Transcript: David Kay at Senate hearing

CNN.com ^ | January 28, 2004

[digger48]

(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.

[digger48]

We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

And never -- not in a single case -- was the explanation, "I was pressured to do this." The explanation was very often, "The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it."

And each case was different, but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I'm convinced that, at least to the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, "inappropriate command influence" that led them to take that position.

[Halfmanhalfamazing]

Thanks for the reminder. It's always good to have history revisitted.

[milwguy]

The administration should be repeating this info often.....Kay directly says he had conversations with Sen Kennedy before the war and told Kennedy Iraq had WMD. Kay also says he was not hired to parrot the admins position on WMD, that the French and Germans said Iraq had WMD, and most importantly, that every analyst he talked to denied being pressured about WMD.

[Tarantulas]

Thanks for posting this. It might come in handy at a certain discussion board.

[Dilbert56]

Further, he said he wished the problem had turned out to be political pressure because we know how to fix that.