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White
House Said In January It Used Info From Iraqi Exiles In Bush’s State of the
Union Speech
by
Jason Leopold
July
29, 2003
Last
weekend, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz explained that the United
States at times relied on “murky”
intelligence in trying to link Iraq to the al-Qaeda terrorist group, but the
war against Iraq was justified despite the fact that the White House is now
being dogged
by questions about the accuracy of its prewar intelligence.
“The
nature of terrorism intelligence is intrinsically murky,” Wolfowitz said on
“Meet the Press. “If you wait until the terrorism picture is clear, you're
going to wait until after something terrible has happened.”
But
the reasons behind the murky intelligence used by the White House to build a
case for war against Iraq may have more to do with the people who provided the
Pentagon and the White House with its information on Iraq’s alleged weapons of
mass destruction than the difficulties the intelligence community already faces
in trying to obtain reliable intelligence from a variety of sources.
“Having
concluded that international inspectors are unlikely to find tangible and
irrefutable evidence that Iraq is hiding weapons of mass destruction, the Bush
administration is preparing its own assessment that will rely heavily on
evidence from Iraqi defectors, according to senior administration officials,”
The New York Times reported Jan. 23.
In
addition, Bush administration officials said Jan. 23 some of the intelligence
information provided by the Iraqi defectors would likely be included in the president’s
State of the Union address, which may explain why the White House has come
under fire for failing to paint an accurate picture of the Iraqi threat—it is
well-known among intelligence experts that much of the information provided by
Iraqi defectors is unreliable.
“The
White House asked administration intelligence analysts … to use the information
from the defectors as part of a "bill of particulars" that the
administration hopes will convince skeptical allies and the American public
that Iraq's behavior warrants military action, the officials said,” The Times
reported. “In addition, they said, it may be incorporated into President Bush's
State of the Union address on Jan. 28.”
Many
of the defectors were encouraged to speak to intelligence officials by Ahmad
Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, an exile group with close ties to
the White House. There continue to be deep divisions in Washington over the
value of information from defectors associated with Chalabi’s group.
“The
Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency has been the most receptive to the
defectors intelligence, saying that defectors are critical to penetrating
Iraq's deceptive practices. The CIA has often been dismissive of the defectors
and questioned their credibility, according to administration officials,” the
Times reported.
As
lawmakers in Washington begin investigations into the accuracy of pre-war
intelligence, they should question whether the White House and the Pentagon
used dubious information from Iraqi defectors to help sway public opinion in
supporting the war and whether some of that information was included in Bush’s
State of the Union address in January.
Five
days before President’s Bush’s State of the Union Speech Jan. 28, Wolfowitz
spoke to the Council of Foreign Relations in New York and credited Iraqi
defectors with providing the Pentagon and other U.S. “intelligence agencies”
much of the information on Iraq’s secret weapons programs that has long been
dismissed by military personnel in Iraq as unreliable.
Wolfowitz
said in his Jan. 23, presentation to the Council of Foreign Relations that it
was Iraqi defectors who told the CIA and the Pentagon about mobile trailers in
Iraq that were allegedly used to produce biological weapons.
“We
know about that capability from defectors and other sources,” Wolfowitz said
during his speech, which can be found at http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2003/t01232003_t0123cfr.html.
“For a great body of what we need to know, we are very dependent on traditional
methods of intelligence — that is to say, human beings who are either
deliberately or inadvertently communicating to us.”
Secretary
of State Colin Powell in his February presentation to the United Nations where
he was trying to win support for war, pointed to the trailers as evidence of
Iraq’s secret weapons program.
When
the trailers were found in May, President Bush, Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld and National Security Adviser Condoleeza Rice were quick to point out
that the trailers were used to produce lethal chemical weapons, even though no
traces of any chemical weapons were found inside the trailers.
But
the State Department in a June 2 classified memorandum disputed the conclusion
that the trailers were used to cook up deadly weapons. United Nations weapons
inspectors said that the trailers were likely used to produce hydrogen for
weather balloons.
Prior
to the war in March, Wolfowitz said some of the most valuable information it
received came from Adnan Ihsan Saeed al-Haideri, a contractor who escaped Iraq
in the summer of 2001. He told American officials that chemical and biological
weapons laboratories were hidden beneath hospitals and inside presidential
palaces and he provided documents to back up some of his other assertions about
Iraq’s weapons programs.
In
December and January, the White House highlighted Haideri’s claims against Iraq
in a report called “Iraq; A Decade of Deception and Defiance” and in a fact
sheet on Iraq posted on the White Houses web site. But when U.S. forces
searched the hospitals and presidential palaces where Haideri said weapons were
hidden they found nothing, not even evidence that weapons had ever been there.
Jason Leopold, formerly the bureau chief of Dow Jones Newswires, is
a freelance journalist based in California. He is currently finishing a book on
the California energy crisis. He can be contacted at jasonleopold@hotmail.com.