US: In a defence of pre-war intelligence following the US failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, CIA director Mr George Tenet said yesterday that his analysts had never claimed Iraq was an imminent threat, writes Conor O'Clery North America Editor in New York.
This contradicted statements made by President Bush to justify war. At the United Nations on September 12th, 2002, Mr Bush said that "Saddam Hussein's regime is a grave and gathering danger" and he told a press conference the next day that Saddam was "a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible".
Mr Tenet said analysts "never said there was an imminent threat, rather they painted an objective assessment for our policy-makers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programmes that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests."
Responding to claims that the intelligence was shaped to fit administration policy, Mr Tenet asserted: "No one told us what to say or how to say it."
Mr Tenet directly rebutted the assertion by the chief US weapons inspector Dr David Kay - a CIA appointee until his resignation two weeks ago - that the search for weapons of mass destruction was 85 per cent over and none would likely be found.
"We are nowhere near 85 per cent finished," the CIA chief said.
Dr Kay weighed in on the arguments again yesterday, taking direct issue with a statement by Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld at a Congressional hearing on Wednesday that unconventional arms might still be found.
This was fundamentally a misinterpretation of how the Special Survey Group - the US search team he headed - worked in Iraq, Dr Kay said. His conclusions were based not just on physical searches but on interviews with scientists and on documentation.
Dr Kay resigned as the CIA-appointed head of the Special Survey Group two weeks ago, and asserted that everyone had been "wrong" on intelligence, igniting a political uproar that has forced President Bush to promise a bipartisan inquiry into pre-war intelligence.
Yesterday in Charlestown, South Carolina, Mr Bush conceded that weapons of mass destruction had not been found but repeated that "America confronted a gathering threat" in Iraq and linked the war to September 11th.
He told naval cadets: "We had a choice: either take the word of a madman, or take action to defend the American people. Faced with that choice, I will defend America every time. September the 11th, 2001, was a lesson . . . this nation must never forget."
Speaking at Georgetown University, Mr Tenet said that varying opinions on the state of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programmes were included in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on which the White House based its case for invading Iraq.
There were three sources of concern about Saddam Hussein, he said. First was his history of possessing unconventional weapons and his attempt in the early 1990s to make a nuclear bomb. Secondly, the UN could not account for all the weapons the Iraqis had. Thirdly, they had gathered intelligence "through human agents, satellite photos and communications intercepts" after UN inspectors left in 1998 that pointed to continued weapons programmes.
"Two sources with high-level access to Saddam's regime told the CIA in the fall of 2002, shortly before the war, that production of biological and chemical weapons was ongoing," he said.
"The question being asked about Iraq in the starkest terms is, were we right or were we wrong?" Mr Tenet said. "In the intelligence business, you are almost never completely wrong or completely right."
On nuclear weapons, Mr Tenet's analysis contradicted the assertion of Vice President Dick Cheney on a television programme in the week the war began that "we believe Iraq has reconstituted nuclear weapons". Mr Tenet said "most agencies" believed that Saddam had begun to reconstitute his nuclear programme but the CIA had concluded that Saddam could not have a nuclear weapon before at least 2007 to 2009.