CONTENTS>

7. THE PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION ON INTELLIGENCE

1. STILL NO WMD

The 1,400-member Iraq Survey Group failed to uncover any weapons of mass destruction. A senior American weapons expert, working with the Iraq Survey Group, said, “We were prisoners of our own beliefs. We said Saddam Hussein was a master of denial and deception. Then when we couldn’t find anything, we said that proved it, instead of questioning our own assumptions.”

On September 16, 2003, Iraqi scientists working under the new provisional Iraqi government confirmed United Nations claims made before the invasion that Iraq had not had any nuclear weapons program for over a decade.

Towards the end of September, Powell recirculated the false story about United Nations weapons inspectors being evicted from Iraq in 1998. On ABC’s “This Week” (September 27, 2003), Powell 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.”

Powell’s account contradicted what actually had occurred. On December 15, 1998, the head of the United Nations weapons inspection team in Iraq, Richard Butler, released a report accusing Iraq of not fully cooperating with inspections. The next day, Butler withdrew his inspectors from Iraq, in anticipation of a United States-British bombing campaign that began that evening. Neither George Stephanopoulos nor George Will, who conducted ABC’s interview, corrected Powell’s false assertion.

The New York Times (September 29, 2003) reported Powell’s charge: “Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in a television appearance today, noted that the Iraqi leader threw weapons inspectors out in 1998, making it more difficult for intelligence agencies to get hard information.” The Los Angeles Times (September 29, 2003) paraphrased Powell’s words to make them more factually accurate, prefacing his quote with the statement that “U.N. weapons inspectors had left Iraq in 1998 and did not return until late last year.” The quote immediately followed, giving readers the misimpression that Powell accurately conveyed this background.

Bush heard more bad news. Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said in diary excerpts that he believed Prime Minister Blair knew two weeks before the war that Iraq probably did not possess usable weapons of mass destruction. Cook said he was most concerned about a conversation he had with Blair on March 5, two weeks before Britain and the United States went to war. At the time, the government was still trying to get a Security Council resolution to approve the conflict and Cook was still in government as leader of the House of Commons. (Los Angeles Times, October 6, 2003)

In early October, 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. Nonetheless, Bush reacted by twisting Kay’s report by saying it vindicated his reasons to go to war. (New York Times, October 4, 2003)

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

In January 2004, The Bush administration confirmed that a 400-strong team of weapons disposal experts was withdrawn from Iraq but insisted their job was accomplished. Yet, White House spokesman Scott McClellan said, “The Iraq Survey Group continues to do its work,” (BBC, January 8, 2004)

Just after retiring in October, Carl Ford Jr., former Assistant Secretary of State for Intelligence and Research -- the State Department’s intelligence arm – said the United States intelligence community “badly underperformed” for years in assessing Iraq’s WMD and should accept responsibility for its failure. Ford was the first senior official, involved in preparing the prewar assessments on Iraq, who conceded that serious intelligence errors were made. (Los Angeles Times, October 30, 2003)

On November 11 -- the second anniversary of the terrorist attacks – Assistant Defense Secretary Wolfowitz tsaid, “We know (Iraq) had a great deal to do with terrorism in general and with Al Qaeda in particular, and we know a great many of Bin Laden’s key lieutenants are now trying to organize in cooperation with old loyalists from the Saddam regime.” (ABC, September 11, 2003)

The next day Wolfowitz was forced to admit it. He told Associated Press that his remarks referred not to a “great many” of Bin Laden’s lieutenants but rather to a single Jordanian, Abu Musab Zarqawi. Wolfowitz conceded, “ should have been more precise.” (Associated Press, September 13, 2003)

Wolfowitz told a Senate committee on September 16 that there was no evidence of connections between Ansar al Islam and Hussein’s regime after the United States invasion. In addition, Vincent Cannistraro, formerly the CIA’s director of counter-terrorism operations and analysis, testified before the committee: “There was no substantive intelligence information linking Saddam to international terrorism before the war. Now we’ve created the conditions that have made Iraq the place to come to attack Americans.”

In November, the chairman of the monitoring group, who was appointed by the United Nations Security Council to track Al Qaeda, said his team had found no evidence linking Al Qaeda to Hussein. (New York Times, June 27, 2003)

After nearly two years, finally the search for WMD officially ended officially on January 13, 2005. The news was buried among “more important articles” in most newspapers.

2. THE CIA

Why would the CIA issue a scathing report of an investigation of itself? The agency began a review to try to determine whether the American intelligence community erred in its prewar assessments of Saddam Hussein’s government and Iraq’s weapons programs. In the spring of 2003, Director George Tenet named a team of retired CIA officers to scour the classified intelligence reports that were circulated inside the government before the war on a range of issues related to Iraq, including those concerning Baghdad’s links to terrorism and unconventional weapons. The team compared those reports with what actually was discovered in Iraq since the war ended. (New York Times, May 22, 2003)

In February 2004, the CIA acknowledged that it did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out by American intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons. That acknowledgment contradicted statements before the war by top Bush administration officials. Both CIA Director Tenet and National Security Advisor Rice said the United States had briefed United Nations inspectors on all of the sites identified as “high value and moderate value” in the weapons hunt. (New York Times, February 21 and 23, 2004)

Senior administration officials said that Rice had relied on information provided by intelligence agencies. She assured Democratic Senator Carl Levin of the Intelligence Committee, in a letter on March 6, 2003, that “United Nations inspectors have been briefed on every high or medium priority weapons of mass destruction, missile and UAV-related site the United States intelligence community has identified.” (New York Times, February 21 and 23, 2004)

Levin said, “All such sites were not shared, and Mr. Tenet’s repeated statements were false.” Levin said the CIA acknowledged that 21 of those 105 sites were not shared with the United Nations before the war. He4 also said if the public had known that not all WMD site information had been shared with United Nations weapons inspectors, it might have reinforced sentiment that United Nations inspections should be completed before going to war. (New York Times, February 21 and 23, 2004)

A July 2004 review by former intelligence officers concluded that the Bush administration “apparently paid little or no attention” to pre-war assessments by the CIA that warned of major cultural and political obstacles to stability in postwar Iraq. (New York Times, October 10, 2005)

The review was conducted by a team led by Richard Kerr, a former deputy director of central intelligence, working under contract for the CIA. It acknowledged the deep failures in the agency’s prewar assessments of Iraq’s weapons programs but said “the analysis was right” on cultural and political issues related to postwar Iraq. (New York Times, October 10, 2005)

3. THE SENATE COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

The Democratic leadership on the intelligence committee in both houses clamored for an investigation. Senator Jay Rockefeller and Congressman Henry Waxman pushed for a full investigation into the intelligence that led Bush to argue that Iraq presented an imminent threat to the United States.

The Democratic leadership on the intelligence committee in both houses clamored for an investigation. Senator Jay Rockefeller and Congressman Henry Waxman pushed for a full investigation into the intelligence that led Bush to argue that Iraq presented an imminent threat to the United States.

Rockefeller charged that “Iraqi WMD and links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda were the primary justification offered for the war in Iraq. Even while the search for WMD continues, the American people need and want to know whether our government was accurate and forthcoming in its prewar assessments.” Rockefeller also said, “Even while the search (for the weapons) continues, the American people need and want to know whether our government was accurate and forthcoming in its prewar assessments.” (Washington Post, June 11, 2003; Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2003)

On the other hand, Republicans rejected calls for a public probe but said they would review the issue in private sessions. GOP leaders all denied that the Bush administration attempted to influence their decision to confine the congressional inquiry to closed-door hearings that reviewed prewar intelligence documents furnished by the CIA. (Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2003)

Thirty-five congressmen signed House Resolution 260, demanding that Bush specifically explain his claims of Iraq’s WMD. “Resolved, That the President is requested to transmit to the House of Representatives not later than 4 days after the date of the adoption of this resolution documents or other materials in the President’s possession that provides specific evidence for the following claims relating to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction.”

Hoping to block a congressional investigation, the CIA reassigned two senior officials who oversaw its analysis on Iraq’s WMD. One of the officials had headed the Iraq Task Force, a special unit set up to provide 24-hour support to military commanders during the war. The other, a longtime analyst who had led the agency’s Iraq Issue Group, was dispatched on an extended mission to Iraq. (Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2003)

Naturally, the CIA denied that the two officials had been punished for providing inaccurate information on Iraq’s WMD. CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said that the changes were routine and that it was “absolutely wrong to think this was punitive or negative or indicative of anything other than a normal rotation.” (Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2003)

However, other intelligence sources gave a different account. One CIA officials said, “Two of the key players on this problem have essentially been sent into deep exile.” Another official added that the changes seemed designed to show the administration that “we’re being responsive to charges that we did not perform well.” (Los Angeles Times, June 14, 2003)

On July 3, Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director who led a review of the CIA’s prewar intelligence on Iraq’s unconventional weapons, held a series of interviews with journalists. He acknowledged that the intelligence on WMD had been somewhat ambiguous, that analysts at the CIA and other intelligence services had received pressure from the Bush administration. He also said the CIA had not found any proof of operational ties between Al Qaeda and Hussein’s regime. (The Nation, July 8, 2003)

While the Bush administration continued to stonewall a congressional investigation of the Iraq war, some high-ranking officials acknowledged for the first time on July 7 that the president relied on incomplete and inaccurate information from American intelligence agencies, when he declared that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Africa. The White House statement undercut one of the key pieces of evidence that Bush and his aides had cited to back their claims made prior to launching an attack against Iraq. (New York Times, July 7, 2003)

Former Ambassador Joseph Wilson publicly revealed that he was the envoy whom the CIA, under pressure from Cheney, sent to Niger to investigate the document that allegedly showed Iraq was trying to acquire enriched uranium that might be used to build a nuclear bomb. Wilson found no basis for the story, and nobody else has either.

The CIA, the State Department, the National Security Council, and Cheney’s office were all informed that the Nigerian document was a forgery. Yet, nearly a year after Wilson reported the facts to Cheney and the intelligence community, Bush, in his 2003 State of the Union speech, invoked the phoney uranium connection as a major justification for rushing the nation to war: “The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium in Africa.” (Los Angeles Times, July 8, 2003)

Wilson’s essay in the New York Times (July 6, 2003) read: “A legitimate argument can be made that we went to war under false pretenses.” Wilson told the Washington Post, “It really comes down to the administration misrepresenting the facts on an issue that was a fundamental justification for going to war. It begs the question, what else are they lying about?”

Senator Dick Durbin of Illinois told the Intelligence Committee that even though the CIA had serious doubts about the uranium charge, a White House official insisted on including the assertion that “Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” (Boston Globe, July 19, 2003)

Durbin said, “It was a persistent or insistent effort on their part to include it and find a way to use language which the CIA would accept.” He said the CIA rejected any reference to American intelligence and only agreed to accept the language after the White House official agreed to rewrite the speech to say that the claim was based on British intelligence. (Boston Globe, July 19, 2003)

Durbin did not name the White House official who persisted in keeping a version of the assertion in the speech. However, Vincent Cannistraro, who was the CIA’s former chief of counterterrorism and remains in close contact with intelligence officials, said that he understood the official named by CIA officials was Robert Joseph, who works in the White House's National Security Council. Joseph, who had worked in two previous Republican administrations, was a protege of the hawkish Richard Perle, who served as chairman of the Pentagon's Defense Policy Board.

Bush administration officials attempted to temper the charges of deception. However, Bush himself refused to concede that he was wrong. He said he “got darn good information from the CIA.” (New York Times, July 15, 2003), as he hoped to brush off questions about his lies on reasons to go to war. When he met with Prime Minister Blair on July 17, both heads of state emphatically defended the war was genuine. Bush again said “this intelligence is good intelligence.” (New York Times, July 17, 2003)

On July 3, Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director who led a review of the CIA’s prewar intelligence on Iraq’s unconventional weapons, held a series of interviews with journalists. He acknowledged that the intelligence on WMD had been somewhat ambiguous, that analysts at the CIA and other intelligence services had received pressure from the Bush administration. He also said the CIA had not found any proof of operational ties between Al Qaeda and Hussein’s regime. (The Nation, July 8, 2003)

It was not until July 7 that some high-ranking Bush administration officials acknowledged for the first time that the president relied on incomplete and perhaps inaccurate information from American intelligence agencies, when he declared that Iraq had tried to purchase uranium from Africa. The White House statement undercut one of the key pieces of evidence that Bush and his aides had cited to back their claims made prior to launching an attack against Iraq. (New York Times, July 7, 2003)

With non-stop criticism directed at the Bush administration, Bush began twisting the reasons for which he went to war. Rather than just basing his charge that Iraq possessed WMD, he began emphasizing that broader reasons prevailed as a justification for his war.

On July 18, the Bush administration released eight pages of a 90-page classified report providing details of intelligence given to the White House in October 2002. The report, called a National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, served as the basis for many of the administration’s claims about Hussein. The estimate was intended to represent a consensus of the CIA and other agencies on Iraq’s weapons programs. (Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2003)

The report indicated that Baghdad amassed banned weapons and worked to reconstitute its nuclear program. The excerpts suggested that the CIA and other agencies were more concerned than they have previously acknowledged that the build-up to war might provoke Hussein to attempt terrorist strikes in the United States. (Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2003)

The report said Iraq “probably would attempt clandestine attacks against the United States homeland if Baghdad feared an attack.” It said that Hussein was likely to use biological weapons for such strikes and order his intelligence service to carry them out. (Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2003)

The report made clear that the intelligence community believed cooperation with the terrorist network would represent an extreme step for Hussein. The document read: “Saddam, if sufficiently desperate, might decide that only an organization such as Al Qaeda” could help him strike America, the report said. The scenario was presented in the context of the build-up to war. (Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2003)

In testimony before Congress, CIA officials told senators that the agency raised objections to the language because of concerns about the underlying intelligence, and finally assented only when the White House proposed attributing the charge to British intelligence. (Los Angeles Times, July 19, 2003)

Even Republicans accused the Bush administration of stonewalling the investigation Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on NBC’s Meet the Press (October 26, 2003) that it would be in the Bush administration’s interest to release documents that the committee had requested.

Finally in the summer of 2003 -- after months of pressure by the Democratic leadership -- the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence finally began its investigation into the rationale behind Bush’s decision to go to war.

In October, the committee issued a blistering report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. They report was critical of CIA Director Tenet and other intelligence officials for overstating the weapons and terrorism case against the Hussein regime. GOP Senator Pat Roberts, chairman of the committee, said, “the intelligence was sometimes “sloppy” and inconclusive. (Washington Post, October 24, 2003)

On October 30, the Select Committee on Intelligence sent angry letters to top-level Bush administration officials, demanding access to records and witnesses. The letters -- sent to National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld, and Secretary of State Powell -- criticized their agencies for failing to deliver documents and testimony. (Los Angeles Times, October 31, 2003)

In November, the committee released a memo that recommended Democrats “prepare to launch an investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the (Senate) majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration’s use of intelligence at any time -- but we can only do so once ... the best time would probably be next year.” (Fox News, November 5, 2004)

The last paragraph of the memo read, “Intelligence issues are clearly secondary to the public’s concern regarding the insurgency in Iraq.” (Fox News, November 5, 2004)

Roberts was clearly shocked by the memo, which Democrat Jay Rockefeller, ranking member on the committee, acknowledged was written in draft form and not meant for distribution. (Fox News, November 5, 2004)

The memo discussed strategy for “revealing the misleading, if not flagrantly dishonest, methods and motives of senior administration officials who made the case for unilateral pre-emptive war.” It discussed how Democrats could press for an independent investigation that has already been rejected by the GOP. (Fox News, November 5, 2004)

The Bush administration and Republican leaders in Congress sought for months to confine the inquiry to the performance of the CIA and other intelligence agencies. The Senate panel voted unanimously on February 11 to expand the probe and evaluate the validity of the information provided by the intelligence community as well as assertions made by the Bush administration in going to war. It was another blow to the Bush administration, since it meant that claims made by Bush and other senior White House officials in the sights of the committee’s investigation. (Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2004; Boston Globe, February 15, 2004)

One objective of the committee was to examine the role played by the Office of Special Plans that was set up secretly at the Pentagon to search for ties between Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network. (Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2004)

Another objective was to examine “whether public statements and reports and testimony regarding Iraq” by administration figures were “substantiated by intelligence information.” The committee would examine public comments and claims made not only by the current administration but also by officials in the Clinton administration. (Los Angeles Times, February 13, 2004)

Still the CIA continued to stonewall the release of documents that had been subpoenaed by the committee. The agency did declassify some documents about pre-war intelligence and Iraq’s WMD and did turn them over to the committee. But the CIA withheld numerous pertinent documents from the committee. (Reuters, June 14, 2004)

Finally in June 2004, frustrated leaders of the committee accused the CIA of trying to delay release of the panel’s report that criticized the agency for overestimating the prewar threat posed by Iraq. (Newsweek, June 14, 2004)

Nevertheless, the CIA continued to refuse to declassify large portions of documents that were sharply critical report on prewar intelligence. Outraged and frustrated members on the Senate Intelligence Committee threatened to embarrass the CIA by publishing blank sections of documents that had been censored. (Newsweek, June 28, 2004)

The CIA edited out large quantities of sensitive but declassified material from early drafts that the agency refused to turn over to the committee. The documents contained information about both human and technical collection methods, and references to CIA dealings with foreign spy agencies. (Newsweek, June 28, 2004)

According to sources, Newsweek reported that the classified documents contained information that was harshly critical of the CIA for faulty prewar judgments about Iraq’s WMD and ties to terrorism. One controversy examined by Senate investigators is the CIA’s claim that Saddam was buying aluminum tubes to use to make bomb-grade uranium. Investigators found the CIA’s analysis “sloppy” and that key analysts were pushing a “point of view” rather than judging evidence objectively. (Newsweek, June 28, 2004)

The CIA also supported the allegation that Iraq had built mobile biological-weapons labs. Secretary of State Powell made that charge in his address to the United Nations. Even officials close to the CIA conceded that two key sources Powell cited were dubious characters such as Ahmad Chalabi. (Newsweek, June 28, 2004)

The July 2004 report. In July, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence issued part one of two reports. The committee left in shreds two of the Bush’s main rationales for the war in Iraq: that Iraq had illicit weapons and that it cooperated with Al Qaeda. In a scathing 511-page report, the committee concluded that intelligence agencies were responsible for a massive failure in failing to accurately assess Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction before the United States invasion. (Washington Post, July 9, 2004)

CIA analysts concluded, according to the committee’s report, no connection existed between Hussein and Al Qaeda. The report said that Hussein “generally viewed Islamic extremism, including the (Saudi-based) school of Islam known as Wahhabism, as a threat to his regime, noting that he had executed extremists from both the Sunni and Shi’ite sects to disrupt their organizations.” Finally, the report concluded that Hussein “sought to prevent Iraqi youth from joining Al Qaeda.” (Los Angeles Times, July 13, 2004)

But Bush ignored the fact that Al Qaeda had been largely funded and supported by powerful extremists in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, two “allies” his administration coddled both before and after 9/11. Pakistan was even exporting nuclear weapons technology to “axis of evil” countries Iran and North Korea, as well as Libya -- but not to Iraq. (Los Angeles Times, July 13, 2004)

The committee also said CIA analysts and other intelligence officials overstated the case that Iraq had illicit weapons. The committee reported that before Bush launched his war, relatives of Iraqi scientists told the CIA that Baghdad’s programs to develop unconventional weapons had been abandoned. Nevertheless, the CIA failed to give that information to Bush, as he continued to charge that Hussein possessed WMD. (New York Times, July 5, 2004)

The committee also investigated allegations that aluminum tubes had been shipped to Iraq and if that was evidence that Hussein was trying to build a nuclear bomb. The committee raised questions about whether the CIA had become an advocate, rather than an objective observer, and selectively sought to prove that the tubes were for a nuclear weapons program. (New York Times, July 5, 2004)

According to the committee, Powell was warned that he was about to provide misinformation about a weapons lab to the United Nations. A few days before Powell was to deliver a speech to the Security Council, a government analyst read a draft of his speech where he claimed that four individuals had confirmed that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories.

The public version of the report included a detailed indictment of the American agencies’ reliance on one central source -- “Curveball” -- who was introduced to German intelligence by Ahmad Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress. (New York Times, July 13, 2004)

According to the committee’s report, a CIA analyst warned that “Curve Ball” was either suspect or unreliable. However, the deputy chief of the CIA sent a dismissive reply to the analyst, “This war’s going to happen regardless of what ‘Curve Ball’ said or didn’t say, and … the ‘Powers That Be’ probably aren’t terribly interested in whether ‘Curve Ball’ knows what he’s talking about.” (Washington Post, July 10, 2004)

The deputy chief never sent the warning to Powell or his top aides. Powell went on to deliver his 90-minute speech. The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence reported that much of the information the CIA provided for Powell’s speech was “overstated, misleading or incorrect.” (Washington Post, July 10, 2004)

The committee also concluded that the intelligence community “suffered from … a collective group-think.” Committee chairman Roberts said this caused the intelligence community “to interpret ambiguous elements … as conclusive evidence of the existence of WMD programs.” Roberts said the group-think also extended to United States allies, the United Nations, and other countries. (Washington Post, July 9, 2004)

Part of the committee’s report remained classified, since it contained a detailed assessment that cast doubt on the credibility of an Iraqi defector -- “Red River” -- whose claims about Iraq’s mobile biological weapons laboratories had been discredited. Nearly three pages in the classified version of the report were devoted to questioning the credibility of the defector. (New York Times, July 13, 2004)

But in the public version of the report, “Red River” and another whose code name included the word “Red” -- were blacked out even in the table of contents. The only information about the source known as “Red River” was an apparent reference to his failure to pass a polygraph test. (New York Times, July 13, 2004)

Committee vice chairman Rockefeller was outraged at the assessments that Bush used to justify war against Iraq. Rockefeller said the war was “one of the most devastating intelligence failures in the history of the nation.” He added, “We in Congress would not have authorized that war with 75 votes if we knew what we know now. … Our credibility is diminished, our standing in the world has never been lower. … We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world.” (Washington Post, July 9, 2004)

The Senate committee’s report was a near mirror image of the investigation conducted in Britain and published in July. The 196-page Butler report -- named after Robin Butler, a former head of civil service – concluded that the British intelligence agencies used unreliable sources and exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq. (Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2004)

However, the report concluded that the government of Prime Minister Blair did not deliberately mislead the public in making the case for war. Blair told Parliament that although he took full responsibility for intelligence failures, the report confirmed that his decision to go to war was justified, even if no WMD had been found and evidence of their existence looked increasingly weak. (Los Angeles Times, July 15, 2004)

In July, Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee released a controversial report blaming the CIA for the mess. The panel conveniently refused to evaluate what the White House did with the information it was given or how the White House set up its own special team of Pentagon political appointees that operated out of the Office of Special Plans. (American Progress Action Fund, August 4, 2004)

Cheney continued to say without a shred of proof that there was “overwhelming evidence” justifying the administration’s pre-war charges. Even the Senate report admitted that the White House misrepresented classified intelligence by eliminating references to contradictory assertions. (American Progress Action Fund, August 4, 2004)

Stonewalling the report. Phase 2 of the investigation centered around whether public statements by United States officials were substantiated by intelligence information. It also compared those pre-war statements with postwar findings. However, Republicans acted slowly in finishing the report. Sixteen months later -- by November 2005 -- the GOP-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee still had not completed phase 2 of its investigation. (New York Times, November 3, 2005)

Democrats were frustrated over delays in the completion of a long-promised Senate investigation into intelligence used by the Bush administration as it sought to build support in late 2002 and early 2003 for toppling Hussein. After the Scooter Libby indictment in the fall of 2005, Democrats in the Senate put the spotlight on the intelligence used by the Bush administration during the buildup to the war. Minority Speaker Harry Reid used Rule 21 in calling for a closed session to discuss alleged manipulation of intelligence that led to the protracted war in Iraq. (New York Times, November 3, 2005)

The May 2007 report. In May 2007, the Senate Intelligence Committee released a 229-page report on the intelligence produced by United States intelligence agencies on what could be expected to occur in Iraq following a United States. No surprise: the intelligence community foresaw the likelihood of chaos and trouble inside and outside Iraq. Bush ignored his intelligence community. (The Nation, May 29, 2007)

Prior to the war, the top intelligence analysts of the United States government concluded that:

*Creating a stable democratic government in Iraq would be a difficult and “turbulent” challenge.

*Sectarian conflict could erupt in a post-invasion Iraq.

*Al Qaeda would view a United States invasion of Iraq as an opportunity to increase and enhance its terrorist attacks.

*Heightened terrorist threat would exist for several years.

*The United States occupation of Iraq would probably cause a rise of Islamic fundamentalism and a boost in funding for terrorist groups.

*Iran’s role in the region would enlarge.

The Senate intelligence committee failed on the most important point: how Bush and his colleagues paid little heed to predictions of a reality when they took the nation to war.

4. SENATE ARMED SERVICES COMMITTEE.

Tenet told the committee of Cheney’s misstatement in a January 9, 2004 interview. Cheney recommended as “your best source of information” on links between Iraq and Al Qaeda. The memorandum came from a senior Pentagon official, Douglas Feith, who headed the Office of Special Plans -- an operation run by neoconservative political appointees set up to purposely bypass usual intelligence channels to make a case for war. Tenet said he was unaware that the Office of Special Plans had presented its findings to the offices of Cheney and National Security Advisor Rice without consent of the intelligence community. It was never endorsed by intelligence agencies that objected to Feith’s findings. (New York Times, March 9, 2004; Los Angeles Times, March 10 and 11, 2004)

That memorandum was handed over to the Senate Intelligence Committee in October 2003. It said that evidence existed of collaboration between Hussein’s government and Al Qaeda. However, it was unreviewed and uncorroborated information.

Tenet also testified he had acted to correct administration statements were in the State of the Union address in January 2002, when he objected after the fact to Bush’s inclusion of disputed intelligence about Iraq’s seeking to obtain uranium from Africa. (New York Times, March 9, 2004)

Tenet also said Cheney was incorrect when he said in a January 22, 2004 radio interview that trailers found in Iraq were used for biological weapons. Cheney claimed there was “conclusive evidence” that Iraq “did in fact have programs for weapons of mass destruction.” Tenet said he had told Cheney there was “no consensus” among American analysts, with those at the Defense Intelligence Agency in particular arguing that the trailers were for producing hydrogen. (New York Times, March 9, 2004)

The Armed Services Committee asked Tenet about the administration’s claims that Iraq posed an “imminent threat” to the United States that justified invasion. He said the CIA “did not say that” to the Bush Administration in any of its assessments. (New York Times, March 9, 2004; Los Angeles Times, March 10, 2004)

5. THE CARNEGIE REPORT. 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. (Washington Post, January 8, 2004)

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)

However, the Carnegie report said Iraq still apparently maintained an active program to produce missiles capable of flying beyond the range permitted by the Security Council. It held open the possibility that Iraq could have been able to resume banned programs, such as biological weapons production, quickly in the future. (Washington Post, January 8, 2004)

According to Kenneth Pollack, a Clinton-era National Security Council member and strong supporter of regime change in Iraq, the Bush administration’s “justifications and explanations for war were at best faulty, at worst deliberately misleading.” Pollack also said that the White House consistently engaged in “creative omission,” overstating the imminence of the Iraqi threat, even though it had evidence to the contrary. Pollack added, “I think the Administration was only telling part of the truth to the American people because it was trying to justify a war in 2003. The intelligence estimates just didn’t really support that imminence. (Kenneth Pollack, Spies, Lies, and Weapons: What Went Wrong)

6. THE KAY REPORT. In an interview with National Public Radio in January 2004, Vice President Cheney revived the issue of the discovery of semi-trailers during the spring of 2003. At that time, the CIA concluded that they had not been used to manufacture chemical weapons. Instead, the vehicles had been used in the manufacturing of hydrogen.

Nevertheless, Cheney told NPR, “We found some semi-trailers we think were part of that (weapons) program. In my mind, it was a danger to have these in the hands of someone like Saddam Hussein.” Cheney said intelligence pointing to stockpiles of anthrax and VX nerve agent came from the United Nations.

After $900 million and at least 1,200 weapons inspectors, David Kay stepped down in January 2004 as the CIA’s chief weapons inspector. The Kay Report also corroborated the findings of American intelligence, saying, “We have not yet been able to corroborate the existence of a mobile biological weapons production effort. ...Technical limitations would prevent any of these processes from being ideally suited to these trailers.” (http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/2003/david_kay_10022003.html)

When Kay was asked about Cheney’s comments, he told the BBC it was “premature and embarrassing” to characterize the vehicles found as weapons labs. Kay added, “I wish that news hadn’t come out.”(Washington Post, January 24, 2004)

Kay also said the CIA and other intelligence agencies did not realize that Iraqi scientists had presented weapons’ programs to Hussein and had then used the money for other purposes.

Kay reported that Iraq attempted to revive its efforts to develop nuclear weapons in 2000 and 2001, but never got as far toward making a bomb as Iran and Libya did. Kay also said his team had uncovered no evidence that Niger had tried to sell uranium to Iraq for its nuclear weapons program. (New York Times, January 27, 2004)

Kay said, “We don’t find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on. I think they gradually reduced stockpiles throughout the 1990s. Somewhere in the mid-1990s the large chemical overhang of existing stockpiles was eliminate. …The Iraqis say they believed that (the United Nations inspection program) was more effective (than United States analysts believed), and they didn’t want to get caught.” (New York Times, January 27, 2004)

Kay also said Baghdad was actively working to produce a biological weapon using the poison ricin until the American invasion in early 2003. Kay said that the CIA and other agencies failed to recognize that Iraq had all but abandoned its efforts to produce large quantities of chemical or biological weapons after the 1991 Persian Gulf war.

On January 28, Kay told the Senate Intelligence Committee that the inability to find WMD pointed to a major intelligence failure, and he suggested that an independent investigation look into the reasons for it. (New York Times, January 29, 2004)

In March, Kay demanded that the Bush Administration “come clean” for misleading Americans about Iraq’s weapons stockpiles. He said the administration’s reluctance to admit its culpability “was delaying essential reforms of U.S. intelligence agencies, and further undermining its credibility at home and abroad. (Christian Science Monitor, March 4, 2004)

7. THE PRESIDENTIAL COMMISSION ON INTELLIGENCE. Not only Democrats clamored for an independent probe into the rationale to go to war, but some pivotal Republicans also accused the Bush administration of stonewalling the federal commission. Senator Chuck Hagel of Nebraska said on NBC’s “Meet the Press” (October 26, 2003) that it would be in the Bush administration’s interest to release documents that the commission had requested. (Los Angeles Times, October 31, 2003)

As pressure built for an independent investigation, Bush changed course. In February 2004, he issued an executive order that created the Presidential Commission on Intelligence -- a bipartisan independent panel of nine members that would make a report in 2005. Headed by Republican Judge Laurence H. Silberman and Democrat Charles Robb, the panel’s goal was to determine how intelligence was developed -- not how policymakers used or misused it. In creating the commission, Bush issued himself a reprieve going into the November 2004 presidential election.

Other panel members included GOP Senator John McCain; Lloyd Cutler, former White House counsel to Presidents Carter and Clinton; former federal judge Patricia M. Wald; Yale University president Richard C. Levin; Admiral William Studeman, former deputy director of the CIA; Charles Vest, MIT’s president since 1990; and Henry Rowen, a professor emeritus at Stanford University, was an assistant defense secretary from 1989 to 1991 and a deputy assistant defense secretary from 1961 to 1964.

1. As a former Reagan advisor, Silberman took part in a meeting between top Republicans and Iranian government representatives during the 1980 election campaign, when the Carter administration was trying to negotiate the release of American hostages in Teheran. Those negotiations failed but the hostages were freed five minutes after Reagan’s inauguration, provoking the “October Surprise” -- Democrat claims of a secret deal to delay the release in return for military aid.

2. He was involved in a major cover-up during the Reagan era. He cast one of the two votes in 1990 in the appeals court that overturned the conviction of Colonel Oliver North, who admitted his central role in the Iran-Contra affair. Proceeds from secret arms sales to Iran were diverted illegally to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

3. He sat on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court of Review, which approved the expanded surveillance powers for the justice department under the controversial Patriot Act. (The Guardian, February 10, 2004)

On issuing its findings on March 31, 2005, the Presidential Commission on Intelligence blamed everyone involved in the WMD fiasco except the Bush administration officials who actually made the decision to go to war. The panel said, “We were not authorized to investigate how policymakers used the intelligence assessments they received.” However, the commission issued a scathing 601-page report, saying, “We conclude that the intelligence community was dead wrong in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. This was a major intelligence failure.” (Washington Post, April 1, 2005)

The commission said the main cause of intelligence gaps was the intelligence community’s “inability to collect good information about Iraq’s WMD programs, serious errors in analyzing what information it could gather, and a failure to make clear just how much of its analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence.” (New York Times, March 31, 2005)

The report continued: “On a matter of this importance, we simply cannot afford failures of this magnitude.” But the commission also said that it found no indication that spy agencies distorted the evidence they had concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction. The commission implicitly absolved the administration of manipulating the intelligence used to launch the 2003 Iraq war, putting the blame for bad intelligence directly on the intelligence community. (New York Times, March 31, 2005)

The commission concluded that the erroneous assumption by intelligence agencies that Hussein possessed deadly chemical and biological weapons had damaged American credibility in the global community, and that this damage would take years to undo. (New York Times, March 31, 2005)

The unclassified version of the report did not go into significant detail on the intelligence community’s assessment of countries such as Iran, North Korea, China, and Russia, because commissioners did not want to tip the United States hand about what was known.

The commission concluded:

1. Curveball’s claims that Iraq was building a fleet of mobile labs was false. In fact, CIA officials had never actually met Curveball. He was not even in the country at times when he claimed to have taken part in illicit weapons work. One document referred to an alleged meeting “that took place on ‘Wednesday, July 7, 2000,’ even though July 7, 2000, was a Friday.”

After the invasion, intelligence officials tracked down Iraqis who Curveball had claimed were his co-workers in the biological weapons program. All denied there was a mobile biological weapons program, and none “even knew who Curveball was.”

Curveball said the program began in 1995, but family members and associates said that he had been fired from his position that year, and that he was out of the country for much of the following four-year period.

2. The CIA asserted that Iraq was importing aluminum tubes to be used as centrifuges in a nuclear weapons program. Subsequently, the commission concluded they were for conventional rockets.

3. The allegation that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium from Niger was based on “transparently forged documents” purporting to show a contract between the countries. The commission concluded there were “flaws in the letterhead, forged signatures, misspelled words, incorrect titles for individuals, and government entities.”

The report called for sweeping changes at the FBI to combine the bureau’s counterterrorism and counterintelligence resources into a new office. The commission recommended:

The creation at the CIA of a Human Intelligence Directorate (HID). The present Directorate of Operations (DO) would be subordinate to the HID, which would have an “Innovation Center” to study unconventional ways to gather information beyond the DO’s traditional reliance on case officers in United States embassies. (Washington Post, April 1, 2005)

The commission concluded that the claim that Saddam was building a hidden network of biological weapons in mobile labs was based on one single Iraqi defector. He was code-named “Curveball.” He spoke with specificity about Iraq’s alleged biological weapons programs and its fleet of mobile labs. Some United States intelligence officials called him “crazy,” and his friends described him as a “congenital liar.” (Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2005)

Curveball reportedly was an Iraqi chemical engineer who defected at a time when United States and other spy agencies were desperate for new sources on Iraq’s weapons programs, after United Nations inspectors had left the country in 1998. The CIA never had access to Curveball. Instead, he was controlled by Germany’s intelligence service, which passed along the information it collected to the United States through the Defense Intelligence Agency, a Pentagon spy agency that handled information from Iraqi defectors. (Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2005)

Between January 2000 and September 2001, the DIA disseminated “almost 100 reports” from Curveball, who was seen as a valuable new source. Among his most alarming claims was that Iraq had assembled a fleet of mobile labs to manufacture biological weapons and evade detection. (New York Times, April 1, 2005)

In 2002 -- one year before Bush launched his war -- a senior CIA official reportedly met with Curveball. An October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq “has” biological weapons was “based almost exclusively on information obtained” from Curveball. (Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2005)

However, CIA officials wanted to evaluate Curveball’s information and credibility for themselves. One CIA official was told there were serious reservations about the reliability of Curveball’s information and about whether he was a “fabricator.” (New York Times, April 1, 2005)

Several senior CIA officials waged a quiet campaign at the highest levels of the agency to stop the United States from continuing to rely upon Curveball’s claims. These officials took their concerns to several top agency managers, including John McLaughlin, then the deputy director, and even George Tenet, then the director. Bush later awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. (New York Times, April 1, 2005)

In meetings with McLaughlin’s executive assistant in December 2002, senior CIA officials expressed mounting reservations of Curveball’s credibility. . One analyst, after arguing that Curveball might indeed be a fabricator, said he was “read the riot act” by a supervisor. But other CIA analysts argued that Curveball’s accounts were consistent with others and seemed solid. (New York Times, April 1, 2005)

In January 2003 -- two months before the American invasion -- a CIA group chief received a draft of the speech Secretary of State Powell was preparing to deliver to the Security Council. This official told the commission that she “couldn’t believe” the speech relied on Curveball’s claims. Her supervisor, a division chief, said that he immediately called McLaughlin’s executive assistant seeking a meeting to protest Curveball’s inclusion in the speech. The division chief said he met with McLaughlin that same afternoon and explained why Curveball could be a fabricator. The division chief recalled that McLaughlin responded something like, “Oh my! I hope that’s not true.” McLaughlin said he did not recall ever discussing Curveball with the division chief, nor was he aware of any other objections to the section of Powell’s speech on Curveball. (New York Times, April 1, 2005)

On February 4, the night before Powell’s speech, Tenet called the division chief at home. Tenet was in New York City with Powell, continuing to review the speech for possible inaccuracies. The division chief told Tenet that the Curveball intelligence reporting “has problems.” The division chief said that Tenet replied, “Yeah, yeah,” and then spoke of how exhausted he was. Nevertheless, concerns about Curveball's credibility were never conveyed to Powell or other administration officials, the commission found. (New York Times, April 1, 2005; Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2005)

The warnings of Curveball’s credibility were never passed on to Powell. The secretary of state proceeded to make Curveball’s claims regarding mobile labs a crucial part of his presentation to the United Nations Security Council. He showed illustrations of Iraq’s alleged bioweapons labs and described an accident in which 12 Iraqis had died operating one of the vehicles. Curveball was the main source for both assertions. (New York Times, April 1, 2005; Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2005)

After Bush’s war was underway, some CIA analysts argued that the agency needed to admit it had been duped. They were forced out of their jobs. (Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2005)

INDEPENDENT REPORTS SLAM THE BUSH ADMINISTRATION. Stuart Bowen, the special inspector-general for Iraq reconstruction, released a 110-page report on October 31, 2005. He concluded that the Bush administration had “no comprehensive policy or regulatory guidelines” in place for staffing the management of postwar Iraq. (Financial Times, October 31, 2005)

The largest expected increase in costs to complete planned projects had occurred in the Project and Contracting Office (PCO), which managed projects in the oil, electrical, security, and water sectors. The PCO allocated $4.6 billion in reconstruction funds. (Financial Times, October 31, 2005)

The PCO reported that the cost of completing the tasks was increasing beyond initial estimates. The report said a separate agency given the job of assisting the Iraqi government in training and equipping security forces. This was a job for which it was allocated $835 million and then spent 14 percent more than originally estimated. (Financial Times, October 31, 2005)

Three months later -- in January 2006 -- the Office of the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction concluded its audit. It discovered gross negligence by the United States involving the reconstruction of Iraq. The audit uncovered problems in an area that included half the size of the entire country of Iraq -- in the southern and central provinces of Anbar, Karbala, Najaf, Wasit, Babil, and Qadisiya. (Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2006)

*Millions of reconstruction dollars were stuffed casually into footlockers and filing cabinets. The living and working quarters of American occupation officials were loaded with shrink-wrapped stacks of $100 bills -- known as bricks. One official kept $2 million in a bathroom safe. Another had more than half a million dollars in an unlocked footlocker. One contractor received more than $100,000 to completely refurbish an Olympic pool but only polished the pumps. Nevertheless, local American officials certified the work as completed.

*More than 2,000 contracts ranging in value from a few thousand dollars to more than half a million, some $88 million in all, were examined. In some cases the agents found clear indications of potential fraud.

*An American soldier in the Philippines gambled away cash belonging to Iraq. He was assigned as an assistant to the Iraqi Olympic boxing team and was given huge amounts of cash for a trip to the Philippines, where he gambled away between $20,000 and $60,000 of the money.

*As part of Iraq’s contribution to the Olympic effort, $108,140 was allocated to completely refurbish the Hilla Olympic swimming pool, including the replacement of pumps and pipes. But the contractor simply polished some of the hardware to make it appear as if new equipment had been installed. Local officials for the provisional authority signed paperwork stating that all the work had been completed properly and paid the contractor in full. The pool never reopened, and when agents from the inspector general’s office arrived to try out the equipment, they said “the water came out a murky brown due to the accumulated dirt and grime in the old pumps.

*A contract for $662,800 in civil, electrical, and mechanical projects was allocated to rehabilitate the Hilla General Hospital. The money was paid in full by an American official in June 2004 even though the work was not finished. But instead of replacing a central elevator bank, as called for in the scope of work, the contractor tinkered with an unsuccessful rehabilitation. The report said, “The hospital administrator immediately escorted us to the site of the elevators. The administrator said that just a couple days prior to our arrival the elevator crashed and killed three people.”

*At a reconstruction project that was outsourced to an American contractor in the town of Hilla, no records were kept as money came and went from the main vault. Inside the money was often stashed haphazardly in a filing cabinet. That led to a dispute when one official for the provisional authority, while clearing his accounts on his way out of Iraq, grabbed $100,000 from another official’s stack of cash.

Outside the vault, money seemed to be stuffed into many small places. One contracting officer kept approximately $2 million in cash in a safe in his office bathroom, while a paying agent kept approximately $678,000 in cash in an unlocked footlocker in his office. (Los Angeles Times, January 25, 2006)

The Office of the Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction also concluded:

*The Bush administration failed to adequately staff the program. Few had technical expertise. Staffing shortfalls and contracting battles between the State Department and the Pentagon created delays for months at a time. Bureaucratic infighting was rampant.

*At one point, a planning team made the decision to put all reconstruction activities in Iraq under the Army Corps of Engineers, except anything to do with water, which went to the Navy. Reconstruction resembled a spoils system between various agencies.

*Companies were contracting subcontractors, and some people, who did not have authority such as the ministries, were also awarding contracts.

*The “ambiguous legal status” of the Coalition Provisional Authority was raised. That brought the question of whether it was an American entity or a multinational one like NATO.

Until January 2003, reconstruction planning was conducted in secrecy “to avoid the impression that the U.S. government had already decided on intervention.” Possibly as a result, the American administrative authority arrived with no written plans or strategies for purchasing and contracting and no personnel with expertise in the area. (New York Times, January 23, 2006)

Security costs constantly increased. Officials realized early on that Iraq would need $70 billion to $100 billion over several years. They were forced cut the list of projects down again and again. Eventually, projects in several infrastructure areas -- oil, electricity, water, health care, and security -- were resolved. But a bottleneck immediately arose as the contracting process descended into chaos. One informer for the inspector general said there were “about 20 different *organizations undertaking contracting.” (New York Times, January 23, 2006)

In early 2006, the Government Accounting Office issued a scathing report regarding the cost of reconstruction. It said 16 to 22 percent of reconstruction costs went to paying for security. (Government Accounting Office, Testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, February 8, 2006)