"Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early

"Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s"

Newsflash: CIA admits no chemical weapons in Iraq
Sydney Morning Herald (subscription), Australia - 15 hours ago
... intelligence to policymakers, even the title of the new report reads like a year-old headline: Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s. ...
CIA corrects prewar WMD reports NEWS.com.au
CIA rewrites prewar Iraq arms reports Al-Jazeera.Net
CIA Corrects Itself on Arms Los Angeles Times (subscription)
Baltimore Sun (subscription) - Boston Globe - all 106 related »
Iraqi president urges reconciliation as final vote count starts
New Straits Times, Malaysia - 19 minutes ago
... "Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s" the second report in a series admits. Washington gave WMD as its motive for going to war. ...

Washington: In a formal acknowledgment of the obvious, the CIA has issued a classified report revising its prewar assessments on Iraq and concluding that Baghdad abandoned its chemical weapons programs in 1991, intelligence officials say.

The report marks the first time the CIA has officially disavowed its prewar judgments, and is one in a "series" of updated assessments the agency is producing as part of a belated effort to correct its record on Iraq's alleged weapons programs, officials said.

For an agency that prides itself on providing the latest intelligence to policymakers, even the title of the new report reads like a year-old headline: Iraq: No Large-Scale Chemical Warfare Efforts Since Early 1990s.

But the CIA's decision to distribute the document in classified channels underscores the awkwardness the agency faces. Before the war, the CIA asserted that Iraq had stockpiled biological weapons and that it was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.
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A senior US intelligence official stressed on Monday that the document was "not a high-level report", meaning it was designed to supplant outdated assessments still on classified computer networks, and was never designed to be brought to the attention of senior government officials.

Current and former intelligence officials described it as a highly unusual step for the CIA.

Los Angeles Times
http://www.smh.com.au/news/After-Saddam/Newsflash-CIA-admits-no-chemical-weapons-in-Iraq/2005/02/01/1107228705488.html?oneclick=true

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Katherine Pfleger Shrader: U.S. Weapons Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD, Yahoo News, September 17, 2004
http://www.crisispapers.org/topics/cia-gate.htm

"Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq (news - web sites) concludes in a draft report due out soon. According to people familiar with the 1,500-page report, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, Charles Duelfer, will find that Saddam was importing banned materials, working on unmanned aerial vehicles in violation of U.N. agreements and maintaining a dual-use industrial sector that could produce weapons. Duelfer also says Iraq only had small research and development programs for chemical and biological weapons. . . . After a year and a half in Iraq. . . the United States has found no weapons of mass destruction — its chief argument for going to war and overthrowing the regime." (9/20)

Robin Wright and Thomas E. Ricks: Wider FBI Probe of Pentagon Leaks Includes Chalabi, Washington Post, September 3, 2004

"FBI counterintelligence agents are investigating whether several Pentagon officials leaked classified information to Iraqi politician Ahmed Chalabi and the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, according to a law enforcement official and other people familiar with the case. Senior White House officials, including national security adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Stephen J. Hadley, have been apprised that Chalabi is part of the investigation, according to a senior U.S. official. The inquiry is part of the larger counterintelligence probe that was disclosed last week - the scope of which is not yet clear. . . . There appears to be at least two common threads in the multi-faceted investigation. First, the FBI is investigating whether the same people passed highly classified information to two disparate allies - Chalabi and a pro-Israel lobbying group. Second, at least some of the intelligence in both instances included sensitive information about Iran. The broader investigation is also looking into the movement of classified materials on U.S. intentions in Iraq and on the Arab-Israeli peace process, sources added." (9/6)

Philip Shenon: Former Iraq Arms Inspector Faults Prewar Intelligence, New York Times, August 19, 2004

"A former Bush administration official who led the fruitless postwar effort to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq [Dr. David Kay] told Congress on Wednesday that the National Security Council led by Condoleezza Rice had botched intelligence information before the war and was 'the dog that did not bark' over Iraq's weapons program. 'Where was the National Security Council when, apparently, the president expressed his own doubt about the adequacy of the case concerning Iraq's W.M.D. weapons that was made before him?' Dr. Kay asked. 'Why was the secretary of state sent to the C.I.A. to personally vet the data that he was to take the Security Council in New York, and ultimately left to hang in the wind for data that was misleading and, in some cases, absolutely false and known by parts of the intelligence community to be false? Where was the N.S.C. then?'" (8/23)

Julian Borger: We Could Have Stopped Him, Guardian (U.K.), August 20, 2004

Borger has one of the final permitted interviews with the CIA officer "Anonymous," and it's a corker. "His book, 'Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror,' is a fire-breathing denunciation of US counter-terrorism policy. In it, Scheuer addresses the missed opportunities of the Clinton era, but he reserves his most withering attack for the Bush administration's war in Iraq. He describes the invasion as 'an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantage'...Bin Laden, he believes, is not a lonely maverick, but draws support from much of the Islamic world, which resents the US not for what it is, but for what it does - supporting Israel almost uncritically, propping up corrupt regimes in the Arab world, garrisoning troops on the Saudi peninsula near Islam's most holy sites to safeguard access to cheap oil. 'America ought to do what's in America's interests, and those interests are not served by being dependent on oil in the Middle East and by giving an open hand to the Israelis,' Scheuer argues. 'If we're less open-handed to Israel over time we can cut down Bin Laden's ability to grow. Right now he has unlimited potential for growing'." (8/23)

Greg Miller: CIA Study on Iraq Weapons Is Off Course, Officials Say, Los Angeles Times, August 20, 2004
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http://www.crisispapers.org/topics/cia-gate.htm