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110th Congress S. Report 2nd Session SENATE 110- REPORT ON WHETHER PUBLIC STATEMENTS REGARDING IRAQ BY U.S. GOVERNMENT OFFICIALS WERE SUBSTANTIATED BY INTELLIGENCE INFORMATION together with ADDITIONAL AND MINORITY VIEWS June _ 2008. - Ordered to be printed Filed, under authority of the order of the Senate of June __, 2008 SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE United States Senate 110" Congress JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, WEST VIRGINIA, CHAIRMAN, CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, MISSOURI, VICE CHAIRMAN DIANNE FEINSTEIN, CALIFORNIA JOHN WARNER, VIRGINIA RON WYDEN, OREGON CHUCK HAGEL, NEBRASKA EVAN BAYH, INDIANA SAXBY CHAMBLISS, GEORGIA BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, MARYLAND ORRIN HATCH, UTAH RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, WISCONSIN OLYMPIA SNOWE, MAINE BILL NELSON, FLORIDA RICHARD BURR, NORTH CAROLINA. SHELDON WHITEHOUSE, RHODE ISLAND HARRY REID, NEVADA, EX OFFICIO MITCH MCCONNELL, KENTUCKY, EX OFFICIO CARL LEVIN, MICHIGAN, EX OFFICIO JOHN MCCAIN, ARIZONA, EX OFFICIO ‘Whether Public Statements Regarding Iraq by U.S. Government Officials Were Substantiated by Intelligence Information I. Scope and Methodology (U) This report’s scope, as agreed to unanimously by the Committee on February 12, 2004, is to assess “whether public statements and reports and testimony regarding Iraq by U.S. Government officials made between the Gulf War period and the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom ‘were substantiated by intelligence information.”" (U) In order to complete this task, the Committee decided to concentrate its analysis on the statements that were central to the nation’s decision to go to war. Specifically, the Committee chose to review five major policy speeches by key Administration officials regarding the threats posed by Iraq, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction programs, Iraqi ties to terrorist groups, and possible consequences of a US invasion of Iraq. These include: * Vice President Richard Cheney, Speech in Tennessee to the Veterans of Foreign Wars National Convention, August 26, 2002.” * President George W. Bush, Statement before the United Nations General Assembly, September 12, 2002.7 * President George W. Bush, Speech in Cincinnati, October 7, 2002.* * President George W. Bush, State of the Union address, January 28, 2003.° * Secretary of State Colin Powell, Speech to the United Nations Security Council, February 5, 2003. (U) These speeches are the best representations of how the Bush Administration communicated intelligence analysis to the Congress, the American people, and the international community. They are also fairly comprehensive in scope, so evaluations about whether a particular statement in a speech was substantiated can be extrapolated to cover similar statements made at similar times. The Committee believes that these speeches would have been subject to careful review inside the White House and most were also reviewed by the intelligence community. (The Grafting processes for the Secretary of State’s speech to the Security Council, and portions of the * Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Press Release, “Chairman Roberts and Vice Chairman Rockefeller Issue Statement op Intelligence Committee's Review of Pre-War Intelligence in Irag,” February 12, 2004. * Transcript available at http.//warw. whitehouse ov. news/releases/2002/08/20020826.himl, last visited March 21, 2008. 5 Transcript available at http://www. ©.g0v.newsireleases/?002/09/20020912-1 htm], last visited March 21, 2008 ‘Transcript available at http://www. whitehouse. gov.pews/releases/?002/10/20021007-8.html, last visited March 21, 2008. Transcript available at http://www. whitehouse. gov.news/releases/?003/0{/20030128-19.html, lat visited March 21, 2008, * Transcript available at http://www. state. gov/secretary/formeripowellitemarks/2003/17300.htm, last visited March 21, 2008, Le 1 2003 State of the Union and the President’s speech in Cincinnati, are all discussed in the ‘Committee's first report on pre-war Iraq intelligence, Senate Report 108-301. The Vice President's August 2002 speech was not reviewed by the intelligence community. Intelligence officials have told the Committee that they could not find any evidence that the President’s ‘September 2002 address to the UN General Assembly was reviewed by the intelligence community.) (©) The Committee selected particular statements from these speeches that pertained to eight categories: nuclear weapons, biological weapons, chemical weapons, Weapons of mass destruction (generally), methods of delivery, links to terrorism, regime intent, and assessments about the post-war situation in Iraq. The report is organized along these eight categories, with each section listing the relevant statements from the speeches. ©) This report does not include statements made prior to summer 2002 or statements made by officials of the United States Government beyond the top levels of the Executive Branch. At the of each section, following analysis of the five speeches, the Committee has listed additional statements by senior officials from the same time period. Those statements that contain assertions not included in the five major policy speeches have been examined further, to determine whether they were substantiated by available intelligence. (U) To conduct this review, the Committee assembled hundreds of intelligence reports produced prior to March 19, 2003 in an effort to understand the state of intelligence analysis at the time of various speeches and statements. The Committee is fully aware that officials may have had multiple credible sources of information upon which to base statements, but has not attempted to document or analyze source materials other than the intelligence, since that is beyond the scope of this report (U) Furthermore, the Committee reviewed only finished analytic intelligence documents, with few exceptions. This did not include intelligence reports “from the field” or less formal ‘communications between intelligence agencies and other parts of the Executive Branch. (U) The Committee has attempted to note where disagreements existed within the Intelligence Community and where different reporting could substantiate different interpretations. In order to complete this task, however, this report focuses first on major coordinated inter-agency intelligence reports such as National Intelligence Estimates, Intelligence Community Assessments and Briefs, and other consensus products. These products are not only the most authoritative, representing the full Intelligence Community position on the issues they cover, but also tend to be widely circulated within the government. The Committee also examined assessments, reports and statements to Congress from individual intelligence agencies to address, those issues for which coordinated reports were not available or where there was disagreement among agencies. (U) In addition to examining the question of whether public statements were substantiated by the underlying intelligence, the Committee’s review also addressed the extent to which statements were incomplete and where relevant Intelligence Community assessments were not ‘made part of the public discourse. A public statement that selectively uses only that intelligence | 2 that supports a particular policy position while ignoring or disregarding intelligence that either weakens or contradicts the position may be accurate on its face but present a slanted picture nonetheless. (U) Overlaying this issue of the selective use of intelligence is the more fundamental issue of the selective declassification of intelligence. Intelligence information contained in many of the speeches analyzed in this report had to be declassified before being released publicly. The Executive Branch has the prerogative to classify information to protect national security, and unlike Congress the Executive Branch can declassify information relatively easily. Until the Congress sought and obtained the release of an unclassified version of the key judgments of the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s presumed weapons of mass destruction programs, the analytical judgments of the Intelligence Community on these matters were classified. The collected intelligence underlying these judgments remained classified until after the invasion of Iraq. Few, if any, of the Intelligence Community's assessments on Iraq’s links to terrorism, the intent of the Iraqi regime, projected post-war conditions, or other relevant matters contained in the statements of senior officials were publicly released before the war. This ability of the Executive Branch to unilaterally declassify and divulge intelligence information at a time, place, and in a manner of its choosing must also be taken into account when evaluating policymakers” use of intelligence information.

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