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June
27, 2003
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June
27, 2003
Contaiment Was Working
CIA:
Seven Months Before 9/11, the Agency Said Iraq Posed No Threat
to the US
By
JASON LEOPOLD
Seven months before two-dozen or so al-Qaida terrorists
hijacked four commercial airplanes and flew three of the aircrafts
directly into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on September
11, 2001, killing 3,000 innocent civilians, CIA Director George
Tenet, testified before Congress 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 claims 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 the allegations that Iraq and
its former President, Saddam Hussein, was aware of the attacks
or helped the 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 in March even though much of the information
in the CIA report has since been disputed.
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 Saddam's 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.
Two months have passed since the U.S.
invaded Iraq and not a spec of anthrax nor any other deadly chemical
or biological weapon has been found. U.S. military forces have
searched more than 300 sites but have turned up nothing substantial.
Lawmakers are now questioning 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.
However, intelligence reports released
by the CIA 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 an
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 Iraq's 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 CIA's
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 Iraq's alleged vast chemical and biological weapons.
The October 2002 CIA report into Iraq's
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 Iraq's 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."
Saddam's "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," but in a separate interview with ABC's Sam Donaldson
on Feb. 1, 2001, Powell said the U.S. could attack Iraq if "something
occurred to us," which would suggest that the 9-11 terrorist
attacks made Iraq a legitimate target.
Weekend
Edition Features
Alexander
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William
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Harry
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The Pitstop Ploughshares
Lawrence
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WMD: The Most Dangerous Game
Harold
Gould
Saddam and the WMD Mystery
David Krieger
10 Reasons to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
Avia
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The Unholy Alliance in the Occupied Territories
CounterPunch
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Todd Chretien
Return to Sender: Todd Gitlin, the Duke of Condescension
Maria
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Danny Goldberg's Imaginary Kids
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