The White House released internal documents Friday that it said bolstered its case that U.S. intelligence agencies had solid evidence Saddam Hussein was pursuing nuclear weapons several months prior to President Bush’s State of the Union speech.
The documents contained declassified excerpts from an October 2002 “national intelligence estimate” on Iraq that warned, “If left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade.” More ominously, the document added, “If Baghdad acquires sufficient fissile material from abroad, it could make a nuclear weapon within several months to a year.”
National intelligence estimates are compiled by the director of central intelligence, George Tenet, from various intelligence agencies and submitted to the White House through the National Security Council, which is headed by Condoleezza Rice.
Bush has been struggling to fend off criticism of his use in the State of the Union speech of a British intelligence claim that Hussein had tried to buy uranium from Africa for weapons.
The CIA and State Department raised doubts about the British report on Iraqi efforts to buy uranium before it was used by Bush, and the claim was found to be based, in part, on forged documents.
Secretary of State Colin Powell deliberately made no reference to it in his presentation to the United Nations on the Iraqi threat a week after the State of the Union speech.
It is highly unusual for an administration to release excerpts from an intelligence estimate, and the White House has been especially protective of presidential secrecy. The decision to distribute the material suggests the pressure facing the administration to demonstrate that its prewar claims about Iraqi weapons were based on solid information.
The intelligence estimate dwelt heavily on Hussein’s purchase of aluminum tubes and other manufacturing equipment as evidence of a nuclear weapons program.
“Most agencies believe that Saddam’s personal interest in, and Iraq’s aggressive attempts to obtain, high-strength aluminum tubes for centrifuge rotors–as well as Iraq’s attempts to acquire magnets, high-speed balancing machines and machine tools–provide compelling evidence that Saddam is reconstituting uranium enrichment efforts for Baghdad’s nuclear weapons program,” the document said.
Not everyone’s in agreement
Still, the excerpts revealed a split within the administration. The State Department’s intelligence agency found the evidence of an Iraqi nuclear program far less compelling than the intelligence community as a whole, the excerpts showed.
The State Department’s assistant secretary for intelligence and research, whose agency is referred to as INR, agreed that Hussein was “pursuing at least a limited effort” to acquire nuclear weapons.
“The activities we have detected do not, however, add up to a compelling case that Iraq is currently pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated and comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons,” said an excerpt from the State Department. “Iraq may be doing so, but INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment.”
In addition, the Energy Department questioned whether the aluminum tubes that Hussein had purchased were in fact intended for a nuclear program, a question other analysts also have raised. The document noted that the department “agrees that reconstitution of the nuclear program is under way, but assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program.”
Moreover, the head of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, Mohamed ElBaradei, said after the State of the Union address in January that the tubes appeared to be intended for conventional rockets, even though, with modifications, they could be used to enrich uranium.
Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair declared at a joint news conference Thursday that their decision to go to war against Iraq was based on sound intelligence and that neither has doubts that Hussein was pursuing weapons of mass destruction that included nuclear arms.
Except for two abandoned laboratory trailers, U.S. forces occupying Iraq have found no evidence of nuclear weapons or the chemical and biological weapons that Bush cited in his call for war.
The Washington Post reported Friday that the State Department had received copies of the forged documents purporting to show Iraq’s attempted uranium purchase three months before the annual presidential address.
Although it distributed them to the CIA and other government agencies within a few days, the newspaper said, the State Department did not turn them over to UN weapons inspectors for another four months, even though the inspectors had requested them.
Last week, Tenet took the blame for the “mistake” of not requesting the removal of the uranium allegation from the State of the Union address, although this week he said he was not given a copy of the speech beforehand.
In a closed-door hearing this week, according to a report in Friday’s New York Times, senior officials said that Alan Foley, a CIA expert on weapons of mass destruction, testified he was asked by Bob Joseph, the director of proliferation at the National Security Council, whether the president’s address could include a reference to Iraq’s seeking uranium from Niger.
The officials said Foley’s testimony indicated that he told Joseph the CIA was not certain about the credibility of the evidence concerning Niger and recommended that it be taken out of the speech.
The officials said, the Times reported, that, according to Foley, Joseph then asked him if the speech could instead include a reference to British intelligence reports that Iraq was interested in seeking uranium from Africa.
According to intelligence officials, Foley said he told Joseph that the CIA had warned the British that it was not sure about the information.
Assertion on solid ground
The documents released Friday suggest that, as the White House has said, the assertion that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear program was based on sources other than the forged documents.
The excerpts were also unequivocal on the intelligence community’s assessment of Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons potential.
“We assess that Baghdad has begun renewed production of mustard, sarin, GF [cyclosarin] and VX,” one portion said. “An array of clandestine reporting reveals that Baghdad has procured covertly the types and quantities of chemicals and equipment sufficient to allow limited CW agent production hidden within Iraq’s legitimate chemical industry.”
The estimate also claimed that Iraq was rapidly developing biological weapons.
“We judge that all key aspects–R&D [research and development], production and weaponization–of Iraq’s offensive BW [biological warfare] program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the gulf war,” it said.
