As the United States and United Kingdom prepared to go to war with Iraq earlier this year, the two countries’ intelligence services differed on several claims offered by each country as justifications for war, the Washington Post reported today (see GSN, Sept. 29).

According to documents published by British investigators, in September 2002 British intelligence services said there was inconclusive evidence that Iraq’s attempts to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes were an indication of efforts to relaunch a nuclear weapons program, according to the Post.  The CIA, however, said in an October National Intelligence Estimate that the tube purchases did reflect intent to relaunch a nuclear weapons program.

Also in September 2002, as the United Kingdom was preparing a dossier on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, U.S. intelligence officials questioned intelligence used to claim that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium in Africa and that Iraq could conduct biological and chemical weapons attacks within 45 minutes, the Post reported.

The CIA never made a similar 45-minute claim in its own assessments of Iraq’s WMD capabilities because it had “no separate reporting,” a senior Bush administration official said, adding that the agency found the claim “interesting and plausible.”

The British documents, which have come out of three British government inquiries into prewar intelligence on Iraq, also indicate that Washington and London agreed that there was no evidence prior to the war that former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein would provide biological and chemical weapons to terrorists, the Post reported.  The two countries also agreed, according to documents, that Hussein would only attempt such a transfer if his regime was about to collapse (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, Sept. 30).

House Intelligence Panel Democrat Challenges “New Information” Claim

Meanwhile, Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, yesterday challenged recent claims made by national security adviser Condoleezza Rice that the United States had new information to support claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

“We don’t see the support for that,” Harman said.

“As we moved to war, did the claims the policy-makers made, were those claims supported by the intelligence?” Harman said.  “My conclusion is no,” she said.

In a letter sent last week to CIA Director George Tenet, Harman and committee Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.) outlined their assessment of the intelligence used to prepare the October 2002 NIE on Iraq, according to the Post.  In their letter, Harman and Goss charged that most of the intelligence used was outdated, according to the Post. 

The letter to Tenet was intended to draw a response as to why the NIE made assertions that were apparently not supported by available evidence, Harman said.

“We want an explanation from him,” she said (Dana Priest, Washington Post, Sept. 30).

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