[ OUR OPINION ]
CIA overhaul is needed
to restore credibilityGEORGE Tenet's resignation as director of central intelligence becomes effective on Sunday, none too soon. A Senate committee report to be released this week shows that U.S. intelligence officials had been told by relatives of Iraqi scientists before the war that programs to develop unconventional weapons had been abandoned. The agency neglected to include the information in reports to President Bush, who went to war on the wrong assumption that Iraq possessed and was poised to use weapons of mass destruction.
THE ISSUE
A Senate committee has reported that the CIA did not advise the White House that it had been told by relatives of Iraqi scientists that Baghdad had abandoned programs to develop unconventional weapons.
The Senate report is further evidence that the intelligence preceding the U.S. invasion of Iraq was badly flawed. Tenet's departure should lead to an overhaul of the Central Intelligence Agency to assure analysis aimed at providing sound information instead of construing findings to support preconceived notions.
The CIA previously had been criticized for being wrong about the existence of such weapons. Tenet had told Bush in a December 2002 briefing that the existence of such weapons in Iraq was "a slam-dunk case," according to Bob Woodward's book "Plan of Attack." Actually, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence has found not only that Tenet's assertion was based on assumptions rather than fact, but that the CIA had contrary information.
The Bush administration told the American people last year that its decision to invade Iraq was based on Saddam Hussein's possession of weapons of mass destruction and ties between Iraq and the al-Qaida terrorist organization. The staff of the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks found "no credible evidence" that Saddam and al-Qaida collaborated in the attacks. Any connections between Iraq and al-Qaida were innocuous.
After the United Nations withdrew weapons inspectors from Iraq in 1998, the CIA embarked on a program to contact relatives of Iraqi scientists believed to be involved in secret weapons programs, The New York Times reported. The relatives told the U.S. agents that the scientists were no longer working on illicit weapons, and those programs were dead. Senate investigators learned that the CIA ignored those statements, neglecting to include them in intelligence reports that were distributed throughout the government.
The Senate committee also found that the CIA had mischaracterized information. An Iraqi scientist who defected to the U.S. told intelligence officials that he had been working on a technical program that was unrelated to biological weapons, adding that he was unaware of any other biological weapons activity under way in Iraq. The defector was incorrectly portrayed in reports as having supplied evidence of the existence of a biological weapons program.
In addition, the Senate committee found that the CIA claimed that aluminum tubes seized by the U.S. in 2001 on its way into Iraq were to be used as spinning rotors to enrich uranium for nuclear weapons. In fact, results of tests showed that the tubes failed to withstand the speeds necessary for the tubes to be put to that use.
