Bush's Televised Speech
Attacked by US Intelligence
Julian Borger
for The Guardian, October 9, 2002
President Bush's case against Saddam Hussein, outlined in a televised
address to the nation on Monday night, relied on a slanted and sometimes
entirely false reading of the available US intelligence, government
officials and analysts claimed yesterday.
Officials in the CIA, FBI and Department Of Energy are being put under
intense pressure to produce reports which back the administration's
line, the Guardian has learned. In response, some are complying, some
are resisting and some are choosing to remain silent.
"Basically, cooked information is working its way into high-level
pronouncements and there's a lot of unhappiness about it in
intelligence, especially among analysts at the CIA," said Vincent
Cannistraro, the CIA's former head of counter-intelligence.
In his address, the president reassured Americans that military action
was not "imminent or unavoidable", but he made the most detailed case to
date for the use of force, should it become necessary.
But some of the key allegations against the Iraqi regime were not
supported by intelligence currently available to the administration. Mr
Bush repeated a claim already made by senior members of his
administration that Iraq has attempted to import hardened aluminium
tubes "for gas centrifuges, which are used to enrich uranium for nuclear
weapons". The tubes were also mentioned by Tony Blair in his dossier of
evidence presented to parliament last month.
However, US government experts on nuclear weapons and centrifuges have
suggested that they were more likely to be used for making conventional
weapons.
"I would just say there is not much support for that [nuclear] theory
around here," said a department of energy specialist.
David Albright, a physicist and former UN weapons inspector who was
consulted on the purpose of the aluminium tubes, said it was far from
clear that the tubes were intended for a uranium centrifuge.
Mr Albright, who heads the Institute for Science and International
Security, a Washington thinktank, said: "There's a catfight going on
about this right now. On one side you have most of the experts on gas
centrifuges. On the other you have one guy sitting in the CIA."
Mr Albright said sceptics at the energy department's Lawrence Livermore
national laboratory in California had been ordered to keep their doubts
to themselves. He quoted a colleague at the laboratory as saying: "The
administration can say what it wants and we are expected to remain
silent."
There is already considerable scepticism among US intelligence officials
about Mr Bush's claims of links between Iraq and al-Qaida. In his speech
on Monday, Mr Bush referred to a "very senior al-Qaida leader who
received medical treatment in Baghdad this year".
An intelligence source said the man the president was referring to was
Abu Musab Zarqawi, who was arrested in Jordan in 2001 for his part in
the "millennium plot" to bomb tourist sites there. He was subsequently
released and eventually made his way to Iraq in search of treatment.
However, intercepted telephone calls did not mention any cooperation
with the Iraqi government.
There is also profound scepticism among US intelligence experts about
the president's claim that "Iraq has trained al-Qaida members in
bomb-making and poisons and deadly gases".
Bob Baer, a former CIA agent who tracked al-Qaida's rise, said that
there were contacts between Osama bin Laden and the Iraqi government in
Sudan in the early 1990s and in 1998: "But there is no evidence that a
strategic partnership came out of it. I'm unaware of any evidence of
Saddam pursuing terrorism against the United States."
A source familiar with the September 11 investigation said: "The FBI has
been pounded on to make this link."
In making his case on Monday, Mr Bush made a startling claim that the
Iraqi regime was developing drones, or unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs),
which "could be used to disperse chemical or biological weapons across
broad areas".
"We're concerned that Iraq is exploring ways of using these UAVs for
missions targeting the United States," he warned.
US military experts confirmed that Iraq had been converting eastern
European trainer jets, known as L-29s, into drones, but said that with a
maximum range of a few hundred miles they were no threat to targets in
the US.
"It doesn't make any sense to me if he meant United States territory,"
said Stephen Baker, a retired US navy rear admiral who assesses Iraqi
military capabilities at the Washington-based Centre for Defence
Information.
Mr Cannistraro said the flow of intelligence to the top levels of the
administration had been deliberately skewed by hawks at the Pentagon.
"CIA assessments are being put aside by the defence department in favour
of intelligence they are getting from various Iraqi exiles," he said.
"Machiavelli warned princes against listening to exiles. Well, that is
what is happening now."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,807194,00.html
