Syria:  Bolton Congressional Appearance Canceled Due to Dispute Over WMD Assessment

U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton’s planned appearance yesterday before a House International Relations subcommittee to testify on Syria’s WMD programs was delayed until September because of objections from U.S. intelligence agencies over his assessment, according to Knight-Ridder (see GSN, June 5).

Bolton was prepared to tell the Middle East and Central Asia Subcommittee that Syria’s WMD programs had developed to the point where they posed a threat to the region, U.S. officials said.  The CIA and other intelligence agencies, however, objected to this assessment, saying it was exaggerated, according to Knight-Ridder.

Bolton’s planned testimony caused a “revolt” among intelligence experts who thought it inflated Syria’s WMD progress, a U.S. official said.  The CIA’s objections alone to Bolton’s prepared remarks ran to up to 40 pages, the official said.

A Bolton aide said the undersecretary’s appearance was delayed because he was called to a White House meeting yesterday afternoon.  Other White House and congressional officials said, however, that the White House Office of Management and Budget, which coordinates officials’ public statements, would not give final approval to Bolton’s prepared testimony.

Another possible reason that Bolton’s congressional appearance was canceled was because of the questioning the White House has recently faced over possible exaggerations of Iraq-related intelligence, several officials said.  There is now more attention paid to “dotting i’s and crossing t’s,” a U.S. State Department official said.  The official added that Bolton’s prepared testimony was subjected to “extensive edits” (Strobel/Landay, Knight Ridder, Miami Herald, July 16).

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Iraq I:  At Least 10 Kilos of Uranium Compounds Missing, IAEA Says

At least 10 kilograms of uranium compounds are missing from an Iraqi nuclear material storage facility near the Tuwaitha complex south of Baghdad, which was the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program, the International Atomic Energy Agency said in a report released yesterday (see GSN, June 23).

An IAEA inspection team, working under the auspices of the agency’s safeguards agreement with Iraq, found last month that at least 10 kilograms of uranium compounds “could have dispersed” from the Location C Nuclear Material Storage Facility, according to the report.  It also says, however, that the missing materials pose little threat of being used to develop nuclear weapons.

“The quantity and type of uranium compounds dispersed are not sensitive from a proliferation point of view,” the report says.

The IAEA plans to request coalition authorities to “make every effort” to find the missing materials and return them to the Location C site and place them under IAEA safeguards, the report says.  It also calls on the United States and the United Kingdom “to ensure the physical protection and security of the entire nuclear material inventory in Iraq” (International Atomic Energy Agency release, July 14).

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Iraq II:  Prior to January Bush Speech, Most Evidence of Iraqi Nuclear Ambition Was in Tatters

By the time U.S. President George W. Bush’s delivered his January State of the Union address, the now-discredited evidence that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa was the only intelligence supporting the allegation that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons program, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, July 15).

Bush administration officials have recently said that the African uranium claim was just one of many pieces of intelligence that indicated Iraq was trying to develop nuclear weapons.  However, following Bush’s Oct. 7 speech outlining the case against Iraq, most of the other pieces of intelligence suggesting Iraq was trying to develop nuclear weapons had been discredited by U.N. weapons inspectors, according to the Post.

In that speech, Bush said satellite imagery indicated that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear sites.  Bush also cited as further evidence of Baghdad’s nuclear intentions “numerous meetings’ between former President Saddam Hussein and Iraqi nuclear scientists, as well as Iraq’s attempts to obtain aluminum tubes that could be used to develop uranium enrichment centrifuges.

The day before Bush’s Jan. 28 State of the Union address, however, International Atomic Energy Agency Director General Mohamed ElBaradei told the U.N. Security Council that two months of U.N. inspections within Iraq had turned up no prohibited activities occurring at former nuclear sites (see GSN, Jan. 27).  ElBaradei also said that inspectors had “useful” interviews with some Iraqi nuclear scientists and that the aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking could not have been used to build centrifuges without modifications (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, July 16).

Congressional Action

Meanwhile, CIA Director George Tenet is expected to testify on the African uranium claim today before a closed session of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, according to the New York Times.

Among the questions Tenet is expected to field is why he sought personally to have a reference to Iraq’s efforts to obtain uranium from Niger removed from Bush’s October speech, according to the Times.  The reference had been included in a national intelligence estimate distributed Oct. 1, but four days later Tenet called a Bush aide to have it removed from the speech, according to White House and intelligence officials.

Tenet’s move to remove the reference has led to questions by some in the White House who want to know why the Niger claim was included in the national intelligence estimate, the Times reported.

“This report was supposed to be the gold standard of our intelligence about Iraq,” a senior Bush administration official said.

CIA officials defended the intelligence, saying such reports sometimes include information that does not rise to the level of certainty required of a presidential speech.  The report also contained a footnote saying the U.S. State Department had doubts about the African uranium claim, the Times reported.

“It’s one thing to have information in a classified document with caveats and footnotes, and another to have the president flatly assert something,” an intelligence official said (Risen/Sanger, New York Times, July 16).

The House Select Committee on Intelligence is scheduled to hold a public hearing next week on claims that the Bush administration misrepresented U.S. intelligence on Iraq prior to the war, according to the Financial Times.

“Big questions remain about who forged the documents and the paper trail that followed,” said Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.), referring to the documents used by the Bush administration to support the African uranium claim.  The IAEA revealed in March that those documents, purporting to show an attempted Iraqi purchase of uranium from Niger, were forgeries.

After returning this week from a visit to Iraq, senior members of the House Intelligence Committee said it is unlikely that the United States would soon find evidence of large-scale Iraqi WMD stockpiles.

“Thus far, the evidence emerging on Iraq’s WMD programs does not point to the existence of large stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons,” the committee said in a statement (Edward Alden, Financial Times, July 16).

Meanwhile, Niger is angry over suggestions that it was involved in an attempted sale of uranium to Iraq, according to the Straits Times.

There have been calls within Niger for Bush to make a public apology for mentioning the African uranium claim in his State of the Union address.  The BBC has reported that some in Niger have also called for the issue to be taken before the International Court of Justice (Straits Times, July 16).

France denied Monday a Financial Times report that said Paris was a probable source of the uranium information, according to Agence France-Presse. 

“Contrary to the insinuations which appeared in the British press, France is not behind the intelligence published in the British dossier dated Sept. 24, 2002, and relative to the nuclear program of Iraq,” the French Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The Times report also said that Italy was a likely source for the information (Agence France-Presse, July 14, in FBIS-WEU, July 14).  Italian judicial officials yesterday began an investigation into whether Italy’s intelligence service was the source for the information, judicial sources said, adding that there is no evidence so far of any wrongdoing (Washington Times, July 16).

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Kyrgyz Response:  Kyrgyzstan to Implement Export-Control Laws

Kyrgyzstan is set to establish new export-control regulations to prevent the spread of WMD-related materials, a senior Kyrgyz trade official said yesterday (see GSN, April 18).

Under the new regulations, materials such as uranium, cyanide and rare-earth metals will now require prior approval before they can be exported or imported, Deputy External Trade and Industry Minister Nina Kirichenko said.  “These measures will allow us to strictly control movement of such dangerous materials,” Kirichenko said (Agence France-Presse, July 16).

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Iraq:  Bush Defends Speech, Rationale for War

U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday defended his January State of the Union address, which contained the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa, saying that the speech was “backed by good intelligence” (see GSN, July 14).

“I think the intelligence I get is darn good intelligence.  And the speeches I have given were backed by good intelligence,” Bush said yesterday during a joint press conference with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan following a White House meeting.  “And I am absolutely convinced today, like I was convinced when I gave the speeches, that [former Iraqi President] Saddam Hussein developed a program of weapons of mass destruction, and that our country made the right decision,” he said.

Bush said his address was cleared by the CIA and that the agency had doubts “subsequent to the speech.”

“The thing that’s important to realize is that’s important to realize is that we’re constantly gathering data.  Subsequent to the speech, the CIA had some doubts,” Bush said.  “But when … they talked about the speech, when they looked at the speech, it was cleared,” he said.

White House press secretary Scott McClellan today sought to clarify Bush’s remark, saying that the president had first learned of doubts in March, after the International Atomic Energy Agency concluded that documents purporting to show that Iraq had purchased uranium from Niger were forgeries (Mike Nartker, GSN, July 15).

Bush aides have said, however, that the CIA raised doubts that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, a basis for the Africa uranium claim, more than four months before the State of the Union, according to the Washington Post.

U.S. Marine Gen. Carlton Fulford told the Post yesterday that he had been sent to Niger last year to investigate the security of that country’s uranium stockpiles, and that after the visit he believed they were secure.  Fulford’s findings were passed on to Gen. Richard Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, though it is unknown if they reached the White House, according to the Post. 

Capt. Frank Thorp, a spokesman for Myers, said the general has “no recollection of the information,” but did not doubt that he had received it.  “Given the time frame of 16 months ago, information concerning Iraq not obtaining uranium from Niger would not have been as pressing as other subjects,” Thorp said (Priest/Milbank, Washington Post, July 15).

Some Republicans have called on the Bush administration to step up its efforts to respond to questions over the case for war on Iraq, according to the New York Times.

“They have the potential to hurt, unless they are firmly and forcefully and frequently answered,” Senator Arlen Specter (R-Pa.) said.  “I don’t think you can let any of this go unanswered.  And I don’t think the president is going to take any of this lying down,” he said.

In his remarks yesterday, Bush defended the decision to go to war with Baghdad, saying that such a decision was necessary because Hussein refused to allow U.N. weapons inspectors into Iraq.

“The larger point is, and the fundamental question is:  Did Saddam Hussein have a weapons program?  And the answer is: Absolutely.  And we gave him a chance to allow the inspectors in, and he wouldn’t let them in,” Bush said.  “And therefore, after a reasonable request, we decided to remove him from power, along with other nations, so as to make sure he was not a threat to the United States and our friends and allies in the region,” he said.

During a White House press briefing today, McClellan sought to clarify Bush’s comment.  What Bush meant by his comment was that Hussein had failed to fully comply with U.N. resolution 1441, which established the inspection regime, and that Hussein had worked to “thwart inspectors … every step of the way,” McClellan said (Nartker, GSN).

British Africa Uranium Claim Disputed

Meanwhile, a Western diplomat with ties to the IAEA has said that all British intelligence purporting to show that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Africa was based on a set of documents that have been revealed to be forgeries, according to Agence France-Presse.

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw defended the Africa uranium claim, which was included in a September 2002 report, saying the information had come from “foreign intelligence services.”

The evidence that the United Kingdom has of Iraq’s efforts to obtain uranium from Africa, however, refers to the same alleged transaction that was described in the forged documents, the diplomat said. 

“I understand that it concerned the same group of documents and the same transaction,” the diplomat was quoted by the Daily Mail as saying (Agence France-Presse).

Discovered Nuclear Components Ineffective, U.N. Inspector Says

U.N. weapons inspector Jacques Baute said it would have been “virtually impossible” for Iraq to relaunch its nuclear weapons program with equipment and materials that were recently recovered from a Baghdad backyard, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, June 26).

The recovered uranium enrichment equipment, provided by an Iraqi scientist last month, lacked necessary components, Baute said.  In addition, blueprints also provided by the scientist contained a number of mistakes, he said.

U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher, while refusing to comment on Baute’s assessment, said the recovered equipment and documents indicated that Iraq had not abandoned its desire for nuclear weapons (see GSN, June 27).

“I think the findings in Iraq demonstrate that Iraq had not abandoned its intentions on nuclear programs.  Just buried them.  Maybe more,” Boucher said.  “We’ll see.  We’ll find the full extent of that as time goes on,” he said (Charles Hanley, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 15).  

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Iraq:  Tenet Takes Responsibility for State of the Union Address

CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility Friday for U.S. President George W. Bush’s January State of the Union address, which contained the now-discredited claim that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa (see GSN, July 11).

“First, CIA approved the president’s State of the Union address before it was delivered.  Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency.  And third, the president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound,” Tenet said in a press statement.  “These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president,” he said (CIA release, July 11).

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Saturday that the decision for Tenet to release his statement was a mutual one between the CIA director and the White House.

“Discussions with Director Tenet about the statement have been going on for days,” Fleischer said.  “The discussion was, the CIA needs to explain what its role was in this,” he said.

Bush said Saturday that he “absolutely” had faith in both Tenet and the CIA itself.

“I’ve got confidence in George Tenet and in the men and women who work at the CIA,” Bush said during a press conference in Abuja, Nigeria. 

Tenet’s statement should close the issue of the Africa claim, according to Fleischer.

“The president is pleased that the director of central intelligence acknowledged what needed to be acknowledged,” Fleischer said.  “The president has moved on.  And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on as well,” he said (Richard Stevenson, New York Times, July 13).

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Tenet was able to persuade White House officials to remove a claim that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger from a Bush speech in October.

The White House wanted to include in the speech an allegation that Iraq had attempted to purchase 500 tons of uranium oxide, an assertion that was contained in a national intelligence estimate in late September 2002, according to the Post.  Tenet personally told White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it only came from one source, according to a senior official.  The CIA also doubted the accuracy of the documents that served as the basis of the allegation, which were later revealed to have been forgeries, a second senior official said.

The late September national intelligence estimate was the basis for Bush’s claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Africa, the Post reported.

A former White House official said that there had been information “available within the system” that should have been able to keep the Africa claim out of the State of the Union address.

“The information was available within the system that should have caught this kind of big mistake,” the former Bush administration official said.  “The question is how the management of the system, and the process that supported it, allowed this kind of misinformation to be used and embarrass the president,” the former official said (Pincus/Allen, Washington Post, July 13).

In his statement Friday, Tenet defended the text of Bush’s State of the Union address as being “factually correct.”

“From what we know now, agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct — i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa,” Tenet said.  “This should not have been the test for clearing a presidential address.  This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed,” he added (CIA release).

Yesterday, two senior Bush administration officials also defended the text of the State of the Union address as being factually correct.

“The statement that he [Bush] made was indeed accurate,” U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Fox News Sunday.  “The British government did say that,” she said.

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also said that Bush’s address was correct, adding that London has continued to stand by its assertion.

“It turns out that it’s technically correct what the president said, that the U.K. does — did say that — and still says that,” Rumsfeld said.  “They haven’t changed their mind, the United Kingdom intelligence people,” he said (James Risen, New York Times, July 14).

Rumsfeld also said yesterday that Vice President Dick Cheney misspoke when he said on Meet the Press that Iraq had reconstituted nuclear weapons, saying that the vice president had meant to say Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear weapons program.

“In no instance did anyone in the administration that I know of suggested that they had a nuclear weapon,” Rumsfeld said.  “We did believe, and do believe, that they had reconstituted their program, and at some point would have … a nuclear weapon — if left alone,” he said (U.S. Defense Department release, July 13).

British Intelligence Report

Meanwhile, France and Italy are believed to have provided the United Kingdom with information that was used to support the British claim that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Africa, according to the Financial Times.

The information used to support the claim came from two Western European countries and not from the documents that were found to have been forgeries, according to senior British government sources.  The United Kingdom did not share the intelligence it received with the United States because it “was not ours to share,” an official said (Huband/Adams, Financial Times, July 13).

The French secret service, the DGSE, is believed to have refused to allow the British MI6 intelligence service to provide the United States with “credible” intelligence that showed that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium ore from Niger, U.S. intelligence sources said yesterday.

MI6 had more than one “different and credible” piece of intelligence that showed that Iraq had attempted to purchase the uranium, but because it was provided by foreign intelligence services, under rules governing cooperation, it could not be shared without the originator’s permission, British officials said.  U.S. intelligence sources believe that MI6’s information came from the DGSE because Niger is a former French colony and its uranium mines are operated by a French company, according to the London Telegraph.  In addition, France was opposed to the war on Iraq and would have been against the idea of intelligence sharing, according to U.S. sources (Michael Smith, London Telegraph, July 14).

Blix Criticizes British 45-Minute Claim

The British government made “a fundamental mistake” in claiming that the Iraqi military could have deployed biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes of receiving an order to do so, former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said.

“I think that was a fundamental mistake,” Blix said of the 45-minute claim, which was included in a British dossier on Iraq’s WMD programs released in September 2002.  “I don’t know exactly how they calculated this figure of 45 minutes in the dossier of September last year.  That seems pretty far off the mark to me,” he said.

Blix also said that the United Kingdom had “overinterpreted the intelligence they had.”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, however, was “strongly convinced” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, Blix said.

“I talked to him several times, and I never had any other impression,” Blix said.  “In fact, I was the one who was skeptical and critical, and said that I didn’t think that the evidence was so strong, and said so to the [U.N.] Security Council,” he said (Irving/Whitaker, London Independent, July 13).

Iraqi Militia Claims Al-Qaeda Connection

A group calling itself the “Islamic Armed Group of al-Qaeda, Fallujah branch” has said that it, and not former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, is behind the series of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, according to a videotape aired on the al-Arabiya satellite television network yesterday.

On the videotape, a distorted male voice tells U.S. troops to “leave Iraq’s territories and to live up to their promises.”  The voice also takes credit for the recent attacks on U.S. troops.

“By God, not one of (Saddam’s) followers carried out any of the Jihadi (holy war) operations like he claims,” the voice said.

The voice also warned that the “coming days … will show you the strike that will break America’s back” (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 14).

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U.S. Response:  New York Distributes Gas Masks to Police

More than 13,000 New York City police officers will be equipped with gas masks to respond to chemical or biological attacks, the New York Post reported today (see GSN, June 30).

More than 3,000 anti-terrorist police have already received the new lightweight “Millennium Masks” and 10,000 more are scheduled to be delivered by the end of 2003.

All police officials now carry “Tactical Response Hoods,” a mask that allows them to evacuate a contaminated area.

“We have different masks depending on what your job is in the department,” said New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly.  “I would like to move to this mask, which is a mask for working in a toxic environment rather than just escaping.  It’s a tighter seal.  The filters last for a longer period of time,” he added.

Kelly plans to eventually distribute the masks to all 34,000 police officers in the city, the Post reported (Hamilton/Lisi, New York Post, July 14).

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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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Iraq:  Former Intelligence Officer Charges U.S. Distortion of Prewar Intelligence

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — Lacking evidence of an Iraqi threat to U.S. security, the Bush administration misrepresented U.S. prewar intelligence on Iraq to justify going to war, a panel of intelligence and nonproliferation experts said yesterday (see GSN, July 9).

As of March, shortly before the U.S.-led coalition invaded Iraq, Baghdad posed “no imminent threat” to the United States or its neighbors, said Greg Thielmann, a former official in the U.S. State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research.  Speaking at a news conference sponsored by the Arms Control Association here yesterday, he accused the Bush administration of failing to provide “an accurate picture” of the military threat posed by Iraq.  For example, Thielmann said, Iraq’s conventional military capabilities were far less than they were prior to the 1991 Gulf War, its nuclear program was “dormant” and its biological and chemical efforts were focused more on rebuilding production capabilities than maintaining stockpiles of actual weapons.

Thielmann accused Bush administration officials of failing “to speak honestly” about the U.S. prewar intelligence on Iraq and its WMD and ballistic missile programs.  CIA Director George Tenet told Congress in February that Iraq had maintained a small cache of U.N.-prohibited Scud ballistic missiles, but Thielmann said U.S. intelligence analysts had actually reported only that they could not account for all the Scud missiles Iraq was once believed to possess — an important difference, he said.

Thielmann also said the Bush administration did not adequately consider the doubts of some intelligence analysts regarding a claim that Iraq had purchased high-strength aluminum tubes for use in making uranium enrichment centrifuges.  There were also doubts within the intelligence community on the often-asserted claim by administration officials that Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical weapons, Thielmann said.  In addition, most terrorism experts have disputed the administration’s claims of connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, and that the ousting of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has aided the war on terrorism, he said. 

In the months leading up to the war, Bush administration officials made increasingly specific allegations about the existence of large Iraqi biological and chemical weapons stockpiles in a “conscious attempt” to discredit U.N. inspections, said Joseph Cirincione, director of the Nonproliferation Project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.  After three months of fruitless searches by coalition forces for evidence of Iraqi WMD efforts, however, it appears that the inspections were working “remarkably well” and would have continued to do so if they had been given more time and support, Cirincione said.

Thielmann yesterday accused the Bush administration of operating under a “faith-based” intelligence policy — fitting available intelligence to pre-existing conclusions.  He defended U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, however, saying that Powell wanted departmental intelligence analysts to provide the best assessments possible.

Gregory Treverton, a former vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, issued a similar criticism, saying the Bush administration had turned “intelligence to evidence” to make the best “bumper-sticker” case for war.

White House Defends Decision

Bush and other senior White House officials, however, have continued to defend the decision to go to war with Iraq.

During a Pretoria, South Africa, press conference yesterday, Bush said there was “no doubt” in his mind that he made the right decision, calling allegations to the contrary “attempts to try to rewrite history.”

“There is no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the world peace.  And there’s no doubt in my mind that the United States, along with allies and friends, did the right thing in removing him from power,” Bush said.  “And there’s no doubt in my mind, when it’s all said and done, the facts will show the world the truth,” he said.

Bush also said yesterday that he was “confident” Hussein had a WMD program.

“Look, I am confident that Saddam Hussein had a weapons of mass destruction program,” Bush said.  “In 1991, I will remind you, we underestimated how close he was to having a nuclear weapon.  Imagine a world in which this tyrant had a nuclear weapon,” he added.

U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld yesterday sought to play down the increasing criticism of prewar intelligence on Iraq, saying the decision to go to war was made based on a reappraisal of old information following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

“The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass murder,” Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee.  “We acted because we saw the existing evidence in a new light, through the prism of our experience on Sept. 11.  On that day, we saw thousands of innocent men, women and children killed by terrorists and that experience changed our appreciation of our vulnerability and the risks the U.S. faces from terrorist states and terrorist networks armed with powerful weapons,” he said.

Supporting Rumsfeld, Senator James Inhofe (R-Okla.) criticized the questioning of the administration’s handling of intelligence.

“It’s so obvious that this whole notion — that weapons of mass destruction they claim that are not found, therefore we should not have gone in and done what we have done — is nothing but an absurd media-driven diversionary tactic, and I’ve never seen the likes of it before,” Inhofe said.

During yesterday’s news conference, Cirincione challenged Rumsfeld’s assertion, saying that Bush administration officials had given the impression that they had new intelligence prior to the war on the threat posed by Iraq.  He cited intelligence reports issued from 1998 to 2001 that said Iraq’s WMD capabilities had been mostly destroyed by the Gulf War and subsequent U.N. inspections. 

Continued Questions Over Iraqi Uranium Purchase Attempt

During yesterday’s Armed Services Committee hearing, Rumsfeld faced questioning from Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.), the top Democrat on the committee, on the issue of the Bush administration’s claim that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Africa.  Bush included the allegation, citing British intelligence reports, in his January State of the Union address. 

The International Atomic Energy Agency later determined, however, that evidence provided by the United States to support the claim — documents purporting to show that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger — were forgeries.  Earlier this week, the White House acknowledged that Bush should not have included the allegation in his address.

Thielmann said yesterday that the Africa claim was one of the administration’s few key pieces of evidence to support allegations that Iraq had sought to develop nuclear weapons.  He said he felt a “combination of surprise and disgust” when he learned that Bush had included the claim in his State of the Union address.

During yesterday’s hearing, Levin asked Rumsfeld why it took so long for doubts over the purported Iraq-Niger uranium sale within the U.S. intelligence community to be shared with administration officials.  “I can’t give you a good answer.  I can try to get an answer for the record, if you’d like,” Rumsfeld replied.

Rumsfeld also said that he did not learn that the reports of Iraq’s attempts to purchase uranium in Africa were false until “recent days.”  Under questioning from Senator Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), Rumsfeld conceded that the information could have crossed his desk, but he does not remember receiving any intelligence denying the allegations.

“I see hundreds and hundreds of pieces of paper a day,” Rumsfeld said.  “And is it conceivable that something was in a document?  It’s conceivable.  Do I recall hearing anything or reading anything like that?  The answer is as I’ve given it.  No,” he said.

For its part, the United Kingdom has continued to support its claim that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, according to the Financial Times.  British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday that his intelligence analysts stand by the claim.

“The evidence that we had that the Iraqi government had gone back to try to purchase further amounts of uranium from Niger did not come from so-called ‘forged’ documents,” said Blair, adding, “They came from separate intelligence.”

According to the Times, IAEA officials have asked the United Kingdom to provide its additional evidence showing Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Africa.

Cirincione said yesterday that he believed that the “euphoria” generated by the quick military victory in Iraq is fading due to the difficulties of the postwar occupation.  It will probably be difficult for the Bush administration to prevent Congress from conducting an open inquiry into the handling of prewar intelligence, he said, adding that he expected congressional hearings to begin soon after the end of the summer recess, if not before.

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International Response:  Exercises Planned as Part of U.S.-Sponsored Cargo Interdiction Plan

A group of 11 nations yesterday agreed to share intelligence and to begin joint military exercises as part of a U.S.-proposed initiative to interdict shipments of suspected WMD cargo, according to the Associated Press (see GSN, July 9).

The 11 countries agreed on the first measures of the Proliferation Security Initiative during a two-day meeting which ended today in Brisbane, Australia.  The meeting moved the proposal “beyond diplomatic and declaratory statements” to “an operational level very quickly,” said U.S. Undersecretary of State John Bolton.

“There’s more work to do, but in diplomatic terms we are moving at light speed here,” Bolton said.

Joint military exercises would probably begin in October and would include air, land and naval forces with an emphasis on naval interdiction, said Paul O’Sullivan, head of the Australian delegation at the meeting.  The 11 countries will also work to develop an intelligence network to better detect shipments of suspect cargo, according to AP.  They also might choose to seek a U.N. Security Council endorsement of the initiative, Bolton said. 

The United States is “prepared to undertake interdictions right now” in international waters if intelligence shows a possible threat, Bolton said (Peter O’Connor, Associated Press, July 10).

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South Korean Response:  Companies Said to be Ignoring Export Control Rules

South Korean companies are ignoring export controls on materials that could be used to develop weapons of mass destruction, the Yonhap News Agency reported today (see GSN, July 9).

South Korean government officials announced earlier this year that they would crack down on violators of the “catch-all” system, designed to prevent the export of sensitive technology and materials.

“Despite massive exports of Korean chemicals, semiconductors and machinery, not a single exporter has complied with catch-all related requests so far, indicating widespread indifference in local business circles to the otherwise costly rules,” said a government spokesman.

The spokesman cautioned that companies caught trading illegal goods could face domestic penalties as well as U.S. sanctions (Yonhap News Agency/BBC Monitoring, July 10).

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