[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 96 (Tuesday, July 13, 2004)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7948-S7951]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

  Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I thank the deputy majority leader for his 
excellent comments. As a member of the Senate Select Committee on 
Intelligence, I congratulate him on his very thorough and thoughtful 
discussion of the work of the Intelligence Committee.
  Last week, as we all recall, the committee released a remarkable 
report unanimously supported by the Democrat and Republican members of 
the committee. However, despite the findings of fact, which took a year 
of interviews by staff of over 200 people reviewing 15,000 documents, 
the campaign continues to attempt to politicize this process perfectly 
consistent with the political strategy memo uncovered last November 
designed by minority staff to show how the Intelligence Committee could 
be manipulated in order to hamper the President and his administration 
during the election year. The fact this is a time of war is apparently 
insufficient justification for leaving politics at the water's edge.
  No rule of law should ever stifle honest debate, discourse, or 
dissent in this country, but somewhere public leaders can recognize 
self-discipline can be a benefit to our troops and our Nation. I saw a 
report recently that in the 1944 election, as Republican candidate 
Thomas Dewey was set to blame President Roosevelt for what transpired 
at Pearl Harbor, General Marshall appealed to Dewey, arguing that the 
Nation should be united against the real enemy. Dewey acted on behalf 
of the country. I guess times were different then.
  In this country, we need to make sure our service men and women 
understand that while we can have our debate, we can demonstrate more 
disdain for the enemy than we have for the opposition party.
  Since Friday, we have heard the suggestions that the efforts of our 
troops to depose Saddam Hussein and set the long-term stage for peace 
and democracy in the most dangerous region in the world was not--yes, 
not--warranted. Besides being wrong, what kind

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of horrible message is this to send our troops and their families, not 
to mention the enemy, whose only hope is to win in Washington what they 
cannot win from our troops on the battlefield?
  If it is the will of this body that we cut and run, then let's debate 
and vote on it. Maybe we need a sense-of-the-Senate resolution, in any 
case, to send a message to our troops and the enemy that we intend to 
see this through. If we agree on it, as I believe we do, we should let 
our troops do what they are doing, and we should spend our time 
supporting their efforts, not retracting from their mission.
  Of course, we should be focused on the need to provide better 
intelligence, but some of us have been saying that since the 1970s when 
our intelligence collection was destroyed. Some of us had said that 
when we failed to predict the Iraqi Army would amass on the Kuwaiti 
border and when intelligence failed to predict they would cross over 
and overtake Kuwait and threaten Saudi Arabia. Some of us said that 
when we learned the estimates of Saddam Hussein's nuclear capability 
were not 5 to 10 years in the future but less than 1 year. All we need 
to know about the quality of intelligence in the region is to know we 
did not have one single agent on the ground.
  As said in today's editorial in Investor's Business Daily, 
intelligence spending was cut, the number of spies sharply dropped, so 
sharply, in fact, that after 9/11 the CIA had to create a 5-year plan 
to undo the damage. During President Clinton's two terms, the number of 
spies fell an estimated 20 percent, the budget tumbled by some 
estimates as much as 30 percent--it is classified--spy satellites got 
taken down, experienced analysts got fired.
  Well, much has been said of the pressure that policymakers allegedly 
put on the intelligence community to get hard answers to important 
questions. We just heard that repeated in the Chamber. They are talking 
about pressure to change the analysis. Let's go back to what the 
bipartisan committee unanimously concluded.
  Conclusion No. 11.

       Several of the allegations of pressure on the intelligence 
     community analysts involved repeated questioning. The 
     committee--

  That is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence--

     believes that the intelligence community analysts should 
     expect difficult and repeated questions regarding threat 
     information. Just as the post-9/11 environment lowered the 
     intelligence community's reporting threshold, it has also 
     affected the intensity with which policymakers will review 
     and question threat information.

  With respect to the Vice President, conclusion No. 84:

       The committee found no evidence that the Vice President's 
     visits to the Central Intelligence Agency were attempts to 
     pressure analysts, were perceived as intended to pressure 
     analysts by those who participated in the briefings on Iraq's 
     weapons of mass destruction programs or did pressure analysts 
     to change their conclusions.

  Conclusion No. 102:

       The committee found that none of the analysts or other 
     people interviewed by the committee said they were pressured 
     to change their conclusions related to Iraq's links to 
     terrorism.

  Now, talking to the people who work in the intelligence community, 
they are expected to get tough questions. They need to be able to 
defend what they have produced, and a good policymaker will challenge 
them not to change the evidence, and there was no evidence--zip, zero, 
none--of pressure to change.
  I ought to mention Ambassador Wilson's name was raised. The committee 
also found that his so-called review was inadequate and did not 
conclusively determine that there was not an effort--in fact, some 
analysts were led to conclude from what he brought back that it was 
more likely that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Africa, and I 
would refer my colleagues to Chairman Roberts' additional views.
  The partisan suggestions continue nevertheless, as administration 
officials are accused of making the same charges against Saddam's 
regime as the Senators themselves made in 1998 and during the debate 
for war which was overwhelmingly adopted in 2002. Candidates accuse our 
President and Vice President of having little swing with our so-called 
allies. Yet somehow they must have had enough swing to intimidate the 
English, French, Swiss, German, U.N. and Russian intelligence agencies 
to fall for the same WMD charge. This notion did not survive 
investigative scrutiny, and it does not survive common sense. 
Furthermore, it is a gross insult to analysts in the intelligence 
community to suggest they conform their views to the pleasure of 
policymakers.
  Again, I would draw the attention of my colleagues to yesterday's 
Wall Street Journal editorial on this subject, which says something 
that I said in the Chamber last Friday. A few apologies would seem to 
be in order. I think apologies are owed to the Vice President and to 
the administration. And yet we are still continuing to hear the same 
misguided, unsubstantiated charges made. Some Senators trying to win 
the White House away are criticizing the President for looking at the 
same intelligence they did and coming to the same conclusion they did. 
Is political victory more important than victory in Iraq? Has political 
victory become so important that some believe it necessary to divide 
America with this blame game while their sons and daughters are risking 
their lives abroad? If we are going to blame someone, I recommend we 
all agree to start with Saddam and bin Laden. Have we forgotten who the 
real enemy of peace, democracy, and humanity really is?
  Recall what President Clinton said who saw the intelligence in 1998. 
President Clinton said:

       The fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he 
     threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of this 
     region, the security of the world. The best way to end that 
     threat once and for all is with the new Iraqi Government, a 
     government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a 
     government that respects the rights of its people. Saddam 
     will strike again at his neighbors and he will make war on 
     his own people, and mark my words, he will develop weapons of 
     mass destruction. He will deploy them and he will use them.

  My colleague, the deputy majority leader from Kentucky, has already 
pointed out the words of the Senators in this body, and I agree with 
him and I endorse that reference. But as we focus to the point of 
obsession on intelligence--and we must make it better if we are to stop 
future acts of terror--we cannot leave behind our own personal 
intelligence. We do not exist to swallow whole what the intelligence 
community feeds us. Sometimes they are wrong, sometimes lazy, but most 
of the time they work tirelessly under dangerous conditions and are 
dead right, and other times their guesses, which is much of what 
intelligence is all about, may not be as good as ours. But in the case 
of Saddam, who in this body needed a CIA report to understand that the 
man and his despicable sons set to lead Iraq through the first half of 
the new century? Ordinary citizens need not have a security clearance 
but need only to have watched or read the news over the previous 20 
years.
  What don't we know about this man's evil intention, his hatred for 
the U.S., his willingness not only to pursue but use weapons of mass 
destruction? Is his track record of insanity meaningless?

  By the time a crazed maniac invades two foreign countries, defies 
repeatedly the mandates of the U.N., fires missiles at Israel, fires 
missiles at our patrol aircraft, pays suicide bombers to blow up 
innocent women and children, not only builds and stockpiles weapons of 
mass destruction but uses them, fills mass graves by the tens of 
thousands, attempts to assassinate our former President, and suggests 
that perhaps his only regret in 1990 was not waiting a few more months 
so he would have the nuclear capability to confront our troops, what 
else do we really need to know about this man? Do we really need the 
CIA to introduce Saddam to the Senate? Can it be true that there is 
this signal that unless WMD are found, Saddam is somehow acquitted? 
Look at the thousands and thousands of people he killed with the WMD.
  In retrospect, many things are more clear, including that we would 
have been better off taking care of him in 1991, but in post-9/11 could 
we really afford to trust him, to let him continue to fester 
indefinitely? Were we prepared to wait until the threat was imminent? 
President Bush said we can't wait until the threat is imminent, meaning 
to wait until the threat is executed which is too late. We didn't know 
his invasion of Kuwait was imminent until we saw his tanks through the 
dust of the Kuwaiti desert. We knew bin Laden was a threat but the

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threat did not appear imminent until after the USS Cole was bombed, 
after the embassies were bombed, after the towers were dropped, killing 
3,000 innocent Americans.
  While it may be lost on some perhaps in this body, but in our 
national news media, the burdens of leadership are not lost on this 
President. While no one else may see the irony, President Bush does. He 
sees a 9/11 commission asking: Why didn't the administration act on 
sketchy intelligence at the very same time some on the other side are 
asking why did the administration act on sketchy intelligence? The 
first investigation answers the second to anyone sitting in the hottest 
political seat in America. Meanwhile, the hottest job abroad is being 
faithfully executed by our soldiers, marines, airmen, and civilian 
support personnel.
  I am proud my son is a marine who expects to get his turn to serve in 
the sandbox. I want him to return safely, but I want him to win, and I 
want our troops abroad to win, and I want them to know that America is 
behind them and to know that addressing the most dangerous nation in 
the most dangerous region of the world makes this world safer because 
it will if Washington will let it.
  Winning the real war on terror is more important than winning the 
political war for the White House. We want to win the war on terror and 
we must. The continued charges of pressure and misinformation are 
totally off the mark based on what the Intelligence Committee found. 
There is no question that we are better off. The region is safer, the 
Iraqi people are much safer, and we in the United States are much safer 
because we have deposed Saddam Hussein, because we have enacted the 
PATRIOT Act, because we have pursued very vigorously the war on terror.
  We ought to be strengthening that war, supporting our troops, 
supporting our agencies here at home and not trying to phony up charges 
of pressure to win political points.
  I ask unanimous consent that two editorials, one from the Wall Street 
Journal and one from Investor's Business Daily, be printed in the 
Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

          [From the Investor's Business Daily, July 13, 2004]

                            Pointing Fingers

       It's a little funny watching some of the very same people 
     who voted repeatedly in the 1990s to strip the CIA of its 
     spies and slash its budget now taking it to task for not 
     doing its job.
       It is true the CIA failed to anticipate Sept. 11--though 
     it's not clear any organization operating in a democratic 
     society could have done so.
       It's also true the CIA made mistakes in estimating the 
     scope of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction 
     programs--and in suggesting the U.S. would find stockpiles of 
     WMDs when it invaded.
       (Although, it's equally clear the CIA wasn't entirely 
     wrong: Iraq did have WMD programs, and coalition troops did 
     find weapons of mass destruction--namely, deadly sarin and 
     mustard gas--in Iraq, though not in the amounts the CIA 
     hinted they would).
       Nonetheless, in a predictable game of political tag, some 
     try to pin the blame for the CIA's failures on President 
     Bush--as if the eight years of massive intelligence cuts in 
     the 1990s played no role at all.
       It's a matter of record: President Clinton slashed 
     intelligence spending and cut the number of spies sharply--so 
     sharply, in fact, the CIA after 9-11 had to create a five-
     year plan to undo the damage.
       During his two terms, the number of spies fell an estimated 
     20%. The budget tumbled, by some estimates as much as 30% 
     (it's classified). Spy satellites got taken down. Experienced 
     analysts got fired.
       That doesn't mean Clinton had no spying priorities. He did: 
     the economy. In place of a relentless focus on the growing 
     terror threat, the Clinton White House made ``economic 
     security'' its top priority.
       Typical was this comment from then-Secretary of State 
     Warren Christopher: ``Our national security is inseparable 
     from our economic security.''
       So much for terrorism.
       Unfortunately, terrorists found the U.S. an easy target 
     during the decade. They started with the World Trade Center 
     bombing in 1993, killing six and wounding a thousand more. 
     They kept at it, blowing up a U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia, 
     attacking U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and bombing 
     the USS Cole in port in Yemen. They murdered hundreds in 
     these and other terror attacks.
       Yet, it was still ``the economy stupid'' in the White 
     House--an attitude that found many allies among Congress' 
     Democrats.
       That includes Sen. John Kerry. He proposed deep cuts for 
     the CIA in 1994 and 1995.
       We mention this because the report on the CIA's 
     shortcomings has been the source of a good deal of finger-
     pointing. Bush often gets the blame, even though the weakened 
     intelligence community he inherited was Clinton's creation.
       The CIA, no doubt, needs reforms. But its troubles didn't 
     arise in just the last three years. And playing political 
     football with America's intelligence failures won't make us 
     more secure.
                                  ____


             [From the Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2004]

                          Of ``Lies'' and WMD

       ``The Committee did not find any evidence that 
     Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or 
     pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's 
     weapons of mass destruction capabilities.''
       So reads Conclusion 83 of the Senate Intelligence 
     Committee's report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. The 
     committee likewise found no evidence of pressure to link Iraq 
     to al Qaeda. So it appears that some of the claims about WMD 
     used by the Bush Administration and others to argue for war 
     in Iraq were mistaken because they were based on erroneous 
     information provided by the CIA.
       A few apologies would seem to be in order. Allegations of 
     lying or misleading the nation to war are about the most 
     serious charge that can be leveled against a President. But 
     according to this unanimous study, signed by Jay Rockefeller 
     and seven other Democrats, those frequent charges from 
     prominent Democrats and the media are without merit.
       Or to put it more directly, if President Bush was ``lying'' 
     about WMD, then so was Mr. Rockefeller when he relied on CIA 
     evidence to claim in October 2002 that Saddam Hussein's 
     weapons ``pose a very real threat to America.'' Also lying at 
     the time were John Kerry, John Edwards, Bill and Hillary 
     Clinton, and so on. Yet, Mr. Rockefeller is still suggesting 
     on the talk shows, based on nothing but inference and 
     innuendo, that there was undue political Bush ``pressure'' on 
     CIA analysts.
       The West Virginia Democrat also asserted on Friday that 
     Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith has been running a 
     rogue intelligence operation that is ``not lawful.'' Mr. 
     Feith's shop has spent more than 1,800 hours responding to 
     queries from the Senate and has submitted thousands of pages 
     of documents--none of which supports such a charge. Shouldn't 
     even hyper-partisan Senators have to meet some minimum 
     standard of honesty?
       In fact, the report shows that one of the first allegations 
     of false intelligence was itself a distortion: Mr. Bush's 
     allegedly misleading claim in the 2003 State of the Union 
     address that Iraq has been seeking uranium ore from Africa. 
     The Senate report notes that Presidential accuser and former 
     CIA consultant Joe Wilson returned from his trip to Africa 
     with no information that cast serious doubt on such a claim; 
     and that, contrary to Mr. Wilson's public claims, his wife (a 
     CIA employee) was involved in helping arrange his mission.
       ``When coordinating the State of the Union, no Central 
     Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts or officials told the 
     National Security Council (NSC) to remove the `16 words' or 
     that there were concerns about the credibility of the Iraq-
     Niger Uranium reporting,'' the report says. In short, Joe 
     Wilson is a partisan fraud whose trip disproved nothing, and 
     what CIA doubts there were on Niger weren't shared with the 
     White House.
       The broader CIA failure on Iraq's WMD is troubling, though 
     it is important to keep in mind that this was a global 
     failure. Every serious intelligence service thought Saddam 
     still had WMD, and the same consensus existed across the 
     entire U.S. intelligence community. One very alarming 
     explanation, says the report, is that the CIA had ``no 
     [human] sources collecting against weapons of mass 
     destruction in Iraq after 1998.'' That's right. Not one 
     source.
       When asked why not, a CIA officer replied ``because it's 
     very hard to sustain.'' The report's rather obvious answer is 
     that spying ``should be within the norm of the CIA's 
     activities and capabilities,'' and some blame for this human 
     intelligence failure has to fall on recently departed 
     Director George Tenet and his predecessor, John Deutch.
       The Senate report blames these CIA failures not just on 
     management but also on ``a risk averse corporate culture.'' 
     This sound right, and Acting Director John McLaughlin's 
     rejection of this criticism on Friday is all the more reason 
     for Mr. Bush to name a real replacement. Richard Armitage has 
     been mentioned for the job, but the Deputy Secretary of State 
     has been consistently wrong about Iran, which will be a 
     principal threat going forward, and his and Colin Powell's 
     philosophy at the State Department has been to let the 
     bureaucrats run the place. We can think of better choices.
       One real danger now is that the intelligence community will 
     react to this Iraq criticism by taking even fewer risks, or 
     by underestimating future threats as it has so often in the 
     past. (The failure to detect that Saddam was within a year of 
     having a nuclear bomb prior to the 1991 Gulf War is a prime 
     example.) The process of developing ``national intelligence 
     estimates,'' or NIEs, will only reinforce this sense of 
     internal lowest-common-denominator, conformity. If the Senate 
     is looking for a place to recommend long-term reform, 
     dispensing with NIEs would be a good place to start.
       Above all, it's important to remember that the Senate 
     report does not claim that the

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     overall assessment of Iraq as a threat was mistaken. U.N. 
     Resolution 1441 gave Saddam ample opportunity to come clean 
     about his weapons, but he refused. The reports from David Kay 
     and his WMD task force have since shown that Saddam violated 
     1441 in multiple ways.
       Saddam retained a ``just-in-time'' capability to make WMD, 
     even if he destroyed, hid or removed the ``stockpiles'' that 
     the CIA believed he had. It's fanciful to think, especially 
     in light of the Oil for Food scandal, that U.N.-led 
     containment was a realistic option for another 12 years, or 
     that once containment ended Saddam wouldn't have expanded his 
     weapons capacity very quickly. The Senate report makes clear 
     we need a better CIA, not that we should have left in power a 
     homicidal, WMD-using dictator.

  Mr. BOND. I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). Who yields time? The time is under 
the control of the majority.
  Mr. REID. Mr. President, on behalf of the minority, are we now on the 
constitutional amendment?
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. No, we have 4 minutes 45 seconds left on the 
Republican side.
  The Senator from Montana.

                          ____________________