Kay testifying now in front of Congressional leaders

[igloo]

I have been watching David Kay testify if front of COngressional leaders this morning. If you are not watching, I suggest you do.

Especially those who cling to the bullshit "Bush Lied" mantra and grab news headline and soundbites as the basis for their uneducated vomit.

Both Dems and Rep are asking questions. He answers many questions, and his findings and testimony puts others into important perspective. It also raises new questions as well.

None scarier than U.S. and foreign intelligence capabilities.

We failed to connect the dots on 9/11 and tragedy occurred. We tried to connect the dots in Iraq, and it looks like intelligence failed (although as Kay testified, Iraq and their behavior was a significant contributor, as well as theri deliberate and continued decpetion and concealment of their WMD activities)......His testimony about Iraqi scientists and Iraqi generals was glaring as well. He testified they all believed Iraq had WMD, but the "other" army division or scientists were working on it. Remarkable stuff.

ANd intelligence agencies still are failing, as he pointed to recent discoveries in Libya, Pakistan, Iran, and Iraq.

Intelligence garned from Iraq defectors so far has proven false, yet it was intelligence from Iranian defectors who alerted the world of Iran's nuclear capabilities.

Kay also testified that all intelligence services (including France and Germany) and indepedent bodies all thought they would find WMD's.

He also put to rest any doubt about Bush "lying" or pressure being exerted on the intelligence community by politics.

[pattbateman]

i always thought our cia was above the rest and capapable of unimaginable things i guess i was wrong??

[jamiroguy1]

So not only is are intelligence community along with France and Germany not able to "connect the dots" with 9/11 but they're able to see false positives and this administration based on that went to a war that should not have happend. What bullshit!

Cheney pressured the CIA to create a sense of urgency where their wasn't any. So much that the Bush administration knew was false (yellow cake in Africa)

I'm glad Daschle is calling for an investigation but their sure is a lot of bulsh shit floating around.

Kay: 'We Were Almost All Wrong'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56311-2004Jan28.html?nav=hptop_tb

[marksimons]

if you want an introduction to what the CIA is really like, then you could do a lot worse than this:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1567510523/ref=pd_bxgy_text_1/104-3975385-4466320?v=glance&s=books&st=*

Killing Hope: U. S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II

- I got a copy for my dad this chrimbo, just to have a copy around, it's damned useful.

John Stockwell, former CIA officer and author, about the previous edition, The CIA: A Forgotten History

"The single most useful summary of CIA history."

A.J. Langguth, author and former New York Times bureau chief, about the previous edition, The CIA: A Forgotten History

"A very valuable book. The research and organization are extremely impressive."

About the Author

William Blum left the State Department in 1967, abandoning his aspiration of becoming a Foreign Service Officer, because of his opposition to what the United States was doing in Vietnam.

Mr. Blum has been a freelance journalist in the United States, Europe and South America. His stay in Chile in 1972-73, writing about the Allende government's "socialist experiment" and its tragic overthrow in a CIA-designed coup, instilled in him a personal involvement and an even more heightened interest in what his government was doing around the world.

In the mid-1970s he worked in London with former CIA officer Philip Agee and his associates on their project of exposing CIA personnel and their misdeeds.

He now lives in Washington, D.C., where he makes use of the Library of Congress and the National Archives to strike fear into the hearts of U.S. government imperialists.

Book Description

Is the United States a Force for Democracy? From China in the 1940s to Guatemala today, William Blum provides the most comprehensive study of the ongoing American holocaust. Covering U.S. intervention in more than 50 countries, KILLING HOPE describes the grim role played by the U.S. in overthrowing governments, perverting elections, assassinating leaders, suppressing revolutions, manipulating trade unions and manufacturing "news."

[jamiroguy1]

Interesting book. I'm about to go to lunch, I'll check it out at borders.

[igloo]

Originally posted by jamiroguy1

So not only is are intelligence community along with France and Germany not able to "connect the dots" with 9/11 but they're able to see false positives and this administration based on that went to a war that should not have happend. What bullshit!

Cheney pressured the CIA to create a sense of urgency where their wasn't any. So much that the Bush administration knew was false (yellow cake in Africa)

I'm glad Daschle is calling for an investigation but their sure is a lot of bulsh shit floating around.

Kay: 'We Were Almost All Wrong'

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A56311-2004Jan28.html?nav=hptop_tb

Don't you ever tire of being a fucking retard?

YOu really are a fucking brain dead jerkoff....

Seriously, stop regurgitating the same tired bullshit, douche bag...

No one pressured anyone you fucking schmuck....

"But Kay told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that he found no evidence to suggest that the Bush administration influenced the intelligence community to inflate the assessment of Saddam’s arsenal as a pretext to go to war"

This is a massive intelligence failure from 1998 to the present....The Bush administration, the Clinton administration, U.S. and foreign intelligence, UN, weapons inspectors, Iraqi defectors, etc....

And if you really want to point a finger of blame, there is one spot: THE IRAQI REGIME

If there is one bit of evidence that is rock solid, it is the Iraqi regime lied, cheated, concealed, and mislead.

UN resolutions demanded they COMPLY, which they never did. They did not adhere to the orginal ceasefire agreement, and subsequent resolutions, and were still at state of war for there non-compliance.

It was incumbent on the Iraqi regime to PROVE they destroyed known stockpiles, and they did not. 1441 gave them one , last chance to prove they were clean, and they refused (whick Kay has proven).

All they had to do was turn over the proof and documents, like UN resoultions called for, that were NOW found that showed they may have disarmed. A costly bluff for Mr. Hussein.

The more you look to point the finger of blame on just the Bush administration, the bigger the dickhead you become, and are easily dismissed as nothing but a blowhard (which you are).

Weapons inspector denies politics affected WMD assessment

Kay says misreading of Saddam’s capability

reflects larger problem in intelligence gathering

David Kay

MSNBC staff and news service reports

Updated: 3:09 p.m. ET Jan. 28, 2004

WASHINGTON - The former top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq encouraged Congress on Wednesday to examine the “fundamental false analysis†that led to the conclusion that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, a primary justification by President Bush for the war in Iraq. But he reiterated that he did not believe intelligence analysts were pressured to draw that conclusion.

“We were almost all wrong,†said the inspector, David Kay, noting that intelligence services in France and Germany, both of which opposed the war, also were convinced that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invasion.

But Kay told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee that he found no evidence to suggest that the Bush administration influenced the intelligence community to inflate the assessment of Saddam’s arsenal as a pretext to go to war.

“I had innumerable analysts came to me in apology … but not in a single case was the explanation, ‘I was pressured to do this,’†he said.

Misreading said to reflect broader problem

He said the misreading of Saddam’s capabilities, as well as inaccuracies in assessments of the capabilities of governments in Iran and Libya, pointed to a bigger problem in U.S. intelligence gathering and highlighted the difficulty in obtaining solid information about programs that hostile governments took great pains to hide.

Kay is one of a number of U.S. officials who have recently adjusted their positions on Saddam’s weapons capabilities.

As special adviser to CIA Director George Tenet, Kay was chosen last year as leader of the Iraq Survey Group in part because he was convinced that weapons would be found. “My suspicions are that we’ll find in the chemical and biological areas — in fact, I think there may be some surprises coming rather quickly in that area,†he said on CNN in June.

Last week, he altered his stance and said he believed large stocks of weapons were unlikely to be found, blaming faulty intelligence for the misguided assessments.

Kay resigned Friday, saying he was stepping down because resources were being shifted away from the search.

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., called the hearing Wednesday to receive Kay’s views directly, even though Kay no longer has an official government position.

Official calls conclusion premature

A U.S. official said Tuesday on condition of anonymity that it was premature to speculate about “why we were wrong†and rejected Kay’s statement that the work in Iraq was 85 percent done.

“Even if we are 85 percent done, what could you have in that 15 percent of information?†the official asked. “The amount of chemical and biological agent that would be required is extremely small in terms of physical footprint. It could be easily hidden.â€

While inspectors have been unable to unearth weapons of mass destruction, they have found new evidence that Saddam’s regime quietly destroyed some stockpiles of biological and chemical weapons in the mid-1990s, Kay told The Washington Post in an interview in its Tuesday editions.

Kay said the evidence, which consisted of contemporaneous documents and confirmations from interviews with Iraqis, indicated that Saddam did make efforts to disarm well before Bush began making the case for war.

Democratic presidential contenders have seized on Kay’s conclusion on the absence of banned weapons.

“The administration did cook the books,†former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean told reporters Tuesday. “I think that’s pretty serious.â€

Calls for wider investigation

Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., has called for a new investigation by an independent commission or a broadened probe by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Kay’s resignation and subsequent statements come as many in the Bush administration are subtly changing their assertions about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, including Bush.

In last year’s State of the Union, Bush called Saddam a “dictator who is assembling the world’s most dangerous weapons.†In the State of the Union this month, he spoke of Saddam’s programs, rather than weapons: “Had we failed to act, the dictator’s weapons of mass destruction programs would continue to this day.â€

Asked Tuesday about Kay’s assertions, Bush did not say that the banned weapons would eventually be discovered. “We know from years of intelligence — not only our own intelligence services, but other intelligence gathering organizations — that he had weapons — after all, he used them,†the president said.

Intelligence officials say that the probe will take time and that plenty of work lies ahead. Kay and others have blamed looting immediately after the war on the difficulties in painting a picture, but Kay has also said that flawed intelligence from 1998 forward — when U.N. inspectors withdrew from Iraq — contributed to the mistakes.

Last February, Secretary of State Colin Powell told the U.N. Security Council that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that posed “real and present dangers.â€

Last weekend, Powell began to backpedal, saying that the United States thought Saddam had banned weapons but that “we had questions that needed to be answered.â€

“What was it?†he asked. “One hundred tons, 500 tons or zero tons? Was it so many liters of anthrax, 10 times that amount or nothing?â€

MSNBC.com's Mike Brunker and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

[igloo]

UK ponders failure to find WMD

By Frank Gardner

BBC Security Correspondent

When US and British troops invaded Iraq last year they carried full protective clothing against chemical and biological weapons.

Many had been inoculated against anthrax and smallpox - precautions their governments thought necessary to counter Saddam's doomsday weapons.

No WMDs have been found in Iraq

But those weapons have still not been found, although there is some evidence of Iraq's illegal research programmes.

Academics such as Dr Gary Samore, at the British International Institute for Strategic Studies, is surprised that Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) have not been found.

He says that British, American, French and Russian intelligence agreed that Iraq had some stockpile of chemical and biological weapons.

"There was a pretty good chance that it would be used during a war," he says, "and now that assessment appears to be wrong."

Whose fault?

In Britain, a dossier on WMD was compiled by the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC).

It took much of its information from the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS), also known as MI6.

The international community and the UN believed Iraq had WMD

Their assessment at the time was that Saddam Hussein did possess such weapons.

It was a view based partly on his past actions, partly on his recent obstructive behaviour, and partly on secret communiques coming from agents inside Iraq.

The director of the Brunel Centre for Intelligence and Security Studies, Professor Anthony Glees, believes SIS should have been more careful.

"There is a serious question to be asked as to why somebody that SIS obviously trusted one hundred percent produced intelligence about WMD that was clearly inaccurate", he says.

"It could have been because the report was published in September 2002 but the attack on Iraq didn't start until March 2003.

Broader enquiry

"There could be some other reason, possibly the agent himself - I'm sure it was a male - was a double agent. We can't be sure. But certainly there has to be a very major investigation into this".

Lord Hutton's report may well criticise the unhealthily close relationship between the JIC and the prime minister's office.

He may also criticise the failure to reflect the concerns of some key analysts in the Defence Intelligence Staff.

But he is unlikely to delve too deeply into the murky world of intelligence. UK INTELLIGENCE FAILINGS

There needs to be a broader enquiry as to whether or not the country was taken to war on false pretences

Dan Plesch, Research Fellow at Birkbeck College

In quotes: Iraq's WMD

Yet some, like Dan Plesch, a research fellow at Birkbeck College, now want the scope of enquiry to be widened.

"I don't think that is something that parliament can fob off to a law lord, however eminent.

"Its an investigation that parliament, on behalf of the British people, needs to investigate itself", he says.

Behind the walls of SIS headquarters in London, officials are bracing themselves for possible criticism.

Amid all the unwelcome attention generated by the Hutton enquiry, they are still standing by their view that in September 2002 Saddam's Iraq did possess WMD.

MI6 has been accused of providing inaccurate intelligence

It was a view shared at the time by many governments and the UN.

But Professor Anthony Glees says presenting that view in a public dossier was a bad mistake on two counts.

"There was a failure on the part of Britain's intelligence services to discover reliable evidence about weapons of mass destruction", he says.

"There was also a failure of government in publishing the dossier in the first place, which contravened virtually every rule that intelligence and security work has always had."

Professor Glees believes that Saddam's secret police then had six months to try to hunt down Britain's spies who were reporting from inside Iraq.

Spy and counter-spy

The risks in publicising intelligence are also shared by Gary Samore, who served on President Clinton's National Security Council.

"The more that intelligence is used in public, the more that governments can take steps to conceal and to disguise what they're doing", he says.

Once it is realised that satellite images, phone conversations or e-mails are being intercepted, he argues, then counter-measures can be taken.

"There's always a game of spy and counter-spy that's going on, and I think it's very difficult to criticise the intelligence services, they're doing the best job they can", Mr Samore said.

Whoever ends up taking the blame for the failure to find Iraq's alleged weapons, it is certain that any British government will now think long and hard before putting secret intelligence into the public domain.

[igloo]

Transcript: David Kay at Senate hearing

Wednesday, January 28, 2004 Posted: 7:29 PM EST (0029 GMT)

Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay addresses the Senate Armed Services Committee.

(CNN) -- Former top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay testified Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Committee about efforts to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

Following is a transcript of Kay's opening remarks before committee members began questioning him.

KAY: As you know and we discussed, I do not have a written statement. This hearing came about very quickly. I do have a few preliminary comments, but I suspect you're more interested in asking questions, and I'll be happy to respond to those questions to the best of my ability.

I would like to open by saying that the talent, dedication and bravery of the staff of the [iraq Survey Group] that was my privilege to direct is unparalleled and the country owes a great debt of gratitude to the men and women who have served over there and continue to serve doing that.

A great deal has been accomplished by the team, and I do think ... it important that it goes on and it is allowed to reach its full conclusion. In fact, I really believe it ought to be better resourced and totally focused on WMD; that that is important to do it.

But I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future.

Let me begin by saying, we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here.

Sen. [Edward] Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction.

I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war -- certainly, the French president, [Jacques] Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq's possession of WMD.

The Germans certainly -- the intelligence service believed that there were WMD.

It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing.

We're also in a period in which we've had intelligence surprises in the proliferation area that go the other way. The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn't discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location.

The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that.

There's a long record here of being wrong. There's a good reason for it. There are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don't have free and open societies.

In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of [u.N.] Resolution 1441.

Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities -- one last chance to come clean about what it had.

We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

I think the aim -- and certainly the aim of what I've tried to do since leaving -- is not political and certainly not a witch hunt at individuals. It's to try to direct our attention at what I believe is a fundamental fault analysis that we must now examine.

And let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation.

As leader of the effort of the Iraqi Survey Group, I spent most of my days not out in the field leading inspections. It's typically what you do at that level. I was trying to motivate, direct, find strategies.

In the course of doing that, I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance.

And never -- not in a single case -- was the explanation, "I was pressured to do this." The explanation was very often, "The limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this. I now see that there's another explanation for it."

And each case was different, but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I'm convinced that, at least to the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, "inappropriate command influence" that led them to take that position.

It was not that. It was the honest difficulty based on the intelligence that had -- the information that had been collected that led the analysts to that conclusion.

And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that.

We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that.

The fact that it wasn't tells me that we've got a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong, and we've got to figure out what was there. And that's what I call fundamental fault analysis.

And like I say, I think we've got other cases other than Iraq. I do not think the problem of global proliferation of weapons technology of mass destruction is going to go away, and that's why I think it is an urgent issue.

And let me really wrap up here with just a brief summary of what I think we are now facing in Iraq. I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the [iraq Survey Group] there's still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened.

A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq -- the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called Ali Baba looting. "It had been the regime's. The regime is gone. I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable."

I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.

The result is -- document destruction -- we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be always unresolved ambiguity here.

But I do think the survey group -- and I think Charlie Duelfer is a great leader. I have the utmost confidence in Charles. I think you will get as full an answer as you can possibly get.

And let me just conclude by my own personal tribute, both to the president and to [CIA Director] George Tenet, for having the courage to select me to do this, and my successor, Charlie Duelfer, as well.

Both of us are known for probably at times regrettable streak of independence. I came not from within the administration, and it was clear and clear in our discussions and no one asked otherwise that I would lead this the way I thought best and I would speak the truth as we found it. I have had absolutely no pressure prior, during the course of the work at the [iraq Survey Group], or after I left to do anything otherwise.

I think that shows a level of maturity and understanding that I think bodes well for getting to the bottom of this. But it is really up to you and your staff, on behalf of the American people, to take on that challenge. It's not something that anyone from the outside can do. So I look forward to these hearings and other hearings at how you will get to the conclusions.

I do believe we have to understand why reality turned out to be different than expectations and estimates. But you have more public service -- certainly many of you -- than I have ever had, and you recognize that this is not unusual.

I told Sen. [John] Warner [chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee] earlier that I've been drawn back as a result of recent film of reminding me of something. At the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the combined estimate was unanimity in the intelligence service that there were no Soviet warheads in Cuba at the time of the missile crisis.

Fortunately, President Kennedy and [then-Attorney General] Robert Kennedy disagreed with the estimate and chose a course of action less ambitious and aggressive than recommended by their advisers.

But the most important thing about that story, which is not often told, is that as a result after the Cuban missile crisis, immediate steps were taken to correct our inability to collect on the movement of nuclear material out of the Soviet Union to other places.

So that by the end of the Johnson administration, the intelligence community had a capability to do what it had not been able to do at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.

I think you face a similar responsibility in ensuring that the community is able to do a better job in the future than it has done in the past.