[Congressional Record Volume 152, Number 110 (Friday, September 8, 2006)]
[Senate]
[Pages S9243-S9246]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE PHASE II REPORT
Mr. ROCKEFELLER. Mr. President, today the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence has released to the public two of the five sections of our
long-promised report on how intelligence was used by policymakers in
the lead-up to the war in Iraq. This phase II report builds on the
committee's July 2003 phase I report on the intelligence community's
very substantial mistakes regarding weapons of mass destruction in
Iraq. Fundamentally, these reports are about accountability. They are
about identifying the mistakes that led us to war and making sure those
mistakes never happen again, so far as we can do so.
Let me share some important excerpts from the report which reflect
both my own views and the views of all of my Democratic colleagues on
the committee.
The committee's investigation into prewar intelligence on Iraq has
revealed that the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq was
fundamentally misleading.
Prior to the war, administration officials repeatedly characterized
Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs in more conclusive and
threatening terms than were substantiated by the underlying
intelligence assessments. Analytical assessments of the intelligence
community that were not in line with the more strident administration
view on alleged Iraqi links to al-Qaida and the 9/11 plot were ignored
and were denigrated by senior policymakers. Most disturbingly, the
administration, in its zeal to promote public opinion in the United
States before toppling Saddam Hussein, pursued a deceptive strategy
prior to the war of using intelligence reporting that the intelligence
community warned was uncorroborated, unreliable, and, in critical
instances, fabricated.
The committee has uncovered information in its investigation which
shows that the administration ignored warnings prior to the war about
the veracity of the intelligence trumpeted publicly to support its case
that Iraq was an imminent threat to the security of the United States.
Some of the false information used to support the invasion of Iraq
was provided by the Iraqi National Congress, the INC, an organization
which our intelligence agencies had cautioned repeatedly was penetrated
by hostile intelligence services and would use its relationship with
the United States to promote its own agenda to overthrow Saddam
Hussein. The committee's investigation concluded that the INC attempted
to influence U.S. policy on Iraq by providing false information through
Iraqi defectors directed at convincing the United States that Iraq
possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to terrorists.
The committee also found the July 2002 decision by the National
Security Council directing that the renewed funding of the INC
contract--the Iraqi National Congress, the Chalabi operation--be put
under Pentagon management was ill advised given the counterintelligence
concerns of the CIA and warnings of financial mismanagement from the
State Department.
Repeated prewar statements by administration officials sought to
connect Iraq and al-Qaida in ways the underlying intelligence simply
did not support.
The administration's--this is key--the administration's repeated
allegations of the past, present, and future relationship between al-
Qaida and Iraq exploited the deep sense of insecurity among Americans
in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks, leading a large
majority of Americans to believe, contrary to the intelligence
assessments at the time, that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 terrorist
attacks.
The administration sought and succeeded in creating the impression
that al-Qaida and Iraq worked in concert and presented a single unified
threat to the United States of America. The committee's investigation
revealed something completely different.
The committee found that there was no credible information that Iraq
was complicit or had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks or any
other al-Qaida strike anywhere. The committee also found that Iraq did
not provide chemical or biological weapons training or any material or
operational support to al-Qaida prior to the war.
Furthermore, no evidence was found of any meeting between al-Qaida
and the Iraq regime before the war, other than a single meeting that
took place years earlier in 1995, in fact, in the Sudan. That meeting
was at a fairly low level, and that meeting did not lead to any
operational cooperation at all. Osama was there, but the Iraqi
representative was at a low level.
Key pieces of evidence used by the administration asserting links
between Iraq and al-Qaida were a report of a meeting in Prague between
9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and an Iraqi intelligence officer and a
claim that Iraq provided chemical and biological weapons training to
al-Qaida in the late 1990s. The committee report demonstrates that the
prewar statements of the Vice President of the United States that the
Prague meeting had been ``pretty well confirmed'' and that the 9/11
hijacker Mohamed Atta--again the Vice President's words--``in fact''
met with Iraqi intelligence services in 2001 were not substantiated by
the intelligence assessment at the time the statements were made by the
Vice President. Likewise, the statement by National Security Adviser
Rice that
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``there are a lot of tantalizing meetings'' between Iraq and ``people
who were involved in 9/11'' was clearly false based upon what was known
prior to the war.
The committee's investigation revealed no postwar information
indicating that Iraq considered using al-Qaida or any other terrorist
group to attack the United States. The committee investigation
concluded that, in fact, Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaida and
viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime and to him
personally, refusing all requests from al-Qaida to provide material or
any kind of operational support. Postwar findings indicate that Saddam
Hussein refused all al-Qaida overtures for material or operational
support and, in fact, issued a general order that Iraq should not deal
with al-Qaida. In addition, Saddam viewed al-Zarqawi, who was present
in Baghdad only from May to November of 2002, as an outlaw. Saddam
regarded Zarqawi as an outlaw and attempted unsuccessfully to locate
him and capture him. Again, he failed.
During the buildup to war, the intelligence community was placed
under pressure to support the administration's position that there was
a link between Iraq and al-Qaida. This is particularly distressing.
This pressure took the form of policymakers repetitively tasking
analysts to review, to reconsider, to revise their analytical
judgments, or simply asking the same question again and again.
Many participants involved with the preparation of prewar
intelligence felt at the time that the decision had been made to go to
war by the administration early on--in fact, many months before
Congress was asked to authorize the use of force. The committee
investigation revealed evidence that this prewar pressure to conform to
administration policy demands may have led to the co-option of the
intelligence community.
The committee's two-phased investigation has been significantly
limited, I must say, by the majority's refusal to examine issues and
documents relative to our inquiry when the issues and documents came
close to the White House.
While a quarter of the committee's INC report is devoted to a lengthy
examination of the CIA's relationship with the INC in the early and
mid-1990s, the committee majority voted down requests by the minority
to investigate the flow of intelligence information from the INC that
circumvented the intelligence community and went directly to the White
House and to Pentagon policy officials in the lead-up to the war.
Finally, the committee's inquiry has been hampered by the decision to
deal with five phase II tasks as separate inquiries, which they are
not, and complete the report on a piecemeal basis rather than a unified
whole. This has been distressing to those of us in the minority.
The chairman suspended the committee investigation into the Pentagon
policy office--we associate the name Doug Fife with that--over 2 years
ago, rejected any investigation, oversight--whatever you will--into the
Pentagon policy office despite evidence presented in the committee's
phase I report that the office attempted to shape the CIA's terrorism
analysis, and when it failed, prepared an alternative intelligence
analysis for policy officials designed to denigrate the CIA's analysis
for not embracing a link between Iraq and al-Qaida and the 9/11
terrorist attacks. It is my belief that the committee can complete its
remaining work on phase II of its Iraq inquiry in a manner that is
complete, objective, and expeditious. It should not have taken nearly 3
years to reach the point where we are now.
Mr. President, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Michigan is recognized.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that I be able to
proceed as in morning business for 25 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. We are in morning business. Without objection,
it is so ordered.
Mr. LEVIN. I understand it is for 10 minutes unless we get unanimous
consent for more time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, the Senator is recognized
for 25 minutes.
Mr. LEVIN. Mr. President, let me begin by thanking the Senator from
West Virginia for the leadership he has shown on this matter and so
many other matters--on every matter he has touched on, in fact, on
intelligence and in his other work in this body.
Today the Senate Intelligence Committee is releasing two of five
parts of phase II of the committee's inquiry into prewar intelligence.
One of the two reports released today looks at what we learned after
the attack on Iraq about the accuracy of prewar intelligence regarding
links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida. Today's report is a
devastating indictment of the Bush administration's unrelenting,
misleading, and deceptive attempts to convince the American people that
Saddam Hussein was linked with al-Qaida, the perpetrators of the 9/11
attack.
The President said Wednesday, just this week, that:
One of the hardest parts of my job is to connect Iraq to
the war on terror.
Well, that shouldn't surprise anybody. The President's decision to
ignore intelligence community assessments prior to the Iraq war and to
make repeated public statements that gave the misleading impression
that Saddam Hussein's regime was connected to the terrorists who
attacked us on 9/11 cost him any credibility he may have had on this
issue.
President Bush said Saddam and al-Qaida were allies--his words. And
that:
You can't distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam when you
talk about the war on terror.
The bipartisan report released today directly contradicts that
linkage which the President has consistently made in his effort to
build public support for his Iraq policy.
The bipartisan committee report finds that the prewar intelligence
assessments were right when the intelligence community said Saddam and
al-Qaida were independent actors who were far from being natural
partners. The report finds that prewar intelligence assessments were
right when they expressed consistent doubts that a meeting occurred
between 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta and a senior Iraqi intelligence
official in Prague prior to September 11. Our report finds that prewar
intelligence assessments were right when they said there was no
credible reporting on al-Qaida operatives being trained in Iraq. Those
were the two principal arguments which were used prior to the war to
support the alleged linkage between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein.
The accurate prewar intelligence assessments didn't stop the
administration from making many false and misleading statements trying
to link Saddam Hussein with al-Qaida. In his September 5 presentation
to the United Nations, Secretary Powell said:
Iraq today harbors a deadly terrorist network headed by Abu
Musab al-Zarqawi, an associate and collaborator of Osama bin
Laden, and his al-Qaida lieutenant.
After the war, in June of 2004, the President said that al-Zarqawi,
the terrorist leader recently killed in Iraq, was the best evidence of
a connection between Iraq and al-Qaida. And to this day--to this day--
these statements have not stopped.
Just 2 weeks ago, the President said in a press conference that
Saddam Hussein ``had relations with Zarqawi.'' Our Intelligence
Committee report demonstrates that statement made 2 weeks ago by the
President was false. The committee report discloses, for the first
time, the CIA's October 2005 assessment that Saddam's regime:
Did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye
towards Zarqawi and his associates.
The President's statement made just 2 weeks ago is flatout false.
The drumbeat of misleading administration statements alleging
Saddam's links to al-Qaida was unrelenting in the lead-up to the Iraq
war which began in March of 2003.
On September 25, 2002, the President said:
Al-Qaida hides. Saddam doesn't, but the danger is that they
work in concert. The danger is that al-Qaida becomes an
extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity
to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world.
And then he said:
You can't distinguish between al-Qaida and Saddam when you
talk about the war on terror.
The next day, in September of 2002, Secretary Rumsfeld said:
We have what we consider to be credible evidence that al-
Qaida's leaders have sought contacts in Iraq who would help
them acquire weapons of mass destruction capabilities.
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On October 14, 2002, the President said:
This is a man--Saddam is a man that we know has had
connections with al-Qaida. This is a man who, in my judgment,
would like to use al-Qaida as a forward army.
On January 30, 2003, Vice President Cheney said:
Saddam's regime aids and protects terrorists, including
members of al-Qaida. He could decide secretly to provide
weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against us.
And as the President said on Tuesday it would just take one
vial, one canister, one crate to bring a day of horror to our
Nation unlike any we have ever known.
On February 6, 2003, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz said:
And, worst of all, his connections with terrorists which go
back decades and which started some 10 years ago with al-
Qaida are growing every day.
What the administration and the President and other administration
officials did not say was what the intelligence community was saying
about this crucial issue because it would have undermined their march
to war and it would have refuted their main argument for attacking
Iraq: that Iraq was linked to the terrorists who attacked us on 9/11.
What was the CIA saying? What was the intelligence community saying
before the war? In June of 2002, the CIA said that:
Our assessment of al-Qaida's ties to Iraq rests on a body
of fragmented, conflicting reporting from sources of varying
reliability.
That same report of the CIA said:
The ties between Saddam and bin Laden appear much like
those between rival intelligence services.
And the Defense Intelligence Agency stated in a July 2002 assessment,
being declassified for this first time in this report:
Compelling evidence demonstrating direct cooperation
between the government of Iraq and al-Qaida has not been
established.
So these two then-classified assessments preceded the President's
statements that ``You can't distinguish between Iraq and al-Qaida'' and
that, in his view, Saddam would love to use al-Qaida as a ``forward
army.''
Then the CIA assessed in January 2003, still before the war, that
``Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden are far from being natural
partners'' and that Saddam has ``viewed Islamic extremists operating
inside Iraq as a threat.''
The CIA assessed in January of 2003 that Saddam viewed al-Qaida with
``deep suspicion'' and stated that:
The relationship between Saddam and bin Laden appears to
more closely resemble that of two independent actors trying
to exploit each other.
That 2003 classified report was issued 1 day before the Vice
President stated to the American public that Saddam's regime:
Aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-
Qaida.
The misleading statements by administration officials didn't stop
there. The Intelligence Committee report recounts the story of the
alleged meeting between Mohamed Atta and the Iraqi intelligence officer
in Prague. In the fall of 2001, the Czech intelligence service provided
the CIA with reporting based on a single source who stated that Atta
met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague in April of 2001.
On December 9, 2001, Vice President Cheney was asked about the report
on ``Meet the Press.'' The Vice President said:
It has been pretty well confirmed that he--
The 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta--
did go to Prague and he did meet with a senior official with
the Iraqi intelligence service in Czechoslovakia last April,
several months before the attack.
On March 24, 2002, the Vice President told ``Meet the Press'':
We discovered, and it has since been public, the allegation
that one of the lead hijackers, Mohammed Atta, had, in fact,
met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague.
But the Intelligence Committee report released today cites a June
2002 CIA paper that said:
Reporting is contradictory on hijacker Mohammed Atta's
alleged trip to Prague and meeting with an Iraqi intelligence
officer and we have not verified his travels.
The Intelligence Committee report released today declassifies, for
the first time, a July 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency paper that
said:
Mohammed Atta reportedly was identified by an asset, not an
officer, of a Czech service, only after Atta's picture was
widely circulated in the media after the attacks,
approximately five months after the alleged meeting occurred.
And that:
There is no photographic, immigration, or other documentary
evidence indicating that Atta was in the Czech Republic
during the time frame of the meeting.
Two months later, in September 2002, the CIA published its assessment
that ``evidence casts doubt'' on the possibility that the meeting had
occurred and that:
The CIA and FBI have reviewed the reporting available so
far and they are unable to confirm that Atta met al-Ani in
Prague.
None of those assessments stopped the Vice President from continuing
to suggest that the report of the meeting was evidence that Saddam's
regime was linked to the 9/11 attack.
On September 8, 2002, in a ``Meet the Press'' interview, the Vice
President said that the CIA considered the report of the meeting
credible, although again, that same month, the CIA said there was
evidence that cast doubt on it having occurred.
In January 2003, the CIA published an assessment stating that:
A CIA and FBI review of intelligence and open-source
reporting leads us to question the information provided by
the Czech service source who claimed that Atta met al-Ani.
The January 2003 paper stated that the CIA was ``increasingly
skeptical''--increasingly skeptical--``that Atta traveled to Prague in
2001 or met with the IIS officer, al-Ani,'' and that ``the most
reliable reporting to date casts doubt on this possibility.''
But the Vice President was undeterred by the CIA's skepticism. On
September 14, 2003, 8 months after the CIA said that the most reliable
reporting cast doubt on the possibility of a meeting between Atta and
the Iraqi intelligence officer, Vice President Cheney was still citing
as this having possibly occurred.
On January 14, 2004, a full year after the CIA expressed serious
doubts about the meeting and the fact that not a shred of evidence had
been found to support the claim of a meeting, the Vice President told
the Rocky Mountain News that the Atta meeting was ``the one that
possibly tied the two together to 9/11.''
Six months later, on June 17, 2004, the Vice President was asked
whether Iraq was involved in 9/11. The Vice President said, ``We don't
know. . . . We had one report, this was the famous report on the Czech
intelligence service, and we've never been able to confirm it or knock
it down. We just don't know.''
The Vice President may not have ``known,'' but the intelligence
community sure as heck did not believe, and did not believe for a long
time before the Vice President's statement, that the meeting took
place.
The intelligence assessments contained in the Intelligence
Committee's unclassified report are an indictment of the
administration's unrelenting and misleading attempts to link Saddam
Hussein to 9/11. But portions of the report which the intelligence
community leaders have determined to keep from public view provide some
of the most damaging evidence of this administration's falsehoods and
distortions.
Among what remains classified, and therefore covered up, includes
deeply disturbing information. Much of the information redacted from
the public report does not jeopardize any intelligence source or method
but serves effectively to cover up certain highly offensive activities.
Even the partially released picture is plenty bleak, about the
administration's use of falsehoods and distortions to build public
support for the war. But the public is entitled to the full picture.
Unless this report is further declassified, they won't get it. While
the battle is waged to declassify those covered-up portions of the
report--unless, of course, those portions truly disclose intelligence
sources or methods, every Senator should read the classified version of
this report. It is available to every Senator, and I urge every Senator
to read the classified version of this report and reach his own
conclusion about what I and Senator Rockefeller have said about the
portions of this report that remain classified and unavailable to the
public.
In addition to trying to create the impression that Iraq was
connected to the 9/11 attackers, the administration also claimed that
Iraq had provided al-
[[Page S9246]]
Qaida with training in poisons and gases. For instance, in a speech on
October 2002, the President said, ``We've learned that Iraq has trained
al-Qaida members in bomb making and poisons and deadly gases.''
In February, 2003, the President said, ``Iraq has also provided al-
Qaida with chemical and biological weapons training.''
In March of 2003, National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said
there was a ``very strong link to training al-Qaida in chemical and
biological weapons techniques, we know from a detainee that--the head
of training for al-Qaida, that they sought help in developing chemical
and biological weapons because they weren't doing very well on their
own. They sought it in Iraq. They received the help.''
Those statements were based on representations of Ibn al Shaykh al-
Libi, a detained senior al-Qaida operative. But what the administration
hid was the fact that the Defense Intelligence Agency did not believe
al-Libi's statement. In February 2002, a year before the President
claimed that Iraq ``provided al-Qaida with chemical and biological
weapons training,'' the DIA assessed that al-Libi ``is more likely . .
. intentionally misleading the debriefers.''
Nor did the administration disclose a second DIA assessment in
February of 2002 that said, ``Iraq is unlikely to have provided bin
Ladin any useful CB knowledge or assistance,'' or DIA's April 2000
assessment that there was no credible reporting on al-Qaida training
``anywhere'' in Iraq.
The administration's statements also flew in the face of the CIA's
January 2003 assessment that al-Libi was not in a position to know
whether training had taken place.
So here is what we have. The President still says that Saddam had a
relationship with Zarqawi. The Senate Intelligence Committee found that
the intelligence community, in 2005, concluded that ``the regime did
not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye towards
Zarqawi.''
The President said that Saddam and al Qaida were ``allies.'' The
intelligence community found that intelligence shows that Saddam
Hussein ``viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime,'' and,
indeed, as postwar intelligence shows, he, Saddam, ``refused all
requests from al-Qaida to provide material or operational support.''
The Vice President called the claim that lead hijacker Mohammed Atta
met with the Iraqi intelligence officer ``credible'' and ``pretty much
confirmed,'' but the Intelligence Committee report finds that the
intelligence shows ``no such meeting occurred.''
The President said that Iraq provided training in poisons and gases
to al-Qaida, but the Intelligence Committee finds that postwar
intelligence supports prewar assessments that there was no credible
reporting on al-Qaida training ``anywhere'' in Iraq and that the
terrorist who made the claim of training was ``likely intentionally
misleading his debriefers'' when he said that Iraq had provided poisons
and gases training.
But the administration's efforts to create the false impression that
Iraq and al-Qaida were linked didn't stop with just statements. One of
the most significant disclosures of the Intelligence Committee report
is the account of the administration's successful efforts to obtain the
support of CIA Director George Tenet to help them make that false case.
The events were of major significance. They go to the heart of the
administration's case for war on the eve of a congressional vote on
whether to authorize that war. Here is what happened.
On October 7, 2002, in a speech in Cincinnati, the President
represented that linkage existed between Saddam and terrorist groups.
He said that ``Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a
biological or chemical weapon to a terrorist group or an individual
terrorist.''
But on that very day, October 7, 2002, in a letter to Intelligence
Committee Chairman Bob Graham, the CIA declassified at the request of
the committee the CIA assessment that it would be an ``extreme step''
for Saddam Hussein to assist Islamic terrorists in conducting a
weapons-of-mass-destruction attack against the United States and that
the likelihood of Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction if
he did not feel threatened by an attack was ``low.''
When made public, the CIA assessment would have undercut the
President's case. Something had to be done. So on October 8, 2002, the
Director of Central Intelligence, George Tenet, issued a statement that
``there is no inconsistency between our view of Saddam's growing threat
and the view expressed by the President in his speech.''
The Tenet statement was aimed at damage control and it undercut the
CIA's own crucial assessment at a critical moment. The New York Times
quoted Tenet prominently in a major story on October 9.
We called Tenet before the Intelligence Committee a month and a half
ago, on July 26, 2006. In his testimony, quoted in the Intelligence
Committee's report, Mr. Tenet admitted that perhaps there was an
inconsistency between the President's statement and the CIA's
assessment. Mr. Tenet said he issued his statement denying the
inconsistency after policymakers expressed concern about the CIA's
assessment, as expressed in the declassified October 7 letter. Again,
that letter saying that it would be an extreme step for Saddam to
assist Islamic terrorists in conducting a weapons-of-mass destruction
attack.
I ask for an additional 3 minutes, Mr. President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. LEVIN. Tenet admitted to the intelligence subcommittee that the
policymakers wanted him to ``say something about not being inconsistent
with what the President had said.'' Tenet complied.
Tenet acknowledged to the committee, in his July 26, 2006, testimony,
that issuing the statement was ``the wrong thing to do.''
It was much more than that. It was a shocking abdication of a CIA
Director's duty not to act as a shill for any administration or its
policies. Director Tenet issued that statement at the behest of the
administration on the eve of the Congress's debate on the resolution
authorizing the use of force in Iraq. The use of the Director of
Central Intelligence by the administration to contradict his own
agency's assessment in order to support a policy goal of the
administration is reprehensible, and it seriously damaged the
credibility of the CIA.
Mr. President, I thank the Chair for its indulgence and I yield the
floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Who seeks recognition?
____________________