Formally Off Iraqi WMD Hunt, Kay Criticizes U.S. Intelligence

CIA Director George Tenet formally announced Friday the resignation of chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq David Kay, who this weekend harshly criticized the U.S. intelligence community’s failure to develop an accurate assessment of the Iraq’s prewar WMD capabilities (see GSN, Jan. 23).

In a press statement Friday, Tenet said that former U.N. weapons inspector Charles Duelfer would take over the hunt for the WMD programs of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (see GSN, Jan. 22).

“David is a model private citizen who willingly lent his unique expertise to his government in a time of need,” Tenet said. “At a time when our WMD hunt efforts were just beginning, David provided a critical strategic framework that enabled the ISG [Iraq Survey Group] to focus the hunt for information on Saddam’s WMD programs,” Tenet said (CIA release, Jan. 23).

In an interview late Saturday with the New York Times, though, Kay said that it was unlikely that coalition forces would find stockpiles of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, and criticized the U.S. intelligence capability for failing to determine that such weapons largely did not exist.

“I’m personally convinced that there were not large stockpiles of newly produced weapons of mass destruction,” Kay said. “We don’t find the people, the documents or the physical plants that you would expect to find if the production was going on,” he said.

“I think they gradually reduced stockpiles throughout the 1990’s. Somewhere in the mid-1990’s, the large chemical overhang of existing stockpiles was eliminated,” Kay said.

Intelligence analysts came to him, Kay said, “almost in tears, saying they felt so badly that we weren’t finding what they had thought we were going to find — I have had analysts apologizing for reaching the conclusions that they did,” Kay said.

Kay said that Iraq had abandoned its WMD programs and had disposed of its stockpiles in the 1990s because of concerns over the U.N. weapons inspection regime. He also said that Iraq attempted to revive its nuclear weapons program between 2000 and 2001, but that there was no evidence that Iraq obtained uranium from Niger, as the United States once believed. 

Furthermore, countering Vice President Dick Cheney’s remarks Thursday, Kay said there was no evidence that recovered mobile trailers were intended for use as mobile biological laboratories (see GSN, Aug. 11, 2003). Rather, the trailers were designed to produce hydrogen for weather balloons or for rocket fuel, Kay said, describing that assessment as a consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community.

In addition, Kay said, intelligence reports that Iraq was poised to use chemical weapons against coalition forces during Operation Iraqi Freedom were based on faulty reports and Iraqi disinformation. He also said that prewar U.S. intelligence reports that elite Special Republican Guard units had chemical weapons were also wrong (see GSN, Dec. 8, 2003).

Iraq had continued to work to weaponize ricin shortly before the U.S. invasion, but “large-scale production” had not begun, Kay said (see GSN, June 30, 2003).

He also said that following 1998, Iraq’s WMD programs were beset by corruption, aided by Hussein’s insistence on personally approving major research projects (see GSN, Jan. 7).

“The whole thing shifted from directed programs to a corrupted process,” Kay said. “The regime was no longer in control; it was like a death spiral. Saddam was self-directing projects that were not vetted by anyone else. The scientists were able to fake programs,” he said.

According to Kay, the U.S. intelligence community was unable to develop an accurate assessment of Iraq’s WMD capabilities because of a lack of human intelligence sources. He said that the CIA had relied too heavily on information provided by U.N. weapons inspectors, and that the quality of information plummeted once inspectors left Iraq in 1998.

“UNSCOM [the U.N. Special Commission on Iraq] was like crack cocaine for the CIA,” Kay said. “They could see something from a satellite or other technical intelligence, and then direct the inspectors to go look at it,” he said. Once the U.N. inspectors departed, however, analysts had few sources of hard information from inside Iraq.

Kay also said that CIA failed to make clear to lawmakers that its assessments were based on limited information.

“I think that the system should have a way for an analyst to say, ‘I don’t have enough information to make a judgment,’” Kay said. “There is really not a way to do that under the current system,” he added.

While some analysts included such warnings in their reports, they “tended to drop off as the reports would go up the food chain.”

In addition, a place for “contrarian views” is needed in the U.S. intelligence system, Kay said (see GSN, Oct. 20, 2003).

“Alarm bells should have gone off when everyone believes the same thing,” he said. “No one stood up and said, ‘Let's examine the footings for these conclusions.’ I think you ought to have a place for contrarian views in the system,” Kay said.

A U.S. intelligence official said yesterday that, while some prewar assessments may have been wrong, “it is premature to say that the intelligence community’s judgments were completely wrong or largely wrong — there are still a lot of answers we need.”

The official also said, though, that the CIA had begun an internal review into its analysis system (James Risen, New York Times, Jan. 26).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell said Saturday that it was still an “open question” as to whether prewar Iraq actually possessed weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, Jan. 9).

“What is the open question is how many stocks they had, if any, and if they had any, where did they go? And if they didn’t have any, then why wasn’t that known beforehand?” Powell said (Peter Slevin, Washington Post, Jan. 25).

Powell said yesterday, though, that Iraq had had the “intent” to possess weapons of mass destruction, justifying the U.S. invasion.

“Iraq had the intent to have weapons of mass destruction and they had previously used weapons of mass destruction. They had programs to develop such weapons,” he said. “And what we were trying to find out was what inventory they actually had, and we are still examining that question,” Powell added (CNN.com, Jan. 26).

In addition, British Prime Minister Tony Blair has continued to defend prewar intelligence reports on Iraqi WMD efforts, according to CNN.

“I can only tell you I believed the intelligence we had at the time. It is absurd to say in respect of any intelligence that it is infallible, but if you ask me what I believe, I believe the intelligence was correct, and I think in the end we will have an explanation,” Blair said in an interview with the British newspaper The Observer. “I have absolutely no doubt at all in my mind that the intelligence was genuine,” he said (CNN.com, Jan. 25).

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said today, though, that he was “disappointed” that weapons of mass destruction had not yet been found in Iraq (Agence France-Presse, Jan. 26).

Meanwhile, Syria yesterday denied claims made by Kay over the weekend that Iraqi weapons of mass destruction had been transferred there.

In an interview with the London Sunday Telegraph, Kay said that the issue of whether some components of Iraq’s WMD programs were transferred to Syria was still open to debate.

“We know from some of the interrogations of former Iraqi officials that a lot of material went to Syria before the war, including some components of Saddam’s WMD program. Precisely what went to Syria, and what has happened to it, is a major issue that needs to be resolved,” Kay said.

In response, Syrian Information Minister Ahmad al-Hassan said that such allegations were an attempt to “mislead” public opinion.

“So long as there were no weapons of mass destruction (found) in Iraq itself how can they be in Syria?” al-Hassan said. “They are seeking to cover their failure,” he added (Reuters, Jan. 25).

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