The Hindu : Iraqi weapons: CIA chief to be examined

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Jun 24, 2003

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International

Iraqi weapons: CIA chief to be examined

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

WASHINGTON JUNE 23. At least one senior and influential Republican lawmaker sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee is urging the administration to come clean on information pertaining to Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction, an issue that is increasingly becoming a major focus of attention on Capitol Hill.

"This is a cloud hanging over their credibility, their word. They need to get that dealt with, taken care of, removed," remarked Senator Chuck Hagel, Republican from Nebraska. "The world — certainly Americans — must have confidence in this administration... And to resolve this issue is certainly in the interests of this administration," he said. This Senate panel has started its investigation of the intelligence material used by the administration to justify the invasion of Iraq.

While some leading Democrats have suggested that much of the intelligence assessment was either hyped or exaggerated, no one has come forward and directly accused the Bush administration of deliberately misleading lawmakers or the American public.

At the same time, while the Republicans have been quite keen on keeping the investigations and hearings closed door or secretive, Democrats have been clamouring for open sessions, something that is unlikely to materialise either in the Senate or in the House of Representatives. The Senate Intelligence and the Armed Services Committees are looking into the matter; and in the House, the Intelligence Committee is reviewing documents on pre-war assessments. Under the present scheme of things, private investigations and closed door hearings will continue with one of the top witnesses expected this week being the head of the Central Intelligence Agency, George Tenet.

Two reports

At the same time, the impression is that the Democrats could be successful in getting one public hearing which will be followed by two reports, a public report and a classified one.

If Republicans are urging this administration to come clean on this Iraq weapons of mass destruction and its supposed links with terror outfits such as Al-Qaeda, leading members of the Grand Old Party are not rushing to the media complaining of stonewalling by the Bush administration as well.

The emphasis, as the Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Pat Roberts, put it, is that there is no evidence of wrongdoing in the early stages of the investigation. Democrats have been quick to pounce on a statement made by the President, George W. Bush, last year during the State of the Union Address that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons programme and was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

The CIA had apparently come to the conclusion nearly 10 months earlier that no transactions with Niger had taken place and all documents to this effect were false.

But the nodal intelligence agency had not passed on this information to the White House.

Also being questioned is the kind of ties Iraq had with Al-Qaeda, with the President insisting last October that the Saddam Hussein regime had trained Al-Qaeda in bomb-making and in poisons and deadly gases.

This was around the time Congress was debating a resolution granting the President broad authority to wage war.

The attention in the media over Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction — which was the chief rationale for going to war — has also taken on another dimension in that there are allegations that people like the Vice-President, Dick Cheney, had sought to pressure analysts in the CIA to tailor their assessments to the administration's point of view.

This has been rejected by senior administration officials.

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