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| Senior US intelligence analyst defends pre-war Iraq data |
| 2003-11-29 |
| A top U.S. intelligence analyst who supervised the production of the U.S. government’s key prewar findings on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs says he believes those conclusions were sound, even though many have not been validated. Stuart A. Cohen, the vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, a body of senior intelligence analysts which advises CIA Director George J. Tenet, argued in an article Friday that with all the evidence the U.S. government possessed, "no reasonable person could have ... reached any conclusions or alternative views that were profoundly different from those that we reached." Cohen was the acting chairman of the council when he oversaw the production of a National Intelligence Estimate summarizing U.S. evidence on Iraq’s alleged weapons programs. Distributed in October 2002, it judged that Iraq had prohibited biological and chemical weapons and missiles and was producing more. It also concluded that Iraq had a nuclear weapons program but did not have a finished weapon, while noting the State Department’s intelligence branch dissented from that view. "We have re-examined every phrase, line, sentence, judgment and alternative view in this 90-page document and have traced their genesis completely," Cohen wrote on the op-ed page of The Washington Post. "I believed at the time the estimate was approved for publication, and still believe now, that we were on solid ground in how we reached the judgments we made," he said. A longer version of Cohen’s defense was posted on the CIA’s web site Friday afternoon. Only a small portion of the classified National Intelligence Estimate was made public, in July. Last year, as the estimate was circulated within the government, the CIA released an unclassified paper that summarized its key points. The estimate’s findings served as a foundation for the Bush administration’s case for war. In his article, Cohen stayed away from discussing any divide between the U.S. intelligence community’s judgments on Iraq and the way President George W. Bush and his administration characterized these conclusions to the public. Some Democrats have said the administration exaggerated what the intelligence community knew, ignoring uncertainties as it tried to persuade the world to support the war. Cohen did acknowledge some uncertainties, but did not speak to the politics of the issue. "There is a reason that the October 2002 review of Iraq’s WMD programs is called a National Intelligence ESTIMATE and not a National Intelligence FACTBOOK," he said. "On almost any issue of the day that we face, hard evidence will only take intelligence professionals so far. Our job is to fill in the gaps with informed analysis." Cohen also set out to correct what he describes as myths that have emerged about the intelligence estimate on Iraq. The estimate made no recommendation on whether to go to war, he says. It relied on intelligence reports not from a single source, but many. So far, weapons hunters in Iraq have found no finished chemical or biological weapons, but what they interpret as possible signs of a program to ramp up production of biological weapons on short notice. They also describe an Iraqi intention to acquire prohibited long-range missiles. Cohen said solid evidence of Iraq’s weapons programs may yet be found. "Finding physically small but extraordinarily lethal weapons in a country that is larger than the state of California would be a daunting task even under far more hospitable circumstances," he says. Cohen, a 30-year veteran of the CIA, also worries that in the face of criticism, intelligence analysts will become averse to reaching - and pronouncing - conclusions on a given issue unless they have "ironclad evidence," something in short supply in the murky intelligence world. "Fundamentally, the intelligence community increasingly will be in danger of not connecting the dots until the dots have become a straight line," he wrote. Still, Cohen acknowledged the possibility the prewar judgments on Iraq were inaccurate. "If we eventually are proven wrong - that is, that there were no weapons of mass destruction and the WMD programs were dormant or abandoned - the American people will be told the truth; we would have it no other way," he said. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |
| #8 More Icecold ass kick'n. Folks we've got a poster that bears watching. Rantburg! |
| Posted by: Lucky 2003-11-30 1:07:55 AM |
| #7 The article says 'reasonable person', Ship. Does't apply to the people you listed. Neither does the word "rational". |
| Posted by: Old Patriot 2003-11-29 6:41:42 PM |
| #6 "no reasonable person could have ... reached any conclusions or alternative views that were profoundly different from those that we reached." Babs? Dr. Dean? 'Lil Steevey? Teddy the Float? Molly (the Smithy) Ivan? |
| Posted by: Shipman 2003-11-29 12:43:31 PM |
| #5 Interesting and good to see this unusual step. The country could use a lot more educational and substantive PR from the administration. The "debate" concerning intel, like most of the discussion on the war, has been extremely sophomoric and mostly substance-free. As noted in a comment above, the burden of proof and risk in this situation was on Iraq, both legally and more importantly strategically. The US has no obligation to bare its throat to psychos and low-lifes known to be dangerous and hostile merely because it can't provide ironclad advance proof of a threat. In that connection, there's a typically amusing and off-base article by Pincus in the WaPo on intel and pre-emption. As usual, the simple logic of pre-emption is mangled beyond recognition, and again the burden is absurdly placed on the target (us) instead of the perpetrator (them). There are even people quoted who cooperate in standing the world on its head -- you see, if we can't be confident of the precision of our intel, we can't use pre-emption. Wrong! Naturally we want the best possible intel, and the Iraq intel must be subjected to rigorous review (apparently it has already, at least to some extent), but as the Cohen column implies but doesn't state clearly enough, intel is fallible and people have to stop pretending that we can attain well-founded certainty on a regular basis. The logic of pre-emption is precisely the reverse of that implied in the WaPo piece. Uncertainty about a serious and probable but incompletely understood threat LOWERS the threshhold for actionable intel, it doesn't raise it. Uncertainty -- deriving from imperfect or incomplete intel -- is precisely the BASIS for pre-emption. In an era of catastrophic WMD technologies in the reach of states or groups not amenable to the usual deterrence, pre-emption is the prudent recourse when intentions or precise capabilities cannot be assessed. Tony Cordesman's work is cited in the WaPo article -- he's to be taken seriously, and it's hard to believe he doesn't understand the pre-emption logic. But who knows. It's deplorable how vapid and upside down the "debate" on these matters is, as typified by the WaPo article. This Cohen column should just be the start on injecting some logic and reality into the situation -- these are life and death matters, after all. Sorry for the rant, but this is "Rantburg" after all, and I haven't had my coffee yet .... |
| Posted by: IceCold 2003-11-29 10:13:23 AM |
| #4 Fissible uranium U235 is great for producing nukes but there are better choices for producing dirty bombs. |
| Posted by: JFM 2003-11-29 7:51:31 AM |
| #3 I care about R&D programs as well as production WMDs. A small quantity of weaponized anthrax or nerve gas could be a major problem if it was transferred to Ansar al Islam or any other terror group. So too would a relatively small amount of fissible uranium ... say, enough to make a dirty bomb or two. It may be many years, if ever, before we know for sure what happened to the WMD that Hussein did deploy in the 90s. But one thing McKay's interim report makes clear is that they were trying to keep a research program going and that they were trying in particular to make advances in biological substances and in acquiring some nuclear capabilities. I was and am actually more concerned, in the short run, about the results of these programs getting out to terror groups than I was about production quantities of armed warheads. Those would be awful if used, of course, but it is harder to hide a full manufacturing program than a few mobile labs. |
| Posted by: rkb 2003-11-29 5:58:48 AM |
| #2 Whether Saddam actually had them or not, he made a show of having them, and did his best to make us believe he did. All the games he played with the UN over the last 12 years, that ALONE legally justified the war, as noted by 1441. In any event, Iraq is better off without Saddam, and we are better off without him as well. Even the French are better off without Saddam, although their oil stock will take a hit. |
| Posted by: Ben 2003-11-29 4:37:52 AM |
| #1 I could care less about WMD. UNLESS they actually had them. Then that means, ME IN TROUBLE. Thank's GW. You did good. |
| Posted by: Lucky 2003-11-29 1:38:21 AM |