Intelligence Was Accurate; Administration Was Not

The Senate Intelligence Committee, on which I serve, recently released a bipartisan report that throws a bucket of cold water on the conventional wisdom that “pre-war intelligence on Iraq was way off.” That view is only half right because half of the key intelligence was wrong but the critically important other half was accurate.

The Administration’s case for war essentially had two parts: Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and, more importantly, Saddam Hussein was an ally of al-Qaeda and might give weapons of mass destruction to those terrorists who attacked us on September 11.

On the first point, the Intelligence Community was concerned that Saddam had chemical and biological weapons and was seeking nuclear weapons – but that intelligence was wrong.

On the key second point, though, the Intelligence Community had it right. As the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report documents, there was no relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, and the Intelligence Community expressed its serious doubts about the extent of such a relationship before the war.

To make the case for war with Iraq, the Bush Administration made statements that were not supported by the Intelligence Community in order to associate Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda in the public mind. The Administration repeatedly suggested that the lead 9/11 hijacker met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague shortly before 9/11 and alleged that Iraq had provided al-Qaeda with training in poisons and gases. The President made the connection directly in September 2002 when he said “you can't distinguish between al Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.”

That drumbeat by the Administration was a driving force that convinced the Congress and the American people to go to war. When the war began, 7 out of 10 Americans believed that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks.

The Intelligence Committee’s report makes clear that the CIA and the Intelligence Community were highly dubious about the Administration’s claims of a Saddam-al Qaeda relationship at the time the Administration was making them. For example, the CIA stated in June 2002 that “the ties between Saddam and bin Ladin appear much like those between rival intelligence services.” The CIA assessed in January 2003 that Saddam “has viewed Islamic extremists operating inside Iraq as a threat” and stated that “the relationship between Saddam and bin Ladin appears to more closely resemble that of two independent actors trying to exploit each other.”

The Administration continues to misrepresent the facts, suggesting to this day that a relationship existed between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

Vice President Cheney was recently asked whether the lead 9/11 hijacker had met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague. The Vice President responded, “We don’t know.” Yet the Intelligence Community does not believe such a meeting took place, and the bipartisan Senate report concluded that post-war findings confirm “no such meeting occurred.”

Secretary of State Rice recently stated: “There were ties between Iraq and al-Qaeda.” The bipartisan report, however, concluded “Saddam Hussein was distrustful of al-Qaeda and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime, refusing all requests from al-Qaeda to provide material or operational support.”

Likewise, President Bush claimed in August that Saddam Hussein “had relations with Zarqawi,” referring to an al-Qaeda terrorist who was recently killed in Iraq. The CIA, however, had stated definitively in October 2005 that Saddam’s regime “did not have a relationship, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi and his associates.” Saddam’s regime, in fact, had tried to capture Zarqawi before the war.

It is vital that we never have another intelligence failure like the failure relative to Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. To that end we have restructured the entire Intelligence Community.

It is also critical that we hold policymakers accountable for what they do with the intelligence they receive. It would be easier and more comforting to believe that the intelligence on Iraq was simply wrong. But the truth is that the intelligence on Iraq and al-Qaeda was accurate, but the way the Administration used that intelligence was not.