USA TODAY
Ex-CIA director says administration stretched facts on Iraq
Thu Jun 19 02:23:34 2003
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Posted 6/17/2003 10:16 PM Updated 6/18/2003 10:52 AM

Ex-CIA director says administration stretched facts on Iraq
By John Diamond, USA TODAY
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2003-06-17-turner-usat_x.htm

WASHINGTON — Former CIA director Stansfield Turner accused the Bush administration Tuesday of "overstretching the facts" about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in making its case for invading that country.

Turner's broadside adds the retired admiral's name to a list of former intelligence professionals concerned that the CIA and its intelligence reports were manipulated to justify the war. Since Baghdad fell April 9, U.S. forces have been unable to find chemical and biological weapons the White House said were in Iraq.

Turner, who headed the CIA under President Carter, paused for a long moment when asked by reporters whether current CIA Director George Tenet should resign. "That's a tough one," Turner said. The problem did not appear to lie with the CIA, he said, but Tenet should consider resigning if he lost the confidence of President Bush or the American people. A CIA spokesman declined to comment.

Turner suggested Tenet should tread cautiously because CIA directors "can be made the fall guy" by administrations when policy judgments based on intelligence go wrong.

Turner said, "There is no question in my mind (policymakers) distorted the situation, either because they had bad intelligence or because they misinterpreted it."

Public criticism of an administration's handling of intelligence is rare from former CIA directors, who typically give the benefit of the doubt to those with full access to classified information.

President Bush has given no indication he is having second thoughts about his decision to invade Iraq.

"We made it clear to the dictator of Iraq that he must disarm," Bush said in a speech Tuesday at Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale. "He chose not to do so, so we disarmed him. And I know there's a lot of revisionist history now going on, but one thing is certain. He is no longer a threat to the free world."

Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was known to have chemical and biological weapons in the early and mid-1990s. Late last year, Iraq claimed to have none left, though it offered no proof of having disposed of them. At the White House, spokesman Ari Fleischer called it "fanciful" and "a fit of imagination" to believe that Saddam would have destroyed his arsenal but neglected to tell the world. Seeking to counter partisan criticism about the intelligence used to justify war, Fleischer said Democrats, including President Clinton, flatly asserted that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the late 1990s.

"The president has every confidence in the intelligence and that weapons will be found," Fleischer said. "The president has full faith in Director Tenet."

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been battling similar criticism about alleged misuse of intelligence. Robin Cook, who resigned from Blair's Cabinet on the eve of the U.S.-British invasion of Iraq, said Tuesday that searchers in Iraq had found no sign either of equipment or a workforce for making weapons of mass destruction.

"It is inconceivable that both could have been kept concealed for the two months we have been in occupation of Iraq," Cook told a parliamentary inquiry into Iraq intelligence matters.

Turner's comments come a month after a group of retired U.S. intelligence officers wrote President Bush to "express deep concern" over alleged misuse of intelligence to justify the war.

Contributing: Richard Benedetto and wire reports
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Monday, June 16, 2003 1:00 a.m. EDT

Hillary in Iraq WMD Flip-Flop
http://www.newsmax.com/showinsidecover.shtml?a=2003/6/16/11554

U.S. Sen. Hillary Clinton said Friday that she supported the Iraq war resolution last fall based on intelligence shared by the Bush administration showing that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction - information she now says may have been "wrong or skewed for whatever purpose."

Last fall, however, the top Democrat assured Americans there was no doubt that Saddam had WMDs - based on intelligence gathered as far back as 1998, when her husband was president.

"I voted for the Iraqi resolution, and I did it in large measure based on the intelligence that I was privy to," she complained to British TV interviewer Trevor McDonald.

"What is important is that we really do find out what the truth was," she told McDonald, "because this is not just about the past, whether or not the intelligence was either wrong or skewed for whatever purpose, but going forward."

After telling the ITV1 "Tonight" show host that she backs a full-bore congressional investigation into the Bush administration's handling of WMD intelligence, Sen. Clinton hinted in another interview that a cover-up may be under way.

"I hope and trust that this administration does not stand in the way" of any WMD probe, she told PBS's Charlie Rose, adding, "We must not be intimidated by those in power."

Just a few months ago, however, Sen. Clinton assured the nation that evidence of Saddam's weapons of mass destruction was solid - based on intelligence gathered by both the Clinton and Bush administrations.

"Now, I believe the facts that have brought us to this fateful vote are not in doubt," Clinton told the Senate the day she announced her support for the war.

She recalled that after Saddam threw U.N. weapons inspectors out of Iraq in 1998, "President Clinton, with the British and others, ordered an intensive four-day air assault, Operation Desert Fox, on known and suspected weapons of mass destruction sites and other military targets."

Citing intelligence that predated the Bush administration, she explained, "In the four years since the inspectors left, intelligence reports show that Saddam Hussein has worked to rebuild his chemical and biological weapons stock, his missile delivery capability, and his nuclear program."

"It is clear, however, that if left unchecked, Saddam Hussein will continue to increase his capacity to wage biological and chemical warfare, and will keep trying to develop nuclear weapons," the top Democrat declared.

A month after the vote, Sen. Clinton was still insisting that Iraq had stockpiles of WMDs, and even warned that Saddam might soon go nuclear.

"There's a very clear history and intention of not only building stockpiles and adding to what they already have of biological and chemical weaponry, but attempting to obtain nuclear capacity," she told MSNBC's Chris Matthews.

"And when I talked to the AEI people, you know the Atomic Energy Institute people and the like, and I said, well, what do you mean? How far are we away from that? They said, you know, six months to seven years. Six months is a very short time period."

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