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What
Bush Was Told About Iraq
The first report, delivered to Bush in early October 2002, was a
one-page summary of a National Intelligence Estimate that discussed
whether Saddam's procurement of high-strength aluminum tubes was for
the purpose of developing a nuclear weapon.
Among other things, the report stated that the Energy Department and
the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research believed
that the tubes were "intended for conventional weapons," a view
disagreeing with that of other intelligence agencies, including the
CIA, which believed that the tubes were intended for a nuclear bomb.
The disclosure that Bush was informed of the DOE and State dissents is
the first evidence that the president himself knew of the sharp debate
within the government over the aluminum tubes during the time that he,
Cheney, and other members of the Cabinet were citing the tubes as clear
evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program. Neither the president nor the
vice president told the public about the disagreement among the
agencies.
When U.S. inspectors entered Iraq after the fall of Saddam's regime,
they determined that Iraq's nuclear program had been dormant for more
than a decade and that the aluminum tubes had been used only for
artillery shells.
The second classified report, delivered to Bush in early January 2003,
was also a summary of a National Intelligence Estimate, this one
focusing on whether Saddam would launch an unprovoked attack on the
United States, either directly, or indirectly by working with
terrorists.
The report stated that U.S. intelligence agencies unanimously agreed
that it was unlikely that Saddam would try to attack the United States
- except if "ongoing military operations risked the imminent demise of
his regime" or if he intended to "extract revenge" for such an assault,
according to records and sources.
The single dissent in the report again came from State's Bureau of
Intelligence and Research, known as INR, which believed that the Iraqi
leader was "unlikely to conduct clandestine attacks against the U.S.
homeland even if [his] regime's demise is imminent" as the result of a
U.S. invasion.
On at least four earlier occasions, beginning in the spring of 2002,
according to the same records and sources, the president was informed
during his morning intelligence briefing that U.S. intelligence
agencies believed it was unlikely that Saddam was an imminent threat to
the United States.
However, in the months leading up to the war, Bush, Cheney, and Cabinet
members repeatedly asserted that Saddam was likely to use chemical or
biological weapons against the United States or to provide such weapons
to Al Qaeda or another terrorist group.
The Bush administration used the potential threat from Saddam as a
major rationale in making the case to go to war. The president cited
the threat in an address to the United Nations on September 12, 2002,
in an October 7, 2002, speech to the American people, and in his State
of the Union address on January 28, 2003.
The one-page documents prepared for Bush are known as the "President's
Summary" of the much longer and more detailed National Intelligence
Estimates that combine the analysis and judgments of agencies
throughout the intelligence community.
An NIE, according to the Web site of the National Intelligence Council
- the interagency group that coordinates the documents' production -
represents "the coordinated judgments of the Intelligence Community
regarding the likely course of future events" and is written with the
goal of providing "policy makers with the best, unvarnished, and
unbiased information - regardless of whether analytic judgments conform
to U.S. policy." (The January 2003 NIE, for example, was titled
"Nontraditional Threats to the U.S. Homeland Through 2007.")
As many as six to eight agencies, foremost among them the CIA, the
Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency,
and the INR, contribute to the drafting of an NIE. If any one of those
intelligence agencies disagrees with the majority view on major
conclusions, the NIE includes the dissenting view.
The one-page summary for the president allows intelligence agencies to
emphasize what they believe to be the conclusions from the broader NIE
that are the most important to communicate to the commander-in-chief.
The President's Summary is among the most highly classified papers in
the government. References to the summaries are contained in footnotes
in the so-called Robb-Silberman report - officially, the report of the
Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States
Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction - that was issued in March 2005
on the use of intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. The White
House has refused to declassify the summaries or to give them to
congressional committees.
The summaries stated that both the Energy and State departments
dissented on the aluminum tubes question. This is the first evidence
that Bush was aware of the intense debate within the government during
the time that he, Cheney, and members of the Cabinet were citing the
procurement of the tubes as evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program.
On October 7, 2002, less than a week after Bush was given the summary,
he said in a speech in Cincinnati: "Evidence indicates that Iraq is
reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Saddam Hussein held
numerous meetings with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he calls his
'nuclear mujahedeen' - his nuclear holy warriors ... . 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."
On numerous other occasions, Cheney, then-National Security Adviser
Condoleezza Rice, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, and then-U.N.
Ambassador John Negroponte cited Iraq's procurement of aluminum tubes
without disclosing that the intelligence community was split as to
their end use. The fact that the president was informed of the dissents
by Energy and State is also significant because Rice and other
administration officials have said that Bush did not know about those
dissenting views when he made claims about the purported uses for the
tubes.
On July 11, 2003, aboard Air Force One during a presidential trip to
Africa, Rice was asked about the National Intelligence Estimate and
whether the president knew of the dissenting views among intelligence
agencies regarding Iraq's procurement of the aluminum tubes.
Months earlier, disagreement existed within the administration over how
to characterize the aluminum tubes in a speech that then-Secretary of
State Colin Powell gave to the U.N. on February 5, 2003. Breaking ranks
with others in the administration, Powell decided to refer to the
internal debate among government agencies over Iraq's intended use of
the tubes.
Asked about this by a reporter on Air Force One, Rice said: "I'm saying
that when we put [Powell's speech] together ... the secretary decided
that he would caveat the aluminum tubes, which he did ... . The
secretary also has an intelligence arm that happened to hold that
view."
Rice added, "Now, if there were any doubts about the underlying
intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the
president, to the vice president, or to me."
The one-page October 2002 President's Summary specifically told Bush
that although "most agencies judge" that the use of the aluminum tubes
was "related to a uranium enrichment effort ... INR and DOE believe
that the tubes more likely are intended for conventional weapons uses."
The lengthier NIE - more than 90 pages - contained significantly more
detail describing the disagreement between the CIA and the Pentagon's
DIA on one hand, which believed that the tubes were meant for
centrifuges, and State's INR and the Energy Department, which believed
that they were meant for artillery shells. Administration officials had
said that the president would not have read the full-length paper. They
also had said that many of the details of INR's dissent were contained
in a special text box that was positioned far away from the main text
of the report.
But the one-page summary, several senior government officials said in
interviews, was written specifically for Bush, was handed to the
president by then-CIA Director George Tenet, and was read in Tenet's
presence.
In addition, Rice, Cheney, and dozens of other high-level Bush
administration policy makers received a highly classified intelligence
assessment, known as a Senior Executive Memorandum, on the aluminum
tubes issue. Circulated on January 10, 2003, the memo was titled
"Questions on Why Iraq Is Procuring Aluminum Tubes and What the IAEA
Has Found to Date."
The lengthier NIE also contained a note regarding the aluminum tubes
disagreement:
One week after Rice's comments aboard Air Force One, on July 18, 2003,
the Bush administration declassified some portions of the NIE,
including the passage quoted above, regarding INR's dissent regarding
the aluminum tubes.
That a summary was also prepared for Bush on the question of Saddam's
intentions regarding an unprovoked attack on the United States is
significant because the administration has claimed that the president
was unaware of intelligence information that conflicted with his public
statements and those of the vice president and members of his Cabinet
on the justifications for attacking Iraq.
According to interviews and records, Bush personally read the one-page
summary in Tenet's presence during the morning intelligence briefing,
and the two spoke about it at some length. Sources familiar with the
summary said it was highly significant that the president was informed
that it was the unanimous conclusion of the intelligence agencies
participating in the production of the January 2003 NIE that Saddam was
unlikely to consider attacking the U.S. unless Iraq was attacked first.
Cheney received virtually the same intelligence information, according
to the same records and interviews. The president's summaries have been
shared with the vice president as a matter of course during the Bush
presidency.
During the second half of 2002, the president and vice president
repeatedly cited the threat from Saddam in their public statements.
"Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons
of mass destruction. There is no doubt he is amassing them to use
against our friends, against our allies, and against us," Cheney
declared on August 26, 2002, to the national convention of the Veterans
of Foreign Wars.
In his September 12 address to the U.N. General Assembly, Bush said:
"With every step the Iraqi regime takes toward gaining and deploying
the most terrible weapons, our own options to confront that regime will
narrow. And if an emboldened regime were to supply these weapons to
terrorist allies, then the attacks of September the 11th would be a
prelude to far greater horrors."
In an October 7 address to the nation, Bush cited intelligence showing
that Iraq had a fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles that could
be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons. "We're concerned
that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for missions targeting
the United States," the president declared.
"We know that Iraq and the Al Qaeda terrorist network share a common
enemy - the United States of America," he added. "Iraq could decide on
any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist
group or individual terrorists. Alliance with terrorists could allow
the Iraqi regime to attack America without leaving any fingerprints."
In his January 28, 2003, State of the Union address, the president once
again warned the nation: "Some have said we must not act until the
threat is imminent. Since when have terrorists and tyrants announced
their intentions, politely putting us on notice before they strike? If
this threat is permitted to fully and suddenly emerge, all actions, all
words, and all recriminations would come too late. Trusting in the
sanity and restraint of Saddam Hussein is not a strategy, and it is not
an option."
In March 2003, as American, British, and other military forces prepared
to invade Iraq, the president repeated the warnings during a summit in
the Azores islands of Portugal and in a March 17 speech to the nation
on the eve of the war. "The danger is clear: Using chemical,
biological, or, one day, nuclear weapons obtained with the help of
Iraq, the terrorists could fulfill their stated ambitions and kill
thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent people in our country,"
Bush said in the March 17 speech. "The United States and other nations
did nothing to deserve or invite this threat. But we will do everything
to defeat it."
Senior Bush administration officials say they had good reason to
disbelieve the intelligence that was provided to them by the CIA,
noting that the intelligence the agency had provided earlier regarding
Iraq was flawed.
And more recently, a 511-page bipartisan report by the Senate
Intelligence Committee on prewar intelligence regarding Iraq concluded:
"Despite four decades of intelligence reporting on Iraq, there was
little useful intelligence collected that helped analysis determine the
Iraqi regime's possible links with Al Qaeda."
The White House declined to comment for this story. In a statement,
Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council said,
"The president of the United States has talked about this matter
directly, as have a myriad of other administration officials. At this
juncture, we have nothing to add to that body of information."
The 9/11 commission concluded in its final report that no evidence
existed of a "collaborative operational relationship" between Saddam
and Al Qaeda, adding, "Nor have we seen evidence indicating that Iraq
cooperated with Al Qaeda in developing or carrying out any attacks
against the United States." |