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THE kumbaya crowd which pressed for East Timor's independence must shoulder much of the blame for the failure of its dysfunctional Government. But while the collective of liberation theologists and civil rights lawyers cheered Fretilin's Portugese-educated Marxist guerrilla leaders, the same candle-wavers protested against the toppling of the mass murdering Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. Yet East Timor, with a population estimated at about one million, whose independence was internationally recognised on May 20, 2002, is now arguably in proportionately worse shape than Iraq, population 26 million, where the first election under its new constitution took place just last December. The...

Technical Intelligence in Retrospect: The 2001 Anthrax Letters Powder ------------------------------------------------- Authors: Dany Shoham; Stuart M. Jacobsen --------------------------------------------------- Published in: International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Volume 20, Issue 1 March 2007 , pages 79 - 105 -------------------------------------------- (Weblink : http://newsdetails.blogspot.com/2007/05/technical-intelligence-in-retrospect.html ) -------------------------------------------- EXCERPTS (...) Naturally, the U.S. Intelligence Community first tried to profile the SSP by technically comparing it with past weaponized anthrax powders made by the U.S. Army. But, while the dehydration-based forming of dry powder, weapon-grade, biological material conducted by William Patrick in the U.S. Army during the 1950s relied on freeze drying, and then grinding down the...

"Relying, apparently, on concrete findings, former top U.S. weapons inspector Dr. David Kay said that "the Iraqis had developed new techniques for drying anthrax - techniques that were superior to anything the United States or the old Soviet Union had. That would make the former regime of Saddam Hussein the most sophisticated manufacturer of anthrax in the world." (Washington Post, 16 septembre 2005)

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH IRAQ WMD SLEUTH DAVID KAYDavid Kay was charged by the Bush administration with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invasion. Instead of finding weapons, though, he found what he told SPIEGEL was 'the biggest intelligence fiasco of my lifetime.' SPIEGEL: As head of the Iraq Survey Group, you led the effort to follow up on the claims made by 'Curveball,' the asylum seeker from Iraq who told German intelligence that Saddam Hussein was building mobile biological weapons laboratories. Do you remember the first time you began to doubt his story? Kay: The real shock...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005 1:14 p.m. EST David Kay Flashback: Iraqi Documents Showed WMD What happened to the internal Iraqi government documents that top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said had convinced him that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? In January 2004, Kay told Congress that the U.S. was "almost all wrong" in believing that Saddam had WMDs. But six months earlier in July 2003, Kay said he was sure Iraq had the banned weapons - based on millions of pages of internal government documents recovered from Saddam's regime. "I've already seen enough to convince...

(excerpt)And let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation.

The Democrats And WMD By Trevor Bothwell (02/05/04) David Kay, who resigned last week as chief U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, came to the conclusion recently that "we are very unlikely to find large stockpiles of weapons. I don't think they exist." Predictably, the Bush-lied-us-into-war crowd considers this proof that President Bush knew full well that Saddam Hussein didn't possess weapons of mass destruction, but dragged the country into war anyway. On the contrary, Kay reported last June his suspicions that he would find chemical and biological weapons rather quickly. These suspicions were gleaned largely from interviews with Iraqi scientists...

It pains me to be hard on Charles Duelfer. A smart and dedicated civil servant with vast experience in Iraq, he at least had an understandable reason for wrapping up his investigation into Iraq’s WMD programs: Osama bin Laden’s man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was trying to blow him up. Dr. Duelfer told London’s Independent in April of this year that a car bomb set by Zarqawi’s men “tried to get me and my follow car. Two of my guards were killed and one was badly wounded. My hearing's not been right since." This was the unofficial reason that...

President George W. Bush has appointed a commission to examine the performance of US intelligence regarding Baathist Iraq, especially errors concerning weapons of mass destruction (WMD). David Kay, the retiring head of the team that has gone in search of such weapons, has testified before the US Congress that, despite pre-war administration claims ­ and an international consensus ­ to the contrary, “we were almost all wrong” about Iraq’s WMD stockpiles: There weren’t any. Given the time that the commission will have for its inquiry ­ its report won’t be due until 2005 ­ perhaps it can examine an aspect...

SEOUL North Korea said it would reject any settlement of the nuclear weapons dispute as long as the United States was led by President George W. Bush, whom a North Korean official called a "cowboy." Meanwhile, the United States reportedly warned allies that North Korea might be ready to carry out an underground nuclear test as early as June. "Bush is a hooligan bereft of any personality as a human being, to say nothing of stature as president of a country," a spokesman of the North Korean Foreign Ministry told the country's official news agency, KCNA, on Saturday. The official...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials played down a report on Monday that the administration might seek a United Nations resolution empowering nations to intercept shipments in and out of North Korea that may contain nuclear-related materials. While acknowledging there may be some discussion of such a move, they said no proposal has been presented to senior policymakers, nor was there a decision to formally bring the issue of North Korea's nuclear programs to the U.N. Security Council. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters traveling with her to Latin America that the United States' main way of dealing with...

The Washington Post yesterday said a quotation used in its lead Page One headline in Thursday's paper -- that the United States got it "almost all wrong" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- was not new and was incorrectly attributed to the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. In an article on Thursday, The Post identified Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration picked to complete a U.S. investigation of Iraq's weapons programs, as the source of that remark. The dispatch by Dana Priest and Walter Pincus reported that Mr. Duelfer, chairman of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group,...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former U.S. chief weapons inspector David Kay urged the United States on Wednesday not to make the same mistakes with Iran that he said it made with Iraq ahead of the second Persian Gulf War. Former President Jimmy Carter, meanwhile, said that even a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities "would not be successful," but he agreed with U.S. officials who have demanded more transparency from the Islamic republic. Kay told CNN he is worried because he's hearing some of the same signals about Iran and its nuclear program that were heard as the Bush administration made...

WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence is unlikely to know much about Iran's contentious nuclear program and could be vulnerable to manipulation for political ends, former intelligence officers and other experts say. Amid an escalating war of words between Washington and Tehran, the experts say they doubt the CIA has been able to recruit agents with access to the small circle of clerics who control the Islamic Republic's national security policy. Serious doubts also surround the effectiveness of an expanded intelligence role for the Pentagon, which former intelligence officials say is preparing covert military forays to look for evidence...

One year ago I told the Senate Armed Services Committee that I had concluded "we were almost all wrong" at the time of the Iraq war about that country's activities with regard to weapons of mass destruction -- and never more wrong than in the assessment that Iraq had a resurgent program on the verge of producing nuclear weapons. I testified about what I saw as the major reasons we got it so wrong, and I urged the establishment of an independent commission to examine this failure and begin the long-overdue process of adjusting our intelligence capabilities to the new...

Since midsummer, the Senate Intelligence Committee has been attempting to solve the biggest mystery of the Iraq war: the disparity between the Bush Administration’s prewar assessment of Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction and what has actually been discovered. The committee is concentrating on the last ten years’ worth of reports by the C.I.A. Preliminary findings, one intelligence official told me, are disquieting. “The intelligence community made all kinds of errors and handled things sloppily,” he said. The problems range from a lack of quality control to different agencies’ reporting contradictory assessments at the same time. One finding, the official went...

UNITED NATIONS - U.N. weapons inspectors are planning for possible monitoring of Iraq's biological, chemical and missile programs despite being barred from the country by the United States, according to a report to the U.N. Security Council. The quarterly report released Wednesday by the U.N. Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission, known as UNMOVIC, outlines a range of activities undertaken by the U.N. inspectors to seek new information about Iraq's weapons programs and to prepare for a possible future role. U.N. inspectors were pulled out of Iraq in March, just before the U.S.-led war that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. After the...

Aaron Brown of CNN just had David Kay, former weapons inspector on for an interview. Aaron said he wanted to "put politics aside" and just stay with the facts. This interview was soooo bias. They had a close-up photo of a broken IAEA seal and Kay commented that once a seal had been broken on a bunker, "you own it", in other words, you were responsible for guarding it, so he was in effect, blaming the troops! You could just tell from the look on Aaron's face he enjoyed hearing that about as much as Clinton enjoyed Monica, while on...

Corrections Washington Post, October 8, 2004, Pg. 2 "An Oct. 7 article and the lead Page One headline incorrectly attributed a quotation to Charles A. Duelfer, the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. The statement, 'We were almost all wrong,' was made by Duelfer's predecessor, David Kay, at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing Jan. 28." Oopsie! Isn't this the darndest thing? An enormously important report confirming that Saddam was scamming the world by selling oil to UN criminals as part of his reacquiring WMDs next year, and those silly geese at the Post just sort of got it all...

Bush administration in denial about lack of Iraq WMD: Kay Thu Oct 7,12:07 PM ET WASHINGTON (AFP) - President George W. Bush (news - web sites)'s administration is in denial over the lack of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (news - web sites) before the US-led invasion in 2003, ex-chief US arms inspector David Kay said. AFP/File Photo A report by the Iraq Survey Group that Kay ran until he quit at the start of the year found Iraq had no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons when Bush was saying that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein (news - web sites)...

Kay Criticizes Bush, Blair on Iraq Intel LONDON - President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair should have realized before going to war that intelligence on Iraqi weapons was weak and did not indicate Saddam Hussein posed a danger to the West, America's former chief weapons inspector in Iraq said Sunday. David Kay resigned from the CIA in January and his conclusion then that Iraq did not have stockpiles of forbidden weapons caused serious problems for both Bush and Blair, undercutting their main justification for war. He told Britain's ITV network that Bush and Blair "should have been able...

US expert slams WMD 'delusions' Weapons of mass destruction do not exist in Iraq and it is "delusional" to think they will be found, says former chief US weapons inspector David Kay. Mr Kay told BBC Radio 4's Today programme that British and American leaders should simply apologise and admit that they were wrong. He said Saddam Hussein had intended to reconstitute his weapons programme at some point and had acted illegally. However, there were no actual WMD stockpiles, he said. Mr Kay led the hunt for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq until he stepped down as head of...

WASHINGTON (AP) - In its first official meeting Wednesday, the president's commission investigating flawed intelligence on weapons of mass destruction heard from David Kay, the former Iraq weapons inspector whose criticism helped drive the panel's creation. Kay, along with about a dozen other experts, appeared before the commission in a closed seven-hour session to brief the nine commissioners as they begin sorting out the quality of U.S. intelligence on the threat of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. President Bush formed the commission - called the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction...

May 6, 2004 Inspector says he warned U.S. officials of Iraqi prisoner abuse By BOB GIBSON Media General News Service CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va. -- David Kay, the man who led the U.S. search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, says he repeatedly told people about problems with the interrogation of prisoners, but the military ignored him. "I was there and I kept saying the interrogation process is broken. The prison process is broken. And no one wanted to deal with it," Kay said. "It was too, too distasteful. This is a known problem, and the military refuses to deal with...

Jordan's King Abdullah revealed on Saturday that vehicles reportedly containing chemical weapons and poison gas that were part of a deadly al Qaeda bomb plot came from Syria, the country named by U.S. weapons inspector David Kay last year as a likely repository for Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. "It was a major, major operation. It would have decapitated the government," King Abdullah told the San Francisco Chronicle. Jordanian officials estimated that the death count could have been as high as 20,000 - seven times greater than the Sept. 11 attacks. Abdullah said that trucks containing 17.5 tons of...

Monday that he had not concluded by July 2003 that Iraq did not possess any weapons of mass destruction as reported by Vanity Fair magazine. Kay told Reuters he was working on four hypotheses in July and did not conclude until later last year that Iraq probably did not have such weapons. President Bush cited the banned weapons as the main reason for taking the United States to war against Saddam Hussein's Iraq in March 2003. In a lengthy report in its latest issue which goes on sale this week, Vanity Fair said that less than a month after arriving...

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN"/> March 31, 2004 Iraq Arms Inspector Says Search Is a TangleBy DOUGLAS JEHL ASHINGTON, March 30 — The new chief weapons inspector in Iraq told Congress on Tuesday that a lack of cooperation from ousted Iraqi officials was thwarting American efforts to untangle the many remaining mysteries surrounding Iraq's suspected illicit weapons program. In the public version of testimony delivered behind closed doors to two Senate committees on Tuesday, the inspector, Charles A. Duelfer, acknowledged that American inspectors had still not found any evidence of an illicit arsenal. But he seemed less inclined...

A U.S. official working with an international group of specialists searching post-Saddam Iraq for weapons of mass destruction said today that more work needs to be performed before arriving at any conclusions. "I do not believe we have sufficient information and insight to make final judgments with confidence at this time" regarding the whereabouts of Saddam Hussein's WMDs, Charles A. Duelfer told Senate Armed Services Committee members here. Duelfer's testimony before the committee was behind closed doors and his unclassified remarks were posted on the CIA's public Web site. Duelfer said he's been the CIA's special adviser for strategy regarding...

Dr. Kay Had Maps with Coordinates of WMD Hiding Places in Syria Feb. 17 - Setting up an inquiry commission is the political leader’s favorite dodge for burying an embarrassing problem until the pursuit dies down. President George W. Bush will this week bow to election-year pressures from Democrats and his own Republicans alike and sign an executive order to investigate US intelligence failings regarding Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction on the eve of war. Both his senior war partners, the Australian and British prime ministers, face the same public clamor ever since WMD hunter Dr. David Kay resigned,...

What do you mean 'we' were wrong? Posted: March 20, 2004 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2004 WorldNetDaily.com Did you see David Kay's confession – "It turns out that we were all wrong" – before the Senate Armed Services Committee about a month ago? Maybe you wondered who "we" were. "We" certainly didn't include Kay's one-time boss at the International Atomic Energy Agency, Hans Blix, who had come out of retirement to chair the U.N. Monitoring Verification and Inspection Commission. "We" certainly didn't include Blix's successor at the IAEA – Director General Mohamed ElBaradei. So, what's this "we" stuff? Well, you...

In the week that marks the one-year anniversary of the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz commented on various aspects of the operation in a series of radio interviews March 16. In an interview with Eric Westervelt and Juan Williams on National Public Radio, Wolfowitz wondered why some people ask in hindsight why the United States didn't do more with incomplete intelligence information before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, yet criticize U.S. action in Iraq on the grounds that pre-war intelligence lacked certainty. "I thought the lesson of Sept. 11 is you can't wait for...

David Kay, the man who led the CIA's postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, has called on the Bush administration to "come clean with the American people" and admit it was wrong about the existence of the weapons. In an interview with the Guardian, Mr Kay said the administration's reluctance to make that admission was delaying essential reforms of US intelligence agencies, and further undermining its credibility at home and abroad. He welcomed the creation of a bipartisan commission to investigate prewar intelligence on Iraq, and said the wide-ranging US investigation was much more likely to...

<p>UNITED NATIONS — A report from U.N. weapons inspectors to be released today says they now believe there were no weapons of mass destruction of any significance in Iraq after 1994, according to two U.N. diplomats who have seen the document.</p>

After all of the publicity relating to the David Kay report, I thought it might be wise to read the report for myself to test whether or not the coverage has been accurate in the local newspapers. What I found was surprising. In my view, the Kay Report actually included enough information to justify the war in Iraq, and yet, no media outlet has said this. On the contrary, it seems as if most media outlets have given an incomplete accounting of this report, and specifically have been very anti-Bush in overall coverage, in my opinion. See for yourself if...

Make no foolish admissions of Iraq error SHORTLY before the Iraq war last March, Canberra received important intelligence from a friendly service. There was a dispute within the Iraqi government over whether to comply fully with the UN on weapons of mass destruction. Tariq Aziz, deputy prime minister, wanted to comply with the UN. Saddam Hussein said no, keeping WMDs was central to his regime. This was one of countless pieces of intelligence that convinced everyone Saddam had WMDs. Now, here's the thing for people who want to restructure Australian intelligence as a result of the failure to find large...

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said Wednesday that he doesn't know whether intelligence about Iraqi weapons was misused by the Bush White House to justify going to war with Saddam Hussein. He said any American president in office during the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks would have been deeply concerned about Saddam, and that it's possible that President Bush may have simply been selective about the facts he used to make the most persuasive appeal to the nation. "Politicians don't go around picking their weakest arguments," Kay said at Trinity University. "The real charge that deserves...

Is it just me, or is anyone else compelled to review the testimony of long-time arms inspector David Kay, former head of the Iraq Survey Group, who triggered a firestorm when he indicated in a variety of venues, both official and media venues, that "we were all wrong", no large stockpiles of WMDs were found in Iraq and were unlikely to be found in Iraq. The liberal press is up to their usual tricks of twisting the truth – in this case taking Kay's partial statements and spinning them into the "big lie" that there was no justification for war...

Q: Well, let’s start with Hispanic soldiers. How important is our continued recruitment and participation as U.S. armed force in United States. Rumsfeld: Oh, it's just enormously important. I don’t go anywhere in the world and meet with the troops that I don’t see so many Hispanic men, women, younger, older right from General Sanchez is leading our forces in Iraq down to a Private. They're just doing a wonderful, wonderful job. We value their willingness to volunteer and their dedication and their service. Q: Is there any special program in the works that would allow Hispanic soldiers who are...

Kay Says Bush Slowing Intelligence Reform Washington (AP) - The Bush administration is hampering efforts to improve intelligence by clinging to the false hope that weapons of mass destruction may be found in Iraq, the former chief U.S. weapons inspector said Thursday. "My only serious regret about the continued holding on to the hope that eventually we'll find it is that it eventually allows you to avoid the hard steps necessary to reform the process," David Kay said in an interview with The Associated Press. Since resigning last month, Kay has repeatedly said U.S. intelligence was wrong in claiming that...

WASHINGTON (AFP) - The former chief of the group of experts responsible for finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq (news - web sites), David Kay, said there was no point in continuing to hunt for arms he said "really did not exist." "I think finding them is probably the wrong approach, the wrong strategy," Kay told a news conference. "Iraq is as large California, Baghdad is as large as LA (Los Angeles). Have you looked every possible place? The answer to that question is always going to be no. My confident prediction is that 20 years from now, maybe...

<p>U.S. intelligence agencies may have wrongly estimated Iraqi weapons stockpiles, but on other key assessments — such as Saddam Hussein's nuclear ambitions — the CIA was right, say current and former government officials.</p> <p>Proponents of ousting the Iraqi dictator say the fact Saddam was actively seeking an atomic bomb and operating chemical and biological programs were sufficient reasons to go to war.</p>

President Bush--and Tony Blair in London--are caught in a political firestorm over the conclusion of the head of the Iraq Survey Group, David Kay, that there are no significant inventories of weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in Iraq and virtually no programs to create them. Why did Bush and Blair tell us otherwise? The short answer is that this is what they were advised by their respective intelligence services. Independent inquiries into the prewar performance of those services have been authorized in both countries. But even before the inquiries begin, the suspicion was noised about that the intelligence agencies must...

This slide released 05 February 2003 by the US State Department shows an aluminum tube found in Iraq that could be used to enrich uranium for use in weapons of mass destruction.(AFP-HO/File) WASHINGTON (AFP) - US experts hunting for elusive weapons of mass destruction in Iraq have ignored depots containing much-publicized aluminum tubes that the administration of President George W. Bush used to illustrate alleged Iraqi nuclear ambitions. The The Washington Post reported Sunday that in their march to Baghdad on April 8, US Marines charged past rows of warehouses at Ash Shaykhili that stored machine tools, consoles and instruments...

In stopping proliferation, the problem has been political will, not faulty intel. BOTH ZEALOUS CRITICS and supporters of President Bush's war against Saddam seem finally to have agreed on one thing--the Central Intelligence Agency goofed. The president's own Iraq weapons sleuth, David Kay, now asserts that our intelligence on Iraq was simply wrong, that Saddam didn't have weapons of mass destruction in 2003. This intelligence failure must be corrected, it is argued, lest we make fresh mistakes against the strategic weapons programs in North Korea and Iran. Hence, President Bush's announcement last week of a special panel to investigate our...

The political fallout continued this week, in the wake of Dr. David Kay's Iraqi WMD report. To no one's surprise, the report has become the focus both for the war's detractors and defenders -- and it came to a head Wednesday during Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee. "[Regarding] the theory that WMD may not have existed at the start of the war," said Mr. Rumsfeld, "I suppose that's possible but not likely. "What we have learned thus far has not proven Saddam Hussein had what intelligence indicated and what we believed he had," Sec....

The confession by the Bush Administration's chief arms investigator that Iraq had no weapons of mass destruction before the war has sent a thunderbolt of puzzlement through the pundits and politicians of the Anglo-American elite. "How could the intelligence reports have been so wrong?" they cry, wringing their hands in consternation. "Independent" commissions filled with Establishment worthies are now in the offing, as the architects of the war -- and their media sycophants -- pledge to resolve this disturbing mystery. But of course there is no "mystery." Anyone with a passing acquaintance of recent history knows exactly how, and why,...

EDITOR'S NOTE: This editorial appears in the February 23, 2004, issue of National Review. "It turns out we were all wrong" about Saddam Hussein's WMD, former chief weapons inspector David Kay told the Senate Armed Services Committee. These blunt words, after months of failing to find such weapons, forced President Bush to call for a bipartisan commission to examine American intelligence operations. Kay repudiated a central article of faith in the religion of conspiracy: that the administration, hot to topple Saddam, pressured intelligence analysts to give it the evidence it needed. Kay said he had "not come across a single...

<p>President Bush should insist his commission investigating the performance of U.S. intelligence agencies answer this question: What did we know about Saddam's weather balloon program, and when did we know it?</p> <p>This is not a facetious suggestion.</p> <p>Mr. Bush's decision to name a commission came after the highly respected David Kay -- who resigned as director of the Iraq Survey Group, saying he didn't believe Iraq had stockpiled weapons of mass destruction -- told the Senate Armed Services Committee an outside investigation was needed.</p>

An Honest Mistake February 3, 2004 “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.” I’ve always loved that ancient saying, whose author seems to be unknown. But in the age of democracy, it needs to be adapted: “In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man loses every election.” Not quite as snappy, maybe, but it meets the facts. By now every blind American has heard that arms inspector David Kay has exploded the Bush administration’s justification for preemptive war on, and regime change in, Iraq: the dogmatic accusation that Iraq had “weapons of mass destruction.” One-eyed...

<p>WASHINGTON (AP) -- Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Wednesday he is not ready to conclude that Iraq did not have weapons of mass destruction before U.S. troops invaded to depose Saddam Hussein last year.</p> <p>Rumsfeld told the Senate Armed Services Committee that U.S. weapons inspectors need more time to reach final conclusions about whether chemical and biological weapons existed in Iraq before the war, as the Bush administration had asserted before sending American troops into battle.</p>