Find, Fix, Finish (16 page)
Authors: Aki Peritz,Eric Rosenbach
“In preparing to argue the case for war, we wanted to cover three main areas: the threat of WMD, the Iraq-al-Qaeda terrorist connection, and human rights,” recalled Wilkerson. “The human rights portion was clear-cut. For the other two sections, we received a 48-page paper from Scooter Libby and the Vice President’s Office on WMD and a 25-page paper from the CIA on the terrorist portion.”
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According to George Tenet, the CIA drafted only the terrorism section of the speech after Powell “promptly dismissed” a forty-page document “of unknown origin” provided by Scooter Libby and the vice president’s office. “They kept suggesting language so far over the top (for example, suggesting possible Iraqi-9/11 connections),” wrote Tenet in his memoirs, “that I finally pulled aside Phil Mudd, the then deputy chief of our Counterterrorism Center, and told him to write the terrorism piece himself.”
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According to George Tenet, the CIA drafted only the terrorism section of the speech after Powell “promptly dismissed” a forty-page document “of unknown origin” provided by Scooter Libby and the vice president’s office. “They kept suggesting language so far over the top (for example, suggesting possible Iraqi-9/11 connections),” wrote Tenet in his memoirs, “that I finally pulled aside Phil Mudd, the then deputy chief of our Counterterrorism Center, and told him to write the terrorism piece himself.”
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Before building his presentation, Powell asked Tenet to make sure every fact had “three, preferably four, independently corroborating sources.”
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After reading the forty-eight-page paper from the vice president’s office, however, Powell realized that the paper’s intelligence lacked corroboration. In fact, the document had no sources at all.
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After reading the forty-eight-page paper from the vice president’s office, however, Powell realized that the paper’s intelligence lacked corroboration. In fact, the document had no sources at all.
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Despite the rewrite, “Colin was really uncomfortable with the CIA-PROVIDED intelligence on al-Qaeda’s connections to Baghdad as well,” recalled Wilkerson. “‘This is nothing more than a genealogy,’ he said, ‘like something from the book of Genesis. This is not intelligence. It’s a chronological history of potential contacts between potential terrorists and the Mukhabarat
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in Iraq, and there’s no solid evidence.’ Colin and I discussed the information, and he decided that he wasn’t going to argue the connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq. There just wasn’t enough evidence.”
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in Iraq, and there’s no solid evidence.’ Colin and I discussed the information, and he decided that he wasn’t going to argue the connection between al-Qaeda and Iraq. There just wasn’t enough evidence.”
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Tenet was also skeptical of the information provided by the vice president’s office, rejecting a great deal of the draft as exaggerated.
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“Much of our time in the run-up to the speech was spent taking out material, including much that had been added by the policy community after the draft left the agency, that we and the Secretary’s staff judged to have been unreliable,” McLaughlin later stated.
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“Much of our time in the run-up to the speech was spent taking out material, including much that had been added by the policy community after the draft left the agency, that we and the Secretary’s staff judged to have been unreliable,” McLaughlin later stated.
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Because of all these doubts, Powell instructed his speechwriter, Lynne Davidson, to strike all information about the al-Qaeda–Iraq connection from the speech, and instead include information from the October 2002 Iraq national intelligence estimate. “We didn’t know at the time how flawed that NIE was,” claimed Wilkerson.
While Davidson rewrote the speech, the rest of the team selected graphics and photos for inclusion in the secretary’s presentation. In a February 1 meeting with advisers at CIA headquarters,
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Powell, Wilkerson, McLaughlin, and other intelligence officials were selecting aerial photographs and architectural sketches when Tenet interrupted the meeting.
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“George walked into the room and said, with a grin on his face, ‘We have learned we have a source who can provide us with contacts for the [al-Qaeda] chemical and biological weapons training in Iraq,’” said Wilkerson. “‘We have training locations, descriptions, and names.’ The Secretary asked him if this was corroborated and certain, and George said ‘yes.’ After some conversation, the Secretary asked us to refashion his remarks again to include the al-Qaeda–Iraq relationship. It wasn’t until months after the presentation that we learned that this source was al-Libi.”
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Powell, Wilkerson, McLaughlin, and other intelligence officials were selecting aerial photographs and architectural sketches when Tenet interrupted the meeting.
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“George walked into the room and said, with a grin on his face, ‘We have learned we have a source who can provide us with contacts for the [al-Qaeda] chemical and biological weapons training in Iraq,’” said Wilkerson. “‘We have training locations, descriptions, and names.’ The Secretary asked him if this was corroborated and certain, and George said ‘yes.’ After some conversation, the Secretary asked us to refashion his remarks again to include the al-Qaeda–Iraq relationship. It wasn’t until months after the presentation that we learned that this source was al-Libi.”
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Davidson and Wilkerson spent the next thirty-six hours finalizing Powell’s speech. The entire team then flew to New York City and set up a mock UN room, where Powell practiced his presentation. Around 10:30 on the evening of February 4 at the conclusion of his final practice round, Secretary Powell sat down for a break. Tenet sat directly behind him.
According to Wilkerson, “The Secretary turned his head slightly and said to George, ‘You stand behind everything, Mr. DCI?’ George replied ‘yes,’ that it was the best they had. ‘I’ll have to stand before my oversight committees in the Congress and explain why if it isn’t.’”
The following morning, before the UN, Powell argued for the necessity of invading Iraq; Tenet again sat directly behind him. In his speech, which lasted approximately an hour and a half, he outlined Iraq’s history of hiding weapons material and thwarting inspections; provided intelligence concerning Iraq’s biological, chemical, and nuclear weapons program; and described the links between al-Qaeda and Iraq.
Arguing that Iraq had trained al-Qaeda operatives in chemical weapons, Secretary Powell referenced intelligence gleaned from al-Libi’s confessions:
I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to al-Qaeda. Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate it to you now as he, himself, described it.This senior al-Qaeda terrorist was responsible for one of al-Qaeda’s training camps in Afghanistan.His information comes firsthand from his personal involvement at senior levels of al-Qaeda. He says bin Laden and his top deputy in Afghanistan, deceased al-Qaeda leader Mohammed Atef, did not believe that al-Qaeda labs in Afghanistan were capable enough to manufacture these chemical or biological agents. They needed to go somewhere else. They had to look outside of Afghanistan for help. Where did they go? Where did they look? They went to Iraq.
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After Powell made the case, the American team promptly returned to Washington. “He [Powell] gave everyone who worked on the speech an award,” said Wilkerson. “I told him I didn’t want one. I didn’t think the speech was as powerful as it needed to be.”
The secretary’s speech received generally favorable reviews. For many Americans, even those skeptical of the case for declaring war, Powell provided the Bush administration the political cover for the necessity of military action against Iraq. Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle wrote a press release that said Powell made a “powerful and compelling case about Iraq’s failure to comply with its obligation to disarm.”
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Other Democratic lawmakers found the presentation “compelling.”
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“The evidence proves that Saddam Hussein has a loaded gun pointed at the civilized world,” stated House Speaker Dennis Hastert. “It is time to take that loaded gun away from this evil tyrant.”
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Other Democratic lawmakers found the presentation “compelling.”
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“The evidence proves that Saddam Hussein has a loaded gun pointed at the civilized world,” stated House Speaker Dennis Hastert. “It is time to take that loaded gun away from this evil tyrant.”
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Other lawmakers remained skeptical about the necessity of an invasion. “There are more immediate threats to security around the globe,” argued West Virginia senator Robert Byrd.
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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who otherwise believed that Iraq must disarm, said, “The question is whether war now is the only way to rid Iraq of these deadly weapons. I do not believe it is.”
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House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who otherwise believed that Iraq must disarm, said, “The question is whether war now is the only way to rid Iraq of these deadly weapons. I do not believe it is.”
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Powell’s performance received mixed reviews from other countries. “The clear and present danger posed by Saddam’s regime requires a united response from the community of democracies,” wrote the foreign ministers of Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Macedonia, Romania, Slovakia, and Slovenia in support of Powell’s presentation and US policies toward Iraq.
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“Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values.”
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Britain and Spain also strongly supported Powell’s presentation. British foreign minister Jack Straw called the presentation “powerful,” and Spanish foreign minister Ana Palacio found the evidence Powell presented “compelling.”
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“Our countries understand the dangers posed by tyranny and the special responsibility of democracies to defend our shared values.”
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Britain and Spain also strongly supported Powell’s presentation. British foreign minister Jack Straw called the presentation “powerful,” and Spanish foreign minister Ana Palacio found the evidence Powell presented “compelling.”
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France and Germany remained skeptical, arguing that they needed more time to review the evidence. Both countries reiterated their preference for strengthening weapons inspections as a critical next step. “The use of force can only be a final recourse,” said French foreign minister Dominique de Villepin. “We must move on to a new stage and further strengthen the inspections.”
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German foreign minister Joschka Fischer concurred: “The dangers of a military action and its consequences are plain to see. We must continue to seek a peaceful solution to this crisis.”
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German foreign minister Joschka Fischer concurred: “The dangers of a military action and its consequences are plain to see. We must continue to seek a peaceful solution to this crisis.”
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No matter. The US continued to move forward with preparations to invade Iraq. On March 16, during a conference in the Azores, President Bush and the leaders of Great Britain, Portugal, and Spain announced that Iraq had twenty-four hours to fulfill all previous UN resolutions for disarmament and come into full compliance with UNSC Resolution 1441, which had been adopted in November 2002. Iraq failed to act accordingly. In response, President Bush authorized air strikes on targets around Baghdad on March 19. When Iraq did not take action again, US-led coalition forces launched nine hours of bombing and missile strikes, and ground forces entered Iraq. Operation Iraqi Freedom had begun.
Over the following weeks, US-led coalition troops marched to Baghdad, encountering less opposition from Iraqi troops than initially anticipated. On April 9, coalition troops entered Baghdad and pulled down a large statue of Saddam Hussein in celebration. Coalition troops had successfully taken Baghdad; however, they had uncovered no weapons of mass destruction along the way.
The search for alternate explanations was on. “As it became increasingly clear that the US forces in Iraq were unlikely to find any WMD stockpiles or any substantial nuclear program,” explained Wilkerson, “the Bush Administration began to search for ways to explain its errors. The principal response the administration came up with was that Saddam Hussein had every intention of stockpiling WMD once the sanctions were lifted and the international focus was off.”
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In the meantime, Tenet and McLaughlin made calls to Powell and his deputy, Richard Armitage, about Powell’s UN presentation. “We got several things right in that speech,” recalled McLaughlin. “We were correct about Saddam Hussein’s intent—he wanted to use the threat of nuclear weapons to deter Iran. And, we were right about the delivery systems. Iraq was in violation of the UN agreements—they had illicit weapons systems.”
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However, McLaughlin continued, “What we were wrong on was the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. They were not there. We had never said they had nuclear weapons—only that they might be able to obtain them in 5–7 years. And the al-Qaeda–Iraq connection had never been strong. The CIA produced two reports on the connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq and both concluded there was no operational relationship between them.”
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However, McLaughlin continued, “What we were wrong on was the stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. They were not there. We had never said they had nuclear weapons—only that they might be able to obtain them in 5–7 years. And the al-Qaeda–Iraq connection had never been strong. The CIA produced two reports on the connections between al-Qaeda and Iraq and both concluded there was no operational relationship between them.”
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During this same period, the CIA commenced a six-month internal investigation into prewar intelligence collection and analysis. “In June when it was becoming increasingly clear that we were not going to find any WMD in Iraq, [the CIA] put fifteen of our sharpest people in a room together and asked them to look at what went wrong,” said McLaughlin. “They reviewed every report, every email going day-by-day, report-by-report and did a scrub of everything. In January 2004, they presented their final report documenting our errors and tracing them back so that we could better understand why they occurred.”
“The first thing that collapsed was the nuclear program,” Wilkerson said. “The information about the mobile labs was the last to collapse in August. But from about late April until June, evidence began to surface that there was some dissent on the verifiability of al-Libi’s information.”
As al-Libi languished in Egyptian custody, intelligence analysts from the CIA and DIA disagreed about the validity of his statements. “Well after Secretary Powell’s UN presentation, I learned that there was a DIA report that consisted of that agency’s dissent on the al-Libi interrogation,” said Wilkerson. “When we asked CIA officials why this DIA dissent wasn’t brought to our attention previously, the official answer was ‘a computer glitch.’ The CIA claimed that the file wasn’t properly coded so they weren’t able to find it in the system.”
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According to Wilkerson, no DIA representatives were included in Powell’s preparation sessions.
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Other senior intelligence officials have reported, however, that senior DIA representatives in fact reviewed Powell’s speech and did not object to including information provided by al-Libi.
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Other senior intelligence officials have reported, however, that senior DIA representatives in fact reviewed Powell’s speech and did not object to including information provided by al-Libi.
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As the search for Iraqi WMD continued fruitlessly into the summer of 2003, the Senate launched a unified and bipartisan oversight effort to investigate the quality, reasonableness, and objectivity of prewar intelligence. As the situation in Iraq rapidly deteriorated and the WMD search failed to uncover anything of significance, the Bush administration attempted to head off these inquiries with a full-throated defense of the policy decisions. In late October, undersecretary of defense for policy Douglas Feith sent SSCI a classified report,
Summary of Body of Intelligence on Iraq-Al-Qaeda Contacts (1990–2003),
that outlined fifty prewar links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime.
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Summary of Body of Intelligence on Iraq-Al-Qaeda Contacts (1990–2003),
that outlined fifty prewar links between al-Qaeda and Saddam Hussein’s regime.
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The report was originally produced by a small group of intelligence analysts in a project called the Policy Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) that became generically known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP). It was founded by Feith and deputy defense secretary Paul Wolfowitz in September 2002, and headed by Feith until its dissolution in mid-2003. Established to provide the Bush administration policymakers with analysis of “raw” intelligence—intelligence that the IC had neither completely vetted nor analyzed—the OSP was controversial. Composed of Pentagon policy and intelligence analysts, the OSP produced assessments that contradicted analysis of the greater intelligence community about the relationship between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda.
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