Washington D.C., 9 July 2004 - The CIA has decided to
keep almost entirely secret the controversial October 2002 CIA intelligence
estimate about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction that is the subject
of today's Senate Intelligence Committee report, according to the
CIA's June 1, 2004 response to a Freedom of Information Act request
from the National Security Archive.
The CIA's response included a copy of the estimate, NIE
2002-16HC, October 2002, Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons
of Mass Destruction, consisting almost entirely
of whited-out pages. Only 14 of the 93 pages provided actually contained
text, and all of the text except for the two title pages and the
two pages listing National Intelligence Council members had previously
been released in July 2003. At that time, CIA responded
to the first round of controversy over the Niger yellowcake story
by declassifying the "Key Findings" section of the estimate
and a few additional paragraphs.
The CIA's censorship of the estimate mirrors its apparent treatment
of the Senate's
own report. The Senate Intelligence Committee had previously
noted, in a 17
June 2004 press release, that "The Committee is
extremely disappointed by the CIA's excessive redactions to the
report." News accounts quoting Senate sources estimate that
this excessive redaction amounted to 50% of the entire text. After
a month of back-and-forth, not only did a number of Senators gain
an education in the subjectivity of classification, but also the
CIA retreated, to a final censorship level (by word-count) of 16%.
Perhaps the most
egregious example of the CIA's knee-jerk secrecy occurs
on pages 49-50, when only one sentence survives censorship in the
Committee's discussion of the British White Paper - and that sentence
reports that the British had actually published the Paper. Large
sections of blacked-out discussion following the Committee's Conclusions
- such as the CIA's
misleading of Secretary of State Colin Powell for his February 2003
United Nations speech (pages 253-257) and the CIA's
misleading the public in its October 2002 white paper
that left out the caveats, hedged language, and dissents in the
underlying intelligence (pages
295-297) - are currently under declassification review
by CIA. The Committee itself withheld these sections from the CIA's
review until release of the report so as not to be scooped or spun.
The estimate has been the subject of multiple public speeches,
statements and testimony by CIA and other intelligence community
officials - even more of which is published in today's Senate report.
These include public statements by CIA director George Tenet on
11 July 2003 and 11 August 2003, Tenet's Georgetown speech of 5
February 2004, and NIC vice-chairman Stuart Cohen's statement of
28 November 2003.
The Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen.
Pat Roberts (R-Kansas) today summed up the committee's 511-page
report as follows: "[T]oday we know these assessments were
wrong. And, as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable
and largely unsupported by the available evidence." National
Security Archive director Thomas Blanton commented, "The CIA's
continued secrecy claims on a document that has been widely and
publicly discussed by top CIA officials, and now by the Senate,
is wrong, unreasonable, and largely unsupported by the available
evidence."
Today's posting by the National Security Archive includes:
1. The 1 June 2004
release by CIA of the censored estimate.
2. The July
2003 release by CIA of the estimate's Key Findings and additional
paragraphs.
3.
The October 2002 unclassified presentation on "Iraq's Weapons
of Mass Destruction Programs," with the seal of the Director
of Central Intelligence on the cover.
4. The
full text of the Senate Intelligence Committee report.
The
October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate
There have been three separate releases of the October
2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's Continuing
Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, including most recently
a June 1, 2004 CIA response to a Freedom of Information Act request
by the National Security Archive. The CIA released an Unclassified
version of the NIE, titled Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction
Programs, in October 2002. In response to the brewing
controversy over U.S. intelligence estimates of Iraqi WMD programs,
the White House approved the release of another version of the report
in July 2003.
National
Intelligence Estimate
Iraq's Continuing Programs
for Weapons of Mass Destruction
October 2002, Top Secret
Source: CIA declassification release under FOIA, June 1, 2004
National
Intelligence Estimate - White House declassification release
Iraq's Continuing
Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction
October 2002, Top Secret (Extract)
Source: White House, July 2003
National
Intelligence Estimate - CIA Unclassified version
Iraq's Weapons
of Mass Destruction Programs
October 2002, Unclassified
Source: CIA public release, October 2002
The
Senate Intelligence Committee Report on Prewar Intelligence
United
States Senate, Select Committee on Intelligence
Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence
Assessments on Iraq
Released on July 7, 2004
Full
text (24 MB)
Or
Download by Section
I.
Introduction
II.
Niger
III.
Intelligence Community Analysis of Iraq's Nuclear Program
IV.
Intelligence Community Analysis of Iraq's Biological Weapons Program
V.
Intelligence Community Analysis of Iraq's Chemcal Weapons (CW)
Program
VI.
Intelligence Community Analysis of Iraq's Delivery Systems
VII.
Iraq Weapons of Mass Destruction Intelligence in Secretary Powell's
United Nations Speech
VIII.
Intelligence Community Collection Activities Against Iraq's Weapons
of Mass Destruction
IX.
Pressure on Intelligence Community Analysts Regarding Iraq's Weapons
of Mass Destruction (WMD) Capabilities
X.
White Paper on Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs
XI.
The Rapid Production of the October 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate on Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass
Destruction
XII.
Iraq's Links to Terrorism
XIII.
Intelligence Community Collection Activities Against Iraq's Links
to Terrorism
XIV.
Pressure on Intelligence Community Analysts Regarding Iraq's Links
to Terrorism
XV.
Powell Speech - Terrorism Portion
XVI.
Iraq's Threat to Regional Stability and Security
XVII.
Saddam Hussein's Human Rights Record
XVIII.
The Intelligence Community's Sharing of Intelligence on Iraqi
Suspect Weapons of Mass Destruction Sites With United Nations
Inspectors
Appendices,
Glossary, Acronyms & Abbreviations
Additional
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