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Documents Show Doubts About Iraq Intelligence
Declassified documents released this weekend show that the U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency had doubts more than a year before the invasion of Iraq about claims that terrorists were being trained to use biological and chemical weapons in Iraq, the Washington Post reported (see GSN, Nov. 4). The documents, released by Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) said that the agency questioned why captured Libyan al-Qaeda operative Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi could not name any Iraqis involved in the program, what type of materials were used and where the training occurred. “[I]t is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers,” the agency said. Al-Libi retracted his statements in January 2004, and the CIA the following month withdrew intelligence reports based on his claims. Levin said that while the Bush administration before the war was linking Iraq and al-Qaeda, the agency and other intelligence services were questioning the connection, the Post reported. It is not known whether anyone at the White House saw the DIA report but Levin said it was his “presumption” that someone at the National Security Council reviewed the document. The White House declined to comment. Levin noted an Oct. 27, 2002, speech in which President George W. Bush addressed the “grave threat” posed by Iraq days before Congress voted to give the president power to go to war. “We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases,” Bush said in the speech. Levin said this claim was based largely on information provided by al-Libi. Bush also said in the speech that, “We know that Iraq and al-Qaeda have had high-level contacts that go back a decade.” Levin said that the 2002 DIA report found that “Saddam's regime is intensely secular and wary of Islamic revolutionary movements. Moreover, Baghdad is unlikely to provide assistance to a group it cannot control.” “Just imagine the public impact of that DIA conclusion if it had been disclosed at the time. It surely could have made a difference in the congressional vote authorizing the war,” Levin said in a prepared statement. Levin said he did not know if the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has the DIA document. It did not have the document when it compiled its first report on prewar Iraq’s WMD programs, according to the Post. The committee is now working to looking at the use of intelligence leading up to the March 2003 invasion. That includes comparing prewar statements by members of the Bush administration and Congress and known intelligence at the time on Iraq (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Nov. 6). On Friday, Senate Democrats called on intelligence committee Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) to do a “thorough” and “credible” investigation into the White House’s use of intelligence, Knight Ridder reported. Democrats last week forced Republicans to continue the investigation into U.S. intelligence on prewar Iraq. “A rush job that glosses over key questions is in no one's interest,” said Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.). A number of questions remain on the use of intelligence in the run up to the war, including: why all caveats and restrictions were removed from the National Intelligence Estimate prepared prior to the war; whether intelligence analysts skeptical of information provided by Iraqi exiles were bypassed by the Defense and State departments and the White House; whether Vice President Dick Cheney knew the FBI and CIA doubted intelligence that indicated Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi official in Prague; and whether Iraqi exiles delivered information directly to the Pentagon and Cheney’s office. Democrats have also asked Roberts to look into a recent report that found Cheney’s former chief of staff, I. Lewis Libby, withheld documents from the committee during its initial investigation (David Goldstein, Knight Ridder, Nov. 5). Roberts yesterday sad that the committee’s initial work found no sign that the administration used “political manipulation or pressure” to change intelligence, the New York Times reported. The committee is expected to review a draft report on the issue this week. Roberts did not offer details of the report. As part of the committee’s initial investigation last year on prewar intelligence, “we interviewed over 250 analysts and we specifically asked them: ‘Was there any political manipulation or pressure?’ Answer: ‘No,’” Roberts said. Studies by the other U.S. and British commissions came to the “same conclusion,” Roberts said (Eric Lichtblau, New York Times, Nov. 6). Meanwhile, four U.S. officials said that the Italian military intelligence service SISMI gave the CIA three reports from October 2001 to March 2002 detailing an alleged agreement for Iraq to buy uranium from Niger, Knight Ridder reported Saturday. Two of these officials said that the Italian agency gave similar reports based on forged document to the United Kingdom, France and Germany. One U.S. official said that a portion of one of the reports given to the United States was taken directly from badly forged documents. “SISMI was involved in this; there is no doubt,” said a U.S. intelligence official. Italy denies any part in passing on the forged documents (Jonathan Landay, Knight Ridder II/Kansas City Star, Nov. 5). The FBI said last week that the documents were believed to be part of a moneymaking scheme, the Associated Press reported. An investigation “confirmed the documents to be fraudulent and concluded they were more likely part of a criminal scheme for financial gain,” rather than an effort to influence U.S. policy, said FBI spokesman John Miller. Miller did not say how the FBI came to this conclusion (Associated Press/Washington Post, Nov. 5).
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