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Senate report on WMDs: CIA claimed as certainties things that were only inferences
The conclusion of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on the intelligence failures leading up to the Iraq war, of which I’ve read just a small portion, seems to be pretty devastating. It is also very useful in that it clarifies the difference between the state of intelligence that the intelligence community actually had, and the kind of intelligence it was claiming to have and which President Bush relied on. Here are some excerpts:
Conclusion 1. Most of the major key judgments in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, either overstated, or were not supported by, the underlying intelligence reporting. A series of failures, particularly in analytic trade craft, led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence….Here’s a clear example of what the report means by overstatement:
Iraq’s efforts to deceive and evade United Nations weapons inspectors and its inability or unwillingness to fully account for pre-Gulf War chemical and biological weapons and precursors could have led analysts to the reasonable conclusion that Iraq may have retained those materials, but intelligence analysts did not have enough information to state with certainty that Iraq “has” these weapons. [emphasis added.]Here’s another passage:
Similarly, the assessment that “all key aspects—R&D, production, and weaponization—of Iraq’s offensive BW program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War” was not supported by the underlying intelligence provided to the Committee. Intelligence showed that Iraq was renovating or expanding facilities that had been associated with Iraq’s past BW program and was engaged in research that had BW applications, but few reports suggested specifically that the activity was related to BW. Intelligence reports did indicate that Iraq may have had a mobile biological weapons program, but most of the reporting was from a single human intelligence (HUMINT) source to whom the Intelligence Community (1C) never had direct access. It was reasonable for intelligence analysts to be concerned about the potential weapons applications of Iraq’s dual use activities and capabilities. The intelligence reporting did not substantiate an assessment that all aspects of Iraq’s BW program “are” larger and more advanced than before the Gulf War, however.And get this:
The Intelligence Community did not accurately or adequately explain to policymakers the uncertainties behind the judgments in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate…. One of the key failures in analytic trade craft of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) was the failure of the Intelligence Community (1C) to explain the details of the reporting and the uncertainties of both the reliability of some key sources and of intelligence judgments. Intelligence analysts are not only charged with interpreting and assessing the intelligence reporting, but with clearly conveying to policymakers the difference between what intelligence analysts know, what they don’t know, what they think, and to make sure that policymakers understand the difference.So, what if the Bush administration had stated the possible threat of WMDs, but had done so using more careful language? There still would have been a reasonable case for war, but it would have been on more solid ground because stated in terms of true probabilities rather than false certainties. Further, if the administration had not made the terrible error in August 2002 of deciding to seek the UN’s approval for the war, which made it necessary to argue for the war solely on the narrow grounds of existing WMDs rather than on the totality of the Iraq situation including Iraq’s rejection of its obligations under the 1991 ceasefire and the character of its regime, that would have been far better. This is very bad. There’s no getting around it. That it took so long for Tenet to step down as CIA head is, of course, an outrage that rests squarely on Bush’s head. But, as we’ve read, Bush personally liked Tenet and bonded with him, just as he likes and has bonded with Condoleezza Rice, another mediocrity, though not as egregious in her mediocrity as Tenet.
However, there’s a major outstanding question, which I and others have been asking for the last 14 months or so: how is it that every intelligence service and every government on earth that was involved with the Iraq problem made exactly the same mistakes as were made by the CIA and the U.S. government—regarding as certainties things that were only reasonable possibilities? Email entry |