Intelligence

DATE=07-29-03

TYPE=DATELINE

TITLE=IRAQ INTELLIGENCE CONTROVERSY

NUMBER=7-37697

BYLINE=JAROSLAW ANDERS

TELEPHONE=619-0252

DATELINE=WASHINGTON

EDITOR=NEAL LAVON

CONTENT=

DISK: DATELINE THEME [PLAYED IN STUDIO, FADED UNDER DATELINE HOST VOICE OR PROGRAMMING MATERIAL]

HOST: The death of Saddam Hussein's sons has given a much-needed impetus to U.S.-led efforts to stabilize Iraq. Nonetheless, the Bush administration continues to struggle with a controversy over questionable intelligence used in President Bush's State of the Union address. This Dateline report, written by Jaroslaw Anders and narrated by Carol Castiel, explores the role of intelligence and policymaking.

CC: While making a case for going to war with Iraq, President Bush said in his 2002 State of the Union Address:

TAPE: BUSH, CUT 1

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

ANNCR: That claim, which the British government still stands by, was later called into doubt by critics of the war against Iraq. They charged the White House with exaggerating the case for war or even manipulating intelligence data. U-S National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice said it was unfortunate the questionable statement was not removed from the President's address.

TAPE: RICE, CUT 2

"Knowing what we know now, we would not have put it in the President's speech."

ANNCR: Director of the Central Intelligence Agency George Tenet said his organization was responsible for approving the claim. During a congressional hearing, he stated President Bush had every reason to believe the information was true. Some members of the administration, like Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, insisted that the sentence WAS technically correct, because it quoted British sources.

TAPE: DEAN, CUT 3

"I think that looks like a little bit of the old bureaucratic two-step to me.."

ANNCR: That was John Dean, former legal counsel to the late President Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. He believes the controversy shows there are some deep problems with the evidence used by the Bush administration to justify war in Iraq. He also contrasts what he sees as President Bush's stance on the issue with Ronald Reagan's more open approach during the Iran-contra affair.

In 1986, some members of the Reagan White House staff were accused of violating a congressional act by secretly selling arms to Iran and using the proceeds to finance the anti-government guerrillas in Nicaragua.

TAPE: DEAN, CUT 4

"It was clearly a potentially impeachable offense. And what Reagan did is he literally flooded the Congress with information. He said, you can talk to anybody you want to, you can talk to all my aides, you can look at all the documents you want. And he, in essence, tried to pre-empt impeachment by coming forward with information rather than waiting for it to build up and have a negative consequence."

ANNCR: Tim Walsh, White House correspondent for the weekly magazine "US News and World Report," believes the Bush team was taken by surprise by the intensity of the storm.

TAPE: WALSH, CUT 5

"As the Democratic presidential candidates have focused increasingly on it, as members of Congress, and even Republican members of the Senate are concerned, the White House, I think, is handling this in an uncharacteristically uncertain way. They just really don't know how to stop the hemorrhaging."

ANNCR: However the British insist that the information about uranium from Africa was absolutely correct and supported by solid evidence, while U-S intelligence agencies announced they had found no evidence to support the claim.

Daniel Benjamin, former aide to President Clinton, and now a scholar at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, says it is most unusual for such a piece of information to be used in an important address by the President of the United States:

TAPE: BENJAMIN, CUT 6

"The State of the Union speech is the most thoroughly scrutinized, aggressively scrubbed speech of the year, and it would go through fifteen, twenty, thirty drafts. Every fact will be reexamined and every statement will be questioned as to whether or not it is truthful, and will have the desired effect. Things just don't flip into State of the Union speeches."

ANNCR: Members of the U-S administration, and many congressional Republicans, say the controversy has been vastly overblown for political reasons. National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice stressed that the evidence that Iraq was seeking to restart its nuclear program was much more extensive than the claim about attempted uranium purchases in Africa.

The administration declassified parts of its October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, which stated that if unchecked, Iraq might produce a nuclear weapon during this decade. The document also claims that Iraq had an active chemical and biological weapons program. Commenting on what he called a consensus in the U-S intelligence community, Vice-President Richard Cheney said recently:

TAPE: Cheney, CUT 6A

"These judgments were not lightly arrived at, and all who were aware of them bore a heavy responsibility for the security of America. When the decision fell to him, President Bush was not willing to place the future of our security and the lives of our citizens at the mercy of Saddam Hussein. And so the President acted."

CC: But the controversy over the State of the Union address raises questions of how much the U-S government knew about the Iraqi threat, and how it used the information. The White House denies that there was any pressure on the intelligence community to stretch the facts in order to supply arguments for immediate military action.

But Joe Cirincione, an expert on nuclear proliferation at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, says intelligence agencies always run the risk of becoming embroiled in political controversies.

TAPE: CIRINCIONE, CUT 7

"There is always political pressure on the intelligence community. After all the Director of Central Intelligence serves at the pleasure of the president. So you are always making sure you are doing the job the president wants. Almost always the pressure is balanced against the integrity of the system itself. Knowing that unless you can provide objective, reliable intelligence to policy makers, you are not doing your job. At this point, this is the most politicized intelligence process I've ever seen."

ANNCR: President Bush's deputy national security advisor, Stephen Hadley, told reporters last week he should have deleted the uranium reference from the president's State of the Union address in January.

He said he had been notified last October by C-I-A officials who raised objections to the uranium allegations, noting the passage was then removed from a speech the president gave that month in Ohio. He said in preparing the State of the Union address, he should have recalled that the uranium issue was controversial, and deleted the reference. The White House maintains that it considers the issue closed. But John Dean, former legal counsel in Richard Nixon's White House, believes that the president may have made the wrong case for war in Iraq because of the controversial statement.

TAPE: DEAN, CUT 8

"I don't think there is any question, that Mr. Bush could have gone to the country and made a very persuasive case on humanitarian grounds, that something needed to be done in Iraq. That isn't the case he made, however. He went out and sold this on the fact that there was an imminent threat of weapons of mass destruction being given to terrorists."

ANNCR: The White House and other supporters of the president counter that the president's policies in Iraq were not solely based on the statement in the State of the Union message and many experts believe there is still truth to Saddam Hussein's seeking uranium in Africa and elsewhere.

But domestic political analysts are not sure if this flap will develop into a political crisis and a major issue during the presidential election of 2004. That will depend, they say, on the situation inside Iraq.

Tim Walsh of U-S News and World Report believes that, if U-S forces manage to capture or kill Saddam Hussein, or find evidence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the issue of the African uranium will soon become irrelevant. However, if the situation in Iraq remains unclear, unstable and dangerous, the controversy will bolster all other doubts about the Iraqi intervention. Mr. Walsh says that if the debate continues, it may also threaten President Bush's chief political assets.

TAPE: WALSH, CUT 11

"There are two things that President Bush has had going for him since September 11 and the terrorist attacks. One is his reputation for honesty and candor. And two, is his reputation for being a strong leader, an effective, competent leader. Both of those are under assault in the CIA intelligence issue."

ANNCR: In the meantime congressional Democrats continue to press for an independent inquiry into the controversy. Some Republicans oppose the investigation, saying Mr. Bush's opponents are trying to politicize the issue. House Speaker Dennis Hastert spoke recently on Fox News TV:

TAPE: HASTERT, CUT 12

".And so it is their job from here on out and you will see a lot of this to try to hurt the credibility of the president, to throw mud and see what sticks."

ANNCR: But the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller, denies political motives are driving the controversy.

TAPE: ROCKEFELLER, CUT 13

"It is not a matter of politics. On the Intelligence Committee there is a lot of bipartisanship. It really resounds, especially recently. It is a question of - was it right or was it wrong."

ANNCR: Republicans and Democrats agree that the administration needs to answer this question. Without such clarification, they say, it may be difficult to reassure Americans that the president's Iraqi policy is on track.

This Dateline was written by Jaroslaw Anders. From Washington, I'm Carol Castiel.

MUSIC: Joe Lovano, "After the Rain."