Iraq:  Bush, Senior U.S. Officials Defend State of the Union Address

U.S. President George W. Bush today said that U.S. intelligence agencies had approved his January State of the Union address, in which he alleged that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa — an allegation the White House admitted earlier this week was made in error (see GSN, July 10).

“I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services,” Bush said.

U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice was more specific, saying the CIA had “cleared the speech in its entirety.”

The CIA had previously mentioned the claim that Iraq had sought to purchase uranium from Africa in a classified National Intelligence Assessment periodically provided to Bush, according to Rice.

“If the CIA — the director of central intelligence — had said ‘Take this out of the speech,’ it would have been gone,” Rice said of the Africa claim.  “We have a high standard for the president’s speeches,” she said.

The CIA only objected to a sentence that alleged that Iraq had attempted to obtain processed uranium known as “yellowcake,” Rice said.  “Some specifics about amount and place were taken out,” she said.

“With the changes in that sentence, the speech was cleared,” Rice said.  “The agency did not say they wanted that sentence (on uranium) out,” she added (Associated Press/New York Times, July 11).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said twice yesterday that the U.S. intelligence community had vetted Bush’s address and had approved the inclusion of the Africa claim.

“It was my understanding that it had been seen and cleared by the intelligence community,” Powell said during a press conference in Pretoria, South Africa.

“The sentence in the State of the Union was not put in there without the knowledge and approval of the intelligence committee that saw this speech,” Powell later said (Mike Nartker, GSN, July 11).

CBS Evening News has reported, however, that the White House ignored a CIA request to remove the Africa allegation from the State of the Union address, according to Reuters.

After reviewing Bush’s speech, CIA officials told the White House National Security Council that there was not enough intelligence to conclude that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa, according to CBS News.  White House officials said, however, that an earlier British report contained the allegation, and if Bush attributed the claim to the United Kingdom, then he would be factually correct, CBS News said.  CIA officials then dropped their objections (Reuters, July 11).

At the time of Bush’s State of the Union address in January, it was determined that it would be appropriate for Bush to include the allegation that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa, Powell said.  “There was no effort or attempt on the part of the president or anyone else in the administration to mislead or to deceive the American people,” he said.

Earlier this week, the White House acknowledged that it was wrong for Bush to have included the Africa claim in his address.  A major piece of evidence that was used to support the claim — documents purporting to show that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger — was later determined by the International Atomic Energy Agency to be false.

Powell noted that he did not include the allegation in a presentation he made to the U.N. Security Council in early February on Iraq’s WMD programs.

“When I made my presentation to the United Nations and we really went through every single thing we knew about all of the various issues with respect to weapons of mass destruction, we did not believe that it was appropriate to use that example anymore.  It was not standing the test of time,” Powell said.  “And so I didn’t use it, and we haven’t used it since,” he said (Nartker, GSN).

The United Kingdom, however, has chosen to stand by the claim, citing additional, undisclosed evidence.  Senior Bush administration officials said yesterday that the CIA failed to persuade the United Kingdom in September 2002 to remove the Africa claim from an official intelligence dossier.

“We consulted about the paper and recommended against using that material,” a senior Bush administration official said.

British officials have said that the Bush administration has not been provided with the intelligence that supported the claim included in the British government’s September 2002 dossier, according to the Washington Post.  The United Kingdom received its intelligence from an unidentified “third country,” a diplomatic source said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, July 11).

Powell yesterday offered tentative support for the United Kingdom’s decision to stand by its original assertion.

“I would not dispute them or disagree with them or say they’re wrong and we’re right, or we’re right and they’re wrong.  I wouldn’t do that, because intelligence is of that nature,” Powell said.  “Some people have more sources than others on a particular issue.  Some people have greater confidence in their analysis,” he said.

Powell also defended the overall U.S. intelligence on Iraq’s WMD efforts, as outlined in his U.N. Security Council presentation.  There was additional intelligence that was considered for inclusion in the presentation, but was ultimately rejected because of a lack of supporting sources, he said.

“The case I put down on the 5th of February, for an hour and 20 minutes, roughly, on terrorism, on weapons of mass destruction and on the human rights case … we stand behind,” Powell said (Nartker, GSN).

Retired U.S. Army Gen. Tommy Franks, who led U.S. troops in Iraq, said yesterday that he believed Iraqi weapons of mass destruction would ultimately be found, and that such a discovery would vindicate U.S. intelligence.

The coalition search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction “is not completed,” Franks told the House Armed Services Committee.  “And so I believe that we will either find the weapons or we will find evidence of the weapons of mass destruction.  And I believe … that will vindicate the intelligence that we received,” he said.

U.S. Senator John Kerry (D-Mass.) yesterday called for a congressional investigation into the handling of prewar U.S. intelligence.

“I believe we need an open, thorough, complete and absolutely believable investigation into the quality of American intelligence so that going forward from now the national security interests of our country will be properly protected,” Kerry said (Stephanie Griffith, Agence France-Presse, July 11).

British Officials Doubt Weapons Will Be Found

Meanwhile, senior British officials have said they no longer believe that stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq, according to the New York Times.

According to British news reports, officials have begun to say that while weapons of mass destruction had existed, they were either dismantled or hidden before the war.  They also said that interviews with Iraqi scientists and military officers might illustrate how such concealment or destruction had occurred (Warren Hoge, New York Times, July 11).

British Prime Minister Tony Blair convened a special Cabinet meeting yesterday to discuss measures to improve the government’s credibility and to confront reports that British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was allegedly responsible for a BBC report that said officials doubted weapons would be found, according to the London Telegraph.  A spokesman for the secretary would not “confirm or deny” whether Straw had spoken to BBC political editor Andrew Marr.

A Blair spokesman said yesterday that the prime minister was “absolutely confident” that both actual weapons of mass destruction and evidence of WMD programs would be found.

“The prime minister is … absolutely confident that we will find evidence not only of his WMD programs, but concrete evidence of the product of those programs as well,” the spokesman said (George Jones, London Telegraph, July 11).

Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said, however, that only the discovery of actual weapons of mass destruction would vindicate Blair’s decision to go to war.

“Parliament voted for war because it was told that [former Iraqi President] Saddam [Hussein] did have real weapons of mass destruction,” Cook said.  “We were told it was so urgent that we went to war, we could not let Hans Blix and the U.N. weapons inspectors have the extra few months they asked for to finish the job,” he said.

“To establish that that’s correct, you do have to produce the weapons, you do have to actually produce the factories; you cannot now say, ‘Well, there were some scientists around who might at some time have had the capacity to develop it,’” Cook said (Associated Press/USA Today, July 11).

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International Response:  British Diplomats Dispute U.S. Authority to Intercept Suspect Shipments

The United States has found itself in dispute with other members of the Proliferation Security Initiative over the existing U.S. authority to intercept suspect cargo shipments, the London Times reported today (see GSN, July 10).

Following a meeting yesterday of initiative partners in Brisbane, Australia, U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton said the United States is “prepared to undertake interdictions right now,” and would do so if needed.  British diplomatic sources, however, argued with Bolton’s interpretation, saying the United States must act in accordance with international law, according to the Times.

“All 11 participants agreed that any action that might be taken would have to be consistent with international law,” a British Foreign Office spokesman said.

Bolton said the group of 11 countries had reached an agreement that gave the United States the authority to intercept suspect shipments.  “There is broad agreement within the group that we have that authority,” he said (Michael Evans, London Times, July 11).

Meanwhile, two nonproliferation experts said today that while the initiative is a good start, a stronger international legal mechanism is also needed.

While the initiative may not completely prevent a country from shipping or receiving WMD materials, such as plutonium, it may have a strong deterrent effect, Brookings Institution researchers Michael Levi and Michael O’Hanlon said in a commentary published in today’s Financial Times.

“If rogue leaders knew there was a decent chance that their WMD exports would be intercepted — inviting U.S. retaliation — they might be deterred from sending such exports in the first place,” they wrote.

Levi and O’Hanlon also called for the development of a stronger legal mechanism to allow for the interception of ships or aircraft from rogue states, even without evidence that they are carrying suspect cargo.  For example, the United States should call on the U.N. Security Council to declare North Korean plutonium illegal on the basis that it was acquired under false pretenses, Levi and O’Hanlon wrote.  This in turn would help establish a low threshold for searches aimed at intercepting such illegal material and could provided a basis for naval interception, they said.

In addition, the United States could also argue that countries with demonstrated oppressive internal polices or sponsorship of terrorism merited special concern, Levi and O’Hanlon wrote.  The Security Council could then pass a resolution that said, by behaving illegally in either way, a state would lose its sovereign right to protection, thus providing automatic authority for cargo searches, they added (Levi/O’Hanlon, Financial Times, July 11).

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Iran:  Tehran Continues to Deny IAEA Sampling at New Facility

During a trip this week to Tehran, International Atomic Energy Agency Director Mohamed ElBaradei failed to persuade Iran to allow IAEA officials to take samples from uranium enrichment centrifuge facilities, according to diplomats in Vienna (see GSN, July 10).

After ElBaradei broached the sampling proposal, Iranian officials “didn’t say yes and they didn’t say no,” according to a diplomat (see GSN, June 12).

ElBaradei was also unsuccessful in his attempt to push Iran to sign the Additional Protocol to its IAEA safeguards agreement, which would allow further access to nuclear activities.  IAEA spokesman Mark Gwozdecky said the protocol would not lead to the same inspections that were conducted in neighboring Iraq.

“There is a misconception that the Additional Protocol is like the draconian measures we had in Iraq,” Gwozdecky said.  “But it doesn’t give us absolute rights,” he added (Reuters/Pakistan Business Recorder, July 11).

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North Korea:  Opposition Leader Urges U.S. Military Action

By David McGlinchey
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The leader of a North Korean opposition group visited here this week to encourage the Bush administration to mount U.S. military strikes against North Korean leader Kim Jong Il’s regime (see GSN, July 10).

Park Gab Dong, chairman of the National Salvation Front for Democratic Reunification of Korea, said North Korea will not honor any treaty obligations or allow inspectors true access to the country’s nuclear activities.

U.S. leaders have been pushing for a diplomatic solution to the Korean nuclear crisis, but the two countries have been unable to agree on a format for the talks.  U.S. Representative Curt Weldon (R-Pa.) recently proposed a plan in which North Korea would open its nuclear facilities to inspection and eventually dismantle them in return for aid and security guarantees (see GSN, June 30).

Weldon said his plan was well received by North Korean officials.

U.S. President George W. Bush has pointedly refused to rule out the possibility of military strikes if Pyongyang cannot be otherwise dissuaded from developing nuclear weapons.

“The pillar of the North Korean regime is the 1.2-million strong Korean People’s Army,” Park said.  He told Global Security Newswire that Kim would not be ousted “unless you dismantle the army.”

The National Salvation Front — composed of 200 former North Korean officials — claims to have contacts in the upper echelons of Pyongyang’s leadership circles.  Citing sources in Pyongyang, Park said North Korean military officials understand that they cannot defeat the United States in a second Korean War and would most likely overthrow Kim in the face of an overwhelming U.S. attack.

Park said if the United States attacked North Korea, the People’s Army would most likely collapse within three days.

Invited to Washington by the Senate Republican Policy Committee, Park has been meeting with Defense Department officials and lawmakers to push for precision strikes against North Korean nuclear and military facilities. 

Korea is “so tightly controlled, there is no possibility of a popular revolt,” he said.

Park was the leader of South Korea’s socialist Worker’s Party before the Korean War, and after the 1953 armistice he took up residence in Pyongyang as a senior official in the North Korean Culture and Propaganda Ministry.  However, Kim Il Sung, who ruled North Korea from its inception through 1994, began to purge South Korean-born members of his government soon after the fighting ended.

Park spent three years in North Korean prisons before Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev pressured the reclusive communist country to release political prisoners.  Upon his release in 1959, Park immediately moved to Tokyo, formed the National Salvation Front and has been working toward the “sole plan of toppling that communist government,” he said.

During a visit to Washington in 1998, Park said his calls for military action were not well received.  On his current visit, however, he said officials “were much more sympathetic … there has been a marked change.”

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Ukraine:  Parliament Criticizes U.S. Decision to Suspend Funding for SS-34 Disposal

The Ukrainian Parliament today criticized the United States for suspending funding to a project to eliminate former Soviet SS-24 ICBMs, according to ITAR-Tass (see GSN, Jan. 31).  The project was in its final stage, the utilization of nuclear fuel, when Washington decided to suspend funding (Vitaly Matarykin, ITAR-Tass, July 11).

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United States I:  Senator Pushes for B-2 Maintenance Funding

U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) is pushing to include more than $30 million in the fiscal 2004 defense appropriations bill to fix cracks in the tail deck of the B-2 stealth bomber, Inside the Air Force reported today (see GSN, June 4).

“It’s a real problem that has to be fixed,” Feinstein said during the July 8 Senate Appropriations defense subcommittee markup of the 2004 spending bill.  Defense contractor Northrop Grumman, which does repair work on the B-2s, reportedly lobbied Feinstein to add the funding.

The House Appropriations Committee included $27 million for aft deck modifications in its version of the bill, but the Senate did not include funding.  Feinstein is campaigning for the $27 million and another $3.8 million for Northrop Grumman to develop a long-term solution to the problem, according to Inside the Air Force.

The cracking “is not a safety-of-flight issue,” according to Jim Hart, spokesman for Northrop Grumman’s Integrated Systems division.  Air Force officials said, however, that the B-2’s performance could be affected.

“Without intervention, cracks in the aft deck’s skin may propagate to the point of affecting the stealthiness of the B-2,” the Air Combat Command said in a statement (Hampton Stephens, Inside the Air Force, July 11).

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NPT:  Tajikistan Signs IAEA Safeguards Agreement, Additional Protocol

Tajikistan signed a safeguards agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency Tuesday and also signed the related IAEA Additional Protocol, according to a Russian Foreign Ministry press release (see GSN, April 16).  The ministry praised the move, saying it was a “practical contribution” to strengthening the international nuclear nonproliferation regime and to the establishing a Central Asian nuclear weapons-free zone (see GSN, March 11; Russian Foreign Ministry release, July 8).

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United States II:  British Teen Hacks Into U.S. Nuclear Laboratory Computers

A British teenager was arrested Wednesday after allegedly gaining electronic access to computers at a U.S. nuclear laboratory and using extra disk space to store his music and video files, the London Times reported (see GSN, July 9).

The 18-year-old gained access to computers at the Energy Department’s Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory, according to the Times.

The hacker stored files on 17 different computers at the laboratory, and he helped others gain access to the laboratory system to download the files.  The computers that were breached did not hold classified information and the system was shut down two weeks after it was breached, according to a spokeswoman for the laboratory.

“The hacker or hackers were taking advantage of our big volume of disk space to store their files,” the spokeswoman said.  “It normally takes an hour to back up our system.  But suddenly we noticed it asking about eight hours, so we new something was up,” she added.

The teenager was released on bail and his computers are being examined by police (Steve Bird, London Times, July 11).

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U.S. Response I:  Experts Criticize Plan to Monitor Air for Pathogens

Experts are continuing to criticize a Bush administration plan that has placed sensors around the country to constantly monitor air quality for evidence of biological terrorism, the Associated Press reported today (see GSN, Jan. 24).

Supporters said the plan, dubbed “Biowatch,” allows authorities to discover if a dangerous agent has been released long before victims become ill.

“Prior to it being rolled out, the only real way to tell if a biological agent had been released was to see if people started turning up sick or worse,” said Bob Bostock, homeland security chief for the Environmental Protection Agency.

Critics said the system’s sensors would not detect harmful agents in enclosed areas such as airports or subways, and outdoor biological attacks would probably not spread far enough to reach the sensors.

“The probability of being able to identify something in time to make some sort of public health decision, is pretty small,” said Jacqueline Cattani, director of the Center for Biological Defense at the University of South Florida.  “If you saw planes going over and releasing major clouds of this stuff, there’s a chance that people would get suspicious a long time before anybody checked the filters,” she added.

Calvin Chue, a researcher at the Center for Civilian Biodefense Strategies at Johns Hopkins University, said the cost of the system will be high and the probability of detecting an attack will be low.

The system includes at least 31 cities, and the White House announced earlier this year it expects the program will cost $1 million per city each year (Associated Press/NBC, July 11).

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U.S. Response II:  Biological Defense Projects Divert Funds From Other Medical Research, Experts Say

Experts have said that the Bush administration’s plans for increased biological defense research could take away necessary funding from other medical research projects, BBC News reported yesterday.

For example, the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases plans to spend $145 million to purchase and test a new experimental anthrax vaccine (see GSN, July 10).  Half of that funding, however, will be taken from research projects on other diseases, such as AIDS, under White House orders due to a lack of congressional funding, according to BBC News.

Luis Montaner of the Wistar Institute said he had just begun an AIDS research project when his funding was cut.

“This basically means for our own research that we have to scale back, to readdress our aims and perhaps accomplish less than what we would have hoped we could accomplish,” Montaner said.  “If there is a commitment that bioterrorism needs to be met by a comprehensive scientific agenda which includes, for example, anthrax vaccines, that should not be at the expense of other, equally important research programs,” he said (Richard Black, BBC News, July 10).

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