Transcript: Senate Armed Services Committee Testimony of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld

I'm not sure what the precedents are for the Senate Armed Services Committee commandeering the other body's chamber, but nevertheless sitting up here I feel somewhat like a bishop.

And I thank my distinguished friend, the chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, Senator Hunter, and the ranking Democrat, another dear friend, Ike Skelton, and Robert Rangel, the staff director.

The committee meets today to receive annual testimony from the secretary of defense and the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Joint Chiefs this morning represented by vice chairman, General Pace in the absence of General Myers, who had the untimely and tragic loss of his brother, Chuck Myers.

We are to receive the posture of the United States armed forces and President Bush's defense budget request for fiscal year 2005 and the future-year defense program.

Secretary Rumsfeld and Vice Chairman Pace, we welcome you again back before the committee and commend you once again for the outstanding leadership that you both continue, as a team, to provide our nation and to our men and women in uniform and their families.

There are few precedents for the challenges you face in this post-9/11 world, but in every way you have met the challenges.

WARNER: I start today by recognizing the men and women of the armed forces of the United States, who, together with a coalition of nations, liberated Iraq, a country larger than Germany and Italy combined, in roughly three weeks.

This combined force accomplished this with unprecedented precision and casualties were far below the estimates. Nevertheless, we grieve each and every one who was lost or wounded and express our compassion to their families.

Iraq, a nation that for decades had known only tyranny and oppression, is now moving forward to a future of freedom and opportunity for all of its people.

While the mission of the U.S. and its coalition forces continues in Iraq, much has been accomplished since Operation Iraqi Freedom began last March. The world is a safer place and Iraq is a better place because, along with many nations, the U.S. confronted a brutal dictator who had defied the mandates of the international community for over a decade.

Disagreements will continue about the process and the timing of the decision to use force. But on one thing there can be no disagreement: The professionalism, the performance and the sacrifices by the men and women in uniform was, is and always will be inspiring.

Every American is justifiably proud of the U.S. armed forces. The security of the United States of America is in good hands today with its military.

As we meet this morning, hundreds of thousands of our servicemembers are engaged around the world and here at home defending our nation in Operation Enduring Freedom, Operation Iraqi Freedom and other military operations in the ongoing global war on terrorism.

These brave men and women and their families deserve our continued support and they will get it from this committee -- the equipment, the resources, the support they need -- to perform their missions today and tomorrow and into the future.

WARNER: We must remember that defense of our homeland begins on the distant battlefields of the world. Our forward-deployed forces are and will remain our first line of defense.

This committee's responsibility will continue to be to ensure that these troops remain the best equipped, the best trained, the most capable forces in the world.

I'm encouraged by my initial review of the president's defense budget for the fiscal year 2005. This request of $401.7 billion for the department represents a 5 percent increase over the FY 2004 authorized level, and the fourth straight year of growth for the defense budget.

This sends a strong signal to the world of America's commitment to freedom. And the president and you, Mr. Secretary, deserve special recognition because we know the competitive forces in our budget today. But this was necessary to get this increase.

As Congress works its will on the budget request, we must be mindful of potential problems. We are putting increased demands on our forces around the world, increased demands on their families, and increased demands on our Reserve and National Guard.

We are blessed with a military that has responded to these demands with extraordinary commitment, but even the best military has its limits.

As we proceed with the hearing today -- and I'm going to ask unanimous consent that the full balance of my statement be included in the record -- we are learning of the president's initiative to strengthen America's intelligence community. I commend the president for this leadership, and we await the greater details about the commission envisioned and its membership.

In testimony before this committee last week, Dr. David Kay, former special adviser to Director Tenet, told us that, based on the findings of the Iraq Survey Group -- that's the military force in- country conducting the survey -- their work to date, prewar estimates about large WMD stockpiles may have been incorrect.

WARNER: As Dr. Kay stated, "We were almost all wrong and I certainly include myself there," end quote.

WARNER: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

Senator Kennedy?

KENNEDY: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, Mr. Secretary, General Pace. And thank you for representing the servicemen and speaking about their continued service to the country which all of us are grateful for.

Mr. Secretary, as the U.S. Iraqi weapons inspector, David Kay, made it clear in the recent days, that his exhaustive postwar inspection leave little doubt that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction at the time the war began. And his conclusion is a devastating refutation of the Bush administration's case for war in Iraq and I think seriously undermines our credibility in the world.

Until now, the administration has resisted the independent investigation of the issue, but now it's proposing investigation by committee hand-picked by the administration, with findings to be made only after 2004 election.

So I think the White House agenda is clear, is to blame the failure of the administration's case for war on the intelligence community, rather than the administration's manipulations and misrepresentations on the available intelligence.

So the debacle cannot all be blamed on the intelligence community. Key policy-makers made crystal clear the results they wanted from the intelligence community.

Mr. Kay said, "We were all wrong"; he's wrong. Many in the intelligence community were right.

And so there are clear warnings from the intelligence community. But to sense within the intelligence community that many of the positions taken by the administration were not noted or glossed over.

As Senator Levin pointed out, your own Defense Intelligence Agency, in September of 2002, said, "There's no reliable information" -- no reliable information, Mr. Secretary -- "whether Iraq is producing, stockpiling chemical weapons or where Iraq has or will establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities."

KENNEDY: The State Department Bureau of Intelligence concluded, "The activities we have detected do not add up to a compelling case that Iraq is pursuing what INR would consider to be an integrated, comprehensive approach to acquire nuclear weapons. INR considers the available evidence inadequate to support such a judgment."

Department of Energy intelligence disagreed that the famous tubes were a nuclear weapons program. State Department Intelligence Bureau also concluded that the tubes were not intended for use in Iraq's nuclear weapons.

Greg Thielmann, a retired career State Department official, had served as director of the Office of Strategic Proliferation and Military Affairs in the Bureau of Intelligence and Research, said it all last July: "Some of the fault lies with the performance of the intelligence community. Most of it lies with the way senior officials misused the information they were provided." He said, "They surveyed the data, picked out what they liked. The whole thing was bizarre. The secretary of defense had this huge Defense Intelligence Agency and he went around it."

Lieutenant Colonel Karen Kwiatkowski, recently retired Air Force intelligence officer, served in the Pentagon during the buildup to the war, said, "It wasn't intelligence, it was propaganda. They take a little bit of intelligence, cherry-pick it, make it sound much more exciting, usually by taking it out of context, usually by juxtaposition of two pieces of information that don't belong together."

We've seen in the examples that were mentioned this morning, for example, just on the issues of stockpiling on chemical weapons, as mentioned by Senator Levin, 2002, DIA said no reliable information on whether producing and stockpile. You said in 2002, before this committee, "We do know that" -- "We do know that." I understand the intelligence community never says, "We know," but you said in September, "We do know that."

In October, the NIE said, "We have 100 metric tons -- 500 metric tons of chemical weapons. We found that out in the last year."

Secretary Powell says, in February, "That's a conservative estimate, the stockpile 100 to 500 tons. That's a conservative estimate."

KENNEDY: And then you say in March '03, "We know where they are. We know where they are."

That is an extraordinary leap, and that extraordinary leap was wrong. Don't you think that that independent commission ought to be really reflective of men and women that can look hard and fast at not just what the intelligence was, but how it was manipulated, and interrogate career individuals in the intelligence community that believe that to be the case?

RUMSFELD: Senator Kennedy, you might not have been here for my opening statement on the intelligence piece, but there was not a single thing in there that blamed the intelligence community or put any cast on it even slightly like you suggested.

Second, I never have gone around the intelligence community. The intelligence community doesn't always agree, and you have hundreds of people and they have footnotes and they have different opinions, and you develop a consensus.

KENNEDY: Don't we have entitled...

RUMSFELD: I have stuck with the consensus...

KENNEDY: Aren't we entitled to hear what the dissent was as well?

RUMSFELD: Absolutely.

KENNEDY: Did we ever? Was that provided to the Congress?

RUMSFELD: Absolutely. Within the...

KENNEDY: Will you provide that where these dissent positions were provided us prior to the time that we voted?

RUMSFELD: I'm not in the intelligence community. I don't deal with the intelligence committees in the Congress. I am saying that within the executive branch, when intelligence is circulated it includes footnotes, it includes differing opinions, as it always has for the last 30 years to my certain knowledge.

Next, you've twice or thrice mentioned manipulation. I haven't heard of it. I haven't seen any of it except in the comment you have made.

Third, I am told by Dr. Cambone, sitting behind me, that the document you read from and possibly the same document that Senator Levin read from also has a paragraph in it that says the following, and I quote: "Although we lack any direct information, Iraq probably possesses CW agent in chemical munitions, possibly including artillery rockets, artillery shells, aerial bombs, ballistic missile warheads. Baghdad also probably possesses bulk chemical stockpiles, primarily containing precursors, but that also could consist of some mustard agent and stabilized VX."

That's in the same document, I am told.

RUMSFELD: Last...

KENNEDY: Well, the -- you said, "probable and possible." "Probable and possible," rather than, "We know." It's a big difference.

RUMSFELD: I'm coming to "We know."

I could be wrong. I'm asked a lot of questions. I use a lot of words. And I'm sure from time to time I say something that, in retrospect, I wish I hadn't.

However, I remember -- I think I remember the moment I said we know something, and it was this: The forces had gone in out of Kuwait into Iraq, and they were moving up, and they had gotten in a day or two, possibly, and they were a long way from Baghdad. And as everyone on this committee will remember, the suspect sites for -- which is what they generally call them -- for WMD that the intelligence community produced, the suspect sites tended to be north, and they tended to be in the Baghdad and north area.

Our troops were a long way from even Baghdad, and I was asked, "Where's the weapons of mass destruction?" And I may have said -- I think I said, "We know where they are. They're up north. They're not down here." And I was referring to the suspect sites.

And you're quite right, shorthand "We know where they are" probably turned out not to be exactly what one would have preferred in retrospect.

But let me say one other thing: General Pace, would you please describe what the United States Armed Forces did every day by putting on chemical weapons? They believed, we believed, everyone believed they had chemical weapons. These people didn't get in these MMOPs (ph)?

PACE: Yes, sir.

What we did, sir, is, as you expect, prepared for the potential capabilities of the enemy. And even if you disregard all of the intelligence that was current at that time, if you simply looked at the fact that he had used chemicals against his own people, had used chemicals against Iran, it was prudent for military planners to believe that he might use chemicals against us when we attacked.

So as we went across the line of departure, as we crossed from Kuwait into Iraq, all of our troops were in mission protective chemical gear.

PACE: And they stayed in that, either just the suits themselves, sometimes the boots and the gloves and on occasion the mask as well, as the tactical intelligence changed. They put that gear on and stayed in that well passed the line in which we thought -- which was about 60 miles south of Baghdad -- well north of that line they stayed in chemical protective gear.

It was reinforced by discoveries in the battlefield, like 3,000 brand new sets of chemical protective suits and atropine injectors that were found on the Iraqi side when they uncovered them in a school.

Those kinds of discoveries led us to believe that if the Iraqis themselves had that kind of equipment, and we knew we did not have chemical weapons, that they were preparing to use it.

So that's the kind of environment inside of which we wore the chemical protective gear. And it was not only for the troops who were on the ground, but everyone in-theater -- the Navy guys at sea, the Air Force folks where they were -- all had the chemical equipment right there with them and practiced daily getting into it in case they were attacked.

KENNEDY: Thank you, Mr. Secretary.

I'd just say that in your September 19th, 2002, testimony to the committee, you said five times that "Iraq has," or "We know they have weapons of mass destruction."

Thank you, Chairman.

RUMSFELD: I'm not going to go back and quote the comments from the previous administration and President Clinton and Vice President Gore...

AKAKA: Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. I'd like to begin by permitting Senator Levin 30 seconds.

LEVIN: Thank you very much, Senator Akaka.

The issue of whether or not an intelligence investigation by an outside commission should be a truly outside commission, the one just appointed by the president, we can save for another place. If it's going to be independent, it's got to be independent of the president. And that means Congress has got to be involved in the selection of that commission and the rules, that's number one.

Another issue which we're not going to resolve here is that we believe, on the Democratic side, that the intelligence committee should look at the use of intelligence by the policy-makers, not just at the production of creation by the intelligence community. That's another issue for another place and another day. (THIS IS NOT GOOD AND NOT RIGHT)

What you've said here, however, I want to put in the record something relative to the alleged continuity of intelligence between the Clinton administration and the Bush administration. I'm going to put in the record three tables that were produced by the Carnegie Endowment.

Table three compares pre-2002 intelligence assessments with October NIE assessment in 2002 -- so I'm going to go down the list and put these tables into the record -- comparing pre-October intelligence with post-October 2002 intelligence.

Iraq reconstituted its nuclear program after 1998: pre-2002, probably not; October, 2002, yes.

Iraq attempted to enrich uranium for use in nuclear weapons: pre-2002, maybe; October, 2002, yes.

Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from abroad: pre-2002, no; October, 2002 NIE assessment, yes.

Now, on the chemical weapons programs: Iraq had large stockpiles of chemical weapons: maybe, maybe; October, 2002 NIE, yes.

Iraq had covert chemical weapon production facilities: before 2002, not sure; October, 2002, yes.

On and on, the differences -- significant differences in the intelligence between before and after October 2002 laid out in this Carnegie Endowment study. I would ask that these be made part of the record.

WARNER: Without objection. And I think the secretary should be given the opportunity to put in the record a rebuttal.

LEVIN: That was on Senator Akaka's time, so I would appreciate...

WARNER: I understand that.

RUMSFELD: I'd be happy to.

I will say this: George Tenet was the director of central intelligence in the last administration and this administration, and he has indicated repeatedly that there are, as I said, threads of the intelligence that are consistent and provide continuity over a sustained period of time. And he's the DCI.

LEVIN: Thank you, Senator Akaka.

WARNER: Thank you very much.

Senator Cornyn?

CORNYN: Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

LEVIN: No, no, Senator Akaka's got the rest of his time.

WARNER: For God's sake, what's going on?

LEVIN: He gave me just a minute.

WARNER: Oh, just a minute? Longest minute I've seen in some time.

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