Just how much does the Bush administration know about Saddam Hussein's alleged stockpile of weapons? Not a lot, perhaps. Walter Pincusreports on what the spies have told the politicians
Despite the Bush administration's claims about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, US intelligence agencies have been unable to give Congress or the Pentagon specific information about the amounts of banned weapons or where they are hidden, according to administration officials and members of Congress.
Senior intelligence analysts say they feel caught between the demands from White House, Pentagon and other government policy-makers for intelligence that would make the administration's case "and what they say is a lack of hard facts", one official said.
"They have only circumstantial evidence . . . nothing that proves this amount or that," said an individual who has regularly been briefed by the CIA.
The assertions, coming on the eve of a possible decision by President Bush to go to war against Iraq, have raised concerns among some members of the intelligence community about whether administration officials have exaggerated intelligence in a desire to convince the American public and foreign governments that Iraq is violating United Nations prohibitions against chemical, biological or nuclear weapons and long-range missile systems.
"They see a particular truck associated with chemical weapons activities keep reappearing, and they estimate chemical activities are there, but that and most intelligence would not pass the courtroom evidence test.
"For policy-makers, who are out on a limb, that is not enough," one official said, adding that he wondered if the administration was shaping intelligence for political purposes.
Although senior intelligence officials said they were convinced that Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction, they felt they would not be able to prove it until after an invasion, when US military forces and weapons analysts would have unrestricted access.
These officials said the administration was withholding some of the best intelligence on suspected Iraqi weapons - uncertain as it was - from UN weapons inspectors in anticipation of war.
"They are clearly hiding weapons, but it is a Catch-22 situation that we will only prove after an invasion," one senior intelligence official said.
US intelligence on Iraqi weapons sites has raised a credibility problem involving the UN inspectors and, more recently, members of Congress.
Intelligence agencies in December produced a two-inch-thick book that listed high- , medium- and low-priority sites in Iraq related to weapons of mass destruction, according to senior administration officials and members of Congress.
Senator Carl Levin, while chairman of the Armed Services Committee earlier this year, several times asked the CIA director, Mr George Tenet, how many of the "top suspect sites" had been passed to the chief UN weapons inspector, Dr Hans Blix. The initial transfers of information to UN inspectors were limited as US intelligence was measuring the security of Dr Blix's system. In one early case, US intelligence data had been electronically intercepted by Iraq, officials said.
Senator Levin was concerned that only a small number of sites contained in the December list had gone to Dr Blix's team, but at a public hearing in February Mr Tenet said that all relevant information on high- and moderate-value sites had been shared with the inspectors.
Senator Levin said in an interview that his concern that the United States was holding back its best information was heightened by a March 6th letter Mr Tenet sent to Senator John Warner, now the Armed Services Committee chairman.
In it the CIA director said the United States had "now provided detailed information on all of the high-value and moderate-value sites" as well as "far more than half of these lower-interest sites" to the inspectors.
Senator Levin wrote back to Mr Tenet on March 7th saying the CIA director gave a "misleading assertion" and repeated a request that Mr Tenet provide a percentage figure, not the number, of the "top suspect sites" listed in the December report that had been turned over to UN inspectors.
"I can't believe we are holding back, and it would be shocking if it is being done, because it might lead the inspectors to something," Senator Levin said.
A CIA spokesman refused to discuss the matter. But some officials claim that the administration is not interested in helping the inspectors discover weapons because a discovery could bolster supporters on the UN Security Council of continued inspections and undermine the administration's case for war.
"We don't want to have a smoking gun," a ranking administration official said recently. He added: "I don't know whether the point is to embarrass Blix or embarrass Saddam Hussein."
Anther official familiar with the intelligence said: "Not all the top sites have been passed to the inspectors.
A senior intelligence analyst said one explanation for the difficulties inspectors have had in locating weapons caches "is because there may not be much of a stockpile".
Administration officials, in making the case against Iraq, have repeatedly failed to mention the considerable amount of documented weapons destruction that took place in Iraq between 1991 and 1998, when the previous UN special commission on Iraq had inspection teams in the field.
In that period, under UN supervision, Iraq destroyed 817 of 819 proscribed medium-range missiles, 14 launchers, nine trailers and 56 fixed missile-launch sites. It also destroyed 73 of 75 chemical or biological warheads and 163 warheads for conventional explosives.
UN inspectors also supervised destruction of 88,000 filled and unfilled chemical munitions, more than 600 tons of weaponised and bulk chemical weapons agents, 4,000 tons of precursor chemicals and 980 pieces of equipment considered key to production of such weapons.
Destruction of biological weapons - which were not discovered to be in Iraq's possession until 1995 - was less advanced. The main facility where biological weapons were produced and developed, Al Hakam, was destroyed along with 60 pieces of equipment taken from three other facilities. In addition, 22 tons of growth media for biological weapons were destroyed. - (Washington Post)