Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded. Mr. President, in a few hours the Senate will vote on the Byrd-Stevens-Inouye-Warner amendment. That amendment's purpose is to ensure that the new…
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
Mr. President, in a few hours the Senate will vote on the Byrd-Stevens-Inouye-Warner amendment. That amendment's purpose is to ensure that the new national intelligence authority is held accountable to the people's representatives in the Congress. Let me say again, the amendment which I have offered on behalf of myself and Mr. Stevens, Mr. Inouye, and Mr. Warner has a purpose, that purpose being to ensure that the new national intelligence authority, the NID, is held accountable to the people's representatives in the Congress.
Last Friday, I spoke about the Englishmen who spilled their blood to wrest the power of the purse away from
monarchs, over many centuries, in England. Their struggle was enshrined in Article I, section 9 of the U.S. Constitution, which I hold in my hand, the Constitution of the United States--the struggle of Englishmen across many centuries, even prior to 1215 when the barons yielded, the great Magna Carta was agreed to by King John, a mighty monarch. And what does that section 9 of Article I say?
No money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in
Consequence of Appropriations made by Law; and a regular
Statement and Account of the Receipts and Expenditures of all
public Money shall be published from time to time.
Not just some of the moneys, all of the moneys. How then, I ask Senators, can a regular account of public money be kept if the Congress empowers a new intelligence director to spend money without regard to appropriations law and without regard to this Constitution?
This is a debate about power. Make no mistake about it. It is a debate about power and who should wield it--the elected representatives of the people or an unelected, unaccountable bureaucrat nestled deep inside our Nation's intelligence agencies.
It goes to the heart of the balance of power between the executive and the legislative branches of Government. I took an oath to support and defend that Constitution, and I have tried to do that now, I will soon be in my 59th year in government, in politics, in the legislative branches of Government--at the State level and at the national level.
Under the pending bill, the Treasury Secretary is authorized to create appropriations accounts to which the national intelligence director can transfer funds. Get that. We are talking about an unelected bureaucrat who will be able to transfer funds. The Collins- Lieberman bill includes no limits on how those funds can be used.
Let me say, I don't see either of the two managers on the floor but they are listening. I saw Senator Lieberman just a few minutes ago. I am sure he is in the premises here. One of the distinguished persons who is aiding the Governmental Affairs Committee in this connection has nodded in the affirmative. So I am not talking behind Senator Lieberman's back. He is here. He knows very well what I am saying, and I am sure he will be very ready to counter my arguments. I respect him for that.
Let me say again, under the pending bill, the Treasury Secretary is authorized to create appropriations accounts to which the national intelligence director can transfer funds. The Collins-Lieberman bill includes no limits on how those funds can be used once they are transferred. Under current law, the intelligence director would be authorized to transfer up to $3.5 billion from the defense budget, giving this director enormous transfer authority never contemplated by the Congress.
That places the Congress on the defensive. The Congress would have to act retroactively to transfers made by the national intelligence director, allowing the intelligence director to spend funds without adequate oversight by the Congress.
I remind Senators that in 1996, the National Reconnaissance Office-- the Government's spy satellite agency--was discovered to have stashed away billions of dollars into a reserve that was not reported to the Congress. While the proponents of the bill before the Senate argue that the national intelligence director needs strong budget authority to fight the war on terror, Senators should understand that the intelligence director can use that authority for activities that have nothing to do with the war on terror. The intelligence director could use this sweeping transfer authority to circumvent the limitations imposed by the Congress, the elected representatives of the American people. It has happened before, and it will happen again. It can happen again and very likely it will happen again.
Senators Collins and Lieberman have argued that our mandate here today is to implement the 9/11 Commission recommendations and that those recommendations include an intelligence director with strong budget authority. I respectfully submit that our mandate as Senators-- my mandate, at least, as a Senator--first and foremost is to protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
We took an oath to do so, and that mandate supersedes any recommendations put forward by any commission, including the 9/11 Commission. To provide virtually unchecked flexibility to an intelligence director to transfer funds from one account to another would nullify and make meaningless the legislative process of reviewing budget requests from the intelligence agencies. It would nullify and make meaningless congressional decisions about how funds are allocated.
Congressional judgment by elected lawmakers--I am elected; I am one of the elected lawmakers. From time to time I have to go back before the people and see if they want me to continue in this work. Congressional judgment by elected lawmakers would be made subordinate to executive judgments by unelected bureaucrats.
The power of the purse for which our English ancestors spilled their blood and which has protected our democratic institutions and individual rights for centuries would, in a very large measure, pass to the executive branch.
I am saying, in essence, that we need more time to discuss this amendment and to discuss this bill. I don't know what is in the bill. I have read parts of the bill, but I have many other duties to perform, and I think we need more time. This is a major bill. This is the very same thing we ran into when we created the Department of Homeland Security--the very same thing. We are backed up against the wall. The idea is you have to pass this. You have to do it. You have to get behind it. And we find we have a lot of problems with that.
I sought to have the leadership take a little more time on that bill, discuss it, debate it, but the leadership didn't choose to take more time.
It was the very same way with the nefarious resolution that was passed by this Senate on October 11 of 2002 to shift the constitutional power to declare war to a single individual; namely, the President of the United States. I pleaded that we have more time. I pleaded on that same occasion--I think it was with Mr. Lieberman and with the other managers on both sides--please take more time.
Here we are shifting the power. Congress says in article I, section 8, that the Congress shall have the power to declare war. So the Framers of the Constitution did not intend for one man to be able to declare war. The Framers of the Constitution did not intend for one body to put this Nation into a war. It required both bodies. The Constitution says Congress--not just the Senate, not just the House-- Congress, which is a combination of both, Congress shall have power to declare war. So the Framers meant for that very great question to be decided by a huge body of men. It was men in those days, only men in the Congress of the United States; but, of course, we know what ``Congress'' meant--for anybody who serves. It is Congress made up of the elected representatives of the American people. So I have a mandate to listen to the American people. I have a mandate to exercise whatever judgment I have and can bring to bear in my own way to look at these things and to ask questions.
So there we were. We passed it in a big hurry. The leadership on both sides said: Let's get this behind us. I am talking about the resolution that was passed by the U.S. Senate on October 11, 2002, shifting the power, shifting the decision to put this country at war, shifting that decision away from the Congress and handing it over lock, stock, and barrel to one man--the President of the United States. It does not make any difference if he is a Democrat or a Republican, that power is his and will be in the next President's hand. He will have that power, and the next one, if he or she decides to use it. It will be there for them because there is no sunset provision in that resolution terminating that power.
I sought even to have the Congress adopt an amendment which would have provided for a sunset provision in that power so that within a year or at most 2 years--and the circumstances were set forth in my amendment calling for a sunset provision, a termination of handing this power over to any President, Republican or Democrat. Do you know how many votes I got? Well, I got 31 votes, including my own.
I yet am astonished to this very day as to why the Members of the Senate of the United States sought not only to give that power to a President, one man--whether he is Democrat or Republican, that is not the point--shift that power to a President. I said: If we are going to be foolish enough to do that, let's at least have a sunset provision so we can terminate that power. But no, I got 31 votes, including my own-- 31 votes. What a shame that this Senate and the House would give that power to an individual and say: It's yours, take it, keep it until we in the Congress decide to repeal that provision and take it back. How about that. So the sunset provision was turned down.
I asked for more time. Oh, the leadership said: Let's get this behind us. The President said: Get it behind you; we have an election coming. That was the manipulation that was wrought to have that key vote occur just a few days before the national elections in the year 2002.
Why, those Members who were up for reelection, as they voted on that resolution, they certainly thought: If I vote against this, what is it going to do to me and my reelection? People might think I am unpatriotic; I better vote for this; man, I have to be reelected; I have to be reelected; I am going to vote for it; I have some questions about it, but I am going to put all questions aside because we have an election coming here. The leadership said: Put it behind us; let's vote on it, get it behind us.
I said at the time: You will not get this behind you because this President is not going to let you get it behind you. It is in his favor to make you vote before the election. You might vote differently after the election. No, you have to vote before the election. There we were. We did not have time. I pleaded for time, time, wait until after the election, let's wait to hear what the people have to say.
Here again, we are pressed for time. We are going to go out on I believe it is October 8 presumably for the elections, at least until they are over, so we are in a hurry. Let's not wait until after the election; no, let's get this behind us. We have to do what the Commission says. What about the Constitution? We are legislating in a tremendous hurry, and that is not good.
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger in his appearance before the Appropriations Committee said that ought to be put off. You need, I believe he said, 6 or 8 months. I am not sure I am quoting him precisely. In essence, that was his message: Put it off; don't do it in a time before an election; don't do it under the heat that is generated; take your time; this is a measured, measured decision, don't rush it through. Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger showed the committee the names of several other very important dignitaries who, by their experience, see the reasoning all joined in the suggestion that we take our time. But no, we are brushing that aside, and that was the decision on the part of former Secretaries of Defense--for example, Mr. Cohen. It included both Republicans and Democrats urging that we take more time. I think we should take more time here because we are doing some dangerous things in this bill.
My amendment will keep the power of the purse where it belongs, not in the hands of the intelligence community but here in the hands of the people's elected representatives in the Congress. My amendment retains for the Congress the responsibility for deciding how budget accounts for the intelligence director should be structured while allowing the flexibility the Governmental Affairs Committee seeks for the transfer of personnel and funding within the intelligence community. My amendment is an oversight amendment. It guarantees better oversight over the way these funds are going to be spent.
Normally, when we pass an appropriation, we say to Mr. A, who is head of one agency: Here, you take this and you do this, and you do this, and you do this, and you do this, and then come back in a year and tell us what you did; come back in here tell us what you did with our limitations to do this, do this, but don't do this, don't do this. Under those limitations the agency assures Congress he will live up to the mandate, he will do this, he will do this, and he will not do this that Congress said don't do.
Well, that is not going to be the case. This national intelligence director will do whatever he wants to do, and then there will not be those limitations, either, on him or her. He is not going to be elected. He is going to be another bureaucrat--and I do not mean to speak in any derogatory manner concerning bureaucrats because we have to have them--but they are not elected by the people.
All these seats--these chairs, as I call them--were here many years before I came, and they are filled with Members who are elected by the people of their respective States. We have to answer to those people.
This amendment limits the transfer of funds to $100 million or to 5 percent of the Department or Agency budget, whichever is the lesser. Senators should realize that even with the limitations included in this amendment, the intelligence director is granted significant authority to transfer funds. He would still have significant authority. Given the history, though, of abuses of power and the violation of civil liberties that have taken place within our intelligence community, I cannot imagine Senators condoning such sweeping budget transfer authority.
Hear me, Senators. We should take time. We are talking about rushing through a massive change, one which will have some bearing upon this Constitution which we are sworn to support and defend, and yet we are going to do it with our ears closed, our eyes closed, and our voices unheard.
We are being pressured to act fast before we go home on October 8. I cannot imagine Senators condoning such sweeping budget transfer authority. Common sense and history suggest that if one man is given control of our intelligence agencies and one man is given control over funds appropriated to those agencies, abuses can occur, may occur, and in all probability will occur at some point in time. Those abuses may manifest themselves in the violations of civil liberties, your liberties. They may manifest themselves in scandals such as those at Abu Ghraib prison, or they may manifest themselves as they did in the lead-up to the war in Iraq through politicized intelligence. Therein lies a great danger.
The New York Times, on Sunday, wrote a very lengthy article--read it--entitled, ``How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence.''
I ask unanimous consent that the article from the New York Times be reprinted in the Record at the close of my remarks.
Mr. President, the article explores how senior administration officials, including President Bush and Vice President Cheney, ``repeatedly failed to fully disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear scientists'' when asserting in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. The article reads:
They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence
assessments . . .
It goes on to say:
yet minimized or rejected strong doubts of nuclear experts.
The article goes on:
Today, 18 months after the invasion of Iraq, investigators
there have found no evidence of . . . a revived nuclear
weapons program.
Secretary of State Colin Powell said last Friday he regretted the administration's claims that Iraq had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction in making its case for war.
So the gut-wrenching question for the Senator from Maine is--hear me--if we do this intelligence reorganization hurriedly, are we willing to launch our next preemptive war based on the presumption that our handiwork has corrected our intelligence problems? That is a very serious question.
I will say it again: The gut-wrenching question for you, Robert C. Byrd, and for every other Member of the Senate, remains: if we do this intelligence reorganization hurriedly, as we are doing, are we willing to launch our next preemptive war based on the presumption that our handiwork has corrected our intelligence problems?
Think about it. That should sober one up. The question remains, and we
are going to be held to it by the American people and by that Constitution: If we do this intelligence reorganization hurriedly, are we willing to launch our next preemptive war based on the presumption that our handiwork has corrected our intelligence problems?
I say to Senators, again, preemptive attack is the official policy of this Government. Preemptive attack today, under the Bush administration, is the official policy of this Government.
Remember also that preemption is totally antithetical to the U.S. Constitution because it clearly cuts the Congress out of decisions to go to war. Preemption by its very nature precludes congressional debates or approval of resolutions before commencing to shed the blood of our sons and our daughters. Preemption stands on its face antithetical, opposite, 180 degrees, to this Constitution, which says that the Congress shall have power to declare war; the Congress, meaning a group of people, two bodies, made up of men and women representing all of the States of this Union. Congress shall declare war, not one man. But the doctrine of preemption tells us the President--the President, not the Congress--the President shall have power to declare war. That is the preemptive doctrine. That great power may send your son, your daughter, your grandson, your granddaughter to war. Who says so? One man, the President of the United States.
So on its face it is unconstitutional. How can a President declare war without doing it clandestinely, secretly? If he wants to bomb a certain country, he is not going to take it up with the Congress. He wants to be secret about this because that strike has to be preemptive. How can it be preemptive if it is going to be debated by the Members of the United States Senate? It can't be preemptive.
Let us remember that intelligence--remember, this is not just Robert Byrd saying this--let us remember that the intelligence was manipulated to get us into the Iraq war. Will it not be more easily manipulated in the hands of one intelligence chief, a partisan chief more free than ever to tweak intelligence to please a President? It may be a Democratic President. Does that make it any better? No. That makes no difference.
It is comforting to believe that our intelligence agencies will not be manipulated for political gain, but it is also naive to believe that. To turn over to a greater degree the power of the purse to shadowy figures in the intelligence community is to invite abuses like those that lead to scandal and to the disgrace of the United States in the eyes of the international community.
Think of what we are doing here. It is just like it was when we had that resolution before the Senate on which the Senate voted on October 11, 2002. There is not another Senator on this floor, except the distinguished Senator from Mississippi, Mr. Cochran, who is presently presiding over this body, and myself, two Senators. A major question is before the Senate. We are talking about your oversight duties as a Member of the Senate, as you chair or as you serve on a committee--your oversight; the oversight powers of the Congress, provided for in the Constitution of the United States. Yet we are saying, Well, forget it.
The Congress must preserve its power to rein in--not just because it can but because the people expect it of the Congress--our Nation's intelligence agencies and to rein in the executive branch when abuses like these occur.
Further, we must do all we can to ensure that the new intelligence positions created by the Collins-Lieberman bill are held accountable to the Congress; in other words, to the people. This Constitution, in its first three words, says, ``We the people . . . .'' So we have a responsibility. We have a duty to the people we represent to see that these people are held accountable to the Congress.
On page 47, the pending bill creates four deputy national intelligence director positions as executive level 2 appointments, the equivalent of a Deputy Secretary of Defense or State. Yet none of these new positions is subject to Senate confirmation. How about that? The Congressional Research Service informs me that these deputy intelligence directors would be--listen to this--the only executive level 2 appointments in our Government not subject to confirmation by the Senate. There you have it. These people are going to have tremendous responsibilities, but I am informed that these deputy intelligence directors would be the only executive level 2 appointments in our Government not subject to Senate confirmation.
So it is clear that more needs to be done to ensure accountability to the Congress. How much thought was given to this in the distinguished committee? How much thought was given to this in the Commission that recommends to the Congress these reforms? These clearly mean that more needs to be done to ensure accountability to the Congress. The intelligence failures of 9/11 and the intelligence failures in Iraq are in part a testament to the dire consequences of the Congress abdicating its constitutional duties. The Congress was rushed, as it oftentimes is--rushed, pressured--could be pressured by circumstances only, but that is not quite the case. Congress was rushed into creating a homeland security department, and, in the process, it ceded authorities to the executive branch over organization and personnel matters. The result has been an underfunded homeland security agency whose effectiveness has been compromised, to some extent, by turf wars and bureaucratic resistance.
So we rushed consideration of the war resolution with Iraq, and in the process ceded the constitutional authority to declare war to the White House. The result has been a rush to war marked by foreign policy failures and scandals, with the death toll rising daily and with no end in sight to the chaos in Iraq.
What a pickle. What a pickle we have put ourselves in. Now the Congress is confronted with an intelligence reform bill, proposing to create a national intelligence director who will command 15 intelligence agencies and a $40 billion budget. Rather than learn from our mistakes, rather than take the time to thoughtfully consider this matter outside of Presidential politics, we are being pushed to finish this bill within a handful of days, finish this bill within a shirt- tail full of days, and to cede control over the allocation of the resources to the intelligence community.
Think about it. Think what you are doing. Think what you are about to do, Senators. National security experts are pleading with the Congress to stop for a minute. Hold on, here. Hold on, they say. Stop for a minute to think about what it is doing.
The Appropriations Committee heard from a bipartisan array of witnesses urging the Congress to slow down.
What is the hurry? What is the hurry?
The list is impressive. These men are not Members of the Congress. Listen to them, though. They are saying, slow down. David Boren, former Senator from the State of Oklahoma, former chairman of the Intelligence Committee in the Senate.
Here is another former Senator, Bill Bradley, saying let's slow down here. Slow down. Where is the hurry? Frank Carlucci, former Secretary of Defense under President Reagan. Here is a more recent Secretary of Defense, former Member of this body, a Republican, William Cohen. Robert Gates, Gary Hart, former U.S. Senator; Henry Kissinger, former Secretary of State; John Hamre.
In the case of some of these, their titles have momentarily escaped me.
Sam Nunn, former Senator from the State of Georgia and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee;
Warren Rudman, Republican, former Senator from New Hampshire; George Shultz, former Secretary of State, Republican--there you have it, an impressive roster of Republicans and Democrats who rendered great service to this country in one form or another. They are saying slow down. What is the hurry? What is the hurry? They are former Senators, former Department of Defense Secretaries, former Secretaries of State, Republicans and Democrats, all making the same plea: ``Racing to implement reforms on an election timetable is precisely the wrong thing to do.''
That is not Robert Byrd saying that. Robert Byrd is quoting these luminaries, and Robert Byrd feels the same way they do.
``Racing to implement reforms on an election timetable is precisely the wrong thing to do. Intelligence reform
is too complex and too important to undertake at a campaign breakneck speed.''
They are saying this subject matter deserves a thoughtful, comprehensive approach. Why in Heaven's name are we in all of this big hurry? Why is there all of this hurry? I am not saying there shouldn't be reform. I am not saying that at all. I am saying this is a major undertaking and we ought to have the time and we ought to take time to debate and ask questions and to try to remove the gremlins that may come to light if we take more time.
The Wall Street Journal concluded in August that:
The larger point here is that there is no need to rush to
any quick political fix.
We may have a different President after the election. He may appoint--and probably would--a national intelligence director who will be a different person from that whom the current President may appoint, should he be reelected. We ought not to do this in such a big hurry.
The Wall Street Journal continues:
We are contemplating the biggest change to our intelligence
services since 1947, while we are fighting a war against a
lethal enemy . . .
a war that in large measure has resulted from faulty intelligence.
Are we fixing that fault in this bill? Are we dealing with 9/11 in this bill without casting a watchful eye to the future, to Iraq? How about it?
That work should take some time--and beltway forbid, maybe
even a little thought.
That is a quotation from the Wall Street Journal of the month of August.
The case for stopping and thinking for a moment grows even stronger when one reads U.S. Circuit Court Judge Richard Posner's critique of the 9/11 Commission's report in the New York Times Book Review. Judge Posner writes:
The enormous public relations effort that the commission
orchestrated to win support for the report before it could be
digested . . . invites criticism . . . [as does] the
commissioners' misplaced, though successful, quest for
unanimity. . . . The Commission's contention that our
intelligence structure is unsound predisposed it to blame the
structure for the failure of the 9/11 attacks, whether it did
or not. And pressure for unanimity encourages just the kind
of herd thinking now being blamed for that other recent
intelligence failure--the belief that Saddam Hussein
possessed weapons of mass destruction. . . . For all one
knows, the price of unanimity was adopting recommendations
that were the second choice [or maybe even the third or
fourth choice] of many of the commission's members. . . .
The larger concern is not only that the Congress, in its rush to act, may botch the implementation of the 9/11 Commission's recommendation, but that those recommendations may not be as well-thought-out as the public relations campaign would have us believe.
We are so threatened by the politics surrounding the 9/11 Commission's report and the release of its recommendations prior to the Presidential election that we stand ready--stand, salute--to abdicate our constitutional responsibilities rather than to question or probe deeper into the potential flaws of the Commission's recommendations.
I say again it is the same kind of thinking that occurred prior to the vote on the war resolution with Iraq, the same mentality that led to the much regretted passage of the PATRIOT Act with only a single dissenting vote in this Chamber, and that led to the creation of a Homeland Security Department that now struggles with its mission to make Americans safer from terrorism.
I urge Senators, I plead with Senators, I beg Senators to consider carefully their vote on this amendment.
I am sure there are many Senators who have regretted and will regret to their dying day their decision to vote for the Iraq resolution that was passed by this body on October 11, 2002. I am sure many Senators have lived to regret that vote because we were being pressured: Hurry, hurry, hurry, get this vote behind us. We don't want to talk more about this. We want to talk about the economy. They will regret it. I have had Senators tell me they regret it.
I urge Senators to consider carefully their vote on this amendment. Also, consider this Constitution and the oath I have taken this many times to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. This Constitution provides for adequate oversight. It gives the Congress the power, the oversight.
This bill will, to a considerable extent, take away that power. I am not seeking to undermine the intelligence reforms proposed by the Governmental Affairs Committee. I seek only to ensure that the Congress retain its oversight functions in intelligence and national security matters. We owe it to the people who had faith and confidence in us and who sent us here.
We are not elected here, sent here, by any President of the United States. No President tapped me on the shoulder and said, go get him, boy, I am going to see that you get it. No President can do that. No President can tap me on the shoulder and say: Boy, you are gone; you won't be back after this election. No, no President can say that, thank God. No President is king in this country. Not here, no. We did not swear an oath to adopt any particular commission's report.
We should use our own best judgment in this case, and in doing that we will arrive at different signals, of course, but that is our responsibility. We owe it to the victims of the September 11 attack and their families to get these reforms straight and to take time to study and debate them. Why not take more time? It would be a sad legacy if the suffering of these victims of the September 11 attack, it would be a sad legacy if their suffering and loss resulted not in the strengthening but in the weakening of our national security and intelligence service, leaving more Americans vulnerable to a terrorist attack.
In summary, it is a critical mistake to hand to an unelected intelligence chief nearly unfettered budget transfer authority. We are handing off the ability to exercise oversight. When we do that, we cannot determine whether congressional intent for the people's tax dollars has been met. We will not know about transfers until some time, perhaps, after the fact. Millions of dollars--nay, billions of dollars--could be moved around at the discretion of one man, an unelected figure, with no one the wiser. Resources could be switched from one area of the world to another area of the globe at the discretion of one man. Secret operations could be funded without the prior knowledge of any Member of Congress at the discretion of one man. This is one-man rule. Intelligence could be manipulated by one man, with discretion concerning where to take away secret resources and where to add them.
Absolute power, Senators just heard, corrupts absolutely, and the United States is about to aid and abet that truism.
Senators, Republicans and Democrats, we will rue the day when, because of rushing and posturing and hurrying, we created a spy chief with such awesome power.
I ask unanimous consent to add the names of Senator Leahy, Senator Dorgan, and Senator Burns as cosponsors.
May the record show that John Hamre is a former Deputy Defense Secretary and Robert Gates is a former CIA Director.
[From the New York Times, Oct. 3, 2004]
How the White House Embraced Disputed Arms Intelligence
(By David Barstow, William J. Broad and Jeff Gerth)
In 2002, at a crucial juncture on the path to war, senior
members of the Bush administration gave a series of speeches
and interviews in which they asserted that Saddam Hussein was
rebuilding his nuclear weapons program. Speaking to a group
of Wyoming Republicans in September, Vice President Dick
Cheney said the United States now had ``irrefutable
evidence''--thousands of tubes made of high-strength
aluminum, tubes that the Bush administration said were
destined for clandestine Iraqi uranium centrifuges, before
some were seized at the behest of the United States.
Those tubes became a critical exhibit in the
administration's brief against Iraq. As the only physical
evidence the United States could brandish of Mr. Hussein's
revived nuclear ambitions, they gave credibility to the
apocalyptic imagery invoked by President Bush and his
advisers. The tubes were ``only really suited for nuclear
weapons programs,'' Condoleezza Rice, the president's
national security adviser, explained on CNN on Sept. 8, 2002.
``We don't want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.''
But almost a year before, Ms. Rice's staff had been told
that the government's foremost nuclear experts seriously
doubted that
the tubes were for nuclear weapons, according to four
officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior
administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of
anonymity. The experts, at the Energy Department, believed
the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets.
The White House, though, embraced the disputed theory that
the tubes were for nuclear centrifuges, an idea first
championed in April 2001 by a junior analyst at the C.I.A.
Senior nuclear scientists considered that notion implausible,
yet in the months after
9/11, as the administration built a case for confronting
Iraq, the centrifuge theory gained currency as it rose to the
top of the government.
Senior administration officials repeatedly failed to fully
disclose the contrary views of America's leading nuclear
scientists, an examination by The New York Times has found.
They sometimes overstated even the most dire intelligence
assessments of the tubes, yet minimized or rejected the
strong doubts of nuclear experts. They worried privately that
the nuclear case was weak, but expressed sober certitude in
public.
One result was a largely one-sided presentation to the
public that did not convey the depth of evidence and argument
against the administration's most tangible proof of a revived
nuclear weapons program in Iraq.
Today, 18 months after invasion of Iraq, investigators
there have found no evidence of hidden centrifuges or a
revived nuclear weapons program. The absence of
unconventional weapons in Iraq is now widely seen as evidence
of a profound intelligence failure, of an intelligence
community blinded by ``group think,'' false assumptions and
unreliable human sources.
Yet the tale of the tubes, pieced together through records
and interviews with senior intelligence officers, nuclear
experts, administration officials and Congressional
investigators, reveals a different failure.
Far from ``group think,'' American nuclear and intelligence
experts argued bitterly over the tubes. A ``holy war'' is how
one Congressional investigator described it. But if the
opinions of the nuclear experts were seemingly disregarded at
every turn, an overwhelming momentum gathered behind the
C.I.A. assessment. It was a momentum built on a pattern of
haste, secrecy, ambiguity, bureaucratic maneuver and a
persistent failure in the Bush administration and among both
Republicans and Democrats in Congress to ask hard questions.
Precisely how knowledge of the intelligence dispute
traveled through the upper reaches of the administration is
unclear. Ms. Rice knew about the debate before her Sept. 2002
CNN appearance, but only learned of the alternative rocket
theory of the tubes soon afterward, according to two senior
administration officials. President Bush learned of the
debate at roughly the same time, a senior administration
official said.
Last week, when asked about the tubes, administration
officials said they relied on repeated assurances by George
J. Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, that the
tubes were in fact for centrifuges. They also noted that the
intelligence community, including the Energy Department,
largely agreed that Mr. Hussein has revived his nuclear
program.
``These judgments sometimes require members of the
intelligence community to make tough assessments about
competing interpretations of facts,'' said Sean McCormack, a
spokesman for the president.
Mr. Tenet declined to be interviewed. But in a statement,
he said he ``made it clear'' to the White House ``that the
case for a possible nuclear program in Iraq was weaker than
that for chemical and biological weapons.'' Regarding the
tubes, Mr. Tenet said ``alternative views were shared'' with
the administration after the intelligence community drafted a
new National Intelligence Estimate in late September 2002.
The tubes episode is a case study of the intersection
between the politics of pre-emption and the inherent
ambiguity of intelligence. The tubes represented a scientific
puzzle and rival camps of experts clashed over the tiniest
technical details in secure rooms in Washington, London and
Vienna. The stakes were high, and they knew it.
So did a powerful vice president who saw in 9/11 horrifying
confirmation of his long-held belief that the United States
too often naively underestimates the cunning and ruthlessness
of its foes.
``We have a tendency--I don't know if it's part of the
American character--to say, `Well sit down and we'll evaluate
the evidence, we'll draw a conclusion,' '' Mr. Cheney said as
he discussed the tubes in September 2002 on the NBC News
program ``Meet the Press.''
``But we always think in terms that we've got all the
evidence,'' he said. ``Here, we don't have all the evidence.
We have 10 percent, 20 percent, 30 percent. We don't know how
much. We know we have a part of the picture. And that part of
the picture tells us that he is, in fact, actively and
aggressively seeking to acquire nuclear weapons.''
joe raises the tube issue
Throughout the 1990's, United States intelligence agencies
were deeply preoccupied with the status of Iraq's nuclear
weapons program, and with good reason.
After the Persian Gulf war in 1991, arms inspectors
discovered that Iraq had been far closer to building an
atomic bomb than even the worst-case estimates had
envisioned. And no one believed that Saddam Hussein had
abandoned his nuclear ambitions. To the contrary, in one
secret assessment after another, the agencies concluded that
Iraq was conducting low-level theoretical research and
quietly plotting to resume work on nuclear weapons.
But at the start of the Bush administration, the
intelligence agencies also agreed that Iraq had not in fact
resumed its nuclear weapons program. Iraq's nuclear
infrastructure, they concluded, had been dismantled by
sanctions and inspections. In short, Mr. Hussein's nuclear
ambitions appeared to have been contained.
Then Iraq started shopping for tubes.
According to a 511-page report on flawed prewar
intelligence by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the
agencies learned in early 2001 of a plan by Iraq to buy
60,000 high-strength aluminum tubes from Hong Kong.
The tubes were made from 7075-T6 aluminum, an extremely
hard alloy that made them potentially suitable as rotors in a
uranium centrifuge. Properly designed, such tubes are strong
enough to spin at the terrific speeds needed to convert
uranium gas into enriched uranium, an essential ingredient of
an atomic bomb. For this reason, international rules
prohibited Iraq from importing certain sizes of 7075-T6
aluminum tubes; it was also why a new C.I.A. analyst named
Joe quickly sounded the alarm.
At the C.I.A.'s request, The Times agreed to use only Joe's
first name; the agency said publishing his full name could
hinder his ability to operate overseas.
Joe graduated from the University of Kentucky in the late
1970's with a bachelor's degree in mechanical engineering,
then joined the Goodyear Atomic Corporation, which dispatched
him to Oak Ridge, Tenn., a federal complex that specializes
in uranium and national security research.
Joe went to work on a new generation of centrifuges. Many
European models stood no more than 10 feet tall. The American
centrifuges loomed 40 feet high, and Joe's job was to learn
how to test and operate them. But when the project was
canceled in 1985, Joe spent the next decade performing hazard
analyses for nuclear reactors, gaseous diffusion plants and
oil refineries.
In 1997, Joe transferred to a national security complex at
Oak Ridge known as Y-12, his entry into intelligence work.
His assignment was to track global sales of material used in
nuclear arms. He retired after two years, taking a buyout
with hundreds of others at Oak Ridge, and moved to the C.I.A.
The agency's ability to assess nuclear intelligence had
markedly declined after the cold war, and Joe's appointment
was part of an effort to regain lost expertise. He was
assigned to a division eventually known as Winpac, for
Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control.
Winpac had hundreds of employees, but only a dozen or so with
a technical background in nuclear arms and fuel production.
None had Joe's hands-on experience operating centrifuges.
Suddenly, Joe's work was ending up in classified
intelligence reports being read in the White House. Indeed,
his analysis was the primary basis for one of the agency's
first reports on the tubes, which went to senior members of
the Bush administration on April 10, 2001. The tubes, the
report asserted, ``have little use other than for a uranium
enrichment program.''
This alarming assessment was immediately challenged by the
Energy Department, which builds centrifuges and runs the
government's nuclear weapons complex.
The next day, Energy Department officials ticked off a long
list of reasons why the tubes did not appear well suited for
centrifuges. Simply put, the analysis concluded that the
tubes were the wrong size--too narrow, too heavy, too long--
to be of much practical use in a centrifuge.
What was more, the analysis reasoned, if the tubes were
part of a secret, high-risk venture to build a nuclear bomb,
why were the Iraqis haggling over prices with suppliers all
around the world? And why weren't they shopping for all the
other sensitive equipment needed for centrifuges?
All fine questions. But if the tubes were not for a
centrifuge, what were they for?
Within weeks, the Energy Department experts had an answer.
It turned out, they reported, that Iraq had for years used
high-strength aluminum tubes to make combustion chambers for
slim rockets fired from launcher pods. Back in 1996,
inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency had
even examined some of those tubes, also made of 7075-T6
aluminum, at a military complex, the Nasser metal fabrication
plant in Baghdad, where the Iraqis acknowledged making
rockets. According to the international agency, the rocket
tubes, some 66,000 of them, were 900 millimeters in length,
with a diameter of 81 millimeters and walls 3.3 millimeters
thick.
The tubes now sought by Iraq had precisely the same
dimensions--a perfect match.
That finding was published May 9, 2001, in the Daily
Intelligence Highlight, a secret Energy Department newsletter
published on Intelink, a Web site for the intelligence
community and the White House.
Joe and his Winpac colleagues at the C.I.A. were not
persuaded. Yes, they conceded, the tubes could be used as
rocket casings. But that made no sense, they argued in a new
report, because Iraq wanted tubes made at tolerances that
``far exceed any known conventional weapons.'' In other
words, Iraq was demanding a level of precision craftsmanship
unnecessary for ordinary mass-produced rockets.
More to the point, those analysts had hit on a competing
theory; that the tubes' dimensions matched those used in an
early uranium centrifuge developed in the 1950's by a German
scientist, Gernot Zippe. Most centrifuge designs are highly
classified; this one, though, was readily available in
science reports.
Thus, well before Sept. 11, 2001, the debate within the
intelligence community was already neatly framed: Were the
tubes for rockets or centrifuges?
Experts Attack Joe's Case
It was a simple question with enormous implications. If Mr.
Hussein acquired nuclear weapons, American officials feared,
he would wield them to menace the Middle East. So the tube
question was critical, yet none too easy to answer. The
United States had few spies in Iraq, and certainly none who
knew Mr. Hussein's plans for the tubes.
But the tubes themselves could yield many secrets. A
centrifuge is an intricate device. Not any old tube would do.
Carefully inquiry might answer the question.
The intelligence community embarked on an ambitious
international operation to intercept the tubes before they
could get to Iraq. The big break came in June 2001; a
shipment was seized in Jordan.
At the Energy Department, those examining the tubes
included scientists who had spent decades designing and
working on centrifuges, and intelligence officers steeped in
the tricky business of tracking the nuclear ambitions of
America's enemies. They included Dr. Jon A. Kreykes, head of
Oak Ridge's national security advanced technology group; Dr.
Duane F. Starr, an expert on nuclear proliferation threats;
and Dr. Edward Von Halle, a retired Oak Ridge nuclear expert,
Dr. Houston G. Wood III, a professor of engineering at the
University of Virginia who had helped design the 40-foot
American centrifuge, advised the team and consulted with Dr.
Zippe.
On questions about nuclear centrifuges, this was
unambiguously the A-Team of the intelligence community, many
experts say.
On Aug. 17, 2001, weeks before the twin towers fell, the
team published a secret Technical Intelligence Note, a
detailed analysis that laid out its doubts about the tubes'
suitability for centrifuges.
First, in size and material, the tubes were very different
from those Iraq had used in its centrifuge prototypes before
the first gulf war. Those models used tubes that were nearly
twice as wide and made of exotic materials that performed far
better than aluminum. ``Aluminum was a huge step backwards,''
Dr. Wood recalled.
In fact, the team could find no centrifuge machines
``deployed in a production environment'' that used such
narrow tubes. Their walls were three times too thick for
``favorable use'' in a centrifuge, the team wrote. They were
also anodized, meaning they had a special coating to protect
them from weather. Anodized tubes, the team pointed out, are
``not consistent'' with a uranium centrifuge because the
coating can produce bad reactions with uranium gas.
In other words, if Joe and his Winpac colleagues were
right, it meant that Iraq had chosen to forsake years of
promising centrifuge work and instead start from scratch,
with inferior material built to less-than-optimal dimensions.
The Energy Department experts did not think that made much
sense. They concluded that using the tubes in centrifuges
``is credible but unlikely, and a rocket production is the
much more likely end use for these tubes.'' Similar
conclusions were being reached by Britain's intelligence
service and experts at the International Atomic Energy
Agency, a United Nations body.
Unlike Joe, experts at the international agency had worked
with Zippe centrifuges, and they spent hours with him
explaining why they believed his analysis was flawed. They
pointed out errors in his calculations. They noted design
discrepancies. They also sent reports challenging the
centrifuge claim to American government experts through the
embassy in Vienna, a senior official said.
Likewise, Britain's experts believe the tubes would need
``substantial re-engineering'' to work in centrifuges,
according to Britain's review of its prewar intelligence.
Their experts found it ``paradoxical'' that Iraq would order
such finely crafted tubes only to radically rebuild each one
for a centrifuge. Yes, it was theoretically possible, but an
Energy Department analyst later told Senate investigators, it
was also theoretically possible to ``turn your new Yugo into
a Cadillac.''
In late 2001, intelligence analysts at the State Department
also took issue with Joe's work in reports prepared for
Secretary of State Colin Powell. Joe was ``very convinced,
but not very convincing,'' recalled Greg Thielmann, then
director of strategic, proliferation and military affairs in
the Bureau of Intelligence and Research.
By year's end, Energy Department analysts published a
classified report that even more firmly rejected the theory
that the tubes could work as rotors in a 1950's Zippe
centrifuge. These particular Zippe centrifuges, they noted,
were especially ill suited for bomb making. The machines were
a prototype designed for laboratory experiments and mean to
be operated as single units. To produce enough enriched
uranium to make just one bomb a year, Iraq would need up to
16,000 of them working in concert, a challenge for even the
most sophisticated centrifuge plants.
Iraq had never made more than dozen centrifuge prototypes.
Half failed when rotors broke. Of the rest, one actually
worked to enrich uranium, Dr. Mahdi Obeidi, who once ran
Iraq's centrifuge program, said in an interview last week.
The Energy Department team concluded it was ``unlikely that
anyone'' could build a centrifuge site capable of producing
significant amounts of enriched uranium ``based on these
tubes.'' One analyst summed it up this way: the tubes were so
poorly suited for centrifuges, he told Senate investigators,
that if Iraq truly wanted to use them this way, ``we should
just give them the tubes.''
enter cheney
In the months after Sept. 11, 2001, as the Bush
administration devised a strategy to fight Al Qaeda, Vice
President Cheney immersed himself in the world of top-secret
threat assessments. Bob Woodward, in his book `` Plan of
Attack,'' described Mr. Cheney as the administration's new
``self-appointed special examiner of worst-case scenarios,''
and it was a role that fit.
Mr. Cheney had grappled with national security threats for
three decades, first as President Gerald R. Ford's chief of
staff, later as secretary of defense for the first President
Bush. He was on intimate terms with the intelligence
community, 15 spy agencies that frequently feuded over the
significance of raw intelligence. He knew well their record
of getting it wrong (the Bay of Pigs) and underestimating
threats (Mr. Hussein's pre-1991 nuclear program) and failing
to connect the dots (Sept. 11).
As a result, the vice president was not simply a passive
recipient of intelligence analysis. He was known as a man who
asked hard, skeptical questions, a man who paid attention to
detail. ``In my office I have a picture of John Adams, the
first vice president,'' Mr Cheney said in one of his first
speeches as vice president. ``Adams like to say, `The facts
are stubborn things.' Whatever the issue, we are going to
deal with facts and show a decent regard for other points of
view.''
With the Taliban routed in Afghanistan after Sept. 11, Mr.
Cheney and his aides began to focus on intelligence
assessments of Saddam Hussein. Mr. Cheney had long argued for
more forceful action to topple Mr. Hussein. But in January
2002, according to Mr. Woodward's book, the C.I.A. told Mr.
Cheney that Mr. Hussein could not be removed with covert
action alone. His ouster, the agency said, would take an
invasion, which would require persuading the public that Iraq
posted a threat to the United States.
The evidence for that case was buried in classified
intelligence files. Mr. Cheney and his aides began to meet
repeatedly with analysts who specialized in Iraq and
unconventional weapons. They wanted to know about any Iraqi
ties to Al Qaeda and Baghdad's ability to make unconventional
weapons.
``There's no question they had a point of view, but there
was no attempt to get us to hew to a particular point of view
ourselves, or to come to a certain conclusion,'' the deputy
director of analysis at Winpac told the Senate Intelligence
Committee. ``It was trying to figure out, why do we come to
this conclusion, what was the evidence. A lot of questions
were asked, probing questions.''
Of all the worst-case possibilities, the most terrifying
was the idea that Mr. Hussein might slip a nuclear weapon to
terrorists, and Mr. Cheney and his staff zeroed in on Mr.
Hussein's nuclear ambitions.
Mr. Cheney, for example, read a Feb. 12, 2002, report from
the Defense Intelligence Agency about Iraq's reported
attempts to buy 500 tons of yellowcake, a uranium
concentrate, from Niger, according to the Senate Intelligence
Committee report. Many American intelligence analysts did not
put much stock in the Niger report. Mr. Cheney pressed for
more information.
At the same time, a senor intelligence official said, the
agency was fielding repeated requests from Mr. Cheney's
office for intelligence about the tubes, including updates on
Iraq's continuing efforts to procure thousands more after the
seizure in Jordan.
``Remember,'' Dr. David A. Kay, the chief American arms
inspector after the war, said in an interview, ``the tubes
were the only piece of physical evidence about the Iraqi
weapons programs that they had.''
In March 2002, Mr. Cheney traveled to Europe and the Middle
East to build support for a confrontation with Iraq. It is
not known whether he mentioned Niger or the tubes in his
meetings. But on his return, he made it clear that he had
repeatedly discussed Mr. Hussein and the nuclear threat.
``He is actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time,''
Mr. Cheney asserted on CNN.
At the time, the C.I.A. had not reached so firm a
conclusion. But on March 12, the day Mr. Cheney landed in the
Middle East, he and other senior administration officials had
been sent two C.I.A. reports about the tubes. Each cited the
tubes as evidence that ``Iraq currently may be trying to
reconstitute its gas centrifuge program.''
Neither report, however, mentioned that leading centrifuge
experts at the Energy Department strongly disagreed,
according to Congressional officials who have read the
reports.
what white house is told
As the Senate Intelligence Committee report made clear, the
American intelligence community ``is not a level playing
field when it comes to the competition of ideas in
intelligence analysis.''
The C.I.A. has a distinct edge: ``unique access to policy
makers and unique control of intelligence reporting,'' the
report found. The Presidential Daily Briefs, for example, are
prepared and presented by agency analysts; the agency's
director is the president's principal intelligence adviser.
This allows agency analysts to control the presentation of
information to policy makers ``without having to explain
dissenting views or defend their analysis from potential
challenges,'' the committee's report said.
This problem, the report said, was ``particularly evident''
with the C.I.A.'s analysis of the tubes, when agency analysts
``lost objectivity and in several cases took action that
improperly excluded useful expertise from the intelligence
debate.'' In interviews, Senate investigators said the
agency's written assessments did a poor job of describing the
debate over the intelligence.
From April 2001 to September 2002, the agency wrote at
least 15 reports on the tubes. Many were sent only to high-
level policy makers, including President Bush, and did not
circulate to other intelligence agencies. None have been
released, though some were described in the Senate's report.
Several senior C.I.A. officials insisted that those reports
did describe at least in general terms the intelligence
debate. ``You don't go into all that detail but you do try to
evince it when you write your current product,'' one agency
official said.
But several Congressional and intelligence officials with
access to the 15 assessments said not one of them informed
senior policy makers of the Energy Department's dissent. They
described a series of reports, some with ominous titles, that
failed to convey either the existence or the substance of the
intensifying debate.
Over and over, the reports restated Joe's main conclusions
for the C.I.A.--that the tubes matched the 1950's Zippe
centrifuge design and were built to specifications that
``exceeded any known conventional weapons application.'' They
did not state what Energy Department experts had noted--that
many common industrial items, even aluminum cans, were made
to specifications as good or better than the tubes sought by
Iraq. Nor did the reports acknowledge a significant error in
Joe's claim--that the tubes ``matched'' those used in a Zippe
centrifuge.
The tubes sought by Iraq had a wall thickness of 3.3
millimeters. When Energy Department experts checked with Dr.
Zippe, a step Joe did not take, they learned that the walls
of Zippe tubes did not exceed 1.1 millimeters, a substantial
difference.
``They never lay out the other case,'' one Congressional
official said of those C.I.A. assessments.
The Senate report provides only a partial picture of the
agency's communications with the White House. In an
arrangement endorsed by both parties, the Intelligence
Committee agreed to delay an examination of whether White
House descriptions of Iraq's military capabilities were
``substantiated by intelligence information.'' As a result,
Senate investigators were not permitted to interview White
House officials about what they knew of the tubes debate and
when they knew it.
But in interviews, C.I.A. and administration officials
disclosed that the dissenting views were repeatedly discussed
in meetings and telephone calls.
One senior official at the agency said its ``fundamental
approach'' was to tell policy makers about dissenting views.
Another senior official acknowledged that some of their
agency's reports ``weren't as well caveated as, in
retrospect, they should have been.'' But he added, ``There
was certainly nothing that was hidden.''
Four agency officials insisted that Winpac analysts
repeatedly explained the contrasting assessments during
briefings with senior National Security Council officials who
dealt with nuclear proliferation issues. ``We think we were
reasonably clear about this,'' a senior C.I.A. official said.
A senior administration official confirmed that Winpac was
indeed candid about the differing views. The official, who
recalled at least a half dozen C.I.A. briefings on tubes,
said he knew by late 2001 that there were differing views on
the tubes. ``To the best of my knowledge, he never hid
anything from me,'' the official said of his counterpart at
Winpac.
This official said he also spoke to senior officials at the
Department of Energy about the tubes, and a spokeswoman for
the department said in a written statement that the agency
``strongly conveyed its viewpoint to senior policy
makers.''
But if senior White House officials understood the
department's main arguments against the tubes, they also took
into account its caveats. ``As for as I know,'' the senior
administration official said, ``D.O.E. never concluded that
these tubes could not be used for centrifuges.''
a referee is ignored
Over the summer of 2002, the White House secretly refined
plans to invade Iraq and debated whether to seek more United
Nations inspections. At the same time, in response to a White
House request in May, C.I.A. officials were quietly working
on a report that would lay out for the public declassified
evidence of Iraq's reported unconventional weapons and ties
to terror groups.
That same summer the tubes debate continued to rage. The
primary antagonists were the C.I.A. and the Energy
Department, with other intelligence agencies drawn in on
either side.
Much of the strife centered on Joe. At first glance, he
seem an unlikely target. He held a relatively junior
position, and according to the C.I.A. he did not write the
vast majority of the agency's reports on the tubes. He has
never met Mr. Cheney. His one trip to the White House was to
take his family on the public tour.
But he was, as one staff member on the Senate Intelligence
Committee put it, ``the ringleader'' of a small group of
Winpac analysts who were convinced that the tubes were
destined for centrifuges. His views carried special force
within the agency because he was the only Winpac analyst with
experience operating uranium centrifuges. In meetings with
other intelligence agencies, he often took the lead in
arguing the technical basis for the agency's conclusions.
``Very few people have the technical knowledge to
independently arrive at the conclusion he did,'' said Dr.
Kay, the weapons inspector, when asked to explain Joe's
influence.
Without identifying him, the Senate Intelligence
Committee's report repeatedly questioned Joe's competence and
integrity. It portrayed him so determined to prove his theory
that he twisted test results, ignored factual discrepancies
and excluded dissenting views.
The Senate report, for example, challenged his decision not
to consult the Energy Department on tests designed to see if
the tubes were strong enough for centrifuges. Asked why he
did not seek their help, Joe told the committee: ``Because we
funded it. It was our testing. We were trying to prove some
things that we wanted to prove with the testing.'' The Senate
report singled out that comment for special criticism,
saying, ``The committee believes that such an effort should
never have been intended to prove what the C.I.A. wanted to
prove.''
Joe's superiors strongly defend his work and say his words
were taken out of context. They describe him as diligent and
professional, an open-minded analyst willing to go the extra
mile to test his theories. ``Part of the job of being an
analyst is to evaluate alternative hypotheses and
possibilities, to build a case, think of alternatives,'' a
senior agency official said. ``That's what Joe did in this
case. If he turned out to be wrong, that's not an offense. He
was expected to be wrong occasionally.''
Still, the bureaucratic infighting was by then so widely
known that even the Australian government was aware of it.
``U.S. agencies differ on whether aluminum tubes, a dual-use
item sought by Iraq, were meant for gas centrifuges,''
Australia's intelligence services wrote in a July 2002
assessment. The same report said the tubes evidence was
``patchy and inconclusive.''
There was a mechanism, however, to resolve the dispute. It
was called the Joint Atomic Energy Intelligence Committee, a
secret body of experts drawn from across the federal
government. For a half century, Jaeic (pronounced jake) has
been called on to resolve disputes and give authoritative
assessments about nuclear intelligence. The committee had
specifically assessed the Iraqi nuclear threat in 1989, 1997
and 1999. An Energy Department expert was the committee's
chairman in 2002, and some department officials say the
C.I.A. opposed calling in Jaeic to mediate the tubes fight.
Not so, agency officials said. In July 2002, they insist,
they were the first intelligence agency to seek Jaeic's
intervention. ``I personally was concerned about the extent
of the community's disagreement on this and the fact that we
weren't getting very far,'' a senior agency official
recalled.
The committee held a formal session in early August to
discuss the debate, with more than a dozen experts on both
sides in attendance. A second meeting was scheduled for later
in August but was postponed. A third meeting was set for
early September; it never happened either.
``We were O.B.E.--overcome by events,'' an official
involved in the proceedings recalled.
white house makes a move
``The case of Saddam Hussein, a sworn enemy of our country,
requires a candid appraisal of the facts,'' Mr. Cheney said
on Aug. 26, 2002, at the outset of an address to the Veterans
of Foreign Wars national convention in Nashville.
Warning against ``wishful thinking or willful blindness,''
Mr. Cheney used the speech to lay out a rationale for pre-
emptive action against Iraq. Simply resuming United Nations
inspections, he argued, could give ``false comfort'' that Mr.
Hussein was contained.
``We now know Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire
nuclear weapons,'' he declared, words that quickly made
headlines worldwide. ``Many of us are convinced that Saddam
will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon. Just how soon, we
cannot really gauge. Intelligence is an uncertain business,
even in the best of circumstances.''
But the world, Mr. Cheney warned, could ill afford to once
again underestimate Iraq's progress.
``Armed with an arsenal of these weapons of terror, and
seated atop 10 percent of the world's oil reserves, Saddam
Hussein could then be expected to seek domination of the
entire Middle East, take control of a great portion of the
world's energy supplies, directly threaten America's friends
throughout the region, and subject the United States or any
other nation to nuclear blackmail.''
A week later President Bush announced that he would ask
Congress for authorization
to oust Mr. Hussein. He also met that day with senior members
of the House and Senate, some of whom expressed concern that
the administration had yet to show the American people
tangible evidence of an imminent threat. The fact that Mr.
Hussein gassed his own people in the 1980's, they argued, was
not sufficient evidence of a threat to the United States in
2002.
President Bush got the message. He directed Mr. Cheney to
give the public and Congress a more complete picture of the
latest intelligence on Iraq.
In his Nashville speech, Mr. Cheney had not mentioned the
aluminum tubes or any other fresh intelligence when he said,
``We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire
nuclear weapons.'' The one specific source he did cite was
Hussein Kamel al-Majid, a son-in-law of Mr. Hussein's who
defected in 1994 after running Iraq's chemical, biological
and nuclear weapons programs. But Mr. Majid told American
intelligence officials in 1995 that Iraq's nuclear program
had been dismantled. What's more, Mr. Majid could not have
had any insight into Mr. Hussein's current nuclear
activities: he was assassinated in 1996 on his return to
Iraq.
The day after President Bush announced he was seeking
Congressional authorization, Mr. Cheney and Mr. Tenet, the
director of central intelligence, traveled to Capitol Hill to
brief the four top Congressional leaders. After the 90-minute
session, J. Dennis Hastert, the House speaker, told Fox News
that Mr. Cheney had provided new information about
unconventional weapons, and Fox went on to report that one
source said the new intelligence described ``just how
dangerously close Saddam Hussein has come to developing a
nuclear bomb.''
Tom Daschle, the South Dakota Democrat and Senate majority
leader, was more cautious. ``What has changed over the course
of the last 10 years, that brings this country to the belief
that it has to act in a pre-emptive fashion in invading
Iraq?'' he asked.
A few days later, on Sept. 8., the lead article on Page 1
of The New York Times gave the first detailed account of the
aluminum tubes. The article cited unidentified senior
administration officials who insisted that the dimensions,
specifications and numbers of tubes sought showed that they
were intended for a nuclear weapons program.
``The closer he gets to a nuclear capability, the more
credible is his threat to use chemical and biological
weapons,'' a senior administration official was quoted as
saying. ``Nuclear weapons are his hole card.''
The article gave no hint of a debate over the tubes.
The White House did much to increase the impact of The
Times' article. The morning it was published, Mr. Cheney went
on the NBC News program ``Meet the Press'' and confirmed when
asked that the tubes were the most alarming evidence behind
the administration's view that Iraq had resumed its nuclear
weapons program. The tubes, he said, had ``raised our level
of concern.'' Ms. Rice, the national security adviser, went
on CNN and said the tubes ``are only really suited for
nuclear weapons programs.''
Neither official mentioned that the nation's top nuclear
design experts believed overwhelmingly that the tubes were
poorly suited for centrifuges.
Mr. Cheney, who has a history of criticizing officials who
disclose sensitive information, typically refuses to comment
when asked about secret intelligence. Yet on this day, with a
Gallup poll showing that 58 percent of Americans did not
believe President Bush had done enough to explain why the
United States should act against Iraq, Mr. Cheney spoke
openly about one of the closest held secrets regarding Iraq.
Not only did Mr. Cheney draw attention to the tubes; he did
so with a certitude that could not be found in even the
C.I.A.'s assessments. On ``Meet the Press,'' Mr. Cheney said
he knew ``for sure'' and ``in fact'' and ``with absolute
certainty'' that Mr. Hussein was buying equipment to build a
nuclear weapon.
``He has reconstituted his nuclear program,'' Mr. Cheney
said flatly.
But in the C.I.A. reports, evidence ``suggested'' or
``could mean'' or ``indicates''--a word used in a report
issued just weeks earlier. Little if anything was asserted
with absolute certainty. The intelligence community had not
yet concluded that Iraq had indeed reconstituted its nuclear
program.
``The vice president's public statements have reflected the
evolving judgment of the intelligence community,'' Kevin
Kellems, Mr. Cheney's spokesman, said in a written statement.
The C.I.A. routinely checks presidential speeches that draw
on intelligence reports. This is how intelligence
professionals pull politicians back from factual errors. One
such opportunity came soon after Mr. Cheney's appearance on
``Meet the Press.'' On Sept. 11, 2002, the White House asked
the agency to clear for possible presidential use a passage
on Iraq's nuclear program. The passage included this
sentence: ``Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-
strength aluminum tubes used in centrifuges to enrich uranium
for nuclear weapons.''
The agency did not ask speechwriters to make clear that
centrifuges were but one possible use, that intelligence
experts were divided and that the tubes also matched those
used in Iraqi rockets. In fact, according to the Senate's
investigation, the agency suggested no changes at all.
The next day President Bush used virtually identical
language when he cited the aluminum tubes in an address to
the United Nations General Assembly.
dissent, but to little effect
The administration's talk of clandestine centrifuges,
nuclear blackmail and mushroom clouds had a powerful
political effect, particularly on senators who were facing
fall election campaigns. ``When you hear about nuclear
weapons, this is the national security knock-out punch,''
said Senator Ron Wyden, a Democrat from Oregon who sits on
the Intelligence Committee and ultimately voted against
authorizing war.
Even so, it did not take long for questions to surface over
the administration's claims about Mr. Hussein's nuclear
capabilities. As it happened, Senator Dianne Feinstein,
another Democratic member of the Intelligence Committee, had
visited the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna in
August 2002. Officials there, she later recalled, told her
they saw no signs of a revived nuclear weapons program in
Iraq.
At that point, the tubes debate was in its 16th month. Yet
Mr. Tenet, of the C.I.A., the man most responsible for
briefing President Bush on intelligence, told the committee
that he was unaware until that September of the profound
disagreement over critical evidence that Mr. Bush was citing
to world leaders as justification for war.
Even now, committee members from both parties express
baffled anger at this possibility. How could he not know? ``I
don't even understand it,'' Olympia Snowe, a Republican
senator from Maine, said in an interview. ``I cannot
comprehend the failures in judgment or breakdowns in
communication.''
Mr. Tenet told Senate investigators that he did not expect
to learn of dissenting opinions ``until the issue gets
joined'' at the highest levels of the intelligence community.
But if Mr. Tenet's lack of knowledge meant the president was
given incomplete information about the tubes, there was still
plenty of time for the White House to become fully informed.
Yet so far, Senate investigators say, they have found
little evidence the White House tried to find out why so many
experts disputed the C.I.A. tubes theory. If anything,
administration officials minimized the divide.
On Sept. 13, The Times made the first public mention of the
tubes debate in the sixth paragraph of an article on Page
A13. In it an unidentified senior administration official
dismissed the debate as a ``footnote, not a split.'' Citing
another unidentified administration official, the story
reported that the ``best technical experts and nuclear
scientists at laboratories like Oak Ridge supported the
C.I.A. assessments.''
As a senior Oak Ridge official pointed out to the
Intelligence Committee, ``the vast majority of scientists and
nuclear experts'' in the Energy Department's laboratories in
fact disagreed with the agency. But on Sept. 13, the day the
article appeared, the Energy Department sent a directive
forbidding employees from discussing the subject with
reporters.
The Energy Department, in a written statement, said that it
was ``completely appropriate'' to remind employees of the
need to protect nuclear secrets and that it had made no
effort ``to quash dissent.''
It closed hearings that month, Congress began to hear
testimony about the debate. Several Democrats said in
interviews that secrecy rules had prevented them from
speaking out about the gap between the administration's view
of the tubes and the more benign explanations described in
classified testimony.
One senior C.I.A. official recalled cautioning members of
Congress in a closed session not to speak publicly about the
possibility that the tubes were for rockets. ``If people
start talking about that and the Iraqis see that people are
saying rocket bodies, that will automatically become their
explanation whenever anyone goes to Iraq,'' the official said
in an interview.
So while administration officials spoke freely about the
agency's theory, the evidence that best challenged this view
remained almost entirely off limits for public debate.
In late September, the C.I.A. sent policymakers its most
detailed report on the tubes. For the first time, an agency
report acknowledged that ``some in the intelligence
community'' believed rocket were ``more likely end uses'' for
the tubes, according to officials who have seen the report.
Meanwhile, at the Energy Department, scientists were
startled to find senior White House officials embracing a
view of the tubes they considered thoroughly discredited. ``I
was really shocked in 2002 when I saw it was still there,''
Dr. Wood, the Oak Ridge adviser, said of the centrifuge
claim. ``I thought it had been put to bed.''
Members of the Energy Department team took a highly unusual
step: They began working quietly with a Washington arms-
control group, the Institute for Science and International
Security, to help the group inform the public about the
debate, said one team member and the group's president, David
Albright.
On Sept. 23, the institute issued the first in series of
lengthy reports that repeated some of the Energy Department's
arguments against the C.I.A. analysis, though no classified
ones. Still, after more than 16 months of secret debate, it
was the first public airing of facts that undermined the most
alarming suggestions about Iraq's nuclear threat.
The reports got little attention, partly because reporters
did not realize they had been done with the cooperation of
top Energy Department experts. The Washington Post ran a
brief article about the findings on Page A18. Many major
newspapers, including The Times, ran nothing at all.
scrambling for an ``estimate''
Soon after Mr. Cheney's appearance on ``Meet Press,''
Democratic senators began pressing for a new National
Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, terrorism and unconventional
weapons. A National Intelligence Estimate is a classified
document that is supposed to reflect the combined judgment of
the entire intelligence community. The last such estimate had
been done in 2000.
Most estimates take months to complete. But this one had to
be done in days, in time for an October vote on a war
resolution. There was little time for review or reflection,
and no time for Jaeic, the joint committee, to reconcile deep
analytical differences.
This was a potentially thorny obstacle for those writing
the nuclear section: What do you do when the nation's nuclear
experts strongly doubt the linchpin evidence behind the
C.I.A.'s claims that Iraq was rebuilding its nuclear weapons
program?
The Energy Department helped solve the problem. In meetings
on the estimate, senior department intelligence officials
said that while they still did not believe the tubes were for
centrifuges, they nonetheless could agree that Iraq was
reconstituting its nuclear weapons capability.
Several senior scientists inside the department said they
were stunned by that stance; they saw no compelling evidence
of a revived nuclear program.
Some laboratory officials blamed time pressure and
inexperience. Thomas S. Ryder, the department's
representative at the meetings, had been acting director of
the department's intelligence unit for only five months. ``A
heck of a nice guy but not savvy on technical issues,'' is
the way one senior nuclear official described Mr. Ryder, who
declined comment.
Mr. Ryder's position was more alarming than prior
assessments from the Energy Department. In an August 2001
intelligence paper, department analysts warned of suspicious
activities in Iraq that ``could be preliminary steps'' toward
reviving a centrifuge program. In July 2002 an Energy
Department report, ``Nuclear Reconstitution Efforts
Underway?'', noted that several developments, including
Iraq's suspected bid to buy yellowcake uranium from Niger,
suggested Baghdad was ``seeking to reconstitute'' a nuclear
weapons program.
According to intelligence officials who took part in the
meetings, Mr. Ryder justified his department's now firm
position on nuclear reconstitution in large part by citing
the Niger reports. Many C.I.A. analysts considered that
intelligence suspect, as did analysts at the State
Department.
Nevertheless, the estimate's authors seized on the Energy
Department's position to avoid the entire tubes debate, with
written dissents relegated to a 10-page annex. The estimate
would instead emphasize that the C.I.A. and the Energy
Department both agreed that Mr. Hussein was rebuilding his
nuclear weapons program. Only the closest reader would see
that each agency was basing its assessment in large measure
on evidence the other considered suspect.
On Oct. 2, nine days before the Senate vote on the war
resolution, the new National Intelligence Estimate was
delivered to the Intelligence Committee. The most significant
change from past estimates dealt with nuclear weapons; the
new one agreed with Mr. Cheney that Iraq was in aggressive
pursuit of the atomic bomb.
Asked when Mr. Cheney became aware of the disagreements
over the tubes, Mr. Kellems, his spokesman, said, ``The vice
president knew about the debate at about the time of the
National Intelligence Estimated.''
Today, the Intelligence Committee's report makes clear,
that 93-page estimate stands as one of the most flawed
documents in the history of American intelligence. The
committee concluded unanimously that most of the major
findings in the estimate were wrong, unfounded or overblown.
This was especially true of the nuclear section.
Estimates express their most important findings with high,
moderate or low confidence levels. This one claimed
``moderate confidence'' on how fast Iraq could have a bomb,
but ``high confidence'' that Baghdad was rebuilding its
nuclear program. And the tubes were the leading and most
detailed evidence cited in the body of the report.
According to the committee, the passages on the tubes,
which adopted much of the C.I.A. analysis, were misleading
and riddled with factual errors.
The estimate, for example, included a chart intended to
show that the dimensions of the tubes closely matched a Zippe
centrifuge. Yet the chart omitted the dimensions of Iraq's
81-millimeter rocket, which precisely matched the tubes.
The estimate cited Iraq's alleged willingness to pay top
dollar for the tubes, up to $17.50 each, as evidence they
were for secret centrifuges. But Defense Department rocket
engineers told Senate investigators that 7075-T6 aluminum is
``the material of choice for low-cost rocket systems.''
The estimate also asserted that 7075-T6 tubes were ``poor
choices'' for rockets. In fact, similar tubes were used in
rockets from several countries, including the United States,
and in an Italian rocket, the Medusa, which Iraq had copied.
Beyond tubes, the estimate cited several other ``key
judgments'' that supported its assessment. The committee
found that intelligence just as flawed.
The estimate, for example, pointed to Iraq's purchases of
magnets, balancing machines and machine tools, all of which
could be used in a nuclear program. But each item also had
legitimate non-nuclear uses, and there was no credible
intelligence whatsoever showing they were for a nuclear
program.
The estimate said Iraq's Atomic Energy Commission was
building new production facilities for nuclear weapons. The
Senate found that claim was based on a single operative's
report, which described how the commission had constructed
one headquarters building and planned `` a new high-level
polytechnic school.''
Finally, the estimate stated that many nuclear scientists
had been reassigned to the A.E.C. The Senate found nothing to
back that conclusion. It did, though, discover a 2001 report
in which a commission employee complained that Iraq's nuclear
program ``had been stalled since the gulf war.''
Such ``key judgments'' are supposed to reflect the very
best American intelligence. (The Niger intelligence, for
example, was considered too shaky to be included as a key
judgment.) Yet as they studied raw intelligence reports,
those involved in the Senate investigation came to a
sickening realization. ``We kept looking at the intelligence
and saying, `My God, there's nothing here,' '' one official
recalled.
The Vote for War
Soon after the National Intelligence Estimate was
completed, Mr. Bush delivered a speech in Cincinnati in which
he described the ``grave threat'' that Iraq and its ``arsenal
of terror'' posed to the United States. He dwelled longest on
nuclear weapons, reviewing much of the evidence outlined in
the estimate. The C.I.A. had warned him away from mentioning
Niger.
``Facing clear evidence of peril,'' the president
concluded, ``we cannot wait for the final proof--the smoking
gun--that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.''
Four days later, on Oct. 11, the Senate voted 77-23 to give
Mr. Bush broad authority to invade Iraq. The resolution
stated that Iraq posed ``a continuing threat'' to the United
States by, among other things, ``actively seeking a nuclear
weapons capability.''
Many Senators who voted for the resolution emphasized the
nuclear threat.
``The great danger is a nuclear one,'' Senator Feinstein,
the California Democrat, said on the Senate floor.
But Senator Bob Graham, then chairman of the Intelligence
Committee, said he voted against the resolution in part
because of doubts about the tubes. ``It reinforced in my mind
pre-existing questions I had about the unreliability of the
intelligence community, especially the C.I.A.,'' Mr. Graham,
a Florida Democrat, said in an interview.
At the Democratic convention in Boston this summer, Senator
John Kerry pledged that should he be elected president, ``I
will ask hard questions and demand hard evidence.'' But in
October 2002, when the Senate voted on Iraq, Mr. Kerry had
not read the National Intelligence Estimate, but instead had
relied on briefing from Mr. Tenet, a spokeswoman said.
``According to the C.I.A.'s report, all U.S. intelligence
experts agree that Iraq is seeking nuclear weapons,'' Mr.
Kerry said then, explaining his vote. ``There is little
question that Saddam Hussein wants to develop nuclear
weapons.''
The report cited by Mr. Kerry, an unclassified white paper,
said nothing about the tubes debate except that ``some''
analysts believed the tubes were ``probably intended'' for
conventional arms.
``It is common knowledge that Congress does not have the
same access as the executive branch,'' Brooke Anderson, a
Kerry spokeswoman, said yesterday.
Mr. Kerry's running mate, Senator John Edwards, severed on
the Intelligence Committee, which gave him ample opportunity
to ask hard questions. But in voting to authorize war, Mr.
Edwards expressed no uncertainty about the principal evidence
of Mr. Hussein's alleged nuclear program.
``We know that he is doing everything he can to build
nuclear weapons,'' Mr. Edwards said then.
On Dec. 7, 2002, Iraq submitted a 12,200-page declaration
about unconventional arms to the United Nations that made no
mention of the tubes. Soon after, Winpac analysts at the
C.I.A. assessed the declaration for President Bush. The
analysts criticized Iraq for failing to acknowledge or
explain why it sought tubes ``we believe suitable for use in
a gas centrifuge uranium effort.'' Nor, they said, did it
``acknowledge efforts to procure uranium from Niger.''
Neither Energy Department nor State Department intelligence
experts were given a chance to review the Winpac assessment,
prompting complaints that dissenting views were being
withheld from policy makers.
``It is most disturbing that Winpac is essentially
directing foreign policy in this matter,'' one Energy
Department official wrote in an e-mail message. ``There are
some very strong points to be made in respect to Iraq's
arrogant noncompliance with U.N. sanctions. However, when
individuals attempt to convert those `strong statements'
into the `knock-out' punch, the administration will
ultimately look foolish--i.e., the tubes and Niger!''
The U.N. Inspectors Return
For nearly two years Western intelligence analysts had been
trying to divine from afar Iraq's plans for the tubes. At the
end of 2002, with the resumption of United Nations arms
inspectors, it became possible to seek answers inside Iraq.
Inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency
immediately zeroed in on the tubes.
The team quickly arranged a field trip to the Nasser metal
fabrication factory, where they found 13,000 completed
rockets, all produced from 7075-T6 aluminum tubes. The Iraqi
rocket engineers explained that they had been shopping for
more tubes because their supply was running low.
Why order tubes with such tight tolerances? An Iraqi
engineer said they wanted to improve the rocket's accuracy
without making major design changes. Design documents and
procurement records confirmed his account.
The inspectors solved another mystery. The tubes
intercepted in Jordan had been anodized, given a protective
coating. The Iraqis had a simple explanation: they wanted the
new tubes protected from the elements. Sure enough, the
inspectors found that many thousands of the older tubes,
which had no special coating, were corroded because they had
been stored outside.
The inspectors found no trace of a clandestine centrifuge
program. On Jan. 10, 2003, The Times reported that the
international agency was challenging ``the key piece of
evidence'' behind ``the primary rationale for going to war.''
The article, on Page A10, also reported that officials at the
Energy Department and State Department had suggested the
tubes might be for rockets.
The C.I.A. theory was in trouble, and senior members of the
Bush administration seemed to know it.
Also that January, White House officials who were helping
to draft what would become Secretary Powell's speech to the
Security Council sent word to the intelligence community that
they believed ``the nuclear case was weak,'' the Senate
report said. In an interview, a senior administration
official said it was widely understood all along at the White
House that the evidence of a nuclear threat was piecemeal and
weaker than that for other unconventional arms.
But rather than withdraw the nuclear card--a step that
could have undermined United States credibility just as tens
of thousands of troops were being airlifted to the region--
the White House cast about for new arguments and evidence to
support it.
Gen. Richard B. Myers, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, asked the intelligence agencies for more evidence
beyond the tubes to bolster the nuclear case. Winpac analysts
redoubled efforts to prove that Iraq was trying to acquire
uranium from Africa. When rocket engineers at the Defense
Department were approached by the C.I.A. and asked to compare
the Iraqi tubes with American ones, the engineers said the
tubes ``were perfectly usable for rockets.'' The agency
analysts did not appear pleased. One rocket engineer
complained to Senate investigators that the analysts had ``an
agenda'' and were trying ``to bias us'' into agreeing that
the Iraqi tubes were not fit for rockets. In interviews,
agency officials denied any such effort.
According to the Intelligence Committee report, the agency
also sought to undermine the I.A.E.A.'s work with secret
intelligence assessments distributed only to senior policy
makers. Nonetheless, on Jan. 22, in a meeting first reported
by The Washington Post, the ubiquitous Joe flew to Vienna in
a last-ditch attempt to bring the international experts
around to his point of view.
The session was a disaster.
``Everybody was embarrassed when he came and made this
presentation, embarrassed and disgusted,'' one participant
said. ``We were going insane, thinking, `Where is he coming
from?' ''
On Jan. 27, the international agency rendered its judgment:
it told the Security Council that it had found no evidence of
a revived nuclear weapons program in Iraq. ``From our
analysis to date,'' the agency reported, ``it appears that
the aluminum tubes would be consistent with the purpose
stated by Iraq and, unless modified, would not be suitable
for manufacturing centrifuges.''
The Powell Presentation
The next night, during his State of the Union address,
President Bush cited I.A.E.A. findings from years past that
confirmed that Mr. Hussein had had an ``advanced'' nuclear
weapons program in the 1990's. He did not mention the
agency's finding from the day before.
He did, though, repeat the claim that Mr. Hussein was
trying to buy tubes ``suitable for nuclear weapons
production.'' Mr. Bush also cited British intelligence that
Mr. Hussein had recently sought ``significant quantities'' of
uranium from Africa--a reference in 16 words that the White
House later said should have been stricken, though the
British government now insists the information was credible.
``Saddam Hussein,'' Mr. Bush said that night, ``has not
credibly explained these activities. He clearly has much to
hide. The dictator of Iraq is not disarming.''
A senior administration official involved in vetting the
address said Mr. Bush did not cite the I.A.E.A. conclusion of
Jan. 27 because the White House believed the agency was
analyzing old Iraqi tubes, not the newer ones seized in
Jordan. But senior officials in Vienna and Washington said
the international group's analysis covered both types of
tubes.
The senior administration official also said the
President's words were carefully chosen to reflect the doubts
at the Energy Department. The crucial phrase was ``suitable
for nuclear weapons production.'' The phrase stopped short of
asserting that the tubes were actually being used in
centrifuges. And it was accurate in the sense that Energy
Department officials always left open the possibility that
the tubes could be modified for use in a centrifuge.
``There were differences,'' the official said, ``and we had
to address those differences.''
In his address, the President announced that Mr. Powell
would go before the Security Council on Feb. 5 and lay out
the intelligence on Iraq's weapons programs. The purpose was
to win international backing for an invasion, and so the
administration spent weeks drafting and redrafting the
presentation, with heavy input from the C.I.A., the National
Security Council and I. Lewis Libby, Mr. Cheney's chief of
staff.
The Intelligence Committee said some drafts prepared for
Mr. Powell contained language on the tubes that was patently
incorrect. The C.I.A.wanted Mr. Powell to say, for example,
that Iraq's specifications for roundness were so exacting
``that the tubes would be rejected as defective if I rolled
one under my hand on this table, because the mere pressure of
my hand would deform it.''
Initelligence analyst at the State Department waged a quiet
battle against much of the proposed language on tubes. A year
before, they had sent Mr. Powell a report explaining why they
believed the tubes were more likely for rockets. The National
Intelligence Estimate included their dissent--that they saw
no compelling evidence of a comprehensive effort to revive a
nuclear weapons program. Now, in the days before the Security
Council speech, they sent the secretary detailed memos
warning him away from a long list of assertions in the
drafts, the intelligence committee found. The language on the
tubes, they said, contained ``egregious errors'' and ``highly
misleading'' claims. Changes were made, language softened.
The line about ``the mere pressure of my hand'' was removed.
``My colleagues,'' Mr. Powell assured the Security Council,
``every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid
sources. These are not assertions.''
He made his way to the subject of Mr. Hussein's current
nuclear capabilities.
``By now,'' he said, ``just about everyone has heard of
these tubes, and we all know there are differences of
opinion. There is controversy about what these tubes are for.
Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors
in centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Other experts and the
Iraqis themselves argue that they are really to produce the
rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket
launcher.''
But Mr. Powell did not acknowledge that those ``other
experts'' included many of the nation's most authoritative
nuclear experts, some of whom said in interviews that they
were offended to find themselves now lumped in with a reviled
government.
In making the case that the tubes were for centrifuges, Mr.
Powell made claims that his own intelligence experts had told
him were not accurate. Mr. Powell, for example, asserted to
the Security Council that the tubes were manufactured to a
tolerance ``that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable
rockets.''
Yet in a memo written two days earlier, Mr. Powell's
intelligence experts had specifically cautioned him about
those very same words. ``In fact,'' they explained, ``the
most comparable U.S. system is a tactical rocket--the U.S.
Mark 66 air-launched 70-millimeter rocket--that uses the
same, high-grade (7075-T6) aluminum, and that has
specifications with similar tolerances,''
In the end, Mr. Powell put his personal prestige and
reputation behind the C.I.A.'s tube theory.
``When we came to the aluminum tubes,'' Richard A. Boucher,
the State Department spokesman, said in an interview, ``the
secretary listened to the discussion of the various views
among intelligence agencies, and reflected those issues in
his presentation. Since his task at the U.N. was to present
the views of the United States, he went with the overall
judgment of the intelligence community as reflected by the
director of central intelligence.''
As Mr. Powell summed it up for the United Nations, ``People
will continue to debate this issue, but there is no doubt in
my mind these illicit procurement efforts show that Saddam
Hussein is very much focused on putting in place the key
missing piece from his nuclear weapons program: the ability
to produce fissile material.''
Six weeks later, the war began.
I yield the floor.
Will the Senator yield?
Why not take more time? What is all the rush? Why not take time? That is all I am asking for is take time. The distinguished Senator has offered to sit down with the distinguished Senator from North Dakota. Why do we not take time and try to work this out? There are many other questions. That is what I am asking. Let us have more time. We are being forced to operate under the gun here and that does not lend itself to very wise legislation. That is what I am asking: How about more time? We might resolve several of these problems then.
Madam President, I ask unanimous consent for 2 minutes. I would like to yield to the distinguished Senator, chairman of the Appropriations Committee and President pro tempore of the Senate.
Madam President, we must not take control of public moneys from the elected representatives of the people and give it to an unelected bureaucrat. The Byrd-Stevens-Inouye-Warner amendment gives the director the flexibility to transfer personnel and appropriations to protect against terrorist attacks but provides a leash with which to rein him in should abuses occur. They may occur. They probably will in time. This is a safeguard.
I say listen to the Constitution of the United States. I am very interested in reform, and I admire the work the committee has done. But we are acting too hastily. We are not given enough time, and we are going to rue the day that we turned this amendment down and failed to leash this unelected bureaucrat. We, the people, stand by the Constitution.