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Former U.S. Chief Weapons Inspector Lashes Out at NSC, CIA for Failures in Prewar Iraq Intelligence By Mike Nartker WASHINGTON — Former chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq David Kay yesterday strongly criticized the National Security Council and the CIA for their roles in the failure to correctly assess the status of prewar Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts (see GSN, Aug. 12). In testimony before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Kay called the council “the dog that did not bark.” “Where was the National Security Council when apparently the president expressed his own doubt about the adequacy of the case concerning Iraq’s WMD weapons that were made before him? Why was the secretary of state sent out to the CIA to personally vet the data that he was to take to the [U.N.] Security Council in New York, and ultimately left to hang in the wind for data that was at least misleading, and in some cases absolutely false — and known by parts of the intelligence community to be false?” Kay said. “Where was the NSC then?” he added. Kay also criticized what he described as an increasing reliance by presidents on the National Security Council to evaluate intelligence information. “Every president who has been successful, at least that I know of, in the history of this republic, has developed both informal and formal means of getting checks on whether people who tell him things are in fact telling him the whole and full truth,” he said. “I think this is particularly crucial and difficult to do in the intelligence area. The recent history has been a reliance on the NSC system to do it. I quite frankly think that has not served this president very well,” Kay added. Following in the footsteps of the Senate intelligence committee, which issued its own harsh assessment of the CIA’s performance regarding prewar Iraq’s alleged WMD efforts, Kay yesterday added to the criticism that has been leveled against the agency. He outlined for lawmakers what he described as nine “principal failings” by the agency, including a poor culture of management, poor analytic tradecraft, a lack of U.S. human clandestine agents within Iraq, a failure to properly question non-American sources of information, a lack of scientific expertise within the directorate of intelligence and a “refusal” to employ the scientific expertise in other sections of the government. “Iraq was an overwhelming systemic failure of the Central Intelligence Agency,” Kay said. The CIA today offered an equally strong reply to Kay’s criticisms, questioning the former weapons inspector’s qualifications to comment on broader intelligence issues. “Dr. Kay, an expert in some of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs, now sees himself as qualified to make sweeping judgments on national intelligence as a whole,” agency spokesman Paul Gimigliano said. “That is unfortunate. Because we welcome informed, constructive criticism, we could not welcome much of what Kay had to say,” he added.
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