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American Morning
Interview with Senator Saxby Chambliss
Aired October 02, 2003 - 07:16 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: From Washington, the House and Senate Intelligence Committee will be briefed today on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They will hear from David Kay, chief weapons hunter for President Bush, about his team's progress, or lack of it right now in Iraq.
National security correspondent David Ensor now has this preview for us in Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The testimony will be behind closed doors, but the stakes will be high for the man the CIA hired to find Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, whose team has yet to find any.
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN (D-IL), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Here we are five months after the fact, after thousands of our inspectors have combed all of those sites and others, and have come up empty.
ENSOR: The question is: Why? Given evidence chemical weapons at a minimum were there after the 1991 war, are they still hidden, or were they destroyed secretly by Saddam so as to keep the world guessing?
CHARLES DUELFER, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I think to a certain extent he may have been bluffing.
ENSOR: But David Kay won't argue Saddam was bluffing, U.S. officials say. He will report finding dual-use facilities that could be converted to weapons production on short notice, and a massive program to conceal them from arms inspectors.
The U.S. military's heavy-handed approach to Iraqi scientists, like Madi Obadi (ph), may have made Kay's work harder, some experts argue. Obadi (ph) was arrested by troops in front of his family, even after offering to tell the CIA what he knew.
DUELFER: Many of the potential people who could cooperate, I think, probably have been scared off.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ENSOR: U.S. officials say they recognize congressmen, especially those who opposed the war, will likely give their versions of Kay's closed-door testimony even if he doesn't come public with it. They're considering putting out a summary of his main points to make sure and get their version out in public, too -- Bill.
HEMMER: David Ensor from D.C.
Let's talk more about it now. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia will be among those who will hear what David Kay has to say today. The senator is with us live from Capitol Hill.
Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. Always a pleasure to speak with you.
SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R), GEORGIA: Always good to be with you, Bill.
HEMMER: I want to take you back to late July. This is what you told me on this same program about the hunt for WMD in Iraq.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHAMBLISS: Saddam had too many opportunities to hide, destroy, give away weapons of mass destruction, but I still think at the end of the day that we're going to find how he manufactured them, where he manufactured them, and evidence that they were there. And in all probability, we'll find some amount of weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: You say at the end of the day you believe that to be true. Is this the day that you will be convinced?
CHAMBLISS: Well, no, because what I expect Mr. Kay to come in and tell us today is that this is a continuing process. It's going to be a long process. We still don't have the people within Iraq who are coming forward to give us information that we need to find exactly what I talked about: where they were manufactured, how they were manufactured and where they were stored.
But I do expect Mr. Kay to give us a report that's more of an interim-type report. I think at the end of the day, we're still going to find evidence of those weapons. We know we had them there. You just showed pictures of weapons of mass destruction on the ground in Iraq.
So, we know he used them against the Kurds. So, we know he had them. We know he admitted to having them. And I think Mr. Kay is doing a fine job. He's got very highly-skilled people there, and I don't expect any smoking gun today. But this is another interim report in the process.
HEMMER: You heard the report and read the report, I'm certain, from "TIME" magazine earlier this week that suggested that possibly they were all done away with and destroyed back in the mid-1990s. You had this four-year gap between 1998 and the year 2002, where no inspectors were scouring the countryside in Iraq. That leads us back to the original question here that we continue to circulate on this program and all across the country: Why is it taking so long right now to locate the WMD? CHAMBLISS: Well, you have to remember that not just in the weeks and months leading up to the Iraqi conflict, but, as you said, since 1998 we have had no one inside of Iraq to monitor what's been going on with Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program. So, it's very difficult for us to say, and he may have destroyed them, he may have buried them, he may have given them away. We don't know.
And Dr. Kay is, once again, completing his report, completing his investigation. It's simply going to take a long time to get those answers, Bill, and we don't have them at this point in time.
HEMMER: Senator, there was a letter that was sent to George Tenet and your colleagues in the House, Jane Harman and Porter Goss, several days ago that talked about significant deficiencies in the intelligence prior to the war beginning. This letter was leaked out to the press. It's been out there for a while right now. Do you believe there were significant deficiencies in the intel you had before the war started?
CHAMBLISS: I do, and I think a lot of what's contained in the letter is absolute fact. And let me explain what I mean by that.
As I have said over the course of the last two and a half years with respect to the intelligence information that we've gathered, both on all terrorist operations as well as on what's going on in Iraq right now, the best way you gather that information is through having human assets on the ground inside of Iraq giving you information. Since 1998, there have been no outsiders in Iraq dealing with the weapons of mass destruction program.
So, the information that we were receiving was from folks who may have been telling us third or fourth-hand what they thought was going on there. That's the deficiency in the information that I see, and that's where I think the letter was correct.
However, that letter does provide a caveat. Chairman Goss was very explicit to say that there were caveats in the information that we received.
So, I think the letter has some very good points to it, and there were some deficiencies, but they can be explained.
HEMMER: Senator, thank you. Saxby Chambliss, the Republican from Georgia. You will be briefed today behind closed doors by David Kay; so, too, will your colleagues in the House. And we will track it. Thanks again for talking with us today.
CHAMBLISS: Thank you, Bill.
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 October 2, 2003 - 07:16 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: From Washington, the House and Senate Intelligence Committee will be briefed today on the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. They will hear from David Kay, chief weapons hunter for President Bush, about his team's progress, or lack of it right now in Iraq.
National security correspondent David Ensor now has this preview for us in Washington.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): The testimony will be behind closed doors, but the stakes will be high for the man the CIA hired to find Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, whose team has yet to find any.
SEN. RICHARD DURBIN (D-IL), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Here we are five months after the fact, after thousands of our inspectors have combed all of those sites and others, and have come up empty.
ENSOR: The question is: Why? Given evidence chemical weapons at a minimum were there after the 1991 war, are they still hidden, or were they destroyed secretly by Saddam so as to keep the world guessing?
CHARLES DUELFER, FORMER U.N. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: I think to a certain extent he may have been bluffing.
ENSOR: But David Kay won't argue Saddam was bluffing, U.S. officials say. He will report finding dual-use facilities that could be converted to weapons production on short notice, and a massive program to conceal them from arms inspectors.
The U.S. military's heavy-handed approach to Iraqi scientists, like Madi Obadi (ph), may have made Kay's work harder, some experts argue. Obadi (ph) was arrested by troops in front of his family, even after offering to tell the CIA what he knew.
DUELFER: Many of the potential people who could cooperate, I think, probably have been scared off.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
ENSOR: U.S. officials say they recognize congressmen, especially those who opposed the war, will likely give their versions of Kay's closed-door testimony even if he doesn't come public with it. They're considering putting out a summary of his main points to make sure and get their version out in public, too -- Bill.
HEMMER: David Ensor from D.C.
Let's talk more about it now. Senator Saxby Chambliss of Georgia will be among those who will hear what David Kay has to say today. The senator is with us live from Capitol Hill.
Welcome back to AMERICAN MORNING. Always a pleasure to speak with you.
SEN. SAXBY CHAMBLISS (R), GEORGIA: Always good to be with you, Bill.
HEMMER: I want to take you back to late July. This is what you told me on this same program about the hunt for WMD in Iraq.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
CHAMBLISS: Saddam had too many opportunities to hide, destroy, give away weapons of mass destruction, but I still think at the end of the day that we're going to find how he manufactured them, where he manufactured them, and evidence that they were there. And in all probability, we'll find some amount of weapons.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: You say at the end of the day you believe that to be true. Is this the day that you will be convinced?
CHAMBLISS: Well, no, because what I expect Mr. Kay to come in and tell us today is that this is a continuing process. It's going to be a long process. We still don't have the people within Iraq who are coming forward to give us information that we need to find exactly what I talked about: where they were manufactured, how they were manufactured and where they were stored.
But I do expect Mr. Kay to give us a report that's more of an interim-type report. I think at the end of the day, we're still going to find evidence of those weapons. We know we had them there. You just showed pictures of weapons of mass destruction on the ground in Iraq.
So, we know he used them against the Kurds. So, we know he had them. We know he admitted to having them. And I think Mr. Kay is doing a fine job. He's got very highly-skilled people there, and I don't expect any smoking gun today. But this is another interim report in the process.
HEMMER: You heard the report and read the report, I'm certain, from "TIME" magazine earlier this week that suggested that possibly they were all done away with and destroyed back in the mid-1990s. You had this four-year gap between 1998 and the year 2002, where no inspectors were scouring the countryside in Iraq. That leads us back to the original question here that we continue to circulate on this program and all across the country: Why is it taking so long right now to locate the WMD? CHAMBLISS: Well, you have to remember that not just in the weeks and months leading up to the Iraqi conflict, but, as you said, since 1998 we have had no one inside of Iraq to monitor what's been going on with Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program. So, it's very difficult for us to say, and he may have destroyed them, he may have buried them, he may have given them away. We don't know.
And Dr. Kay is, once again, completing his report, completing his investigation. It's simply going to take a long time to get those answers, Bill, and we don't have them at this point in time.
HEMMER: Senator, there was a letter that was sent to George Tenet and your colleagues in the House, Jane Harman and Porter Goss, several days ago that talked about significant deficiencies in the intelligence prior to the war beginning. This letter was leaked out to the press. It's been out there for a while right now. Do you believe there were significant deficiencies in the intel you had before the war started?
CHAMBLISS: I do, and I think a lot of what's contained in the letter is absolute fact. And let me explain what I mean by that.
As I have said over the course of the last two and a half years with respect to the intelligence information that we've gathered, both on all terrorist operations as well as on what's going on in Iraq right now, the best way you gather that information is through having human assets on the ground inside of Iraq giving you information. Since 1998, there have been no outsiders in Iraq dealing with the weapons of mass destruction program.
So, the information that we were receiving was from folks who may have been telling us third or fourth-hand what they thought was going on there. That's the deficiency in the information that I see, and that's where I think the letter was correct.
However, that letter does provide a caveat. Chairman Goss was very explicit to say that there were caveats in the information that we received.
So, I think the letter has some very good points to it, and there were some deficiencies, but they can be explained.
HEMMER: Senator, thank you. Saxby Chambliss, the Republican from Georgia. You will be briefed today behind closed doors by David Kay; so, too, will your colleagues in the House. And we will track it. Thanks again for talking with us today.
CHAMBLISS: Thank you, Bill.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
