About That NIE
Stephen Hadley for the defense:
"The intelligence was clear in terms of the weapons of mass destruction," Hadley said, citing a National Intelligence Estimate provided to Bush. "The case that was brought to him, in terms of the NIE, and parts of which have been made public, was a very strong case."
Ackerman & Judis for the prosecution:
In the late summer of 2002, Graham had requested from Tenet an analysis of the Iraqi threat. According to knowledgeable sources, he received a 25-page classified response reflecting the balanced view that had prevailed earlier among the intelligence agencies--noting, for example, that evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program or a link to Al Qaeda was inconclusive. Early that September, the committee also received the DIA's classified analysis, which reflected the same cautious assessments. But committee members became worried when, midway through the month, they received a new CIA analysis of the threat that highlighted the Bush administration's claims and consigned skepticism to footnotes. According to one congressional staffer who read the document, it highlighted "extensive Iraqi chem-bio programs and nuclear programs and links to terrorism" but then included a footnote that read, "This information comes from a source known to fabricate in the past." The staffer concluded that "they didn't do analysis. What they did was they just amassed everything they could that said anything bad about Iraq and put it into a document."
Graham and Durbin had been demanding for more than a month that the CIA produce an NIE on the Iraqi threat--a summary of the available intelligence, reflecting the judgment of the entire intelligence community--and toward the end of September, it was delivered. Like Tenet's earlier letter, the classified NIE was balanced in its assessments. Graham called on Tenet to produce a declassified version of the report that could guide members in voting on the resolution. Graham and Durbin both hoped the declassified report would rebut the kinds of overheated claims they were hearing from administration spokespeople. As Durbin tells TNR, "The most frustrating thing I find is when you have credible evidence on the intelligence committee that is directly contradictory to statements made by the administration."
On October 1, 2002, Tenet produced a declassified NIE. But Graham and Durbin were outraged to find that it omitted the qualifications and countervailing evidence that had characterized the classified version and played up the claims that strengthened the administration's case for war. For instance, the intelligence report cited the much-disputed aluminum tubes as evidence that Saddam "remains intent on acquiring" nuclear weapons. And it claimed, "All intelligence experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons and that these tubes could be used in a centrifuge enrichment program"--a blatant mischaracterization. Subsequently, the NIE allowed that "some" experts might disagree but insisted that "most" did not, never mentioning that the DOE's expert analysts had determined the tubes were not suitable for a nuclear weapons program. The NIE also said that Iraq had "begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents"--which the DIA report had left pointedly in doubt. Graham demanded that the CIA declassify dissenting portions.
Chew that over for a bit.
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Did Graham and Durbin warn their fellow Senators that the declassified NIE was not to be relied upon?
Does anyone know the answer?
November 11, 2005 10:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think that the key to the whole argument is the phony term WMD. The administration lumped in chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons in this category, but their scare talk emphasized nuclear weapons, which Iraq did not have and wasn't going to get (as the Bush people may have known).
As long as you let people talk about "WMD", you'll lose, because Saddam did have some chemical weapons. It's a fairly classic bait-and-switch.
November 11, 2005 11:12 AM | Reply | Permalink
John
You are so right. It was the blurring of WMD to include nuclear weapons, Rice's talk of mushroom clouds, and the link to 9/11. It was the fear, terror, that Iraq would provide Al Qaeda with nuclear weapons to use agains the United States that allowed Bush to dishonestly sell the war.
November 11, 2005 11:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
"The intelligence was clear in terms of the weapons of mass destruction," Hadley said
It's his story lie and he is sticking to it...
Subsequently, the NIE allowed that "some" experts might disagree but insisted that "most" did not, never mentioning that the DOE's expert analysts had determined the tubes were not suitable for a nuclear weapons program. The NIE also said that Iraq had "begun renewed production of chemical warfare agents"--which the DIA report had left pointedly in doubt.
And nobody on the committee (Messers Graham and Durbin) could make this public at the time because it was only included in the "classified" report? If I remember correctly the claims about the tubes were debunked in the press almost immediately. And the chemical weapons claims were shown to be unsubstantiated by UN weapons inspectors. It seems the info was there for the Senate to seriously question the administrations claims but went along for the ride anyways...what is part of Congress' duties? Oh yeah, oversight...I almost forgot.
November 11, 2005 11:36 AM | Reply | Permalink
Yeah, the fact that we found all kinds of WMDs and nuclear weapons ready for launching all around Iraq within days of the invasion really lends that extra credence to Hadley's statements.
Will we ever live in reality again?
November 11, 2005 1:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
I find it hard to believe that members of Congress didn't know the case for Iraq having WMDs was grossly overstated. Lets not forget the second part, which was never credible, that if Saddam had WMDs he would give them to Al Queada. I hate to say it, but their (the Dems) vote for the war was a act of political cowardace. Blaming misleading intelligance (that most surely knew was bullshit from the begining) is just as bad as Bush blaiming the CIA.
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows
November 11, 2005 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
John Emerson makes a crucial point: the only WMD of real concern in terrorist hands are nukes. If biological weapons are of similar concern, then I would like to hear the Republican explanation for the Reagan and Bush 41 administrations allowing anthrax, etc. to be transferred to Saddam.
November 11, 2005 3:29 PM | Reply | Permalink
Would any American commander-in-chief send troops to battle against an enemy commanded by a man thought to be a madman and who had WMDs ready to launch in retaliation?
November 11, 2005 10:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
"Did Graham and Durbin warn their fellow Senators that the declassified NIE was not to be relied upon?
Does anyone know the answer?"
Hi, Ellen.
Robert Graham did for sure. I remember reading in news stories in 2002-2003 that Graham was livid when he saw the declassified White Paper the CIA had prepared (at his own request, no less). He was basically telling everyone who would listen not to believe everything they read and that they were hearing a lot of things in committee that called the administration's case very much into question. Unfortunately he couldn't actually tell anyone what those things were because most of what the committee knew that the rest of the Senate didn't was classified secret.
Even so, I did some checking back the other day and was disappointed to find that 4 of the 9 Democrats on the committee (Bayh, Edwards, Feinstein and Rockefeller) still voted for HJ Res 114 (authorizing use of military force against Iraq). Presumably they sat in all the same hearings and did have access to the same information that Graham had. Of course at that point it wasn't all that certain that a vote for the resolution was a vote for an actual war. I think a lot of people believed at the time that they were just voting to put some real credibility into saber-rattling, to try and get UN inspectors back into Iraq (which actually worked, BTW). But that's another discussion altogether.
November 13, 2005 6:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Here's a question. Seems like when we talk about the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq, we're actually talking about 3 different things.
1. There was obviously the full, unabridged and unredacted, 90-something page NIE entitled Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction. I was under the impression that this document in its entirety was still classified sectret.
2. Then there was a 28-page "White Paper," that was excerpted from full the NIE, entitled Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, that was in wider circulation before the vote on Joint Resolution 114. That we know was missing a lot of the "if," "but," "however," and "whoah, wait a minute!" language from the original. That one you can download in PDF format from the CIA's web site.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/reports/iraq_wmd/Iraq_Oct_2002.pdf
3. There was a heavily redacted (and we're talking entire pages whited out), declassified version of the full NIE that while still missing a lot of pieces did, when closely scrutinized, reveal enough qualifiers in unredacted footnotes and such to call some of the most spectacular claims the administration was making before the war very much into question.
For the last few days I have been combing news stories, opinion columns and blogs and there seems to be some confusion -- at least in my mind -- regarding exactly what Congress knew (or could have known) and when they knew it (or could have known it). But when people talk about Congress having access to "the NIE" before voting on the Iraq resolution (authorizing use of force), it sounds like they're talking about one or another of these three documents or all three interchangeably. But they are obviously three very different things, so it really matters very much which one you're talking about in that context.
It was my recollection that before the vote on the resolution, most of the Congress had only the white paper (item 2) to reference regarding available intelligence. I didn't recall hearing about item 3 until summer of 2003, after it started to become painfully apparent that Iraq's supposed nuclear weapons programs, Winnebagos of death, and Model Airplanes of the Apocalypse (to name a few) either didn't exist or very much didn't live up to the hype and people started wondering why not. So I am obviously confused.
Can anyone shed any light on this for me?
November 13, 2005 8:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
I find it hard to believe that members of Congress didn't know the case for Iraq having WMDs was grossly overstated.
many, if not most, of them did. But the fact that an argument is "overstated" does not mean that the argument is insufficient, merely that it was exaggerated.
The Bush administration pulled a "topsy-turvy" with classified materials. There is an assumption that "what they can't tell us, because it would compromise sources and methods" supports the policy being advocated by an administration. So when something like the "White Paper" is released, people think that there is even more damning evidence that we can't be told about.
What Bush and his cronies did was exploit that assumption, and used the classification process to hide the information that would lead to doubts about their claims.
And this was especially pernicious because of the timing involved. Every Congresscritter who was thinking about voting against the war did so against a backdrop of having to explain their vote to their constituents who believed the White Paper. But their hands were tied --- sure, there was some "publicly available" information that could throw some of the conclusions of the White Paper in doubt, but the "overstatement" of the case made it virtually impossible to explain how distorted the White Paper really was without diclosing "classified" information.
November 14, 2005 6:31 AM | Reply | Permalink