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Pre-War Intelligence on Iraqi WMD: Press Briefing by US Deputy National Security Adviser and White House Director of Communications, July 22

Press briefing by Dan Bartlett, White House Director of Communications, and Steve Hadley, Deputy National Security Adviser, The White House, July 22.

Dan Bartlett: I am on the record today to talk a little bit about and recap the discussion from Friday [about the mention of attempted Iraqi importation of uranium from Niger in President Bush's State of the Union Address], which I think is very important. After the discussions by the administration about the State of the Union process, the Chief of Staff Andy Card was - directed his office to make sure that we get to the bottom of the process. As you have seen throughout this process, we have attempted to share every piece of information we have that we can with regards to how the speech was developed, how we do speechwriting particularly for the State of the Union process; about the case - the clear and compelling case against Saddam Hussein; and particularly of interest, the reconstitution of his nuclear weapons program that has been stated in the National Intelligence Estimate. And it is important, as I talked about last Friday...that in the National Intelligence Estimate [NIE], that the agencies involved in developing that came with a very clear key judgment and said since inspections entered in in 1998, Iraq has maintained its chemical weapons effort, energized its missile program, invested more heavily in biological weapons. In the view of most agencies, Baghdad has reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. It goes on to say, although we assess that Saddam does not yet have nuclear weapons or sufficient material to make any, he remains intent on acquiring them. Most agencies assess that Baghdad started reconstituting its nuclear program at the time that UNSCOM inspectors departed, December of 1998. Now, we spoke - as we went through this, we also spoke about the alternative views about that issues, about the aluminum tubes and other alternative views with regards to the uranium. But even in the INR [the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research] dissent, the Assistant Secretary of State for INR believes that Saddam continues to want nuclear weapons, and that available evidence indicates that Baghdad is pursuing at least a limited effort to maintain and acquire nuclear weapon-related capabilities. So even in the dissent by the one agency of the six agencies that did not have a clear and convincing understanding of a nuclear weapons program still was able to state that they believe that there was a reconstitution effort, just not as robust as what the other agencies had concluded.

As we work through this process and as we do speechwriting process for the State of the Union, as I stated and as we tried to reconstruct why different decisions were made, it's first important to understand that the speechwriters, particularly on an issue such as this, which there has been a lot of conversation about, they gather facts and they go off and they write a speech. There's not - the input from various offices within the White House and within the administration typically happens at the latter part of the process as the more formulated drafts are being distributed through the staffing process. ... [A]s I said on Friday, the reference to purchasing uranium from Africa was created in draft number two. Draft number three was the first draft of the speech which was circulated outside the speechwriting offices. That doesn't mean that it went to the administration, but that's when it starts being shared within the White House, with other people within this building. And for many aspects of the reiterations, from two through draft seven, "he has not explained his efforts to procure uranium in Africa, or high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for uranium enrichment" - that's the quote that was in the original drafts of the speech. The next series of drafts through draft 15 also was quoted the following way: "We also note that he has recently sought to procure uranium in Africa and has purchased high-strength aluminum tubes suitable for nuclear weapons production." Now, when we saw that and when we went back and looked through the reconstruction of each draft of the speech, we were trying to answer your questions by determining, well, why was that change made. And as I walked through the process on Friday, the reason why is that throughout that, as a construct of the speech was developed by the speechwriters, there were a series of assertions that were made.

Those assertions were very straightforward in which they said, we know that Saddam Hussein had materials sufficient to produce more than 38,000 liters of botulism toxin; we know that Saddam Hussein had materials to produce as much as 500 tons of saran, mustard, VX nerve agents; we know that Saddam Hussein had upwards of 30,000 munitions capable of delivering chemical agents; we know that Iraq in the late 1990s had several mobile biological weapons labs; we know that in the 1990s Saddam Hussein had advanced nuclear weapons program and had a design for a nuclear weapon, was working on five different methods of enriching uranium for a bomb; and we know that Saddam Hussein had recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. So there were a whole litany of "we knows." And as we read the speech and reviewed the drafts, we believed that it would be much more credible for those that were hearing the speech and making a decision based on the speech, and being educated by the speech, if they understood how we knew these things. So we asked the speechwriters to go back and source each of these assertions that we made. That's why we go back, and you can look at the final text of the speech in which we cite specific sources, where possible that we can make public. Several of them were the UN, IAEA; some we had to say, US intelligence indicates; one we said, from three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq in the late 1990s had several mobile biological weapons labs. Then on the issue of uranium in Africa, we said, "the British government has learned." And as I said on Friday, the explanation for that was that we had obviously at that point two separate data points or source points in order to reference. One was the intelligence underlying in the NIE, or the British government. As the conversation took place in the fact-checking process, which took place, as I said on Friday, with the National Security staff member Bob Joseph, with the CIA - is that they talked about the two; that one was very sensitive and was part of the NIE, and they preferred, based on that discussion, to cite the British government report.

There is a conspiracy theory out there that there was some protracted negotiation, or that this was information that was in a clandestine way being forced into the speech by various factions of the administration. It's simply nonsense. This information was provided through the normal process, and in this case, the motivation behind citing the source was to make the speech in the broader sense more credible by, in a series of claims, to give public sourcing, to give the knowledge of how we knew this information to the American people and to the world.

As I also said in my briefing on Friday, and has been said by other members of the administration...as we went through this process, the White House was not made aware of concerns about the British reporting. There have been reports that this information was shared by the CIA with Congress, and directly with the British government last fall. As we've gone through our information and attempted to determine that information, there was no recollection by the people on the staff that remembered any citation of concern with the British intelligence reporting. As I said in the briefing on Friday, that the recollection - and Steve Hadley is here to talk at more length about this - that his own recollection of the conversation we reported between himself and Director Tenet was focused on the fact of the single sourcing of the 550 tons of uranium from Africa, which was Niger, and that there was a concern about the sourcing, the single sourcing in a speech like this. And that's what I explained then; it's what other administration officials explained. But as we have gone forward and looked for - and to make sure that we're being as responsive as possible, we have now found memos relating to the [President's] Cincinnati speech [on October 7, 2002] - not to the State of the Union speech, but to the Cincinnati speech - that was found over the weekend by [chief Presidential speechwriter] Mike Gerson, who shared this information with Steve. And in the memo, itself, it is a memo from the Director to Mike Gerson and Steve Hadley. And Steve is going to talk more about that here in a minute. So this is, like I said, new information that we have, through our process, have found paperwork to the Cincinnati speech. We had spent a lot of time looking at all the drafts and all the files on the State of the Union address. But we've now, as members have gone back and looked through their old files, have found the information on the Cincinnati speech. And in these memos there is a direct reference to the concerns about the British reporting that was shared with the White House.

Steve Hadley is the most - as Deputy National Security Advisor, is the most senior person in the White House that is in charge of vetting for substantive purposes the President's State of the Union address and other key speeches when it pertains to national security. And I'd like for him to go ahead and make some comments about that now.

Steve Hadley: I've got some notes I'm going to use to walk you through this, because obviously, trying to be accurate is important in these matters. This is the result of efforts that were made at the White House and the CIA after this controversy arose, to go through the files and make sure and reconstruct as best we could of what happened. And I'm going to try and walk you through some of this as best we can reconstruct it at this point in time, recognizing that the process - there is always the likelihood that we'll find additional information. So I don't want to say this is [definitive] - this is where we are at this point in time. As we've already disclosed publicly, George Tenet had a brief telephone conversation with me during the clearance process for the October 7 Cincinnati speech. This was the one - he asked that any reference to Iraq's attempt to purchase uranium from sources from Africa to be deleted from the speech. The language he was referring to when he made that call was language that said the following - and I'll just quote it - "And the regime has been caught attempting to purchase substantial amounts of uranium oxide from sources in Africa, and a central ingredient in the enrichment process." Based on DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] Tenet's request, the sentence was deleted from the Cincinnati speech, when he said he did not want the President to be a fact witness for that statement. To my best recollection, we did not have any discussion about the UK or UK sources or anything else at that time. ... Yesterday morning I learned of the memorandum that is dated October 5, 2002. Dan said it was from DCI - I think, more accurately, as these things come over - it comes over with a cover sheet from CIA. It is addressed to Mike Gerson and to myself. The memo is about three and a half pages, single-spaced. It has a variety of suggestions and comments on a variety of different provisions in the Cincinnati speech. On page three of that memorandum, there's a reference to a sentence that appears in draft six of the Cincinnati speech. And that sentence read as follows: "And the regime" - and here they're talking about the Iraqi regime - "And the regime has been caught attempting to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from sources in Africa, and the central ingredient for the enrichment process." Now, with respect to that sentence, the October 5 CIA memorandum asked that we remove the sentence because the amount, 500 tons, is in dispute and it is debatable whether it can be acquired from the source. ... I'll tell you, as I sit here, I do not recall that paragraph. But I will also tell you that I'm confident I received the memorandum, that I would have read it carefully and in its entirety shortly after receipt. Today I learned of a second memorandum sent by the CIA on October 6. This is commenting on draft eight of the Cincinnati speech. And by this time, by draft eight, the reference to Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium has already been deleted from the speech, as DCI Tenet asked me to do in his telephone request. And what the memorandum does is provide some additional rationale for the removal of the uranium reference. The memorandum describes some weakness in the evidence, the fact that the effort was not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions because the Iraqis already had a large stock of uranium oxide in their inventory. The memorandum also stated that the CIA had been telling Congress that the Africa story was one of two issues where we differed with the British intelligence. This memorandum was received by the Situation Room here in the White House, and it was sent to both [National Security Adviser] Dr. [Condoleezza] Rice and myself.

Question: So there were two issues...

Hadley: Yes. And the other issue I think was the aluminum tubes issue. But I'm not sure. We need to check that. I was not party to those conversations, so we're going to have to find out from the agency what the second issue was. ...

Question: This memorandum is classified?

Hadley: Yes.

Question: Are they about to be declassified?

Hadley: That's not my call. ... Based on these memorandum, the fact is that I had been advised on October 5 that CIA had reservations about British reporting on attempts by Iraq to purchase up to 500 metric tons of uranium oxide from Africa, which I understood to involve Niger. And these reservations were reaffirmed by the CIA memorandum on October 6. The State of the Union speech was given January 28, 2003. It's about three-plus months later. The speech is lengthy, it sets out a pretty overwhelming case for holding Saddam Hussein to account, and was based on very strong intelligence case regarding weapons of mass destruction. The context in which this whole discussion of the natural uranium has to be seen I think is one in which - and I'd just like to digress for a minute - that we know a lot about Saddam Hussein nuclear ambitions and nuclear appetites. We know he was pursuing a program at the time of the Gulf War. We found out in 1991 he was much further along in that program than we ever imagined. We found, to our surprise, in 1995, that it was continuing and it was more extensive, his nuclear program, than we thought. And we had an intelligence community judgment which Dan read that said when the various UN inspectors were thrown out in 1998, he began an effort to reconstitute his nuclear capability. What we knew about that was that we still had his nuclear Mujahideen, the nuclear experts, that had been part of that program for over a decade. He had a chairman network that was trying to acquire the confines of a nuclear infrastructure. And he had, in fact, acquired a number of actual hardware items that were required for that. We also knew that he had uranium oxide, about 550 tons, in inventory in the country, and that he had obtained about 200 tons of that, roughly, from Niger. So this is the context in which people see this language and report about seeking quantities of uranium in Africa. It is not an odd fact. It is, in fact, in the context that makes the report very plausible. Now, the sentence that was uttered by President Bush about Iraqi efforts to acquire uranium was factually accurate. That was true when it issued, and it is true now. The British government - the statement said, the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa. As Prime Minister Blair said last week, the British government still stands by this statement and the intelligence on which it was based. And the President had every reason to believe that the text of the State of the Union presented to him was sound. But the fact is that given the October 5 and 6 CIA memorandum, and my telephone conversation with the DCI Tenet at roughly the some time, I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue. When the language in the drafts of the State of the Union referred to efforts to acquire natural uranium, I should have either asked that they - the 16 words given to that subject be stricken, or I should have alerted DCI Tenet. And had I done so, this would have avoided the whole current controversy. And in my current position, I am the senior most official within the NSC staff, directly responsible for the substantive review and clearance of presidential speeches. The President and the National Security Advisor look to me to ensure that the substantive statements in those speeches are the ones in which the President can have confidence. And it is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility in connection with the inclusion of these 16 words in the speech that he gave on the 28th of January. The National Security Advisor also wants, Condi wants it clearly understood that she feels a personal responsibility for not recognizing the potential problem presented by those 16 words. And we both agree that in permitting the inclusion of those words, the high standards that the President sets with his speeches were not met. ...

Question: So you're saying mea culpa, it's not George Tenet's fault, as was indicated last week?

Bartlett: Well, we said, indicated that last what George Tenet has said and what we have given information here is that the process failed. He acknowledged the process on his end, and the fact-checking that he did on his end did not work properly. And as Steve Hadley has talked about here today, is that based on the information that was shared with him at the time, that it should have been remembered and flagged in our process. So the point is, is that...

Question: So you're saying both processes failed?

Hadley: This is a situation where a number of people had an opportunity to avoid the problem. And those opportunities were not taken advantage of. And what we needed to make clear today is that based on what we now know, we had opportunities here to avoid this problem. We didn't take them. ...

Bartlett: ... Like I said, this information was found by Mike Gerson this weekend. I believe it was late Friday evening. The first person he shared it with was Steve Hadley, since he was the other name on the document, after a senior staff meeting on Monday morning. This information then was shared with...Dr. Rice, Secretary Card and ultimately the President. So he was informed of this yesterday. ... He - as he has stated on many occasions, the case against Saddam Hussein was clear and compelling and comprehensive; that he is responsible for this decisions to - the decision of going to war. He takes responsibility for those decisions and the case that he outlined to the public for that rationale to go to war, the decisions that were behind it. He accepts the explanation by this National Security Council staff, as well as the Director of Intelligence. He is, obviously, not pleased when the high standards that he expects to be met have not, but he has the highest level of confidence in the National Security team, as well as the Director of Intelligence. ...

Hadley: So there's two points. ... Had we recalled those memos, had we seen them we would have raised the red flag or taken it out. That's obviously one failure. The other failure is, it's in the speech. The vetting of the State of the Union speech is a separate process, it goes out to all Agencies and at the end of the day, nobody raises their hands and says, take it out. That's the problem. There were, in fact, two failings here. One other thing. And, obviously, we depend on that clearance process. You know, you cannot have a process that depends solely on recollections of three and a half months before. You have a process that both tries to draw from what people have learned in the past, but also sends it out again for another clearance because we want to make absolutely sure. And one last point, if I could. The problem with this is that the - and the real failing is that we've had a national discussion on 16 words, and it's taken away from the fact that the intelligence case supporting concerns about WMD in Iraq was overwhelming. It had been put together over a period of decades. It was based as much on UN sources as it was on American sources. It was supported by a variety of other intelligence services. It was supported by a number of administrations - it was a basis for President Clinton to use military action in 1998. It was a basis for an overwhelming congressional resolution twice authorizing military force in Iraq. In the end, it all came down to this statement, and we judged that Iraq has continued its weapons of mass destruction programs in defiance of UN resolutions and restrictions. Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons, as well as missiles with ranges in excess of UN restrictions. If left unchecked, it probably will have nuclear weapons during this decade. That is the judgment of the intelligence community. It was a strong case, a 90-plus page NIE, facts of intelligence reports behind it, as strong a case as you get in these matters. And the tragedy of this is that that has all been obscured by the struggle over 16 words. ...

Question: Can I follow up one thing on the British intelligence? And tell me if I'm wrong. According to [UN Security Council resolution] 1441, Article 10, if there is solid intelligence on nukes, aren't you required to share that with the IAEA? And, if so, why haven't the British done that?

Bartlett: I can't speak on behalf of the British government.

Question: Well, am I wrong? ... Fourteen forty-one, Article 10, part of it says that any government with information relating to Saddam's pursuit of nuclear weapons is required to provide that information to the IAEA. So it seems odd that the British wouldn't do that, having signed off on 1441, and, yet, sort of tap this intelligence that they're not sharing with anyone else.

[Note: under the terms of operative paragraph 10 of resolution 1441,unanimously adopted on November 8, 2002, the Security Council "requests all member States to give full support to UNMOVIC and the IAEA in the discharge of their mandates, including by providing any information related to prohibited programmes or other aspects of their mandates, including on Iraqi attempts since 1998 to acquire prohibited items, and by recommending sites to be inspected, persons to be interviewed, conditions of such interviews, and data to be collected, the results of which shall be reported to the Council by UNMOVIC and the IAEA".]

Bartlett: Again, we can't speak on behalf of the British government.

Question: Well, wouldn't we press them? I mean, they're your partner is this coalition and...

Hadley: Think - we ought to - you may want to look back at 1441. My guess is - and you'd have to examine it - but one possible explanation is that a lot of that was to get information to UNMOVIC and IAEA in order to make the inspection regime successful. And it was asking all countries to share intelligence with IAEA and UNMOVIC to support the effort which we were, at that point, in terms of conducting a vigorous inspection regime. So I think that's probably the context. And you can decide whether you think this discussion about efforts to acquire in Niger would help an effort to find WMD in Iraq. That's the only - you know, that's a guess. You might want to go back and take a look at it and see if I'm - but that's a possible explanation. That's the best I can do. I don't have the document in front of me.

Question: Can I just present the kind of challenge you've been hearing, and that you'll hear more of because of what you've told us here today. You say there was a strong case that seems so far, at least, to have been badly off the mark. And the error that you described that you made and that others made, there are those who will say that it wasn't just some kind of bureaucratic snafu, it was an ideological error. You didn't want to see, you didn't notice, it didn't stick with you, any information, any communication that went against the conclusion you already wanted to reach. What do you say to that?

Bartlett: The ideological error of the United Nations Security Council and the dozens of resolutions that they passed? ... The ideological error of the British government? Of the Spanish government? Of the Italian government? Of the Australian government? Of the Clinton administration? Of the Bush administration? Of members of Congress on both sides of the aisle? All of who had information and access to intelligence based on this information that came to their own conclusion? That was embodied in the vote in 1441 and other areas? I think that's complete nonsense.

Question: But is it possible that at some point during that process which you've just described which convinced the world that something was going on in Iraq, the blinders got put on? Of you, in your own mind, so that that's the reason you missed this?

Hadley: I don't think so, and I'll tell you why. The way the clearance process works is most of it is done at the lower level of experts, who are close to the intelligence, close to the data, and who are in the best position to make sure what the President says is accurate. If there are problems and disputes, there are things that can't get resolved, they move up and they get to my level. And that is why on several occasions I've had conversations in the clearance of speeches with John McLaughlin and DCI Tenet. That is why he calls me in connection with the Cincinnati speech. And the reaction is typical. If he calls and says take something out, we take it out - because the President's guidance is, I don't want anything in the speech of an intelligence nature that George Tenet can't stand behind. That's the test of the President. Or you can see, from what we've been through in the last two weeks, how right that is. Nobody who was committed to Iraq and getting the case out on Iraq, wanted to go through what we did in the last two weeks. Because it has blotted what, as I just said before, the overwhelming case that was there. So I just think when it comes to presidential speeches, it's not true, the President is very clear what his standard is and we didn't - I - I - didn't meet it.

Question: And that's not because of your predisposition to believe something else?

Hadley: No, it's not because of predisposition to believe something else. And the other point I would have to say is it gets into the speech in the way that Dan described. By the time it gets to me, it's there, it's been through a number of drafts and it's out for the clearance process. And at that point, I'm waiting to hear problems coming in from the Agencies that need to be raised up so they can get resolved. And my standard is, you know, if Tenet has a problem, it comes out. ...

Source: White House Officials Discuss Pre-War Intelligence on Iraq, US Department of State (Washington File), http://usinfo.state.gov/usinfo/products/washfile.html, July 23.

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