O'REILLY: Last question, and this is a very important question. You've been criticized for taking $400,000 from a guy who's friendly with Saddam Hussein to make a film. Should you have done that?
RITTER: You're damn right I should have.
MR. RITTER: Mr. Chairman, members of the committee; last week I resigned my position out of frustration that the United Nations Security Council, and the United States as its most significant supporter, was failing to enforce the post-Gulf War resolutions designed to disarm Iraq. I can speak to you today from firsthand experience about the effectiveness of American policy or lack thereof, with respect to the United Nations's effort to rid Iraq of its weapons of mass destruction. I sincerely hope that my actions might help to change things.
It was very sad to hear the secretary of State on Tuesday night giving an interview from Moscow challenging my credentials. She told the world through CNN that Scott Ritter doesn't have a clue about what our overall policy has been, that we are the foremost supporters of UNSCOM. I do have a clue, in fact several, all of which indicate that our government has clearly expressed its policy in one way and then acted in another. Such clues include various statements by the secretary of State, a report to Congress on 6 April by the president of the United States and several statements made to me and to other UNSCOM officials at a variety of inter-agency briefings held at the State Department, the Pentagon and the White House. If these were the only clues, the administration's record would be impressive. However, I can say without fear of contradiction and with the confidence that most of my former colleagues agree with me that those clues derive from the practical experience obtained on the ground in Iraq and behind the scenes at the United Nations tell another story: that the United States has undermined UNSCOM's efforts through interference and manipulation, usually coming from the highest levels of the administration's national security team, to include the secretary of State herself.
Iraq today is not disarmed, and remains an ugly threat to its neighbors and to world peace. Those American who think that this is important and that something should be done about it have to be deeply disappointed in our leadership. I'm here today to provide you with specific details about the scope and nature of interference by this administration in UNSCOM, the debilitating effect that such interference has on the ability of UNSCOM to carry out its disarmament mission in Iraq and to appeal to the administration and to the Senate to work together to change America's Iraq policy back to what has been stated in the past: full compliance with the provisions of Security Council resolutions, to include enabling UNSCOM to carry out its mission of disarmament in an unrestricted, unhindered fashion. Only through the reestablishment of such a policy, clearly stated and resolutely acted upon, does the United States have a chance of resuming its leadership role in overseeing the effective and verifiable disarmament of Iraq so that neither we nor Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East will be threatened by Saddam Hussein's nuclear, chemical or biological weapons or long-range ballistic missiles capable of delivering such weapons. Within the confines of the need to protect the sources and methods used by the special commission to gather relevant information, I am prepared to give you whatever details I can so you will understand why I gave up such an interesting, challenging and meaningful position in which I had hoped to have the chance to contribution to making the world a little safer. Thank you.