House Rejects Proposal for Additional Iraq Intelligence Probes
David T Taylor
House Rejects Proposal for Additional Iraq Intelligence Probes
By Ken Guggenheim Associated Press Writer
Published: Jun 26, 2003
WASHINGTON (AP) - The House on Thursday rejected two attempts by
Democratic lawmakers for additional inquiries into the handling of
intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs.
Democrats sought to include the inquiries in a bill authorizing 2004
intelligence activities. That bill, whose details are mostly
classified, was expected to be approved late Thursday or early Friday.
Democrats have questioned whether prewar intelligence was inaccurate
or manipulated to back up President Bush's push for war. Republicans
have said there is no sign of wrongdoing and have accused Democrats of
raising the issue for political reasons.
David T Taylor
The House Intelligence Committee has found that the Bush
Administration
"overstat[ed] the case" concerning the threat from Iraqi weapons of
mass destruction, said ranking member Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA),
describing the Committee's preliminary findings thus far.
"When discussing Iraq's WMD, administration officials rarely included
the caveats and qualifiers attached to the intelligence community's
judgments," said Rep. Harman during the June 25 House debate on the
2004 intelligence authorization act.
"The committee is now investigating whether the intelligence case on
Iraq's WMD was based on circumstantial evidence rather than hard facts
and whether the intelligence community made clear to the policy-makers
and Congress that most of its analytic judgments were based on things
like aerial photographs and Iraqi defector interviews, not hard
facts," said Rep. Harman.
She repeatedly referred to the Committee's activity as an
"investigation" even though that term has been proscribed by Senate
Republicans such as Senate Intelligence Committee chair Sen. Pat
Roberts (R-KS) who say it is "pejorative."
"Iraq did have ties to terrorist groups, but the [House Committee]
investigation suggests that the intelligence linking al Qaeda to Iraq,
a prominent theme in the administration's statements prior to the war,
[was] contradictory, contrary to what was claimed by the
Administration," she said.
"I think it is very important that the committee hold public hearings,
and I have the gentleman from Florida's (Chairman Goss') personal
commitment that we will. I hope our first hearing will occur in July.
Our committee also decided to produce a written, unclassified report
as promptly as possible," she said.
The transcript of the June 25 House floor debate on the 2004
intelligence authorization act is posted here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h062503.html
Rep. Harman's statement begins here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/h062503.html#harman
Meanwhile, "The State Department's intelligence division is disputing
the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion that mysterious trailers
found in Iraq were for making biological weapons, United States
government officials said today," reported Douglas Jehl in the New
York Times.
"In a classified June 2 memorandum, the officials said, the
department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research said it was premature
to conclude that the trailers were evidence of an Iraqi biological
weapons program, as President Bush has done." See:
http://www.nytimes.com/2003/06/26/international/worldspecial/26WEAP.html
Questions about the Administration's presentation of the case for war
against Iraq are not going away and evidence of public frustration
with the closed-door official proceedings to date is beginning to
mount.
The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists this week issued "A call for a
truly public public hearing." See:
http://www.thebulletin.org/issues/2003/wo/0624rothstein.html
"This is no game," said Sen. Robert Byrd (D-WV) on June 24. "For the
first time in our history, the United States has gone to war because
of intelligence reports claiming that a country posed a threat to our
Nation."
"Congress should not be content to use standard operating procedures
to
look into this extraordinary matter. We should accept no substitute
for a full, bipartisan investigation by Congress into the issue of our
prewar intelligence on the threat from Iraq and the use of that
intelligence." See Senator Byrd's remarks here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/s062403.html
ANOTHER LOOK AT THE 2004 HOUSE INTELLIGENCE BILL
The House version of the 2004 intelligence authorization act would
make
it legal for "certain qualified aliens" to receive, possess and
transport "explosive materials" if they are in the United States to
cooperate with the CIA or the United States military (HR 2417, section
332).
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/hr2417.html#332
The otherwise unexplained provision is apparently intended to
facilitate the US training of foreign military or paramilitary forces
by the CIA and the Pentagon.
Another section of the bill instructs the DCI to prepare a report on
"intelligence lessons learned as a result of Operation Iraqi Freedom
(section 344). But no provision is made for an unclassified version
of such a report, observed John Pike of GlobalSecurity.org.
"The Administration would strenuously object if certain high priority
transformational development programs affecting the IC's [intelligence
community's] future collection and research and development strategies
are not authorized as requested," the White House warned in a June 25
statement on the House version of the 2004 intelligence authorization
act.
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/06/hr2417sap.html
The message seems to have been received. The new bill "postures the
United States for the future with a unified overhead imagery
intelligence architecture," House Intelligence Committee chair Rep.
Porter Goss (R-FL) promised later in the day, apparently referring to
the troubled and massively expensive Future Imagery Architecture
program.
NEW RESOURCES ON FISA
A new Congressional Research Service report presents the arguments for
and against pending modifications to the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act, the law that governs the search and surveillance of
suspected foreign intelligence and terrorist targets.
See "Proposed Change to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
(FISA) under S. 113" by Jennifer Elsea, May 19:
http://www.fas.org/irp/crs/RS21472.pdf
An overview of the FISA "before and after the USA Patriot Act" is
provided by FBI special agent Michael J. Bulzomi in the latest issue
of the FBI's Law Enforcement Bulletin. See:
http://www.fbi.gov/publications/leb/2003/june2003/june03leb.htm#page_26
_______________________________________________
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Project on Government Secrecy
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David T Taylor
Jack Straw admits that war dossier was ‘embarrassing’
By Paul Waugh
The Downing Street dossier alleging Iraq could deploy biological
weapons within 45 minutes was re-drafted several times to “present the
best case” against Saddam Hussein, Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary,
admitted yesterday.
In the most detailed government comments to date on the nature of the
September dossier, Mr Straw told the Foreign Affairs Select Committee
that it went through “a number of drafts”.
He denied allegations by the BBC reporter, Andrew Gilligan, the
document had been “sexed up” or “transformed” at the request of Number
10. But Mr Straw did reveal the dossier had “started life” early last
September and had undergone presentational changes, including the
addition of Tony Blair’s foreword making claims about Baghdad’s
weapons capability. “My colleagues suggested there should be a
foreword,” Mr Straw said.
“It went back and forth several times ... it is an iterative process
where various drafts are shared and documents go through all sorts of
drafting. I make comments, officials make comments. “It is not a
question of someone saying ‘this must go back’. It is, here is a
document, does it present the best case of evidence that was being
sourced and adjudicated by others, namely the JIC (Joint Intelligence
Committee)?” he said. Peter Ricketts, the former head of the Joint
Intelligence Committee and now a senior Foreign Office official, also
told the MPs that the JIC “took ownership” of the September dossier
and approved it.
But, when asked directly by Donald Anderson, the chairman of the
committee, if the “ambiguities” of normal intelligence reports had
been “altered”, Mr Ricketts ducked the question. He insisted the JIC
had approved the document in its name.
During his appearance before the select committee, Mr Straw staunchly
defended the September dossier and the dossier produced in February.
He said he had no doubts about the authenticity of the first document,
despite the fact no weapons of mass destruction had been found and
claims about Saddam acquiring nuclear material from Niger were proved
to be forgeries.
“Some of what is in here has been proved by events, none has been
disproved,” he said. It was “nonsense” to suggest the whole burden of
the Government’s case against Saddam rested on the 45 minute claim, he
added. “Neither the Prime Minister nor I have ever used the word
‘immediate’ or ‘imminent’ in relation to the threat posed by Saddam
Hussein. What we talked about in the dossier was a ‘current and
serious threat’ which is very different.” “We didn’t use the phrase
immediate or imminent because it means ... as it were, about to happen
today or tomorrow. We didn’t use that because frankly the evidence
didn’t justify it.” Mr Straw said war was justified by the “bigger
picture” of Saddam’s weapons violations, but he made clear he wanted
to distance himself from the 45-minute claim. —Independent
How Campbell’s staff left their fingerprints on the dossier
“Iraq - Its infrastructure of concealment, deception and
intimidation”, published by the Government in January, was quickly
dubbed the “dodgy dossier” after a Cambridge academic, Dr Glen
Rangwala, pointed out that it had been cobbled together from published
articles and a 12-year-old student thesis. However, what did not
emerge until yesterday was that it was possible to detect the names of
the last four people to have worked on the dossier. The version posted
on the internet carried a “revision log”, easily viewed by those who
know their way around Microsoft Word, showing the last 10 revisions
made to the document. All four of the people named in the log worked
for the Communications Information Centre (CIC), a Downing Street unit
set up under Alastair Campbell, the Prime Minister’s director of
communications, to put the Government’s case for the Iraq war. Around
Whitehall the four have been linked to the dossier ever since it came
out, but Mr Campbell is said to have insisted on appearing before the
parliamentary Foreign Affairs Committee today to clarify their
involvement. How he will explain the electronic evidence is not
clear.The four names - Paul Hamill, John Pratt, Alison Blackshaw and
Murtaza Khan - were put to the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, when he
appeared yesterday. Sir John Stanley, Tory MP for Tonbridge and
Malling, told the committee that Dr Rangwala had informed him just
before the hearing of the detailed “computer trail” for the dossier.
—Independent
David T Taylor
The Central Intelligence Agency has abruptly removed from its web site
published photographs of centrifuge equipment and engineering drawings
hidden in Iraq in 1991 and recently handed over to the Agency by Dr.
Mahdi Shukur Ubaydi, a senior Iraqi nuclear scientist.
The photographs had been featured in a June 26 news release from the
CIA, reposted here in its complete form:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/06/cia062603.html
A notice from Cryptome.org, which spotted the change in the CIA web
site, suggests that the photos were withdrawn because they might have
permitted identification of the product manufacturer. See:
http://cryptome.org/cia-waffle.htm
LEVIN PRESSES CIA ON IRAQI WMD
While most congressional leaders remain politely deferential, not to
say obsequious, towards the Bush Administration on the subject of
Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, Senator Carl Levin (D-MI) is
stepping forward to raise some of the awkward questions others prefer
to ask behind closed doors, if at all.
For example, in a June 26 letter, Senator Levin, the ranking member of
the Senate Armed Services Committee, probed the reported dispute among
intelligence analysts over the significance of the mysterious Iraqi
trailers. CIA and DIA had described the trailers conclusively as
"mobile biological warfare agent production plants." State Department
analysts reportedly demurred.
"Why isn't this dissenting view noted on the CIA's website?" Senator
Levin wanted to know.
Moreover, "Is it standard practice for the CIA to put reports like
this
[on the Iraqi trailers] on its web site? If so, what is the purpose of
doing so? If not, why was an exception made in this case and what was
the purpose of doing so?"
See Senator Levin's June 26 letter here:
http://www.fas.org/irp/congress/2003_cr/levin062603.html
The question of the State Department's dissenting view of the subject
was batted about at a June 26 State Department press briefing:
http://www.fas.org/irp/news/2003/06/dos062603.html
On June 27, Senator Levin "directed his staff on the [Senate Armed
Services] committee to begin an inquiry into the objectivity and
credibility of the intelligence concerning the presence of weapons of
mass destruction in Iraq immediately before the war and the alleged
Iraq-al Qaeda connection, and the effect of such intelligence on
Department of Defense policy decisions, military planning and conduct
of operations in Iraq." See:
pot...@netscape.com
Cryptome.org had via google if you search the term and you select
cache on the page (from Google)
Box Head
wrote: