Iraq:  Blix Questions Coalition’s Expectations for WMD Discovery

Retiring chief U.N. weapons inspector Hans Blix said Tuesday that he was surprised that coalition forces expected to find large quantities of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq when U.N. inspectors had made no such discovery (see GSN, June 18).

“What surprises me, what amazes me, is that it seems the military people were expecting to stumble on large quantities of gas, chemical weapons and biological weapons,” Blix said in an interview with the New York Times.  “I don’t see how they could have come to such an attitude if they had, at any time, studied the reports” of U.N. inspectors, he said.

“Is the United Nations on a different planet?”  Blix said.  “Are reports from here totally unread south of the Hudson?” he added.

Blix also said he did not know if there was anything former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein could have done, short of abasing himself before the world, to avoid war.  If Iraq had quickly provided a list of scientists who had worked on the destruction of VX and anthrax stockpiles in 1991, interviews with those scientists might have accounted for weapons of mass destruction that have not been found, he said.

“If we had clear evidence” of the stockpiles’ destruction, “that would have been impressive,” Blix said.  “But would it have been so unambiguous?  That is doubtful,” he added (Felicity Barringer, New York Times, June 19).

WMD Hunt

Meanwhile, a British weapons team has found no evidence of a rumored chemical weapons laboratory beneath a Baghdad hospital, according to the London Times.

Last week, the team, believed to be a lead element of the Iraqi Survey Group, arrived at the Bittar Hospital of Cardiology in Baghdad and demanded to search the premises.  The team conducted a thorough search of the hospital, including the sewer system beneath the facility, but found nothing, the Times reported.

“I was astonished,” said hospital Director Hussein al-Hilli.  “The British soldiers came to my office.  They told me they knew there was an underground chemical weapons laboratory beneath the hospital and insisted that they search the site.  I told them that they were wasting their time but were welcome to look,” he said (Richard Beeston, London Times, June 19).

U.S. troops Monday captured an Iraqi official believed to have been the third highest-ranking official in Hussein’s regime, just after the Iraqi leader himself and his youngest son Qusay, according to the Knight Ridder News Service.

The U.S. Central Command announced yesterday the capture of Gen. Abid Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, who U.S. officials described as Hussein’s personal secretary, senior bodyguard and national security adviser.  Mahmud, who may have had the authority to authorize the use of weapons of mass destruction, might have knowledge about the fate of Hussein and whether Iraq possessed such weapons.

Based on previous experiences with captured Iraqi officials, however, U.S. officials are unsure as to how valuable Mahmud may be, according to Knight Ridder.  “We have no reason to believe that his initial reaction will be to spill his guts,” a senior U.S. official said (Lasseter/Hull, Knight Ridder/Philadelphia Inquirer, June 19).

U.S. Intelligence

The U.S. House and Senate intelligence committees yesterday began closed hearings to review the prewar intelligence used by the Bush administration to justify the war on Iraq, according to the Washington Post.

“The credibility of the intelligence community is at issue here” because questions have been raised “about whether the (Bush) administration accurately portrayed the intelligence case regarding Iraq’s WMD (weapons of mass destruction) and ties to al-Qaeda and other nonindigenous terrorist groups,” Representative Jane Harman (D-Calif.) said after the House intelligence committee hearing.

Yesterday, the House committee heard testimony from several intelligence officers that provided background on an October 2002 national intelligence estimate on Iraqi WMD programs and how that report was prepared, Bush administration and congressional sources said.  The committee is expected to hear from intelligence officers today about the status of the search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, they said.

Yesterday, the Senate intelligence committee attempted to develop procedures for future hearings, according to the Post.  Both committees may continue to hold hearings on the Iraq intelligence issue throughout the summer (Pincus/Priest, Washington Post, June 19).

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Iraq:  London Urges Washington to Exchange Leniency for Information

The United Kingdom is urging the United States to offer captured senior Iraqi officials leniency if they provide information that aids the coalition’s search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the London Times reported today (see GSN, June 17).

London wants to offer the captured officials — 32 out of the 55 U.S. most-wanted — the assurance that their assistance would be taken into account if they appear before a war crimes tribunal.  If an official offered particularly useful information, he or she could be granted immunity and a new life in another country, according to the Times.

The United States, however, is divided over the British proposal, officials said.  Some U.S. Defense Department officials oppose any agreement that could lower the officials’ possible sentences if they are convicted of war crimes.

“We have been trying for ages to persuade the Americans but they have come up with all kinds of legal arguments,” a British official said (Michael Evans, London Times, June 18).

Meanwhile, another coalition search tactic, the use of the massive Iraq Survey Group of weapons teams and intelligence analysts, bears many resemblances to the U.N. weapons inspection regime that U.S. officials criticized prior to the war, according to senior military and intelligence officials in Iraq.

The group will not be fully operational for several more weeks, officials said.  When it is up and running, its 1,400 members will live in mobile trailers and work at a facility that will be constructed within one of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s palaces near the Baghdad airport, according to the Los Angeles Times.  The group will also operate two satellite bases in the northern and southern sections of Iraq.

Advance survey group teams have already been assigned to find and interview certain Iraqis, with other teams assigned to translating and analyzing recovered documents and computer data, the Times reported.  In addition, some group teams have been given the task of investigating Iraq’s former covert procurement efforts.

“This is truly going to be looking for all the clues,” a Pentagon official said.  “We haven’t done that before,” the official said.

Brig. Gen. Steve Meekin, the senior Australian officer in the group, said the new effort “absolutely” resembles the U.N. inspection regime because it will focus on collecting information and not just site searches.

The Iraq Survey Group has several advantages, however, over the previous U.N. effort, the Times reported.  For example, the group will rely heavily on U.S. and British intelligence operatives who have been dubbed “secret squirrels” by U.S. commanders.  The group will also have what one commander called “unfettered access to Iraqis at all levels.”

“We have a full deck of cards,” the commander said.  “The U.N. had about 35,” the commander added (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, June 18).

Bush Defends WMD Claims

In the past two days, U.S. President George W. Bush has twice attacked the growing criticism coming from some in the U.S. Congress, as well as overseas, that no weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.

“I know there’s a lot of revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain:  He [Hussein] is no longer a threat to the Free World, and the people of Iraq are free,” Bush said yesterday (Mike Allen, Washington Post, June 18).

Bush and his aides believe that Americans’ relief over the fall of Hussein will counter any questions over the case the White House built to justify going to war, Bush administration officials and Republican strategists said.

“We see a very similar pattern to the commentary around the military campaigns in Afghanistan and Iraq — the premature drawing of conclusions, based on a picture that is still incomplete,” said White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett.  “Americans are patient.  They are willing to wait and see what we find,” he said.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich agreed that Bush is likely to experience little fallout over the lack of a discovery of weapons of mass destruction.  “The president is 99 percent safe on this one,” he said.

“The literary class that dislikes Bush and dislikes American activism is thrilled, whether in Europe or in the U.S., to have this question to raise,” Gingrich said.  “But in the United States at least, given the mass graves, given the level of torture and brutality by the Baath Party regime, you’re asking the American people to side with the apologists for replacing Saddam.  Does even the most left-wing Democrat want to defend the proposition that the world would be better off with Saddam in power?” he added.

Some Republicans are concerned, however, that the growing criticism British Prime Minister Tony Blair is facing over the lack of success in finding weapons of mass destruction could have an influence in Washington, according to the New York Times.

“After all, we were all working off the same shared evidence,” said a senior coalition diplomat.  “If it was wrong for one, it was wrong for all,” the diplomat said (Sanger/Hulse, New York Times, June 18).

DIA Doubted Iraqi Use of Chemical Weapons

U.S. intelligence analysts told the Bush administration last year that while Iraq had begun to deploy chemical weapons, it would not use them unless the fall of Hussein’s regime was imminent, U.S. officials said yesterday.

In a November 2002 report, the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency said it was unlikely that Iraq would resort to using weapons of mass destruction as long as U.N. sanctions were in place.  Hussein would use such weapons only “in extreme circumstances,” the report said, “because their use would confirm Iraq’s evasion of U.N. restrictions,” according to the report, portions of which were read to a reporter by an intelligence official (James Risen, New York Times, June 18).

U.S. Intelligence Review

U.S. House and Senate intelligence committees are expected to begin hearings today on the prewar U.S. intelligence on Iraq, according to Reuters.

The House committee is set to hold a closed hearing today to interview intelligence analysts about the compilation of National Intelligence Estimate reports on Iraqi WMD programs, with a focus on the last such report, produced in October 2002.  Committee members plan to ask analysts how the report was prepared, how the report was used and how it differed from other intelligence reports, congressional aides said.  The committee is expected to hold a second closed hearing tomorrow on the current search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction.

The Senate intelligence committee is scheduled to meet today to discuss procedures for future hearings.  The committee is then expected to hold a closed hearing tomorrow on Iraq-related intelligence reports (Tabassum Zakaria, Reuters/Yahoo!News, June 18).

The House International Affairs Committee voted 23-15 along party lines yesterday to unfavorably report a resolution calling on Bush to release all Iraq-related documents within 14 days of the measure’s adoption (Sara Steines, CongressDaily, June 18).

British Intelligence Review

Former British International Development Secretary Claire Short yesterday accused Blair of “honorable deception” in drawing the United Kingdom into war.

“I believe that the prime minister must have concluded that it was honorable and desirable to back the U.S. in going for military action in Iraq, and therefore it was honorable for him to persuade us through various ruses and ways to get us there — so for him I think it was an honorable deception,” Short said before the British Parliament’s House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee, which is examining the case Blair made for going to war (Ben Russell, London Independent, June 18).

Australia Senate to Conduct Inquiry

The Australian Senate has decided to conduct an inquiry into Australia’s prewar intelligence on Iraqi WMD programs, the Sydney Morning Herald reported today (Sydney Morning Herald, June 18).

A spokesman for the opposition Labor Party today accused Australian Prime Minister John Howard of seeking to deter intelligence officials from answering questions during the inquiry.

“Mr. Howard may have a grand political strategy in mind about how to create a public political environment which makes life difficult for those agencies if they cooperate,” opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd said (Sydney Morning Herald II, June 18).

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U.S. Response:  Threatened Force Fails More Than It Succeeds, Study Says

By David Ruppe
Global Security Newswire

WASHINGTON — The U.S. experience in the 1990s suggests the threat of force to obtain objectives short of war tends to fail more often than it succeeds, according to a new book.

Furthermore, it says when such threats fail they tend to produce either of two outcomes:  all-out war or a credibility- and power-risking political retreat.

“Coercive diplomacy” should therefore be undertaken cautiously and only when leaders are willing to go to war over the objective, according to The United States and Coercive Diplomacy, which was published by the United States Institute of Peace and released yesterday.

“Coercive diplomacy is difficult and has a relatively low success rate,” the book says, advising to “never resort to coercive diplomacy unless you are prepared to go to war should it fail, or unless you have devised a suitable political escape hatch if war is not acceptable.”

Assessing the circumstances in which coercive diplomacy was used by the United States during the 1990s, and the likelihood that the country will remain the sole global superpower for years to come, the book predicts that coercive diplomacy will remain a common tool of U.S. strategy in the future.

“The need to back U.S. diplomacy with force will not go away; consequently, political-military coercion short of all-out war will remain a highly attractive option to U.S. leaders,” wrote the book’s editor, Brandeis University professor Robert Art.

“I expect to see a lot more instances of coercive diplomacy.  We have just seen the most recent failure of coercive diplomacy in the second Gulf War,” Art said at a panel here accompanying the release of the book yesterday, referring to the U.S. military takeover of Iraq.

Art said the extent of global U.S. military commitments, particularly in occupied Iraq, might inhibit the application of coercive diplomacy.

25 Percent Success Rate Seen

Providing eight case studies of instances in which the United States threatened or used limited force to compel action by other governments during the last decade, the book concludes that in only two instances, or 25 percent of the time, was coercive diplomacy clearly successful — once in 1994 to compel regime change in Haiti, and a rollback in Serb aggression and end to the war in Bosnia in 1995.

Some failures, the book says, include efforts to compel:

*         North Korea in 1994 to freeze its nuclear weapons program;

*         the Yugoslav government in 1999 to end repression of Kosovo;

*         Somali clans from 1992 to 1994 to disarm to allow for creation of a civil reconstruction program, a new government and strengthening of peacekeeping and civilian reconstruction efforts;

*         changes in Iraqi government behavior from 1990 to 1998, which, while producing some successes, was deemed overall to be a failure; and

*         al-Qaeda to stop terrorism by bombing sites in Sudan and Afghanistan in 1998.

It described as “ambiguous” the U.S. response to Chinese coercive diplomacy against Taiwan in 1996, finding the U.S. response was as much about deterrence than coercion — or preventing action rather than changing it. 

The book concluded the United Sates and Taiwan were arguably successfully coerced in that incident, as both altered their behavior to some degree after the encounter in response to Chinese pressure.

On North Korea

The studies were performed by American academics, think-tank analysts and a senior Bush administration official from the Agency for International Development.  Art summarized them in an introduction and conclusion.

Two panelists yesterday not associated with the book — Arnold Kanter, a senior fellow at the Forum for International Policy, and former Ambassador Robert Gallucci, who was a principal player in the 1994 North Korea episode — praised its conclusions.

However, Gallucci disagreed that coercive diplomacy failed in that case, contending that the implied threat of force through a noticeable military buildup probably helped bring North Korea to the negotiating table.

Also in attendance was the author of the case study, William Drennan, who said former President Jimmy Carter was the primary instrument of the solution and the avoidance of war, and that the United States appeared to be successfully coerced by North Korea during that period.

There is “a lot more evidence that North Korea … actually did the coercing, and the United States did the reacting,” said Drennan, the deputy director of the USIP’s Research and Studies Program.

“The argument that for a brief moment Carter hijacked our foreign policy is not an unreasonable argument,” said Gallucci, but added that he was not sure Carter was essential to eventually concluding an agreement.

Regarding the Bush Administration

Drawing from the case studies, the book offered additional lessons on the application of coercive diplomacy.  For instance, it concluded that success is difficult to predict regardless of the situation, that military superiority does not guarantee success and that the probability of success appeared to have no correlation to the objective.

Art said coercive diplomacy often produces a “game of chicken.”

“The dynamics of the game of chicken are such that usually a crisis escalates before it de-escalates, because crises, after all, being games of chicken, are tests of wills.  Part of the problem with games of chicken, or in coercive diplomatic encounters, is it’s very difficult to estimate whose resolve is stronger before you have this crisis or this test,” he said.

“In most of the cases we looked at, the target cared very strongly about what it was trying to do, what it was trying to achieve, and therefore it was not willing to bow to U.S. threats to use force or very limited use of force,” he added.

The book said offering carrots, as well as the stick of threatened force, can increase the probability of success, but is more likely to do so if incentives are offered prior to threats and not after.

Threatened leaders, Art said, often would prefer to stand up to a threat rather than back down and lose power and credibility, thereby escalating tensions and bringing the situation closer to war.

“Coercive diplomacy asks a very difficult thing of the target, it asks that it sacrifice some of its credibility, willingness to stand firm … or to diminish its power,” he said.

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Threat Assessment:  MI5 Director Says WMD Attack “Only a Matter of Time”

The head of Britain’s MI5 said it is “only a matter of time” before terrorists strike a Western city using nuclear, chemical, biological or radiological materials, the London Independent reported yesterday.

“Renegade scientists” — most likely from Pakistan — have given Islamic extremists information to create weapons of mass destruction, Eliza Manningham-Buller, the director general of the security service, said in her first public remarks since she became head of the service in October.

“We are faced with a realistic possibility of a form of unconventional attack that could include chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear (CBRN),” Manningham-Buller said.  “It is only a matter of time before a crude version of a CBRN is launched on a Western city, and it is only a matter of time before the crude version becomes more sophisticated,” she added (Jason Bennetto, London Independent, June 17).

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Romania:  Bucharest to Adopt New Export Transparency Measures

Romania plans to implement new transparency measures soon that would be based on information-exchange procedures approved earlier this month by the Australia Group, a group of 33 countries that coordinate export controls on dual-use items that could be used to create biological or chemical weapons, the Rompres news agency reported yesterday (see GSN, June 11).

The planned Romanian transparency measures are intended to help prevent the diversion of biological and chemical products to weapons use.  During a plenary meeting of the Australia Group held earlier this month in Paris, group members also approved a Romanian proposal on the distribution of an electronic collection of members’ export control systems to aid in licensing and implementation activities (Rompres/BBC Monitoring, June 17).

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Iraq:  CIA Sought to Rebuild Intelligence Network in Iraq Prior to War, Officials Say

In the year prior to the U.S.-led war on Iraq, the CIA attempted to rebuild its network of Iraqi agents, which had been decimated by numerous purges conducted by ousted Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s regime, USA Today reported today (see GSN, June 16).

The CIA began an intensive effort to rebuild its Iraq spy network after it had been almost destroyed by Hussein’s security forces, according to three U.S. intelligence officials.  In a series of classified briefings to congressional intelligence committees beginning in late 2001, CIA officials described a plan to rebuild a network of agents within Hussein’s regime.  While a major focus of the effort was to obtain information on Iraqi WMD programs, the CIA also wanted to obtain information that would aid the U.S. Defense Department in planning an invasion, according to a Bush administration official.

Although the CIA allocated numerous resources to its effort, by the end of last year it had only achieved partial success in recruiting a network of Iraqi agents, according to USA Today.  While those agents provided valuable information about Iraq’s conventional weapons, they provided no conclusive evidence of biological or chemical weapons, Bush administration and congressional officials said (John Diamond, USA Today I, June 17).

The CIA effort was needed because of the brutal effectiveness of Hussein’s security forces in finding, and eliminating, Iraqis working for U.S. intelligence, according to USA Today.  In the 12 years leading up to the recent war, Iraqi security services killed hundreds of Iraqis working for U.S. intelligence through a combination of careful planning and broad purges, intelligence sources said.

“Saddam Hussein would say, ‘If we’ve got a spy on the fifth floor of the building, take everyone on that floor out and chop them up into little pieces,’” said Milt Beardon, a former senior CIA official.

The largest single blow to the U.S. intelligence network in Iraq came in August 1996, when Iraqi security agents infiltrated a U.S.-supported coup plot and arrested 200 Iraqis on charges of supporting the plot, executing 80 of them immediately, according to USA Today.  Afterward, Iraqi forces invaded sections of the northern part of the country that was a base for the CIA-backed effort, capturing additional suspects.

Kenneth Allard, a retired U.S. Army colonel, praised the effectiveness of Iraq’s counterespionage efforts. 

Hussein displayed an “extreme efficiency ... at rooting out anyone suspicious,” Allard said.  “He was far more serious about counterintelligence than we were about positive intelligence,” Allard added (John Diamond, USA Today II, June 17).

Meanwhile, Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) yesterday questioned the credibility of CIA Director George Tenet, according to the Baltimore Sun.

Levin has asked Tenet to release classified documents describing the information the CIA shared with U.N. weapons inspectors on suspect Iraqi WMD sites.  In February, Tenet told Congress that intelligence officials had briefed U.N. inspectors on all “high-value and moderate-value” known suspect sites.  Classified documents, however, indicate that U.S. officials withheld information from U.N. inspectors, Levin said.

“It undermines the credibility of the director of (central) intelligence to be making public statements relative to intelligence which are factually inaccurate, and this falls into that general category,” Levin said.

Tenet, along with other U.S. officials, might have claimed to have fully informed U.N. inspectors to avoid delaying invasion plans, Levin said.  Public opposition to the war might have increased if it had been known that U.S. intelligence agencies had withheld information on suspect Iraqi sites from U.N. inspectors, he said.

“There could have been questions as to why,” Levin said.  “It could have made the administration’s decision to cut short the U.N. inspection process and to institute military action less compelling,” he added (Julie Hirschfeld Davis, Baltimore Sun, June 17).

British Intelligence

In London today, the British Parliament’s House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee is set to begin an inquiry into the British decision to go to war with Iraq, according to Agence France-Presse.

The committee is expected to hear today from two former Cabinet officials who opposed the war in Iraq:  former Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and former International Development Secretary Claire Short.  The committee is expected to hear from current Foreign Secretary Jack Straw twice next week, with one meeting to be conducted in private (Agence France-Presse, June 17).

Cook said today that he was concerned that the British government used intelligence on Iraq’s suspect WMD programs to justify a decision that had already been made.

“I fear the fundamental problem is that instead of using intelligence as evidence on which to base a decision about policy, we used intelligence as the basis on which to justify a policy on which we had already settled,” Cook said (Jill Lawless, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 17).

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U.S. Response:  AMA Announces New Training Courses for Health Care Workers

The American Medical Association announced yesterday the creation of new training courses to prepare doctors and other health care workers for mass casualty events, such as a terrorist attack involving weapons of mass destruction (see GSN, June 7, 2002).

The two courses, a basic course and a follow-up advanced level, focus on a wide range of potential mass casualties events and related issues, such as nuclear and radiological attacks, biological incidents, chemical incidents and medical decontamination issues, according to an association press release.  The courses were developed by the association in conjunction with the medical schools in Georgia and Texas.

The new courses will help provide a standardized approach to training health care professionals in disaster response, said James James, director of the new AMA Center for Disaster Preparedness and Emergency Response. 

“Currently, there is a tremendous amount of information out there on emergency response,” James said.  “But while there is a lot of material, there is not much consistency.  We need to be thinking of standardization and what is required in terms of basic skills and knowledge to make our health care providers and physicians more ready,” he said.

Physicians will receive continuing medical education credit for taking the new courses, according to the association release.  The association is also working to develop additional courses that will focus on logistical issues and target the general public.  In addition, the association is also working to develop a system to teach the courses online.

The courses will initially be targeted at current health care workers, but there are also plans to incorporate them into medical school education, according to Richard Schwartz, director of the Center of Operational Medicine at the Medical College of Georgia.

“Disaster medicine has not been a traditional part of medical education, so there is a tremendous need for a train-up for the country,” Schwartz said.  “I think our first phase will be to do that initial train-up for the health care providers who are out there.  To sustain that training is the next piece, where we have ongoing training within medical schools and nursing schools for students coming through so this becomes an integrated part of our mission,” he said (American Medical Association release, June 16).

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Georgia:  Authorities Capture Nerve Gas Concentrate, Radioactive Materials

Georgian officials announced yesterday the capture of nerve gas concentrate and radioactive materials that were that were discovered inside a taxicab in the capital Tbilisi, according to the Boston Globe.

During a routine search May 31, Georgian police discovered three boxes inside the taxicab, officials said.  One box contained a brown liquid that was later determined to be a nerve gas concentrate, Georgian Interior Ministry spokesman Givi Mgebrishvili said.  Earlier reports had identified the liquid as mustard gas agent, the Globe reported.

Noting the possibility that the recovered liquid could be Russian mustard gas agent, Russian ecological activist Maxim Shingarkin warned that it would be easy to steal such material.

“It is kept in huge barrels in three large sites in central Russia,” Shingarkin said.  “Anyone who has access could just walk up and pour it out,” he said.

Inside the two other boxes, police discovered cesium 137 and strontium 90, both of which could be used to build radiological weapons.

“These substances could be used to create a … dirty bomb, which would be operational within a 500- to 600-meter radius (about one-third of a mile), and would create a larger area of radioactive fallout,” Mgebrishvili said.

The recovered materials were likely destined for Turkey to be resold, Mgebrishvili said.  Police have detained the taxicab’s driver, and two other suspects have reportedly been arrested, including a man living on the Georgian-Turkish border (David Filipov, Boston Globe, June 17).

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Iraq:  Senator Previews U.S. Iraqi Intelligence Hearings

U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Chairman Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) said yesterday that while his committee would hold closed hearings to review U.S. prewar intelligence on Iraq, the committee might release both a classified and a public report on the committee’s findings (see GSN, June 13).

Intelligence agencies have provided the committee with “voluminous” amounts of material, Roberts said, adding that he has encouraged committee members to read the information before questioning officials or analysts.  The committee will conduct closed hearings, but may conclude its investigation with a public hearing if committee members believe one is needed, he said on CBS’s Face the Nation.

The committee “will probably have a classified report and a public report,” Roberts said, noting that he plans to interview Bush administration officials as part of the inquiry.  He issued an “open invitation” to any intelligence official “who thinks that their analytical product was skewed in any way, or if they were intimidated, or if they were coerced.”  One person wanting to share such concerns has already contacted the committee, Roberts said (Susan Schmidt, Washington Post, June 16).

Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.) yesterday criticized Senate Republicans’ approach to the intelligence hearings. 

“We need a thorough, bipartisan investigation,” Levin said on Face the Nation.

The House intelligence committee is set to begin its own hearings on the issue this week with two closed meetings, committee members said, adding that open hearings may be conducted if appropriate (Jennifer Kerr, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 16).

U.S. WMD Hunt

Meanwhile, U.S. military teams in Iraq searching for evidence of WMD efforts have visited all of the priority suspect sites identified by U.S. intelligence prior to the war and have found nothing, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Most of the priority sites were either so badly damaged by coalition airstrikes or so heavily looted that any potential evidence was gone, the Times reported.  In addition, U.S. teams have visited the same sites that U.N. inspectors had previously searched without finding anything.  It has been made difficult to compare the results of the U.S. search with that of U.N. inspectors because the names of some long-identified U.N. sites have been changed, according to the Times.

The U.S. Defense Department has begun transferring responsibility for the WMD hunt from the U.S. Army’s 75th Exploitation Task Force to the larger Iraq Survey Group.  The transition is not expected to be completed, however, before mid-July, according to the Times.

Several “sensitive site teams” completed their last mission June 2 and have been told to not expect further missions until at least June 25.  In the meantime, team members spend their time washing laundry or watching DVDs, the Times reported.

“We’re here to answer the big question,” said Lt. Cody Strong, a tactical intelligence officer.  “You’d think if this was really a priority, we’d have nonstop missions,” Strong said.

One veteran intelligence official said he is angry at inaccurate intelligence reports that have dispatched weapons teams to search empty sites.

“I’m sitting here, and frustrated isn’t the word anymore,” the official said.  “I feel almost duped,” the official added (Bob Drogin, Los Angeles Times, June 15).

The United States has begun increasing radio appeals to Iraqis who may have been involved in WMD programs to come forth and surrender, according to the Associated Press.

Yesterday, a Baghdad radio station operated by U.S. Army’s Psychological Operations personnel issued an appeal to Iraqi former WMD scientists to surrender, promising leniency for those who do so.

“It’s time to leave your hideouts,” a station announcer said in Arabic.  “If you come voluntarily and give information about weapons of mass destruction and their launch vehicles, the United States will do its best to give you a just trial in accordance with the law,” the announcer said (Jim Krane, Associated Press/Yahoo!News, June 15).

British Investigation Counters U.S. Claims Over Suspect Iraqi Trailers

A British investigation into two suspect Iraqi trailers has determined that they were meant to produce hydrogen to fill artillery balloons, as Iraq claimed, according to the London Observer (see GSN, June 9).  The United States has argued that the trailers were mobile biological weapons facilities.

“'They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories.  You could not use them for making biological weapons.  They do not even look like them,” said a British scientist who has examined the trailers.  “They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were — facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons,” the scientist said (London Observer, June 15).

A senior British official in the Iraq administration has told British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s communication director that a “backlash” is likely if Iraqi weapons of mass destruction are not found.

“The Americans don’t care because (President George W.) Bush knows he can get away with it, but it is a real problem for us,” the official said (Christina Lamb, London Sunday Times, June 15).

Some Americans Believe WMD Has Already Been Found

A recent poll of Americans found that a third of those surveyed believed the United States has already found weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer.

The poll, conducted by the University of Maryland’s Program on International Policy Attitudes, also found that 22 percent of those surveyed believed Iraq had used biological or chemical weapons during the war.  The poll of 1,256 adults had an error margin of 3.5 percent, the Inquirer reported.

The results of the poll surprised even the pollsters who conducted it, according to the Inquirer.

“It’s a striking finding,” said Steve Kull, director of the Program on International Policy Attitudes.  “Given the intensive news coverage and high levels of public attention, this level of misinformation suggests some Americans may be avoiding having an experience of cognitive dissonance,” he added.

The Inquirer defined “cognitive dissonance” as having personal beliefs conflict with facts.

There are number of possible explanations for the gap between beliefs and facts, such as short attention spans for foreign news, conflicting media reports and White House efforts to increase support for the war by oversimplifying the possible threat, according to pollsters and political analysts.

“Most people get little whiffs and fragments of news, not in any organized way,” said Thomas Mann of the Brookings Institution.  “And there have been a lot of conflicting reports on the weapons,” he said (Frank Davies, Philadelphia Inquirer, June 14).

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International Response:  EU Foreign Ministers to Agree to Use of Force to Prevent Proliferation

Foreign ministers from 15 European Union members are expected today to endorse a WMD nonproliferation action plan that would include the possible use of force as a last resort, according to the Financial Times (see GSN, June 5).

The plan, which details several stages in which the EU could attempt to pressure a country into meeting its nonproliferation obligations, is expected to be endorsed today during a meeting in Luxembourg.  The plan’s first stage calls for a strengthening of multilateral disarmament and nonproliferation regimes, according to the Times.

“In case political and diplomatic measures have failed, coercive measures, including as a last resort, the use of force in according with the United Nations Charter will be considered,” the ministers said in a statement (Judy Dempsey, Financial Times, June 16).

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Iraq:  CIA Says It Informed White House of Intelligence Doubts

The CIA yesterday said it sent a cable to the White House and other U.S. agencies in March 2002 that cast doubt on the credibility of a report that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger (see GSN, June 12).

The cable did not, however, include the conclusions of a former U.S. ambassador who had been sent to Niger in April 2002.  The former ambassador determined that documents purporting to describe the attempted purchase had been forged, Bush administration officials said.  Instead, the CIA cable attributed its assessment only to an anonymous source, failing to mention the name of the former ambassador — a known Africa expert — or that the agency had sent him to Niger, according to the Washington Post.

The CIA cable was one of a large number of such reports the White House received every day, a Bush administration official said yesterday.  Other information received after the cable transmission supported claims that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium prior to the recent war, the officials said.  The cable was not considered especially important because it cited an anonymous source and therefore was not distributed to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice or other senior White House officials, the Post reported.

Rice said Sunday that she did not know there had been doubts about the documents that purported to show that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium from Niger.

“Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery,” Rice said (Walter Pincus, Washington Post, June 13).

The CIA also informed the United Kingdom that the Niger claims were false, months before London would include the claim in a dossier justifying war, according to the Associated Press.

The CIA passed on the information to British officials, a senior intelligence official said.  Even so, the claim that Iraq “sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” was still included in a British dossier released Sept. 24 that cited intelligence sources (John Lumpkin, Associated Press/London Independent, June 13).

Former U.N. Inspector Criticizes Intelligence

Meanwhile, former U.N. weapons inspector Steve Allinson has said that every piece of intelligence provided to the inspectors by the United States and the United Kingdom was “absolute rubbish.”

Allinson said that in the three months prior to the war that he worked in Iraq, inspectors were often sent to sites named in U.S. and British intelligence, but no weapons of mass destruction were found.  At one site, U.S. intelligence said that equipment was being moved and that some pieces had been placed on the roof of a store, he said.

“That site I had been to several times ... and it is basically just a warehouse full of mechanical bits and pieces,” Allinson said.  “Even though we had been to this site, we had to act on the intelligence to appease the Americans,” he said (Press Association/London Guardian, June 13).

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell yesterday defended the U.S. intelligence that said Iraq possessed and was attempting to develop weapons of mass destruction.

“This isn’t a figment of somebody’s imagination.  This isn’t something that was overblown, or made up in the basement of the CIA late one night,” Powell said.  “These were real weapons, real programs, that Saddam Hussein refused to come forward and explain. ... Do you want to give Saddam Hussein the benefit of the doubt?  Well, we didn’t.  And now we don’t have to worry about it anymore,” he added.

The Bush administration believes that prior to the war Iraq possessed both actual weapons of mass destruction and WMD programs, Powell said.  Once coalition teams finish examining suspect WMD sites, interviewing Iraqi scientists and reviewing documents, “it will lead us not only, we believe, to weapons that may exist, but to the programs themselves,” Powell said (Sonya Ross, Associated Press/Washington Post, June 13).

U.S. Secret Forces Played Role in WMD Search

A U.S. Army special forces unit that has been operating in Iraq since before the war began has played an important — but unsuccessful — role in the search for Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, according to military and intelligence sources.

The unit’s main mission is to “seize, destroy, render safe, capture or recover weapons of mass destruction,” according to a special operations mission statement.  As part of that mission, the unit conducted raids ahead of coalition forces to capture suspected WMD stockpiles, collected hundreds of samples and captured as many as half of the Iraqi scientists and Baath Party officials now in custody, according to the Washington Post.

The U.S. Defense Department has so far refused to publicly release the unit’s preliminary findings, which include the discovery of a cache of land mines believed to have been designed for use with biological agents, the Post reported.  A Task Force 20 “direct action” team discovered the mines during a raid on an Iraqi military base near the western city of Qaim shortly before the war. 

Testing on the mines helped to convince some U.S. analysts that the mines were once loaded with botulinum toxin, according to two sources.  The mines are not considered to be offensive weapons, however, and they had deteriorated to the point where their contents could be disputed, the sources said.

While Task Force 20 had initially sent a number of reports to Washington indicating the possibility of WMD discoveries, it has found no conclusive evidence of such weapons or programs, sources said (Barton Gellman, Washington Post, June 13).

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