Iraq:  Powell Praises Blix; U.S. Taps Former Inspector to Coordinate WMD Search

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday praised chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix, who recently accused U.S. officials of conducting a smear campaign against him (see GSN, June 11). 

“There is no smear campaign I am aware of,” Powell said.  “I have high regard for Dr. Blix.  I worked very closely with Dr. Blix.  I noted the president had confidence in him as well,” he said (Barry Schweid, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 11).

CIA Appoints Former U.N. Inspector to Advise WMD Hunt

Meanwhile, CIA Director George Tenet yesterday announced the appointment of former U.N. chief nuclear inspector David Kay to advise on the continuing search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

Kay, who has been named special adviser for strategy regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs, will be in charge of refining the overall U.S. search for banned weapons, according to a CIA press release.  The Defense Department’s Iraq Survey Group, which will soon take over the search, will provide direct support to Kay, the CIA said.

“David Kay’s experience and background make him the ideal person for this new role,” Tenet said in a statement.  “His understanding of the history of the Iraqi programs and knowledge of past Iraqi efforts to hide WMD will be of inestimable help in determining the current status of Saddam Hussein’s illicit weapons,” he added (CIA release, June 11).

Some senior officials appear to be concerned that Kay’s appointment will be seen as turf war between the CIA and the Pentagon, according to the New York Times.  The precise working relationship between Kay and U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, who heads the Iraq Survey Group, is still being determined, officials said.

The decision to appoint Kay was done to help coordinate the work in Iraq of all U.S. agencies with expertise on weapons of mass destruction, a senior Bush administration official said.  “This is about bringing all of the resources of the United States to bear on a challenging and important task,” the official said (James Risen, New York Times, June 12).

U.S. Intelligence

The chairmen of the House and Senate intelligence committees yesterday announced that reviews of prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq would be conducted in closed sessions.

Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) yesterday indicated concerns that a public investigation into Iraq-related intelligence could be used for partisan purposes.

“I will not allow the committee to be politicized or to be used as an unwitting tool for any political strategist,” Roberts said.

Democrats, however, criticized the decision to conduct the review in private.

“Even while the search (for the weapons) continues, the American people need and want to know whether our government was accurate and forthcoming in its prewar assessments,” Senator John Rockefeller (D-W.Va.) said.

Roberts, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner (R-Va.) and House Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Porter Goss (R-Fla.), all denied that the Bush administration had pressured them to conduct a closed review of prewar intelligence documents provided by the CIA. 

Some observers have called on the committees to investigate other documents besides those provided by the CIA, and to hear testimony from former intelligence analysts, officials and experts who have criticized the White House’s handling of Iraq-related information, according to the Los Angeles Times.  Democrats have also called for the review to focus on work conducted by a team of Pentagon-assembled analysts that investigated Iraq-related intelligence.  While the Pentagon team determined that there was a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, its reports have never been shared with congressional oversight panels (Brownstein/Miller, Los Angeles Times, June 12).

CIA Disputed Niger Claim

A claim that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger, which U.S. President George W. Bush cited in his State of the Union address last year, was disputed by a CIA-directed mission to Niger in early 2002, according to senior Bush administration officials and a former U.S. official (see GSN, March 28).

The CIA, however, did not share the results of its investigation into the Iraq-Niger link with the White House or other agencies, the officials said. 

In February 2002, the CIA sent a retired U.S. ambassador to Niger to the country to investigate the alleged attempted purchase, according to the officials.  While there, the CIA’s envoy spoke with the president of Niger and other officials mentioned as being involved in the attempted purchase, some of whose signatures were allegedly on related documents, according to the Washington Post. 

Upon his return, the envoy told the CIA that the uranium purchase story was false, sources said.  The envoy believed that documents purported to be related to the purchase were forged because the “dates were wrong and the names were wrong,” the former U.S. official said.

The CIA, however, did not include details of the envoy’s report nor his identity, which would have added credibility, in agency intelligence reports that were shared with other agencies, the Post reported.  Instead, the CIA said that Nigerien officials had denied that the attempted purchase had occurred, a senior Bush administration official said.

The CIA’s action, which has been previously unreported, was the result of “extremely sloppy” handling of a piece of evidence in the U.S. case against Iraq, a senior intelligence official said.

The official defended, however, the overall U.S. case against Iraq.  “It is only one fact and not the reason we went to war.  There was a lot more,” the official said.

A senior CIA analyst, however, said the case “is indicative of larger problems” in the handling of intelligence related to Iraq’s suspected WMD programs and links to terrorism. 

“Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was (consistent) was not seriously scrutinized,” the analyst said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 12).

INC Supplied Sources

Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, said yesterday that his group helped three Iraqi defectors provide the CIA with information on Iraqi WMD programs.

“We provided exactly three people to the U.S. who we thought could provide information about the weapons programs,” Chalabi said.

In 2001, the INC set up a meeting in Bangkok between U.S. intelligence officials and Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, an Iraqi engineer, according to the Washington Times.  Al-Haideri provided the INC with information on Iraqi weapons-storage facilities, Chalabi said. 

The second defector the INC worked with was Mohammed Harith, who met with U.S. intelligence officials in Jordan and provided information on Iraqi mobile biological facilities, the Times reported.  U.S. intelligence officials rejected the third defector, an Iraqi physicist who was involved in isotope separation efforts.

“They talked to him briefly and they didn’t want to talk to him any more and told us about that,” Chalabi said.  “That is it.  That is the extent of our intelligence provided by the INC to the United States’ government on weapons of mass destruction,” he said (Bill Gertz, Washington Times, June 12).

British Intelligence

British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw will appear before the British Parliament’s House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee, which is conducting an inquiry as to whether British Iraq-related intelligence was exaggerated to build support for war, British Prime Minister Tony Blair said yesterday (see GSN, June 10).

In “accordance with convention,” however, Blair said that neither he nor any of his staff would appear before the committee.  Blair also said there was not “a shred of truth” in the allegations that the government had exaggerated its intelligence information (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 11).

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International Response:  Officials Discussing Ways to Stop WMD Shipments

Eleven nations, including the United States, are scheduled to meet in Madrid today to discuss modifying international law to make it easier for authorities to board and seize cargo vessels suspected of transporting WMD materials (see GSN, June 2).

The meeting is the first, informal gathering of “a small group of like-minded countries” to discuss the “Proliferation Security Initiative” that U.S. President George W. Bush proposed late last month, a senior U.S. State Department official said yesterday.  The United States hopes the meeting will help improve intelligence sharing between countries to better block shipments of weapons and nuclear material, the official said.

The new measures are being pursued because countries that don’t belong to nonproliferation agreements, such as the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, do not violate any laws if they transfer weapons technology, said Jon Wolfsthal of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

For example, Spanish soldiers stopped a North Korean ship in December that was transporting ballistic missiles to Yemen, but the shipment was allowed to proceed after authorities determined that the sale was not illegal.

One purpose of today’s meeting is to discuss whether new international law is needed to grant the authority to block transfers of weapons that are not banned under international law, diplomats said.  Without legal authority, the seizure of a ship or airplane could be seen as an act of war, according to the Los Angeles Times.

“We want to talk about our mutual understanding of the rules of the road, what the permissible bases for interdiction are,” the State Department official said.

Under international maritime law, countries can board a suspect ship with the permission of the country under whose flag the ship is sailing, or board ships that are flying no flag, the official said.

“One thing we’re going to explore is whether those authorities need to be supplemented,” the official said (Efron/Demick, Los Angeles Times, June 12).

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Iraq:  Blix Attacks U.S. Critics

U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix yesterday openly criticized members of the Bush administration, saying some within the U.S. Defense Department had orchestrated a smear campaign against him (see GSN, June 10).

“I have my detractors in Washington.  There are bastards who spread things around, of course, who planted nasty things in the media.  Not that I cared very much,” Blix said in an interview with the London Guardian.  “It was like a mosquito bite in the evening that is there in the morning, an irritant,” he added.

While describing his overall relationship with the United States as “good,” Blix said the Bush administration “leaned” on inspectors to prepare reports that would gain the United States support within the U.N. Security Council for attacking Iraq.  For example, the United States was angered that inspectors did not “make more” of discovered cluster bombs in Iraq, he said.

Blix said he was convinced that there were officials within the Bush administration that “say they don’t care if the U.N. sinks under the East River, and other crude things.”  Instead of seeing the United Nations as a collective body, the United States now sees it as an “alien power, even if it does hold considerable influence within it.  Such (negative) feelings don’t exist in Europe where people say that the U.N. is a lot of talk at dinners and fluffy stuff,” Blix said (Helena Smith, London Guardian, June 11).

Blix yesterday also defended U.N. inspectors’ efforts prior to the war in Iraq.  “I would say that I think the criticism that was directed to us was misdirected,” he said in an interview with the Associated Press.

With no weapons of mass destruction found so far in Iraq, Blix said an important question now is why Iraq chose not to cooperate with the United Nations for so long.

“I have speculations, one could be pride,” Blix said.  “Saddam Hussein regarded himself as an emperor of Mesopotamia, some said, and he regarded inspectors as impostors,” he said.

Blix nevertheless praised Hussein’s ouster.

“He was an ancient-type ruler who got control of a country with an oil income and could use 21st century weapons,” Blix said.  “That was a very dangerous combination, and I think we all feel a great relief that he is put out of action,” he said (Edith Lederer, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 10).

Opposition Leader Defends Intelligence

Meanwhile, Iraqi opposition leader Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, yesterday defended information he provided to Washington on Iraq’s WMD programs, denying that he had exaggerated the threat (see GSN, May 27).

“We gave very accurate information, and we produced people who we handed over to the United States who told them very significant things,” Chalabi said.  “The only tangible things they have found are the mobile labs, which our defectors talked about,” he said.

U.S. authorities will find Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction once they find Hussein, who Chalabi claims is still alive, he said. “The weapons and Saddam are one and the same thing,” he said (Colum Lynch, Washington Post, June 11).

DIA Defends Report

U.S. Navy Adm. Lowell Jacoby, director of the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, last week denied that a 2002 DIA report indicated that the agency did not believe Iraq possessed a chemical weapons program prior to the war (see GSN, June 6).

The classified report, which was leaked to the media June 6, said there is “no reliable information” as to whether Iraq at the time was producing or stockpiling chemical weapons.  All the report meant, however, was that the DIA could not identify specific facilities that were involved in producing chemical weapons, Jacoby said.

“It is not, in any way, intended to portray the fact that we had doubts that such a program existed … was active, or … was part of the Iraqi WMD infrastructure,” Jacoby said.  “We did not have doubts about the existence of the program,” he said (U.S. State Department release, June 9).

United Nations Appoints New UNMOVIC Acting Head

The United Nations yesterday appointed Demetrius Perricos as acting executive chairman of the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission. 

Perricos, currently serving as Blix’s deputy and director of planning and operations, will assume his position July 1.  Diplomats believe U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan will not appoint a new executive director to UNMOVIC until the United States agrees to allow inspectors to return to Iraq, Reuters reported (Reuters/Business Recorder, June 11).

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International Response:  Australia Group Adds New Pathogens to Control List

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — A group of 33 industrial nations agreed last week to restrict the export of a number of human pathogens that could be used to create biological weapons, the Australian Foreign Ministry announced Friday (see GSN, Oct. 28, 2002).

The Australia Group — an informal network of countries that coordinate export controls on dual-use items that could be used to create biological or chemical weapons — agreed at its annual meeting in Paris to add 14 pathogens to the group’s biological control list, the ministry said in a press release.  The pathogens include 12 types of viruses, such as encephalitis and hemorrhagic fever, as well as two types of bacteria, according to the U.S. State Department.  The pathogens were selected because they are sufficiently dangerous to humans to pose the risk of being used as biological weapons, a State Department official told Global Security Newswire yesterday.

At last week’s meeting, the group also agreed to several additional nonproliferation measures.  Group members endorsed a cooperative program to engage countries in the Asian-Pacific region on biological and chemical export-control issues, according to the Australian Foreign Ministry.  The plan could also include group members helping Asian-Pacific countries to develop or strengthen national biological and chemical export control laws, the State Department official said.

The official denied that the Asian-Pacific region posed a greater risk for biological and chemical proliferation, saying that Australia’s position as chair of the group was a factor in the region being chosen as the target of the first action plan.  The United States hopes similar plans for other regions will also be developed, the official said.

Australia Group members agreed to new procedures to improve transparency and information sharing, the ministry said in its release.  These new procedures include mandatory information-sharing among members on the implementation of group-related export controls, the State Department official said.  In addition, group members approved a new guide to help national compliance and enforcement officers to detect and prevent illegal transfers of controlled items.

“I welcome the continued high priority placed by members of the Australia Group on preventing the spread of CBW in the fight against terrorism and their commitment to strengthening export-control measures,” Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said in a statement.

The United States believes, however, that more work remains to be done through the group to address chemical weapon-related issues, according to the State Department official.  The group was unable to reach a consensus at this year’s meeting on adding additional chemical precursors to the group’s control list, the official said.

Meanwhile, the U.S. Commerce Department’s Bureau of Industry and Security has modified the U.S. Export Administration Regulations to incorporate decisions made by the Australia Group at its annual meeting last year, according to a final rule published yesterday in the Federal Register (see GSN, June 21, 2002).

Under the final rule, which took effect yesterday, eight new toxins have been added to the U.S. Commerce Control List.  The bureau has also lowered volume limits for controlled fermenters from 100 liters to 20 liters.

In addition, the bureau has also modified licensing policy provisions in the Export Administration Regulations to make them more consistent with guidelines the Australia Group adopted last year.  Now, the bureau will consider several new factors before an export license will be granted, such as the reliability of the parties involved in the transfer, relevant information about proliferation or terrorism activities, the risk of diversion of the transferred items and the applicability of other export control or nonproliferation agreements.

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German Response:  Berlin Withdraws WMD Team From Kuwait

Germany is pulling a specialized WMD detection team out of Kuwait, German Defense Minister Peter Struck said today (see GSN, Nov. 7, 2002).

The German unit includes 60 personnel and six modified armored vehicles.

“This was a combined joint task force — the United States, the Czech Republic and Germany posted defense forces against nuclear, biological and chemical weapons to Kuwait,” Struck said.  “Now that the Americans and Czechs have left, there is no longer a combined joint task force,” he added (Associated Press, June 11).

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Iraq:  Bush Says WMD “Program” Will be Found, Refines Previous Claims

U.S. President George W. Bush yesterday said coalition forces would find evidence that Iraq had WMD programs prior to the war, moving away from earlier claims that Iraq possessed actual weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, June 9).

“Iraq had a weapons program,” Bush said.  “Intelligence throughout the decade showed they had a weapons program.  I am absolutely convinced, with time, we’ll find out that they did have a weapons program,” he said.

Critics, however, have said the word “program” is too imprecise, according to Newsday.

“It can mean anything,” said Mel Goodman, a retired CIA analyst.  “It can mean documents, anything; no matter how benign, they will find some various purpose for it,” he said (Knut Royce, Newsday, June 10).

Prior to the war in Iraq, Bush often made concrete claims that Iraq possessed actual biological and chemical weapons, according to the Los Angeles Times.  For example, in an Oct. 7 speech, Bush said Iraq “possesses and produces chemical and biological weapons” (see GSN, Oct. 8, 2002).

“If we know Saddam Hussein has dangerous weapons today ð— and we do —does it make any sense for the world to wait to confront him as he grows even stronger and develops even more dangerous weapons?”  Bush said then.

Shortly before the war, Bush again made claims that Iraq possessed actual weapons, the Times reported.  On March 17, Bush said “intelligence gathered by this and other governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq regime continues to possess and conceal some of the most lethal weapons ever devised” (see GSN, March 18).

Bush yesterday denied that a failure to find actual weapons of mass destruction in Iraq would damage U.S. credibility.

“The credibility of this country is based upon our strong desire to make the world more peaceful, and the world is now more peaceful after our decision” to remove Hussein, Bush said.

The lack of concrete proof of the death of Hussein is making it more difficult to obtain evidence that could aid the WMD search, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said yesterday.

“To the extent it’s not proven that he’s not alive, there are a lot of people who might fear that he could come back,” Rumsfeld said, referring to Hussein.  “And if they fear that he could come back, they might be somewhat slower in an interrogation to say what they know,” he said (Greg Miller, Los Angeles Times, June 10).

Bush yesterday also defended prewar administration claims that Hussein and al-Qaeda were connected. 

The New York Times reported yesterday that two captured senior al-Qaeda operatives have denied any such link during interrogations.  Bush said yesterday, however, that the Times had ignored evidence that an al-Qaeda operative hiding in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was responsible for the murder last year of Laurence Foley, a U.S. aid official, in Jordan.

“I guess the people that wrote that article forgot about al-Zarqawi’s network inside of Baghdad that ordered the killing of a U.S. citizen named Foley,” Bush said (David Rennie, London Telegraph, June 10).

Iraq Survey Group to Begin Search Soon

Meanwhile, the Iraq Survey Group could begin Saturday to search for evidence of Iraq’s WMD efforts, according to Reuters.

The group will replace the U.S. military’s 75th Exploitation Task Force, which so far has found no conclusive evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.  The Iraq Survey Group, headed by Army Maj. General Keith Dayton, director of operations for the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency, will have a staff of 1,400, consisting mainly of Americans, officials said.  A British national may be named as the group’s second-in-command, they said.

While the United States has long opposed a formal U.N. role in the WMD search, up to 50 former U.N. inspectors have been recruited to join the group, a defense official said.  It is “hugely important” that the group include “a large number of people with all the historical experience with previous inspections,” said former U.N. chief weapons inspector Terence Taylor (Reuters/Boston Globe, June 10).

The U.S. military units that made up the 75th Exploitation Task Force are now being given time off or being assigned to other duties than the WMD search because there are no more sites to investigate, according to the Associated Press.

“It doesn’t appear there are any more targets at this time,” said Lt. Col. Keith Harrington, whose team has been cut by more than 30 percent.  “We’re hanging around with no missions in the foreseeable future,” he said (Dafna Linzer, Associated Press/Philadelphia Inquirer, June 10).

British Intelligence

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Alastair Campbell, Blair’s communications director, will not allow themselves to be questioned by the British Parliament’s Foreign Affairs Select Committee regarding allegations that the government exaggerated prewar intelligence on Iraq, the prime minister’s office said yesterday.

The committee last week asked if Blair and Campbell would answer questions in their inquiry as to whether intelligence was exaggerated to boost support for war, according to the London Independent.  A spokesman for Blair said, however, that neither man would appear before the committee.  Instead, Blair will meet with members of the Intelligence and Security Committee when they publish an annual report on the British intelligence services today, the Independent reported.  That committee, which has also announced that it will conduct an inquiry into Iraq-related intelligence, conducts its work in private and can have its reports censored by the government (Paul Waugh, London Independent, June 10).

Iran Backs United States on WMD Claims

In a rare moment of agreement with the United States, Iran has concurred with the U.S. assessment that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction prior to the war, according to an Iranian official with ties to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

“Yes, we agree with the Americans,” the Iranian official said.  “Our intelligence indicated that Iraq did possess weapons of mass destruction and was hiding them from the U.N.,” the official said.

While Iran does not know what happened to such weapons, there are concerns that they might have been smuggled into local black markets, according to the official.

“We know other items, once under military control (such as broadcast transmission equipment), have found their way onto the black market,” the official said.  “We have people coming to Tehran from Baghdad with catalogs of items (stolen from the Iraqi government) offering them for sale,” the official said, adding that no chemical or biological weapons have so far been discovered (Stewart Stogel, Washington Times, June 10).

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Iraq:  IAEA Begins Survey of Tuwaitha Nuclear Complex

An International Atomic Energy Agency team yesterday began inspecting parts of the Tuwaitha complex, the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program, to determine the extent of looting of radioactive materials there (see GSN, June 6).

The seven-member team surveyed a three-building storage center at the complex known as Site C, according to Reuters.  The IAEA team was accompanied by U.S. troops (Reuters/Business Recorder, June 9).

Area residents said that looters emptied barrels taken from the complex and then sold them to people who knew nothing about Iraq’s former nuclear efforts.  The barrels were then used to store food and water, and were also washed in the nearby Tigris River, all of which has raised health concerns, according to Agence France-Presse.

A U.S. military spokesman said, however, that the Tuwaitha site posed minimal health risks.

“Our initial assessment is that the risk for health effects is not large,” the spokesman said.  “We have had folks there at the site, my deputy went there and his teeth are still there, and his hair is still in,” the spokesman added (Agence France-Presse/Yahoo!News, June 7).

Weapons Programs

Meanwhile, a former senior Iraqi intelligence officer has said the Iraqi intelligence services established a network of small laboratories after 1996 with a goal of someday resuming full biological and chemical weapons production.

Each weapons team consisted of up to four scientists who were unknown to U.N. inspectors, the officer said.  The teams worked on computers and conducted experiments in bunkers and safe houses around Baghdad, the officer said.

The former intelligence officer said he worked mainly “on the money side” of the effort since the 1980s, which helped to fund a network of local trading companies that were covertly operated by Iraqi intelligence operatives to obtain materials for weapons programs.  The officer said he made several trips between the mid-1990s and 2001 to help oversee the clandestine acquisition network.  He also said he obtained money for the effort from secret bank accounts in Egypt, Jordan, Switzerland and other countries.

The small weapons laboratories did not produce any actual weapons, nor do any weapons now exist in Iraq, the officer said.  The teams did, however, create plans to quickly begin WMD production if U.N. sanctions were lifted, the officer said.

“We could start again anytime.  It’s very easy.  Especially biological,” the officer said.  “The point was, the Iraqis kept the knowledge,” he said.

U.S. troops, however, “will never find anything here.  Only oil,” the officer said (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, June 8).

Mobile Laboratories Questioned

Some U.S. and British intelligence analysts are skeptical of the Bush administration’s claims that two trailers discovered in Iraq were mobile biological facilities, according to the New York Times.  Instead, they said the White House claims were marked by a rush to judgment (see GSN, May 29).

“Everyone has wanted to find the ‘smoking gun’ so much that they may have wanted to have reached this conclusion,” said one intelligence expert who has seen the trailers.  “I am very upset with the process,” the expert said.

The trailers lacked equipment for steam sterilization, normally required for any type of biological agent production, analysts said.  The lack of such a piece of equipment would increase the risk of contamination, thereby producing failed weapons agents, according to the Times.  The trailers also only had the ability to produce small amounts of biological agents in liquid form, which would then have to be furthered processed at another facility, according to analysts.  In addition, the trailers lacked equipment to easily remove germ fluids from the processing tanks onboard.

The CIA stands by its assessment, made in a white paper released last week, that the trailers were most likely for use to produce biological weapons agents, according to an agency spokesman.

Skeptics “are entitled to their opinion, of course, but we stand behind the assertions in the white paper,” CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said (Miller/Broad, New York Times, June 7).

U.S. Intelligence

A number of top Bush administration officials have recently defended the U.S. intelligence on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction prior to the war, according to reports.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice yesterday said the White House had made the best judgment on Iraq’s suspected WMD efforts as it could with the information it had, and that previous CIA directors had made the same assessments since 1996.

“Successive CIA directors, successive administrations, have known that we had every reason to judge that he had weapons of mass destruction,” Rice said on NBC’s Meet the Press, referring to ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

Both Rice and Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday denied that the Bush administration had exaggerated Iraq-related intelligence in order to increase support for war.  They both said more time is needed to find evidence of Iraq’s WMD programs, according to the New York Times.

“The fact is this was a program that was built for concealment,” Rice said.  “We’ve always known that.  We have always known that it would take some time to put together a full picture of his weapons of mass destruction programs,” she said (David Sanger, New York Times, June 9).

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld last week also defended U.S. intelligence on Iraq, saying the current weapons search in Iraq will validate a presentation made by Powell in February to the U.N. Security Council.

“(The intelligence has) been enriched as they’ve gone through this past period of years, and that I believe that the presentation made by Secretary Powell was accurate and will be proved to be accurate,” Rumsfeld said, adding that the Pentagon would cooperate if the U.S. Congress began an inquiry into Iraq-related intelligence (U.S. Defense Department release, June 6).

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) yesterday criticized the U.S. intelligence on Iraq’s WMD efforts, saying U.S. credibility was at stake if such weapons were not found.

The likely presence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction “was turned into a certainty over and over and over again by the administration,” Levin said.  If such weapons are not found, “the credibility and reliability of our intelligence is going to be challenged in the future, and it’s going to be much more difficult for us to lead the world,” he said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 9).

British Intelligence

Meanwhile, British intelligence officers have said they have a “smoking gun” that proves that British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s staff pressured them on Iraqi WMD-related intelligence, according to the London Independent.

“A smoking gun may well exist over WMDs, but it may not be to the government’s liking,” a senior source said.  “Minuted details will show exactly what went on.  Because of the frequency and, at times, unusual nature of the demands from Downing Street, people have made sure records were kept.  There is a certain amount of self-preservation in this, of course,” the source added (Sengupta/McSmith, London Independent, June 8).

In addition, British Home Secretary David Blunkett said yesterday that a dossier on Iraq’s efforts to conceal WMD programs should not have been published (see GSN, Feb. 7).

The dossier, which included information taken from a graduate student’s thesis that had been published online, was prepared by Alastair Campbell, Blair’s communications director, Blunkett said.  Campbell had previously written the chief of the Secret Intelligence Service to apologize for discrediting the service by releasing the dossier, according to the London Telegraph.

Campbell promised the British intelligence services that the government would take “far greater care” in using material prepared by them in the future (George Jones, London Telegraph, June 9).

Al-Qaeda Operatives Deny Iraqi Connection

Two high-ranking al-Qaeda operatives in U.S. custody have separately denied that their organization worked with Hussein, according to several intelligence officials.

Abu Zubaydah, captured in March 2002, said during interrogations that the idea of working with Hussein had been discussed among al-Qaeda leaders, but terrorist mastermind Osama bin Laden rejected the proposal because he did not want to be beholden to Hussein, according to an official who has read the CIA classified report on the interrogation (see GSN, Nov. 18, 2002).  Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in March of this year, also has said during interrogations that al-Qaeda had no desire to work with Iraq, according to the New York Times (see GSN, May 12).

The CIA has refused to comment on what the two men might have said during interrogations.  A senior intelligence official played down the reports, saying that statements made by captured al-Qaeda operatives must be taken with a high degree of skepticism (James Risen, New York Times, June 9).

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South Africa:  “Dr. Death” Seeks Reinstatement in Military

Wouter Basson, the former head of apartheid-era South Africa’s “Project Coast” biological and chemical weapons program, has begun seeking reinstatement in the South African military, the South African Press Association reported last week (see GSN, April 12, 2002).

Basson — dubbed “Dr. Death” by the media — said his reinstatement would make him the highest-ranking general in terms of experience and academic qualifications.  He is currently employed as a cardiologist at a private Cape Town hospital, according to the Press Association.

Basson was acquitted last year of 46 criminal charges, including murder and attempted murder, stemming from his involvement with Project Coast.  Last week, the South African Supreme Court of Appeal refused to grant the state an opportunity to retry Basson (South African Press Association, June 5 in FBIS-AFR, June 5).

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U.S. Response:  Russia Complains of Continuing Aid Restrictions

Russia’s Foreign Ministry expressed frustration Friday with restrictions placed on U.S. nonproliferation aid to Moscow (see GSN, Jan 14).

Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Yakovenko began by praising $450 million in U.S. aid recently approved by each house of Congress, in particular the congressional authorization to fund a chemical weapons destruction plant in Shchuchye.  Yakovenko disagreed with some regulations, however, including a U.S. requirement that $100 million in funds for Shchuchye be matched with a $50 million donation from Russia or a third party.

“We could not but take note of the fact that the American side continues the policy of setting forth additional unjustified conditions pertaining to the expansion of its assistance to the Russian projects.  Particularly disquieting is the fact that the list of these conditions is not decreasing, but on the contrary increasing,” he said.

Yakovenko said the restrictions were in place despite a “considerable buildup” in Russian funding.

“The American decisions are creating some additional difficulties for us,” he added (Russian Foreign Ministry release, June 6).

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Iraq I:  IAEA Inspectors to Return to Tuwaitha Nuclear Site Today

A team of International Atomic Energy Agency experts is scheduled to return to Iraq today to determine the extent of looting of radioactive materials from the Tuwaitha complex, the main site in Iraq’s former nuclear program  (see GSN, June 3).

“Their job will be to do an inventory to see what’s missing and, if possible, to re-collect and reseal the material,” agency spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said.

The United States, however, has set a number of conditions on the IAEA team’s visit, according to the Los Angeles Times.  For example, the team is limited to only seven members and may only visit the Tuwaitha complex — they are barred from visiting six other looted Iraqi nuclear sites.  The team was also originally required to sleep in tents at the complex, but now will be able to stay in a hotel in Baghdad (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, June 6).

The IAEA team will also be accompanied at all times by U.S. troops during the visit to the Tuwaitha complex, U.S. Defense Department officials said.  Fleming said, however, that the team would operate independently.

“We’re not going to conduct any activities with the military,” she said (Dafna Linzer, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 6).

The IAEA team’s visit is a one-time event to help enforce the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Pentagon officials said, adding that the visit should not be seen as a type of weapons inspection (Betsy Pisik, Washington Times, June 6).

U.S. military commanders this week said they are unequipped to sufficiently monitor the Tuwaitha complex.

“I know that the Tuwaitha facility is larger than the assets we have now in country to deal with it,” said Lt. Gen. David McKiernan, commander of U.S. ground troops in Iraq (Linzer, Associated Press).

Pentagon officials have also said they have found more radioactive material at the Tuwaitha complex than originally expected (Matt Kelley, Associated Press/London Guardian, June 6).

U.S. officials have so far recovered more than 100 containers believed to have been taken from the complex, according to the Washington Times.  None of the people who returned the containers, and were paid $3 per container, have shown elevated levels of radiation, officials said (Pisik, Washington Times).

U.N. Security Council Members Call for Return of Inspectors

Meanwhile, U.N. Security Council members yesterday called for the United States to allow experts from the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission to return to Iraq to certify whether it possessed biological or chemical weapons.

The calls for the return of U.N. inspectors to Iraq appear to reflect a growing belief within the Security Council that inspectors should be allowed to test the U.S. and British claims that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction prior to the war, according to the Washington Post.

“The disarmament of Iraq must be verified and confirmed by UNMOVIC and the International Atomic Energy Agency on the ground and in conjunction with the (U.S.-led military) coalition,” French U.N. Ambassador Jean-Marc de la Sabliere told the Security Council, according to a copy of his speaking notes.

John Negroponte, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said the Iraq Survey Group, a Pentagon-established group of weapons experts, is capable of searching for evidence of Iraq’s WMD programs by itself, and that the United States is unlikely to permit U.N. inspectors to return anytime soon (Lynch/Graham, Washington Post, June 6).

“What we’ve said all along is that since March 17 or 18, the coalition has taken on responsibility for inspections and the search for the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq,” Negroponte said.  “But for the time being, we have undertaken this mission of searching for WMD and I would expect that situation to continue for the foreseeable future,” he added (Evelyn Leopold, Reuters, June 6).

DIA Reported Last Year No Evidence of Chemical Weapons

The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency reported in September — at the same time the Bush administration was building the case for war — that there was no reliable evidence that Iraq had chemical weapons, officials said today.

In its report, the DIA said there was no evidence that Iraq had deployable chemical weapons.  There was evidence, however, that Iraq had stockpiles of banned chemical agents, the agency said.

Two Pentagon officials who had read a summary of the report released yesterday by Bloomberg News said today that the report said the DIA had no solid evidence that Iraq possessed useable chemical weapons (Robert Burns, Associated Press/Boston Globe, June 6).

British Intelligence

British intelligence officers have said that the MI6 intelligence service inadequately evaluated information on Iraqi WMD efforts that was passed on to the British government, according to the London Independent (see GSN, June 5).

Most of the Iraq-related intelligence given to Prime Minister Tony Blair’s office was from “raw” MI6 intelligence, according to senior government sources.  Other information came from U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, according to security sources.

Officers in the British intelligence services said that MI6 wanted to please the prime minister’s office over Iraq to the point where “short cuts” were taken.  For example, MI6 officers are believed to have approached the prime minister’s office directly with information, without having first passed it through the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Independent reported.  While MI6 was allowed to do so, such actions resulted in a lack of filtering for the information (Kim Sengupta, London Independent, June 6).

A source described by the BBC as being  “close to British intelligence” has said the prime minister’s office asked intelligence services at least six times to rewrite a dossier released last year on Iraq’s WMD efforts, according to the Press Association.  Blair was personally involved at one point in the decision to have the dossier rewritten, the source said (Press Association, London Guardian, June 6).

Niger Claim Defended

British claims that Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Niger prior to the war were not based on falsified information, according to the Financial Times.

The United States provided the IAEA with documents purporting to illustrate the attempted sale, but those documents were later revealed to have been forgeries.  The British government, however, never possessed those documents and did not base its claims about the attempted uranium purchase on them, the Times reported (Huband/Turner, Financial Times, June 6). 

Iraqi Officials — Dead or Alive?

Pentagon officials have said that ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein is probably alive and behind a recent series of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, according to ITAR-Tass.  The attacks, which have so far killed nine U.S. soldiers over the past month, may have been coordinated by former senior Iraqi officials, according to intelligence reports (ITAR-Tass, June 6).

In addition, Rumsfeld said yesterday that Ali Hassan al-Majid — known as “Chemical Ali” for ordering a 1998 chemical weapons attack on Kurdish rebels in Northern Iraq — may still be alive (see GSN, April 24).

U.S. officials had previously believed that al-Majid was killed during a U.S. airstrike on the southern Iraqi city of Basra in April.

“There was some speculation afterwards that they thought that he had been killed.  Now there’s some speculation that he may be alive,” Rumsfeld said.  “But I just don’t know,” he added (New York Times, June 6).

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Iraq II:  Experts Continue to Question U.S. WMD Intelligence

By Peter H. Stone

National Journal

WASHINGTON — You cannot call it “WMDgate” yet, but the chorus of criticism aimed at the Bush administration for overselling, or misleading, the public and lawmakers about the existence and threat of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction is climbing rapidly up the decibel meter.

Six weeks after the war, the search for biological and chemical weapons in Iraq is still fruitless.  Members of Congress, foreign governments, the media, and, perhaps most ominously, a growing number of intelligence insiders are questioning the accuracy of prewar intelligence on Iraq’s weapons and whether it was hyped to build support for going to war.

The adjectives used to describe key parts of the administration’s intelligence-some of them uttered on the record and some of them without attribution-are getting stronger and stronger with each passing day.  They range from “spurious” and “intellectually dishonest,” to “fraudulent” and “completely unscrupulous.”

Vince Cannistraro, a 27-year veteran of the CIA who left in 1991, is one of several former agency officials who say that the administration’s intelligence on Iraq’s unconventional weapons capabilities now looks way off base.  “It was at least incorrect and at the worst fraudulent,” says Cannistraro.  “The real story is the politicization of intelligence.”

Other agency alumni hold similar views.  “I don’t like the fact that the U.S. government exaggerated that Saddam’s alleged weapons of mass destruction were an imminent threat against U.S. forces or allies in the region,” says Robert Baer, a 21-year CIA operative in the Middle East who retired in 1997.  “People died.  As an American, I’m mad, and I want to know why we’re there.”

Members of Congress, too, are asking, “Where are the WMD?”  The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence this week began examining the issue at its weekly briefings on intelligence.  Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), the ranking Democrat on the committee, says he’s “still inclined to believe that some weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq,” but he has “grave misgivings” about the administration’s prewar claims.  “We’ll continue to press and probe and try to get people who know the information,” Rockefeller added.  In addition, the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services panels are expected to work together on reviews of CIA documents relating to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, and could launch a broader joint investigation later this year.

Meanwhile, in a May 22 letter, Representatives Porter Goss (R-Fla.) and Jane Harman (D-Calif.), the chairman and ranking Democrat respectively on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, asked CIA Director George Tenet some tough questions.  The House committee, the letter said, is “interested in learning, in detail, how the intelligence picture regarding Iraqi weapons of mass destruction was developed,” and it asked for answers by July 1.  The letter also pressed Tenet to explain “how the CIA’s analysis of Iraq’s linkages to terrorist groups, such as al-Qaeda, was derived.”

Now some Republicans are accusing the Democrats of making partisan hay out of the situation.  Goss, for instance, told National Journal, “There’s no question that partisan politics has crept into the debate....  This is largely a media event so far.”  But Goss, a former CIA official himself, said the administration’s intelligence product warranted a committee review, which will likely lead to hearings later this year.

The administration is starting to mount a defense, albeit with conflicting messages and some backtracking from its broader prewar claims.  On his recent European trip, President Bush went on Polish television and declared that two mobile trailers found in Iraq, which contained fermenters capable of making biological weapons, proved the administration’s case.  “We found the weapons of mass destruction,” he said.  “We found biological laboratories.”

Moreover, in a highly unusual move, Tenet in a written statement defended intelligence on Iraq, saying that the “integrity of our process was maintained throughout, and any suggestion to the contrary is simply wrong.”  The CIA had earlier announced that it had started a review to analyze how its prewar assessments of the Iraqi threat measured up against what was being discovered after the war.

Tenet’s statement came in response to a memo written to Bush, and posted on some Internet sites, by a group of retired CIA and State analysts known as Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity.  The memo declared that there was “growing mistrust and cynicism” among professionals about the intelligence that the administration’s top officials, including Bush, cited to justify the war against Iraq.

These concerns certainly weren’t allayed when Paul Wolfowitz, the deputy defense secretary, told Vanity Fair last month that although there were three fundamental worries about Iraq’s regime — its support for terrorism, criminal treatment of its own citizens, and weapons of mass destruction — “the truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the U.S. government bureaucracy, we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on, which was weapons of mass destruction, as the core reason” for the war.

Indeed, senior administration officials hammered that theme home constantly in the months preceding the war.  Last Aug. 26, for instance, Vice President Dick Cheney, addressing a Veterans of Foreign Wars convention, flatly declared, “There is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.  There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us.”  Further, Secretary of State Colin Powell in his Feb. 5 presentation to the United Nations stated, “We know that Saddam Hussein is determined to keep his weapons of mass destruction, he’s determined to make more.”  And last October, Wolfowitz said that Hussein “will not easily give up those horrible weapons that he has worked so hard and paid such a high price to develop and retain.”

For many critics, the primary problem with the prewar assessments of the Iraqi threat was that the administration slighted more-conservative and more-nuanced intelligence reports on Iraq from the CIA, while relying too heavily on more-aggressive and more-pessimistic intelligence provided by a small and secretive unit that the Pentagon set up in late 2001 called the Office of Special Plans.  The real mission of OSP, critics allege, was to amass intelligence to help administration hard-liners make their case that the threat posed by Iraq was imminent.

Cannistraro, along with other former CIA officials, charges that the OSP “incorporated a lot of debatable intelligence, and it was not coordinated with the intelligence community.”  Other intelligence veterans also point out that the Pentagon unit relied a great deal on the Iraqi National Congress and its leader Ahmed Chalabi, who were far from impeccable sources.  “Chalabi never provided the CIA anything that could be corroborated,” Baer says.  “Chalabi had an agenda — he wanted to go back.  You can take his information, but you need to caveat it.”

Other former intelligence hands say that the caveats didn’t happen because of pressures to reach certain conclusions.  Larry Johnson, who did stints in counterterrorism at both the CIA and the State Department, says he’s been told by people still in intelligence that what “they’re experiencing now is the worst political pressure” they’ve ever faced.  “Anyone who attempted to challenge or rebut OSP was accused of rocking the boat.”  Johnson adds that the OSP analysts “came in with an agenda that they were predisposed to believe.”

Ken Pollack, a former CIA analyst who is research director at the Brookings Institution’s Saban Center for Middle East Policy, says, “One of the lessons to take away from the Iraq experience is that defectors are often biased and willing to tell the United States what they think we want to hear.”  The Pentagon and its special unit, he continues, “Fought constantly with the CIA.  They beat the crap out of the agency and their own analysis.  It was a war of attrition, and they ground the agency down.”

The real issue, Pollack concludes, “isn’t overreliance on defectors or opposition groups, but that some officials in the administration seem to have run with defector reports and opposition-group claims that other intelligence analysts believe were spurious or of dubious accuracy.”

In developing good intelligence, intelligence veterans and others say that competition among agencies can be useful, but poses risks.  “Competition is good, up to a point,” Rep. Goss says.  But “I’m very much opposed to competition going to the point of obfuscation.  This is a race that has to be run freely; you can’t trip your opponent in the next lane.”

That’s what some CIA veterans now say happened in the Bush administration’s effort to build its case against Iraq.  Particularly troubling to former analysts are the British intelligence reports cited by Bush in this year’s State of the Union speech on Iraq’s supposed efforts to buy uranium from the Republic of Niger for a nuclear weapons program.  The documents, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency, are now considered forgeries, and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has asked inspectors general at the CIA and the State Department to investigate.

Looking back, weapons experts are skeptical of America’s prewar intelligence on Iraq.  “I think it’s increasingly unlikely that Iraq was the imminent threat which was at the heart of the administration’s case for pre-emptive action,” says Jonathan Tucker, a senior fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace and the author of Scourge: The Once and Future Threat of Smallpox.  “The administration gave the impression that those weapons were deployed and ready to use,” he said.

Veteran intelligence operatives fear that the growing doubts about the administrations prewar intelligence will harm U.S. credibility, especially in the conflict that everyone acknowledges is a direct threat to Americans — the war against terrorism.

“How good other countries believe our intelligence was about Iraq will color how they view our intelligence on other issues,” Pollack warns.  “If they believe our intelligence on Iraq was greatly exaggerated, either intentionally or unintentionally, then they’re likely to be even harder to persuade next time around.” 

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International Response:  Five Countries Join G-8 Effort to Prevent WMD Spread

By Mike Nartker
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The White House announced earlier this week the addition of five new countries to an effort by the Group of Eight to help address WMD prolferation concerns in the former Soviet Union (see GSN, June 2).

Finland, Norway, Poland, Sweden and Switzerland have chosen to join the G-8 Global Partnership to Prevent the Spread of Weapons and Materials of Mass Destruction, according to a White House fact sheet.  The partnership calls for G-8 members — Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, the United Kingdom and the United States — to pledge $20 billion over 10 years to help fund nonproliferation projects, primarily in Russia.  The effort was launched at the 2002 G-8 summit in Kananaskis, Canada.

G-8 members are also set to begin new projects in Russia through the partnership, the White House said.  For example, France is expected later this year to launch three projects to help dispose of nuclear fuel and solid waste recovered from dismantled Russian submarines.  In addition, Germany is expected to begin this month new projects to help improve physical protection at 17 Russian sites housing fissile materials.

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