CIA to be Cited for ‘Series of Failures’
Lawmaker assails Iraq intelligence report
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., during a news conference on Capitol Hill Thursday, holds a copy of a CIA report which finds "no credible information" of a meeting between Iraqi intelligence officials and Mohammed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 highjackers.
(NBC News/MSNBC)
WASHINGTON -- A Senate Intelligence Committee report to be released on Friday will sharply criticize the Central Intelligence Agency for pre-war intelligence failures in Iraq, but a senior Senate Democrat charged Thursday that it fails to address evidence suggesting that the Bush administration knowingly exaggerated a purported link between al-Qaida and toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
And while the White House will be spared from criticism in Friday’s report, excerpts of the document obtained by NBC News cite the CIA for a "series of failures, particularly in analytic tradecraft” that “led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence” on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The report will criticize leadership at the CIA, including the agency’s director George Tenet, whose resignation is effective Sunday. The CIA, the report says, "in several significant instances, abused its unique position in the intelligence community" by not sharing information on Iraq's weapons.
As to those false claims about Iraq's nuclear imports in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, the report says Tenet "should have taken the time to read the State of the Union speech and fact check it himself."
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said in a statement that the committee’s report “is an accurate, hard-hitting and well-deserved critique of the CIA,” but charged that it avoids the critical question of the administration’s possible pre-war exaggerations regarding an al-Qaida link to the Iraqi government.
Prague Connection Discounted
As an example of the sort of information he said was not included in the report, Levin cited a CIA statement he received this week saying that there is no credible information that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic city of Prague in April 2001. In fact, the report concludes, CIA analysts “are increasingly skeptical that such a meeting occurred.”
“(The finding) demonstrates that it was the administration, not the CIA, that exaggerated the relations between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida," Levin said at a news conference.
Intelligence suggesting such a meeting was cited repeatedly by administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, as supporting the assertion of such a link.
Cheney most recently said in a June 17 interview with CNBC that the meeting between Atta and the Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague “couldn’t be ruled out.”
But Levin pointed to published reports that the CIA had doubts that the meeting took place as early as December 2001. He also cited a report by the independent Sept. 11 commission stating that information gathered by the FBI placed Atta in the United States during the week of the alleged meeting.
The administration had no immediate response to Levin’s charge. But NBC News has learned that excerpts of the report specifically cite the CIA for critical lapses of action or judgment.
Battle with White House
Democrats on the Intelligence Committee lost their battle to have Friday’s report incorporate the administration’s statements about pre-war intelligence. Instead, a follow-up report examining White House actions will be completed after the November election.
The report will say that intelligence analysts did not question the long-held belief that Iraq had banned weapons of mass destruction and saw ambiguous information as supporting that view, a Senate source told Reuters this week.
The report was also expected to criticize intelligence agencies for using unreliable and inadequate sources.
“They used the thinnest sources to justify the grandest conclusions about weapons of mass destruction and other activity in Iraq,” Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat on the panel, told Reuters.
The main U.S. justification for going to war against Iraq was the view that Baghdad posed a threat due to stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was attempting to develop nuclear weapons. No large stockpiles of banned weapons have been found since the U.S. invasion last year.
Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana, said flawed intelligence resulted from a pre-existing belief that Iraq had banned weapons, pressure to reach conclusions in the face of ambiguity, and that all doubts were resolved in favor of the pre-existing beliefs.
“It’s also important to have a devil’s advocate, somebody playing the contrarian; I’m afraid some of that may have gotten lost,” Bayh told Reuters.
Both Republican and Democratic senators on the committee, which voted on Wednesday to make the report public, said it would sharply criticize the intelligence agencies.
Reform Ideas
Republicans said the report was also meant to be a constructive factor in the debate of how to reform the U.S. intelligence apparatus.
“There’s no question that if you look at the conclusions, they literally beg for changes and reform,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, said.
“It’s very critical of the reasoning that was used by analysts at the CIA,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican, said. “There were a number of failures.”
Some Democrats have written “additional views” to the report which will raise questions about whether the Republican Bush administration, including the White House and Pentagon officials, pressured the CIA to fit its conclusions with the administration’s desire to go to war.
“Go to each of the key elements justifying the invasion of Iraq and you will find a failure of our intelligence agencies to properly assess the evidence given to them and to describe it to policymakers,” Durbin said.
One main area of focus is the process by which the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate was drafted. That key pre-war report, which compiles views of various intelligence agencies, concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Draft portions of that report are submitted to administration officials and various agencies and then the material is adjusted after comments.
“And in the last draft, all of a sudden, this material that has been thought to be erroneous by the CIA or has been said to be wrong, is now back in that report,” a government source familiar with the Senate report said. “That’s the kind of stuff that is problematic.”
Lawmaker assails Iraq intelligence report
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., during a news conference on Capitol Hill Thursday, holds a copy of a CIA report which finds "no credible information" of a meeting between Iraqi intelligence officials and Mohammed Atta, one of the Sept. 11 highjackers.
(NBC News/MSNBC)
WASHINGTON -- A Senate Intelligence Committee report to be released on Friday will sharply criticize the Central Intelligence Agency for pre-war intelligence failures in Iraq, but a senior Senate Democrat charged Thursday that it fails to address evidence suggesting that the Bush administration knowingly exaggerated a purported link between al-Qaida and toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
And while the White House will be spared from criticism in Friday’s report, excerpts of the document obtained by NBC News cite the CIA for a "series of failures, particularly in analytic tradecraft” that “led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence” on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.
The report will criticize leadership at the CIA, including the agency’s director George Tenet, whose resignation is effective Sunday. The CIA, the report says, "in several significant instances, abused its unique position in the intelligence community" by not sharing information on Iraq's weapons.
As to those false claims about Iraq's nuclear imports in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, the report says Tenet "should have taken the time to read the State of the Union speech and fact check it himself."
Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said in a statement that the committee’s report “is an accurate, hard-hitting and well-deserved critique of the CIA,” but charged that it avoids the critical question of the administration’s possible pre-war exaggerations regarding an al-Qaida link to the Iraqi government.
Prague Connection Discounted
As an example of the sort of information he said was not included in the report, Levin cited a CIA statement he received this week saying that there is no credible information that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic city of Prague in April 2001. In fact, the report concludes, CIA analysts “are increasingly skeptical that such a meeting occurred.”
“(The finding) demonstrates that it was the administration, not the CIA, that exaggerated the relations between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida," Levin said at a news conference.
Intelligence suggesting such a meeting was cited repeatedly by administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, as supporting the assertion of such a link.
Cheney most recently said in a June 17 interview with CNBC that the meeting between Atta and the Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague “couldn’t be ruled out.”
But Levin pointed to published reports that the CIA had doubts that the meeting took place as early as December 2001. He also cited a report by the independent Sept. 11 commission stating that information gathered by the FBI placed Atta in the United States during the week of the alleged meeting.
The administration had no immediate response to Levin’s charge. But NBC News has learned that excerpts of the report specifically cite the CIA for critical lapses of action or judgment.
Battle with White House
Democrats on the Intelligence Committee lost their battle to have Friday’s report incorporate the administration’s statements about pre-war intelligence. Instead, a follow-up report examining White House actions will be completed after the November election.
The report will say that intelligence analysts did not question the long-held belief that Iraq had banned weapons of mass destruction and saw ambiguous information as supporting that view, a Senate source told Reuters this week.
The report was also expected to criticize intelligence agencies for using unreliable and inadequate sources.
“They used the thinnest sources to justify the grandest conclusions about weapons of mass destruction and other activity in Iraq,” Sen. Richard Durbin, an Illinois Democrat on the panel, told Reuters.
The main U.S. justification for going to war against Iraq was the view that Baghdad posed a threat due to stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons and was attempting to develop nuclear weapons. No large stockpiles of banned weapons have been found since the U.S. invasion last year.
Sen. Evan Bayh, a Democrat from Indiana, said flawed intelligence resulted from a pre-existing belief that Iraq had banned weapons, pressure to reach conclusions in the face of ambiguity, and that all doubts were resolved in favor of the pre-existing beliefs.
“It’s also important to have a devil’s advocate, somebody playing the contrarian; I’m afraid some of that may have gotten lost,” Bayh told Reuters.
Both Republican and Democratic senators on the committee, which voted on Wednesday to make the report public, said it would sharply criticize the intelligence agencies.
Reform Ideas
Republicans said the report was also meant to be a constructive factor in the debate of how to reform the U.S. intelligence apparatus.
“There’s no question that if you look at the conclusions, they literally beg for changes and reform,” Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, said.
“It’s very critical of the reasoning that was used by analysts at the CIA,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss, a Georgia Republican, said. “There were a number of failures.”
Some Democrats have written “additional views” to the report which will raise questions about whether the Republican Bush administration, including the White House and Pentagon officials, pressured the CIA to fit its conclusions with the administration’s desire to go to war.
“Go to each of the key elements justifying the invasion of Iraq and you will find a failure of our intelligence agencies to properly assess the evidence given to them and to describe it to policymakers,” Durbin said.
One main area of focus is the process by which the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate was drafted. That key pre-war report, which compiles views of various intelligence agencies, concluded that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction.
Draft portions of that report are submitted to administration officials and various agencies and then the material is adjusted after comments.
“And in the last draft, all of a sudden, this material that has been thought to be erroneous by the CIA or has been said to be wrong, is now back in that report,” a government source familiar with the Senate report said. “That’s the kind of stuff that is problematic.”
