain, and Australia and was based in Baghdad. About 300 members of the group were assigned to searching in Iraq, while the job of the others was to analyze and question people with possible knowledge of weapons. (New York Times, May 31, 2003)

Bush was dealt an embarrassing blow when General James Conway, commander of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force, contradicted the administration’s rationale for failing to uncover WMD. Conway said, “We were simply wrong. It was a surprise to me then, it remains a surprise to me now, that we have not uncovered (nuclear, chemical or biological) weapons” in Iraq. He added, “Believe me, it’s not for lack of trying. We’ve been to virtually every ammunition supply point between the Kuwait border and Baghdad, but they’re simply not there.” (Los Angeles Times, June 3, 2003)

13. PLANNING TO “PLANT” WMD

Once Bush declared victory in Iraq, the arduous job of hunting down WMD began. Military planners said they were convinced Iraq planned to use chemical weapons against the invaders. But questions of their whereabouts continued to haunt Bush. Central Command began the war with a list of 19 top weapons sites. Another list enumerated 68 top “non-WMD sites,” without known links to special weapons but judged to have the potential to offer clues.

In August, a former Pentagon employee and a DOD whistleblowers charged that the Bush administration’s assurance about finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq was based on a CIA plan to “plant” WMDs inside Iraq. Nelda Rogers was a 28-year veteran debriefer for the Pentagon, and she was second in the chain of command within this DOD’s special intelligence office. She said the plan failed when the secret mission was mistakenly taken out by “friendly fire. (www.almartinraw.com, August 13, 2003)

Rogers said, “This was a contingent of CIA/ DOD operatives, but it was really the CIA that bungled it. They were relying on the CIA’s ability to organize an effort to seize these assets and to be able to extract these assets because the CIA claimed it had resources on the ground within the Iraqi army and the Iraqi government who had been paid. That turned out to be completely bogus. As usual.” (www.almartinraw.com, August 13, 2003)

Retired Navy Lieutenant Commander Al Martin said, “CIA people were supposed to be handling the operation to “plant” WMD inside Iraq. He claimed the CIA had a special ‘black’ aircraft to fly it out. But none of that happened because the regular U.S. Army showed up, stumbled onto it and everyone involved had to scramble.” (www.almartinraw.com, August 13, 2003)

Another covert operation was authorized to locate the assets of Hussein and his family. It included cash, gold bullion, jewelry, and assorted valuable antiquities. The problem became evident when “the operation in Iraq involved 100 people, all of whom apparently are now dead, having succumbed to so-called ‘friendly fire.’ The operation included the penetration of the Central Bank of Iraq, other large commercial banks in Baghdad, the Iraqi National Museum, and certain presidential palaces where monies and bullion were secreted.” (www.almartinraw.com, August 13, 2003)

Martin said, “They identified about $2 billion in cash, another $150 million in Euros, in physical banknotes, and about another $100 million in sundry foreign currencies ranging from Yen to British Pounds. … These people died, mostly in the same place in Baghdad, supposedly from a stray cruise missile or a combination of missiles and bombs that went astray. There were supposedly 76 who died there and the other 24 died through a variety of ‘friendly fire,” ‘mistaken identity,’ and some of them -- their whereabouts are simply unknown.” (www.almartinraw.com, August 13, 2003)

14. THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION CHANGES ITS STORY ON WMD

On March 23, 2003, Defense Policy Board member Kenneth Adelman said, “I have no doubt we’re going to find big stores of weapons of mass destruction.” (Washington Post, March 23, 2003)

The following day, in an appearance on CBS’s Face the Nation, Rumsfeld stated: “We have seen intelligence over many months that they have chemical and biological weapons, and that they have dispersed them and that they’re weaponized and that, in one case at least, the command and control arrangements have been established. … Rumsfeld boasted, “We know where the WMD is.”

Interviewed on ABC’s This Week on March 30, Rumsfeld bragged, “We know where they (WMD) are. They’re in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.” (Donald Rumsfeld, ABC Interview, March 30, 2003)

Bush told reporters on May 3, “We'll find them. It’ll be a matter of time to do so.” He also said, “We found the weapons of mass destruction. We found biological laboratories.” Three days later, Bush told reporters, “I’m not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein -- because he had a weapons program.”

On May 4, Powell told reporters, “I’m absolutely sure that there are weapons of mass destruction there and the evidence will be forthcoming. We’re just getting it just now.” The same day, Rumsfeld told Fox News, “We never believed that we’d just tumble over weapons of mass destruction in that country.”

On May 27, Rumsfeld said, “They may have had time to destroy them, and I don’t know the answer.” The following day, in a Vanity Fair interview on May 28, Wolfowitz said, “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”

In a Reuters interview on May 12, Rice said, “U.S. officials never expected that ‘we were going to open garages and find’ weapons of mass destruction.” The next day, Major General David Petraeus, Commander 101st Airborne, in a press briefing, told reporters, “I just don’t know whether it was all destroyed years ago -- I mean, there’s no question that there were chemical weapons years ago -- whether they were destroyed right before the war, (or) whether they’re still hidden.”

Interviewed on May 21, General Michael Hagee, Commandant of the Marine Corps, said, “Before the war, there’s no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, biological and chemical. I expected them to be found. I still expect them to be found.” Five days later, General Richard Myers, Chairman Joint Chiefs of Staff, was interviewed on NBC’s Today Show.” He said, “Given time, given the number of prisoners now that we're interrogating, I’m confident that we’re going to find weapons of mass destruction.”

Rumsfeld told members of the Council on May 27, “They may have had time to destroy them, and I don’t know the answer.”

In a Vanity Fair interview on May 28, Wolfowitz said, “For bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction (as justification for invading Iraq) because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.”

Rice continued to defend herself, even though charges that Saddam possessed WMD were disproved. Before the Iraq war, she made 29 false or misleading public statements concerning WMD and links to al Qaeda, according to a congressional investigation by the House Committee on Government Reform. (Boston Globe, May 12, 2006)

In July 2003, Rice said: “Now if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence … those doubts were not communicated to the president, the vice president, or to me.” Rice’s own deputy, Stephen Hadley, later admitted that the CIA had sent her a memo eight months earlier warning against the use of this claim. (Boston Globe, May 12, 2006)

In August, the Office of Communications for Planning drafted a white paper -- “A Grave and Gathering Danger: Saddam Hussein’s Quest for Nuclear Weapons” -- that was never published. Rice decided not to publish it, feeling that it “was not strong enough.” The paper cited the IAEA’s description of Iraq’s defunct nuclear program in language that appeared to be current. The draft stated, “Since the beginning of the nineties, Saddam has launched a crash program to divert nuclear reactor fuel for … nuclear weapons.” However, the reactor fuel, except for waste products, was gone. The white paper said satellite photographs showed “many signs of the reconstruction and acceleration of the Iraqi nuclear program.” Chief weapons inspector Hans Blix refuted the claims, saying, “You can see hundreds of new roofs in these photos, but you don’t know what’s under them.” (Washington Post, August 10, 2003)

On August 7, Rice told the National Association of Black Journalists that she was “certain to this day that this regime was a threat, that it was pursuing a nuclear weapon, that it had biological and chemical weapons, that it had used them.” (Washington Post, August 10, 2003)

In September, Bush still claimed Saddam had WMD. He said, “The Iraqi regime possesses biological and chemical weapons.” (Washington Post, March 4, 2004) That same month, Powell falsely claimed that United Nations weapons inspectors had been evicted from Iraq in 1998. He said explained that the Clinton administration “conducted a four-day bombing campaign in late 1998 based on the intelligence that he had. That resulted in the weapons inspectors being thrown out.” (ABC’s This Week; September 27, 2003)

On September 14, Cheney was asked by Tim Russert on Meet the Press about his pre-war statement that Iraq possessed nuclear weapons. Cheney responded, “The whole notion that somehow there’s nothing to the notion that Saddam Hussein had or had developed WMD just strikes me as fallacious. Nobody drove into Baghdad and had somebody say, ‘Hey, there’s the building where all of our WMDs are stored.’ But that’s not the way the system worked.”

Cheney acknowledged for the first time that “I did misspeak. I said repeatedly during the show, ‘weapons capability.’ We never had any evidence that (Hussein) had acquired a nuclear weapon.”

Still, Cheney tried to minimize that statement by saying David Kay, the CIA special advisor directing the hunt for WMD, might find evidence of chemical and other banned arms “buried inside (Hussein’s) civilian infrastructure.” Cheney cited the case of an Iraqi scientist who came forward with plans and components for a centrifuge that could be used to process uranium for use in nuclear weapons. Cheney added, “That’s physical evidence that we've got in hand today. (Meet the Press, September 14, 2003)

Three days later, Bush contradicted Cheney’s comments. The president acknowledged for the first time that there was no concrete evidence linking the Hussein regime to the 9-11 attacks. While emphasizing that Iraq was a haven for terrorists, he conceded that the war was not to fight al Qaida. (San Jose Mercury News, September 14, 2003; New York Times, September 18, 2003)

Even in the latter part of the summer, the Bush administration still refused to accept any responsibility for falsely claiming that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. In fact, White House officials in August inferred that Hussein had sent defectors who planted disinformation to mislead the West before the war. (Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2003)

White House officials said former Iraqi operatives have confirmed since the war that Hussein's regime sent “double agents” disguised as defectors to the West to plant fabricated intelligence. In other cases, Baghdad apparently tricked legitimate defectors into funneling phony tips about weapons production and storage sites. A senior Bush administration official said, “They were shown bits of information and led to believe there was an active weapons program, only to be turned loose to make their way to Western intelligence sources. Then, because they believe it, they pass polygraph tests ... and the planted information becomes true to the West, even if it was all made up to deceive us.”

A senior United States intelligence official said the goal “is to see if false information was put out there and got into legitimate channels and we were totally duped on it. … We’re re-interviewing all our sources of information on this. This is the entire intelligence community, not just the U.S.” (Los Angeles Times, August 28, 2003)

The Bush administration appeared to be getting more desperate. In the fall of 2003, one Bush insider said, “I’ll tell you what. We really need to find some fuckin’ WMD.” (Newsweek, October 6, 2003)

THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION BEGINS TO CHANGE ITS STORY. In August 2003, two senior Bush administration policymakers, who supported the war, said in unauthorized interviews that the White House greatly overstated Iraq’s near-term nuclear potential. One of the policymakers said, “I never cared about the ‘imminent threat. The threat was there in (Saddam’s) presence in office. To me, just knowing what it takes to have a nuclear weapons program, he needed a lot of equipment.’ ” (Washington Post, August 10, 2003)

Failing to uncover weapons of mass destruction, the Bush administration changed its strategy. In early 2004, the White House attempted to twist its rationale for going to war. High-level officials began saying that Iraq had a program to develop WMD -- not that Iraq possessed WMD.

On January 30, 2004, Rice conceded that there might have been flaws in prewar intelligence about Iraq but refused to recommend an independent investigation. She told CBS, “I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground.” (Boston Globe, January 31, 2004)

In late January, Bush finally relented to growing criticism and acknowledged the need for an independent investigation. The administration acknowledged that the intelligence community should be investigated. But it was certain that Bush did not want the probe to go into the White House; that is, to determine if the intelligence was misused.

A CIA report on proliferation released in January said the intelligence community had no “direct evidence” that Iraq had succeeded in reconstituting its biological, chemical, nuclear, or long-range missile programs during the two years since United States planes bombed Iraqi facilities. The CIA report said, “We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since Desert Fox to reconstitute its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs.” (NBC News, January 24, 2003)

Bush’s story began to change. He no longer repeated his claims that WMD would eventually be found in Iraq. Instead, he insisted that his war justified, because Hussein posed “a grave and gathering threat to America and the world.” He refused to respond to reporters’ questions concerning Robert Kay’s assertion that WMD would never be found. (New York Times, January 28, 2004)

Still, Bush continued to refuse to concede that something was seriously wrong with the intelligence reports he used to take the nation to war in Iraq. He vehemently opposed an investigation into the intelligence failures.

Refusing to admit that the Bush administration had erred, Rumsfeld continued to insist that inspectors would find WMD. Addressing the Senate Armed Services Committee, Rumsfeld defended Bush’s decision to go to war in Iraq, and he denied that administration officials had manipulated the intelligence to justify the invasion. (Washington Post, February 5, 2004)

However, Rumsfeld backed away from his assertion before the war that the administration knew Hussein possessed banned weapons in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion. “Intelligence will never be perfect,” Rumsfeld said. “We do not, will not and cannot know everything that’s going on in this world of ours. … I’m convinced that the president of the United States did the right thing in Iraq.” (Washington Post, February 5, 2004)

Tenet went public for the first time on February 5. He acknowledged that American spy agencies might have overestimated Iraq’s illicit weapons capacities, in part because of a failure to penetrate the inner workings of the Iraqi government. Still he defended American spy agencies and their integrity. Tenet also said analysts had varying opinions on the state of Iraq’s chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs and those differences were spelled out in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) given to the White House. The NIE report summarized intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs. (Washington Post, February 6, 2004)

Tenet said that the CIA never claimed before the war that Iraq posed an imminent threat. Similarly, the Bush administration claimed it never told the public that Iraq was an “imminent” threat, and therefore it should be absolved for overstating the case for war and misleading the American people about Iraq’s WMD. (Washington Post, February 6, 2004)

In March, Powell said that the case the Bush administration had made for war “reflected not some political spin -- it reflected the best judgment of the intelligence community.” He said he presented “the same information that in a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) the intelligence community had presented to Congress” and the public. (Fox News, March 14, 2004)

On May 27, 2004, Rumsfeld suggested publicly for the first time that Iraq might have destroyed its suspected chemical and biological weapons before the start of the war. (New York Times, May 27, 2004; May 28, 2004) One week later, he appeared on ABC’s This Week and said that WMD was not in areas controlled by allied forces. “We know where they are, they are in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north of that.” One week later, Rice said on Meet the Press, “No one ever said that we knew precisely where all of these agents were, where they were stored.”

Rumsfeld was caught contradicting his past statements, and we have the video clip. CBS’s Bob Schieffer asked Rumsfeld: “If Iraq did not have WMD, why did they pose an immediate threat to this country?” Rumsfeld answered, “You and a few other critics are the only people I’ve heard use the phrase ‘immediate threat.’ I didn’t. ... It’s become kind of folklore that that’s what happened.” Yet much earlier, Rumsfeld had told Congress, “No terrorist state poses a greater or more immediate threat to the security of our people” than Iraq and that “some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent (but) I would not be so certain.”

In August 2004, Bush conceded for the first time that he had miscalculated post-war conditions in Iraq. He conceded that he made “a miscalculation of what the conditions would be” in post-war Iraq. But he insisted that the 17-month-long insurgency was the unintended by-product of a “swift victory” against Hussein’s military. Bush said his strategy had been “flexible enough” to respond. (New York Times, August 27, 2004)

15. EVIDENCE SHOWS THAT WMD DOES NOT EXIST

NSC OFFICIAL RICHARD CLARKE. Claims that Saddam possessed WMD were refuted by former National Security Council official Richard Clarke. In August 2003, Clark said that seized Iraqi documents disclosed the existence of a “crash program” to build a bomb in 1991. However, Clarke refuted Bush administration’s claims that Iraq posed a nuclear threat: “I can understand why that was a seminal experience for Cheney. And when the CIA says (in 2002), ‘We don’t have any evidence,’ his reaction is … ‘We didn’t have any evidence in 1991, either. Why should I believe you now?’ ” (Washington Post, August 10, 2003)

THE IAEA’S REPORT. In October 2003, David Kay issued the IAEA’s first public assessment of progress in that search since Bush declared an end to major combat on May 1. After three months of searching for WMD, Kay said his 1,200 person team failed to find any such weapons cited by the Bush administration as a principal reason for going to war. Kay said it seemed Iraq had not produced chemical or biological weapons since before the 1991 Gulf War. (Boston Globe, October 3, 2003)

That did not stop the Bush administration which, up to this time, already had spent $300 billion in the four months after victory was declared searching for WMD. Appearing as if he was still desperate to find WMD, Bush asked for $600 billion to continue scouring Iraq for such weapons. Nevertheless, Bush reacted by twisting Kay’s report by saying it vindicated his reasons to go to war. (New York Times, October 4, 2003)

In January 2004, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace released a report entitled “WMD in Iraq: Evidence and Implications.” The think tank concluded that Iraq posed no imminent threat to the United States and that the Bush administration systematically misrepresented the weapons threat from Iraq. The Carnegie report also said that Iraq had dismantled its nuclear program and that no convincing evidence had emerged that it was being revived. It said Iraq’s ability to produce chemical weapons on a large scale had been destroyed by the 1991 Gulf war and by United Nations sanctions and inspections. (Washington Post, January 8, 2004)

The report read in part: “It is unlikely that Iraq could have destroyed, hidden or sent out of the country the hundreds of tons of chemical and biological weapons, dozens of Scud missiles and facilities engaged in the ongoing production of chemical and biological weapons that officials claimed were present without the United States detecting some sign of this.” (Washington Post, January 8, 2004)

THE NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE COUNCIL. In July 2004, the National Intelligence Counsel spelled out “a dark assessment of prospects for Iraq.” The estimate outlined three possibilities for Iraq through the end of 2005, with the worst case being developments that could lead to civil war. The most favorable outcome described was an Iraq whose stability would remain tenuous in political, economic, and security terms. (New York Times, September 16, 2004)

IT’S OFFICIAL: NO WMD. In April 2005, the 1,700-member Iraq Survey Team concluded that Saddam did not possess WMD and that none had been passed on to Syria before his fall. (New York Times, April 26, 2005)

The same month, a CIA report concluded that United States military interrogators botched the questioning of Iraqi scientists in the search for WMD. The report said that in many cases the wrong people were detained, and subjected to questioning by “inexperienced and uninformed” interrogators. It estimated that 105 scientists and officials suspected of involvement in WMD programs remained incarcerated. (The Guardian, April 27, 2005)

The CIA report drew several other conclusions:

No evidence suggested that Saddam had smuggled WMD into Syria.

The threat to coalition forces from explosives looted from unguarded sites after the invasion was probably far greater.

Dual-use equipment, which could be used to build chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons, had gone missing. (The Guardian, April 27, 2005)