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American Morning
Report Summary Released at Pentagon
Aired June 06, 2003 - 09:02 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Back to the Pentagon right now. The Defense Intelligence Agency report stating that prior to the war there was "no reliable information about chemical weapons in Iraq."
CNN has obtained a copy of the summary of that report.
Barbara Starr talked about it last hour, back with us with more -- Barbara, what do you have?
BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Bill, well, you know, U.S. soldiers continuing to scour Iraq every day, looking for weapons of mass destruction, looking through many suspect sites, trying to see where Saddam Hussein may have hidden those weapons. But in the weeks since the war ended, they have come up with nothing.
Now, this may not be a surprise to some members of the intelligence community. What we can tell you is that we have obtained a one page summary of a classified Defense Intelligence Agency report from September 2002. That's when the administration was making a very strong public case that Iraq posed an imminent threat.
But look at what the DIA had to say at that time. The Defense Intelligence Agency saying there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has or will establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.
Now, as recently as yesterday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in his view the intelligence was solid.
Here's what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: My observation on the intelligence, although it's not my business, but I read it, is that it's been good, it's been enriched as they've gone through this past period of years and that I believe that the presentation made by Secretary Powell was accurate and will be proved to be accurate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STARR: Now, that isn't to say that the DIA did not think there was nothing going on in Iraq. The report says that there was unusual activity last year that suggested Iraq was distributing munitions on the battlefield. But that may be something quite different than what some elements of the administration were talking about. Of course, it also said that Iraq had chemicals and equipment to produce mustard agent. But that may have been as far as they could have gone, the DIA said, because Iraq did not have the chemicals or the capability to produce nerve agents. It didn't have the materials and many of those facilities had been destroyed in previous U.S. bombing attacks.
So the bottom line is the DIA said it lacked direct information on Iraq's chemical weapons program and that it was unsure about its biological weapons program.
Now, again, to place all of this into perspective, the intelligence community rarely comes to 100 percent definitive conclusions. They do have assessments. They are very caveated and that appears to be what was going on, in the Pentagon's intelligence agency, back in December 2002 -- Bill.
HEMMER: And, Barbara, certainly we have to go forward and see if any of that information changed. In Washington, when you're dealing with the Pentagon and dealing with the CIA, how do these two agencies take the information they're gathering right now and square it together to reach possibly a conclusion not just based on what we're hearing from the Pentagon, but ultimately a decision about what was happening on the ground in Iraq? It gets a bit confusing here. How would they square the info?
STARR: Well, that is the question. What we don't know is absolutely where this information was shared. Now, the intelligence community has long said that it tries to share everything it has, but there was so much information coming in about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction it's not clear what weight, what attention would have been paid to this particular assessment.
However, it was part of a larger study, we are told, and that study by the DIA also was very heavily caveated. This is the question Congress apparently is going to try and resolve, as well as the CIA itself -- did it have all the information in hand, was it appropriately shared and was the information accurate?
Now, the intelligence community really does not often come to definitive conclusions. They have assessments. They have judgments. The question Congress is going to look at is whether those assessments and judgments were perhaps overstated by the administration. No clear answers to that question yet -- Bill.
HEMMER: Barbara, thanks.
Barbara Starr at the Pentagon with breaking news from there.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Aired June 6, 2003 - 09:02 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Back to the Pentagon right now. The Defense Intelligence Agency report stating that prior to the war there was "no reliable information about chemical weapons in Iraq."
CNN has obtained a copy of the summary of that report.
Barbara Starr talked about it last hour, back with us with more -- Barbara, what do you have?
BARBARA STARR, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Bill, well, you know, U.S. soldiers continuing to scour Iraq every day, looking for weapons of mass destruction, looking through many suspect sites, trying to see where Saddam Hussein may have hidden those weapons. But in the weeks since the war ended, they have come up with nothing.
Now, this may not be a surprise to some members of the intelligence community. What we can tell you is that we have obtained a one page summary of a classified Defense Intelligence Agency report from September 2002. That's when the administration was making a very strong public case that Iraq posed an imminent threat.
But look at what the DIA had to say at that time. The Defense Intelligence Agency saying there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has or will establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities.
Now, as recently as yesterday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said in his view the intelligence was solid.
Here's what he had to say.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DONALD RUMSFELD, SECRETARY OF DEFENSE: My observation on the intelligence, although it's not my business, but I read it, is that it's been good, it's been enriched as they've gone through this past period of years and that I believe that the presentation made by Secretary Powell was accurate and will be proved to be accurate.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
STARR: Now, that isn't to say that the DIA did not think there was nothing going on in Iraq. The report says that there was unusual activity last year that suggested Iraq was distributing munitions on the battlefield. But that may be something quite different than what some elements of the administration were talking about. Of course, it also said that Iraq had chemicals and equipment to produce mustard agent. But that may have been as far as they could have gone, the DIA said, because Iraq did not have the chemicals or the capability to produce nerve agents. It didn't have the materials and many of those facilities had been destroyed in previous U.S. bombing attacks.
So the bottom line is the DIA said it lacked direct information on Iraq's chemical weapons program and that it was unsure about its biological weapons program.
Now, again, to place all of this into perspective, the intelligence community rarely comes to 100 percent definitive conclusions. They do have assessments. They are very caveated and that appears to be what was going on, in the Pentagon's intelligence agency, back in December 2002 -- Bill.
HEMMER: And, Barbara, certainly we have to go forward and see if any of that information changed. In Washington, when you're dealing with the Pentagon and dealing with the CIA, how do these two agencies take the information they're gathering right now and square it together to reach possibly a conclusion not just based on what we're hearing from the Pentagon, but ultimately a decision about what was happening on the ground in Iraq? It gets a bit confusing here. How would they square the info?
STARR: Well, that is the question. What we don't know is absolutely where this information was shared. Now, the intelligence community has long said that it tries to share everything it has, but there was so much information coming in about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction it's not clear what weight, what attention would have been paid to this particular assessment.
However, it was part of a larger study, we are told, and that study by the DIA also was very heavily caveated. This is the question Congress apparently is going to try and resolve, as well as the CIA itself -- did it have all the information in hand, was it appropriately shared and was the information accurate?
Now, the intelligence community really does not often come to definitive conclusions. They have assessments. They have judgments. The question Congress is going to look at is whether those assessments and judgments were perhaps overstated by the administration. No clear answers to that question yet -- Bill.
HEMMER: Barbara, thanks.
Barbara Starr at the Pentagon with breaking news from there.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
