House Committee Finds No Sign of Misuse of Prewar Iraq Intelligence

The U.S. House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has determined that there is no evidence that senior Bush administration officials distorted information on Iraqi WMD efforts to bolster the case for war, the Washington Times reported today.

Committee Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.) said there is “absolutely no evidence that the intelligence was manipulated, distorted or in any way shaped or morphed to suit a preordained purpose.”

Goss also said that the most important issue raised by the committee’s inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq was the inaccuracy of that intelligence.

“The answer, I think, probably is because we didn’t have enough dots on the table for the analysts to draw a clear enough picture for our policy-makers,” he said (Guy Taylor, Washington Times, Feb. 12).

In addition, Goss criticized former U.S. President Bill Clinton and his administration for reducing intelligence assets during the 1990s. He also said that Clinton himself rarely met with intelligence officials and was not “particularly engaged” on the subject (Pauline Jelinek, Associated Press/San Francisco Chronicle, Feb. 12).

The Senate intelligence committee, meanwhile, is considering expanding the scope of its own inquiry into prewar intelligence on Iraq to consider the White House’s use of intelligence in making the case for war, according to congressional sources.

The topic was discussed yesterday during a closed committee meeting. Among those involved in the discussion was Senator Charles Hagel (R-Neb.), who sources said was considering whether to back an expanded inquiry.

An aide to a committee Democrat said a series of negotiations were underway. “There are groups all over the place meeting, and deals being brokered right and left,” the aide said (Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, Feb. 12).

Officials said yesterday that CIA Director George Tenet has ordered an end to an agency practice of withholding from analysts details about clandestine agents who provide information. The changes were ordered after an internal review found several occasions where analysts believed that Iraqi WMD information had been confirmed by multiple sources, when it had only come from a single source, said CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence Jami Miscik.

“We are not brushing aside the agency’s duty to protect sources and methods, but barriers to sharing information must be removed,” Miscik said in a speech to CIA analysts, a copy of which was obtained by the Washington Post. “Analysts can no longer be put in a position of making a judgment on a critical issue without a full and comprehensive understanding of the source’s access to the information on which they are reporting,” Miscik said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Feb. 12).

A senior official said yesterday that the reliability of all of the sources cited by Secretary of State Colin Powell in his presentation on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction to the U.N. Security Council last year is being reviewed. Former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq David Kay has said that there are indications that the opposition groups Iraqi National Congress and Iraqi National Accord were infiltrated by agents of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein prior to the war. Kay also has said that some of the sources cited by U.S. intelligence reports could turn out to be Hussein agents.

Kay and U.S. officials have detailed two possible reasons why Hussein might have infiltrated opposition groups to plant misleading stories about his WMD efforts, according to Newsweek. One is that the agents were used to plant stories of continued WMD programs to deter enemies both inside and outside Iraq. A second theory is that Hussein sent agents to plant false WMD claims with the expectation that they would reach the United States and later be passed on to U.N. weapons inspectors, who would then discover they were not true, and thereby discredit Washington (Isikoff/Hosenball, Newsweek, Feb. 11).

Meanwhile, Powell told the House International Relations Committee yesterday that he was “surprised” that weapons of mass destruction have not been found in Iraq, but continued to defend the war.

“We presented what we believed the truth to be at the time,” Powell said. “The reason we told you there were stockpiles there because we believed it to be true. … We were surprised when they did not turn up,” he added (Barry Schweid, Associated Press/Boston Globe, Feb. 12).

According to USA Today, a classified U.S. intelligence study prepared three months before the Iraq war predicted difficulties in searching for alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. The study cited several factors that would hinder the search, including guerilla warfare, looting and dishonest Iraqi officials.

“Locating a program that from its conception has been driven by denial and deception imperatives is no small task,” the study says. “Prolonged insecurity with fractional violence and guerilla forces still at large would be the worst outcome for finding Saddam’s WMD arsenal,” it adds (John Diamond, USA Today, Feb. 12).

The CIA today posted a notice on its Web site calling for information from Iraqis on Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction and related programs in exchange for a reward. The agency promises “strict confidentiality” for those who provide information (CIA release, Feb. 12).

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