Myths
About Intelligence
Stuart A. Cohen
Vice Chairman, National Intelligence Council
The Washington Post
28
November 2003
The
National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) of October
2002 concerning Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction
(WMD) has been dissected like no other product
in the history of the U.S. intelligence community.
We have reexamined every phrase, line, sentence,
judgment and alternative view in this 90-page
document and have traced their genesis completely.
I believed at the time the Estimate was approved
for publication and still believe now that we
were on solid ground in reaching the judgments
we did.
The NIE judged with high confidence that Iraq
had chemical and biological weapons, and missiles
with ranges in excess of the 150-kilometer limit
imposed by the U.N. Security Council. It judged
with moderate confidence that Iraq did not have
nuclear weapons. These were essentially the same
conclusions reached by the United Nations and
by a wide array of intelligence services—friendly
and unfriendly alike. Moreover, when US intelligence
agencies disagreed, particularly regarding whether
Iraq was reconstituting a uranium enrichment effort
for its nuclear weapons program, alternative views
were spelled out in detail. Despite all of this,
a number of myths have been created that seem
to have gained traction with the public. A hard
look at the facts of the NIE should dispel these
popular myths:
Myth: The NIE favored going to war.
Intelligence judgments, including NIEs, are policy
neutral. We do not propose policies, and the Estimate
in no way sought to sway policymakers toward a
particular course of action.
Myth: Analysts were pressured to change
judgments to meet the needs of the Bush administration.
The judgments presented in the October 2002 NIE
were based on data acquired and analyzed over
15 years. Our judgments were presented to three
different administrations and routinely to six
congressional committees. And the principal participants
in the production of the NIE from across the entire
U.S. intelligence community have sworn to Congress,
under oath, that they were not pressured to change
their views or to conform to administration positions.
Myth: We buried divergent views and concealed
uncertainties.
Alternative views presented by intelligence officials
at the Department of State, the Department of
Energy and the U.S. Air Force were showcased in
the NIE and were acknowledged in unclassified
papers on the subject. Uncertainties were highlighted
in the key judgments and throughout the text.
Myth: Major NIE judgments were based on
single sources.
Overwhelmingly,
major judgments in the NIE on WMD issues were
based on multiple sources-often from human intelligence,
satellite imagery, and communications intercepts.
Myth: We were fooled on the Niger uranium
story—a major issue in the NIE.
This was not one of the reasons underpinning our
Key Judgment about nuclear reconstitution. In
the body of the Estimate, after noting that Iraq
already had considerable low-enriched and other
forms of uranium, enough to produce roughly 100
nuclear weapons, we included reference to reported
Iraqi efforts to procure uranium from Niger with
appropriate caveats, for the sake of completeness.
Myth: We overcompensated for having underestimated
the WMD threat in 1991.
The
NIE noted that we had underestimated key aspects
of Saddam’s WMD efforts in the 1990s. We
were not alone in that regard: UNSCOM missed Iraq’s
BW program and the IAEA underestimated Baghdad’s
progress on nuclear weapons development. In no
case however, were any of the judgments “hyped”
to compensate for earlier underestimates.
Myth: We mistook rapid mobilization programs
for actual weapons.
Even with “only” rapid mobilization
capabilities, Saddam would have been able to produce
and stockpile such weapons in the run-up to a
crisis, with little risk of being caught. There
is practically no difference in threat between
the two.
Myth: The NIE asserted that there were
large WMD stockpiles and
because we haven’t found them, then Baghdad
had no WMD.
We
judged that Iraq probably possessed 100 to 500
metric tons of CW munitions fill. One hundred
metric tons would fit in a backyard swimming pool;
five hundred could be hidden in a small warehouse.
We made no assessment of the size of Iraq’s
biological weapons holdings, but a biological
weapon can be carried in a small container. Lastly,
despite considerable progress the Iraq Survey
Group (ISG) is a long way from finishing its work.
We do not know whether the ISG ultimately will
be able to find physical evidence of Iraq’s
chemical and biological weapons or learn the status
of its WMD programs and its nuclear ambitions.
Regime-directed destruction of evidence pertaining
to WMD already has affected the ISG’s work.
Iraqis who have been willing to talk to U.S. intelligence
officers are in great danger; some have been killed.
And finally, finding physically small but extraordinarily
lethal weapons in a country that is larger than
the state of California would be a daunting task
even under far more hospitable circumstances.
Confronting allegations about the quality of the
U.S. intelligence performance have forced senior
intelligence officials to spend much of their
time looking backward. I worry about the opportunities
lost because of this preoccupation, but also that
analysts laboring under a barrage of allegations
will become more and more disinclined to make
judgments that go beyond ironclad evidence--a
scarce commodity in our business. If this is allowed
to happen, the nation will be poorly served and
ultimately much less secure. Fundamentally,
the Intelligence Community increasingly will be
in danger of not connecting the dots until the
dots have become a straight line.
The search for WMD cannot and should not be about
the reputation of US Intelligence. Men and women
from across the Intelligence Community continue
to focus on this issue because finding and securing
weapons and the know-how that supported Iraq’s
WMD programs before they fall into the wrong hands
is vital to our national security. If we eventually
are proven wrong—that is, that there were
no weapons of mass destruction and the WMD programs
were dormant or abandoned—the American people
will be told the truth; we would have it no other
way.
The writer, who has been with
the CIA for 30 years, was acting chairman of
the National Intelligence Council when the 2002
National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq’s Weapons of Mass Destruction
was published.
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