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Iraq: US used 'old information'
04/07/2003 08:21 - (SA)
Washington - A Central Imtelligence Agency internal review panel has concluded that United States intelligence analysts lacked new, hard information about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction after United Nations inspectors left Iraq in 1998.
The Washington Post reported Friday that analysts relied on data from the early- and mid-1990s in the run-up to the Iraq war.
The newspaper said the CIA's findings that the biological, chemical and nuclear programs were still being pursued by Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's government in 2003 were based primarily on this old information.
However, despite the fact that the post-1998 evidence was largely circumstantial or "inferential", the panel believes the CIA's conclusion that Saddam continued to have weapons of mass destruction probably was justified, according to the report.
"It would have been very hard to conclude those programmes were not continuing, based on the reports being gathered in recent years about Iraqi purchases and other activities before the war."
Inconsistencies in report
The Post was quoting Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director who heads the four-person review panel appointed in February by CIA Director George Tenet.
Kerr said the prewar intelligence reports given to the Bush administration by the CIA, the Pentagon and state department contained caveats and disagreements on data underlying some judgments, such as whether Iraq's nuclear programme was being reconstituted, according to the paper.
But "on the whole, the analysts were pretty much on the mark", it quotes Kerr as saying.
Iraq's alleged possession of weapons of mass destruction was President George W Bush's prime rationale for launching an invasion of Iraq on March 20.
No proof of joint activities
On another controversial Iraq intelligence issue, the preliminary report indicates that although the al-Qaeda terror network and Saddam Hussein had a common enemy in the United States, "it was not at all clear if there were any co-ordination or joint activities," said the Post, quoting an individual inside the CIA familiar with the report.
"There were people talking to each other," in Iraq and other countries, the paper quotes this individual as saying. "But, that was how Saddam kept track of what was going on" in al-Qaeda, the report said.
- AFX
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