Report on weapons program likely to draw no conclusions, CIA says

Associated Press ^ | 09-24-03

[Brian S]

The upcoming report of the CIA's chief weapons hunter is not expected to reach any conclusions about Iraq's alleged weapons programs, officials at the intelligence agency said Wednesday.

The officials declined to discuss what specific findings David Kay might include in his report, which may not be made public after it is completed.

[arete]

that the U.S. government would proceed slowly before going public with any discoveries, to make sure its analysis was sound.

Geez, it would have been nice if the clown patrol in charge would have thought about that before going to war.

Richard W.

[Marianne]

The officials declined to discuss what specific findings David Kay might include in his report, which may not be made public after it is completed.
I guess we just can't handle the truth!

[arete]

I guess we just can't handle the truth!

LOL -- I'm still wondering what Fox News was talking about a couple of months ago when they were pounding the idea that the administraton had to keep the info secret so as not to tip off the evil-doers. Yoo Fox -- we invaded their country. They know we're there.

Richard W.

[Brian S]

Must be GWB is more honest than I am however.

I would have "made sure" that they found "something" once we occupied the region.

We have "people" that could make that happen, you know. ;)

Teacup full of 'thrax is all it would take...

[finnman69]

Geez, it would have been nice if the clown patrol in charge would have thought about that before going to war

saddam hussein thanks you for your support.

[Pikamax]

not that I put stock in BBC, but there are now 3 reports released today speculating no WMD's but varying degrees of programs. so all these leaks either mean people are seeing different parts of the report or just useless speculation.


http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/3135932.stm


No WMD in Iraq, source claims
No weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq by the group looking for them, according to a Bush administration source who has spoken to the BBC.
This will be the conclusion of the Iraq Survey Group's interim report, the source told the presenter of BBC television's Daily Politics show, Andrew Neil.

Downing Street branded the story "speculation about an unfinished draft of an interim report".

Mr Neil said the draft report - which the source said is due to be published next month - concludes that it is highly unlikely that weapons of mass destruction were shipped out of the country to places like Syria before the US-led war on Iraq.


The bottom line is that the team has found no weapons of mass destruction
Andrew Neil

It will also say that Saddam Hussein mounted a huge programme to deceive and hinder the work of United Nations weapons inspectors, he said.

Mr Neil said that according to the source, the report will say its inspectors have not even unearthed "minute amounts of nuclear, chemical or biological weapons material".

They have also not uncovered any laboratories involved in deploying weapons of mass destruction and no delivery systems for the weapons.


IRAQ SURVEY GROUP
Took over WMD hunt from the US military in June
Using intelligence to build picture of Iraqi weapons programmes
Led by US general, but has some UK and Australian staff
1,300 staff include former UN weapons inspectors
But, Mr Neil added, the report would publish computer programmes, files, pictures and paperwork which it says shows that Saddam Hussein's regime was attempting to develop a weapons of mass destruction programme.
CIA spokesman Bill Harlow told the Reuters news agency he expected the report would "reach no firm conclusions, nor will it rule anything in or out".

Reuters also quoted a senior US official as saying the Iraq Survey Group (ISG) was expected to report finding "documentary evidence" that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons programmes.

"Whether they will find or disclose anything on the weapons themselves, I doubt," said the official.

'Savage blow'

UK Foreign Secretary Jack Straw said: "This is speculation on an as yet unpublished report.

"I await the report eagerly from Mr Kay (head of the survey group), as does the international community."

Mr Straw argued that the whole international community had agreed Iraq's weapons programmes had posed - the issue had been what to do about it.


People did not need the ISG report for evidence of that threat, he said. It was already shown in volumes of reports from UN inspectors.
A Number 10 spokesman said "we don't have this text", but asked if the prime minister had seem the report, remarked: "We are not going into details of process."

Mr Neil, a former editor of the Sunday Times, stressed he had not seen the draft report, and was reporting what a single source had said its findings were likely to be.

He said the report was still to be finalised and could undergo some changes, but the source had been told the content of some key passages which were not expected to be substantively altered.

Former Conservative cabinet minister Michael Portillo said if these details of the report were true, it would be a "savage blow" to the prime minister.

'Fake facilities'

The inspectors have uncovered no evidence that any weapons were actually built in the immediate years before the war, the leak of the report suggests.

It is alleged that Saddam Hussein's programme of deception involved fake facilities and infrastructure to deceive and hinder the work of UN weapons inspectors.


The group may well conclude that Iraq had an elaborate and secret effort to maintain elements of its weapons programmes - in 'suspended animation' if you like
Jonathan Marcus
BBC defence correspondent

Documents have been uncovered showing weapons facilities were concealed as commercial buildings, the report is likely to say.

The ISG took over the job of finding WMD from the US military in June.

The survey group, led by David Kay, a former UN weapons inspector and now a special adviser to the CIA, is a largely US operation, although it includes some British and Australian staff.

Its 1,400 personnel are made up of scientists, military and intelligence experts, and its work is shrouded in secrecy.

Its focus is intelligence, using documents and interviews with Iraqi scientists to build up a picture of the secret world of Iraq's weapons programmes.

The survey group has been under pressure to prove the Bush administration's case that Iraq's weapons posed a significant threat.

Gary Samor, of the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, recently told the BBC that UN inspection teams should have been sent back into Iraq as there would be much scepticism about the ISG's findings.

[dogbyte12]

I don't feel like putting up the NY Times article, but it's icky. I will quote one paragraph. It also says nothing was found. This is the bright side.

They also said that Mr. Kay's team had interviewed at least one Iraqi security officer who said he had worked in such a chemical and biological weapons program until shortly before the American invasion in March.

It would be worse to publish this fact. If they release a report that says they haven't found the weapons, but one security guard in the entire country said he worked on them, but basically can't tell anybody where they are, it will be worse than not having him.

I can't believe this has come to this.

[Txco]

i agree with you... ...unfortunately, i think this goes against what allot of people at this site were saying that the administration was holding back on news of WMD till the right time. if any "physical" material had been found then it would have come out by now...news like this is just going to drop Bush's poll ratings.

[dogbyte12]

I really think the administration thought they were going to find stuff.

I do think Blair & Bush "massaged" the intel, but I think they thought of it as a white lie. Saddam was sneaky, and the only way to catch him red handed was to go in, so they made the intel seem more sure, when really they were just going on Iraqi dissident, and gut reactions.

Clinton, Albright, Kerry you name it were snookered by Saddam as well. They refused to act on their beliefs that he was making weapons, and they left President Bush to hold the bag.

A conspiracy theorist might even say that Clinton knew Saddam didn't have anything, but dumped bad info on Bush to trick him into over-reaching.

[Txco]

not exactly sure if I would use the word "massaged"...i just plain think that there some dead wrong assumptions made about WMDs in Iraq. The NIE report sounds quite convincing and I'm sure that people in the administration wouldn't have pushed the WMD issue so hard before the war if they didn't really believe there was any there. I think this is more of a massive intelligence failure. What ticks me off is those that say that they should have pushed the human rights issue more before invading...those same people would have come back with the arguement that human rights are abuse all over the world.

[edchambers]

Ok so there are no weapons of mass destruction so WHY IN THE HELL did Saddam fight the inspections tooth and nail and why would he not allow the Scientists to be interviewed outside the country?? Have they really found NOTHING?

[Txco]

i agree...i'm not arguing against you, but the cold hard fact remains that so far no "physical" evidence has been found.
I believe he had WMD... but chances are that he could have destroyed or sent them somewhere else. the problem remains that the administration sounded so absolutely certain before the war that they would be found... hey, i agree with the war.

[Pikamax]

I am shocked this made it into the report

"In a formal National Intelligence Estimate last October, the C.I.A. and the rest of the American intelligence community concluded that "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons" and that "if left unchecked, it probably will have a nuclear weapon during this decade." That general view was shared at the time by the United Nations and most foreign governments but support for the position has been eroded by the American failure to discover the weapons in Iraq.

A United Nations inspection team headed by the Swedish diplomat Hans Blix said in June that Iraq had never accounted for weapons and materials it claimed to have destroyed. But Mr. Blix said in more recent interviews that he now believes that Iraq destroyed its banned weapons long before the United States mounted its invasion in March."


http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/25/international/middleeast/25WEAP.html?pagewanted=2&hp

[WOSG]

Bush is not interested in appearing to do the right thing.
That's Clintonesque.

Bush is interested in *doing* the right thing.
Which is what he did - he did the right thing in liberating Iraq.

In retrospect, he could have made the case to the US about Saddam's terrorist links, but the UN could care less about that since so several UN members besides Iraq are also complicit in supporting terrorism.

[WOSG]

We've liberated a country and drained a part of the terrorist supporting swamp, while at the same time removing a WMD threat that was uncertain because it was hidden behind the veil of dictatorship's secrecy. that threat was undoubtably real over the long-term whether or not there were active agents in-country on march 23 2003.

The US isnt holding any 'bag'. We've got 4 aces. (Okay, only 3 still missing Saddam himself).

[bushfamfan]

I really worried about the time spent prior to actually going to war in which Iraq may very well have shipped the weapons off to Syria. Didn't Israeli intelligence have some report on such? Israel is very good in regards to intelligence and they say Iraq had WMD too. I would still think something would be left in Iraq however. The question is what happened to the WMD because every indication points to Saddam Hussein's obsession with them, the decade in which inspectors were harrassed and numerous deceit was going on in Iraq in regards to WMD, the nature of the regime. He was going to be a serious problem and to claim he had no WMD is ludicrous in regards to Iraq's behavior.