CIA Intelligence
Reports Seven
Months Before 9/11 Said
Iraq Posed No Threat To U.S.
By Jason Leopold
21 September, 2005
Countercurrents.org
CIA Director George Tenet testified before
Congress in February 2001 that Iraq posed no immediate threat to the
United States or to other countries in the Middle East.
But immediately
after the terrorist attacks on 9-11, which the Bush administration has
said Iraq is partially responsible for, the President and his advisers
were already making a case for war against Iraq without so much as providing
a shred of evidence to back up their allegations that Iraq and its former
President, Saddam Hussein, helped al-Qaida hijackers plan the catastrophe.
It was then, after
the 9-11 attacks, that intelligence reports from the CIA radically changed
from previous months, which said Iraq posed no immediate threat to the
U.S., to now show Iraq had a stockpile of chemical and biological weapons
and was in hot pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration seized
upon the reports to build public support for the war and used the information
to eventually justify a preemptive strike against the country last March.
Lawmakers in Washington,
D.C. are now investigating whether the intelligence information gathered
by the CIA was accurate or whether the Bush administration manipulated
and or exaggerated the intelligence to make a case for war.
In just seven short
months, beginning as early as February 2001, Bush administration officials
said Iraq went from being a threat only to its own people to posing
an imminent threat to the world. Indeed, in a Feb. 12, 2001 interview
with the Fox News Channel Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said:
Iraq is probably not a nuclear threat at the present time.
But Rumsfeld testified
before the House Armed Services Committee on Sept. 18, 2002 that Iraq
is close to acquiring the materials needed to build a nuclear bomb.
Some have
argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent -- that Saddam
is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons, Rumsfeld
testified before the committee .
I would not
be so certain
He has, at this moment, stockpiles chemical and
biological weapons, and is pursuing nuclear weapons.
Rumsfeld never offered
any evidence to support his claims, but his dire warnings of a nuclear
catastrophe caused by Saddam Hussein was enough to convince most lawmakers,
both Democrat and Republican, that Saddams Iraq was doomed. Shortly
after his remarks before the House Armed Services Committee, Congress
passed a resolution authorizing President Bush to use all appropriate
means to remove Saddam from power.
However, intelligence
reports released by the CIA in 2001 and 2002 and more than 100 interviews
top officials in the Bush administration, such as Secretary of State
Colin Powell, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary
Paul Wolfowitz, gave to various Senate and Congressional committees
and media outlets prior to 9-11 show that the U.S. never believed Saddam
Hussein to be an imminent threat other than to his own people.
Moreover, the CIA
reported in February 2001 that Iraq was probably pursuing
chemical and biological weapons programs but that it had no direct evidence
that Iraq actually had actually obtained such weapons.
We do not
have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since (Operation)
Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs, although given its past
behavior, this type of activity must be regarded as likely, CIA
director Tenet said in a agency report to Congress on Feb 7, 2001.
We assess
that since the suspension of (United Nations) inspections in December
of 1998, Baghdad has had the capability to reinitiate both its (chemical
and biological weapons) programs
without an inspection monitoring
program, however, it is more difficult to determine if Iraq has done
so.
Moreover,
the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN at known
and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating, according
to the 2001 CIA report. Having lost this on-the-ground access,
it is more difficult for the UN or the US to accurately assess the current
state of Iraqs WMD programs.
Ironically, in the
February 2001 report, Tenet said Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaida terrorist
network remain the single greatest threat to U.S. interests here and
abroad. Tenet eerily describes in the report a scenario that six months
later would become a reality.
Terrorists
are also becoming more operationally adept and more technically sophisticated
in order to defeat counter-terrorism measures. For example, as we have
increased security around government and military facilities, terrorists
are seeking out "softer" targets that provide opportunities
for mass casualties. Employing increasingly advanced devices and using
strategies such as simultaneous attacks, the number of people killed
Usama bin Ladin and his global network of lieutenants and associates
remain the most immediate and serious threat. Since 1998, Bin Ladin
has declared all U.S. citizens legitimate targets of attack. As shown
by the bombing of our embassies in Africa in 1998 and his Millennium
plots last year, he is capable of planning multiple attacks with little
or no warning, Tenet said.
However, Tenet only
briefly discussed the al-Qaida threat and devoted the bulk of his testimony
on how to deal with the threat of rogue countries such as North Korea,
Syria, Iran and Iraq. Six months later, Bin Laden was identified as
the mastermind behind 9-11.
Between 1998 and
early 2002, the CIAs reports on the so-called terror threat offered
no details on what types of chemical and biological weapons that Iraq
obtained.
But that changed
dramatically in October 2002 when the CIA issued another report that
this time included details of Iraqs alleged vast chemical and
biological weapons.
The October 2002
CIA report into Iraqs WMD identifies sarin, mustard gas, VX and
numerous other chemical weapons that the CIA claims Iraq had been stockpiling
over the years, in stark contrast to earlier reports by Tenet that said
the agency had no evidence to support such claims. And unlike testimony
Tenet gave a year earlier, in which he said the CIA had no direct evidence
of Iraqs WMD programs, the intelligence information in the 2002
report, Tenet said, is rock solid.
This information
is based on a solid foundation of intelligence, Tenet said during
a CIA briefing in February. It comes to us from credible and reliable
sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources.
The CIA would not
comment on the differing reports between 2001 and 2002 or how the agency
was able to obtain such intelligence information and corroborate it
so quickly.
Still, in early
2001, while hardliners in the Bush administration were privately discussing
ways to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Secretary of State Powell
said the U.S. successfully contained Iraq in the years since
the first Gulf War and that because of economic sanctions placed on
the country Iraq was unable to obtain WMD.
We have been
able to keep weapons from going into Iraq, Powell said during
a Feb 11, 2001 interview with Face the Nation. We have been
able to keep the sanctions in place to the extent that items that might
support weapons of mass destruction development have had some controls
on them
it's been quite a success for ten years
Moreover, during a meeting with Joschka Fischer, the German Foreign
Minister, in February 2001 on how to deal with Iraq, Powell said the
U.N., the U.S. and its allies have succeeded in containing Saddam
Hussein and his ambitions.
Saddams forces
are about one-third their original size. They don't really possess the
capability to attack their neighbors the way they did ten years ago,
Powell said during the meeting with Fischer. Containment has been
a successful policy, and I think we should make sure that we continue
it until such time as Saddam Hussein comes into compliance with the
agreements he made at the end of the (Gulf) war.
Powell added that
Iraq is not threatening America.
Jason Leopold is
the author of the explosive memoir, News Junkie, to be released in the
spring of 2006 by Process/Feral House Books. Visit Leopold's website
at http://www.jasonleopold.com/ for updates.
(C) 2005 Jason Leopold