The Bush administration is making final arrangements with the International Atomic Energy Agency to conduct “joint inspections” of the looted Tuwaitha complex, the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program, U.S. State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said yesterday (see GSN, May 21).

Inspections could begin as early next week, a senior Bush administration official said (James Dao, New York Times, May 22).  “We’re ready to have them as soon as they are ready to go,” Boucher said.

The IAEA’s resumed role in Iraq would be pursuant to its responsibilities under the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Boucher said.  He added that the agency’s new role would be different than the one created for the IAEA in the U.N. Security Council resolutions that established weapons inspections regimes in Iraq (U.S. State Department release, May 21).

An IAEA spokesman said that several details still needed to be finalized on how the joint inspections would be conducted, such as the U.S. role and the scope and objective of the inspections (Dao, New York Times).

CIA Reviewing Prewar Intelligence Assessments

Meanwhile, the CIA has started to compare prewar intelligence reports on Iraq with information discovered on the ground during and after the war, the New York Times reported today (see GSN, May 15).

CIA Director George Tenet has prepared a team of retired CIA officers to review intelligence reports on Iraq that were circulated within the Bush administration prior to the war and compare them with what has been learned since then, according to the Times.  The review will include reports from several agencies, including the CIA, National Intelligence Council and Defense Intelligence Agency, officials said, adding that it is the first such internal review.  The review will not assess all Iraq-related intelligence information, but instead focus on a small number of sensitive issues, including whether the United States exaggerated the threat of Iraq’s WMD efforts, according to officials.

The decision to conduct the review was initially prompted by a request made in October 2000 from Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, a senior intelligence official said Monday.  Rumsfeld had become agitated by disagreements among intelligence analysts over the possible connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda, an intelligence official said.  Prior to the war, some Defense Department officials were irritated over what they perceived to be excessive caution by CIA analysts who found too little to make such a connection, according to several intelligence officials.

The review is not meant to be a formal investigation; rather, it is an attempt to improve the intelligence community, a senior intelligence official said. 

“This is not a report card,” on Iraqi intelligence, the official said.  “We really want to find ways to make the intelligence community work better,” the official added (James Risen, New York Times, May 22).

Byrd Slams Bush

Also in Washington, Senator Robert Byrd (D-W.Va.) yesterday lashed out at the White House’s handling of the war in Iraq, saying that the Bush administration took the United States into war “under false premises.”

“This house of cards built of deceit will fall,” Byrd said on the Senate floor.

In his remarks, Byrd criticized the Bush administration for working to merge the respective threats posed by ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein and terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden in the eyes of the public “until they virtually become one.”  He also said the United States still has not been able to find evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

“The Bush team’s extensive hype of (weapons of mass destruction) in Iraq as justification for a pre-emptive invasion war has become more than embarrassing — it has raised serious questions about prevarication and the reckless use of power,” Byrd said (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, May 22).

About Newswire  |  Contact National Journal  |  Re-Use Guidelines

HOME  |  CONTACT US  |  GET INVOLVED  |  SITE MAP

Back to top