CIA INtelligence Failures led to WMD Claims

Stravo · Post by **Stravo** » 2004-07-09 11:31am

Report blames 'group think' for CIA failures on Iraq
Friday, July 9, 2004 Posted: 11:24 AM EDT (1524 GMT)

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The key U.S. assertions leading to the 2003 invasion of Iraq -- that Saddam Hussein had chemical and biological weapons and was working to make nuclear weapons -- were wrong and based on false or overstated CIA analyses, a scathing Senate Intelligence Committee report asserted Friday.

Intelligence analysts fell victim to "group think" assumptions that Iraq had weapons that it did not, concluded the bipartisan report.

Many factors contributing to those failures are ongoing problems within the U.S. intelligence community -- which cannot be fixed with more money alone, it said.

Sen. Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican who heads the committee, told reporters that assessments that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and could make a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade were wrong.

"As the report will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence," he said.

"This was a global intelligence failure."

The report repeatedly blasts departing CIA Director George Tenet, accusing him of skewing advice to top policy-makers with the CIA's view and elbowing out dissenting views from other intelligence agencies overseen by the State or Defense departments.

It faulted Tenet for not personally reviewing Bush's 2003 State of the Union address, which contained since-discredited references to Iraq's attempts to purchase uranium in Africa.

White House spokesman, Scott McClellan, traveling with President Bush on a campaign trip Friday, said the committee's report essentially "agrees with what we have said, which is we need to take steps to continue strengthening and reforming our intelligence capabilities so we are prepared to meet the new threats that we face in this day and age."

Tenet has resigned and leaves office Sunday.

Questionable information
Intelligence analysts worked from the assumption that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons and was seeking to make more, as well as trying to revive a nuclear weapons program.

Instead, investigations after the Iraq invasion have shown that Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein had no nuclear weapons program and no biological weapons, and only small amounts of chemical weapons have been found.

Analysts ignored or discounted conflicting information because of their assumptions that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, the report said.

"This 'group think' dynamic led Intelligence Community analysts, collectors and managers to both interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program as well as ignore or minimize evidence that Iraq did not have active and expanding weapons of mass destruction programs," the report concluded.

Such assumptions also led analysts to inflate snippets of questionable information into broad declarations that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, the report said.

For example, speculation that the presence of one specialized truck could mean an effort to transfer chemical weapons was puffed up into a conclusion that Iraq was actively making chemical weapons, the report said.

Analysts also concluded that Iraq had a mobile biological weapons program based mainly on the since-discredited claims of one Iraqi defector code-named "Curve Ball," it said.

American agents did not have direct access to Curve Ball or his debriefers, but the source's information was expanded into the conclusion that Iraq had an advanced and active biological weapons program, the report said.

Group think. Group think?! Group think led the CIA to claim that there were WMD's and thus paved the way to war. Yeah OK. If the group think was Bush and his cronies saying they wanted to hear more about Iraq then I might give this more credence.

RedImperator · Post by **RedImperator** » 2004-07-09 12:38pm

The CIA just took a bad pummeling. If the congressional leadership of the Republican Party was worth a turd on a warm day, the administration would have taken one too, today, and not after the election.

Axis Kast · Post by **Axis Kast** » 2004-07-09 05:49pm

"As the report will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available intelligence," he said.

"This was a global intelligence failure."

That's a very interesting piece of information.

Why a "global intelligence failure"? Could it be that the rest of the world didn't go to Iraq for various, self-interested reasons, rather than because they saw something (or didn't see something) we did not?

Stofsk · Post by **Stofsk** » 2004-07-09 06:54pm

"Group think" sounds suspiciously Orwellian. And like all Orwellian terms, it serves to obfuscate meaning rather than promote it. What the fuck does 'group think' mean, anyway? From the article it seems to be another new buzzword that just got thrown in there for the hell of it.

"Ah yes, Group Think. This is what happens when a bunch of people screw up. We used to call them 'failures' but realised such a term was too easy to understand and had negative connotations, therefore we switched to the more versatile and murky 'Group Think'. That way we can accuse anyone of Group Think and we'd be right, technically, because no-one knows what the hell we're talking about."

18-Till-I-Die · Post by **18-Till-I-Die** » 2004-07-09 07:00pm

You know, this wouldve been nice back, waaay back, when we still had a chance to pull out without blasting the Iraqi infrastructure to fuck and back and loosing the lives of hundreds-goin'-on-thousands of people with their whole lives ahead of them.

Of course, back then, everyone was engaged in 'Group Think'. Which means they we're pulling intelligence reports out of their ass. So i guess it just wasnt available at the time, while our 'intelligence' was.