The IC did not find a substantial link between Iraq and al Qaeda. According to the 9/11 Commission report, shortly after the 9/11 attacks, Richard Clarke’s office sent a memo to the National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, at the President’s direction, concluding that “only some anecdotal evidence linked Iraq to al Qaeda…Arguing that the case for links between Iraq and al Qaeda was weak, the memo pointed out that Bin Ladin resented the secularism of Saddam Hussein’s regime.â€
The January 2003 report Iraqi Support for Terrorism, the final major IC report prior to the war, acknowledged that its conclusions “especially regarding the difficult and elusive question of the exact nature of Iraq’s relations with al Qaida are based on currently available information that is at times contradictory and derived from sources with varying degrees of reliability.†It stated that the relationship “appears to more closely resemble that of two independent actors trying to exploit each other,†and that “al Qaida, including bin Ladin personally, and Saddam were leery of close cooperation.†Relative to the 9/11 attacks, the report said that the “Intelligence Community has no credible information that Baghdad had foreknowledge of the 11 September attacks or any other al-Qaida strike.â€13 Moreover, the SSCI, after reviewing all available intelligence, concluded in its report that the CIA “reasonably assessed that there were likely several instances of contacts between Iraq and al-Qaida throughout the 1990s, but that these contacts did not add up to an established formal relationship.â€
The CIA’s corrections applied to numerous entries in Feith’s Summary, including some of the reports that claimed the most direct and potentially threatening connections between Iraq and al Qaeda (i.e., training in bombmaking and meetings between senior al Qaeda members and Iraqi intelligence officials). A comparison of the classified CIA-requested corrections and Feith’s Addendum reveals that while some of the CIA’s corrections were made, highly significant corrections relating to Iraq-al Qaeda contacts were not made.
The 9/11 Commission, after reviewing the relevant intelligence reports, concluded that, despite contacts between Iraq and al Qaeda, the relationship was limited and somewhat distant, and that there was “no evidence†of a “collaborative operational relationship.†As noted above, the IC characterized the relationship as “independent actors.â€
The Weekly Standard article to which Vice President Cheney referred starts with the conclusion that “Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein had an operational relationship from the early 1990s to 2003 that involved training in explosives and weapons of mass destruction, logistical support for terrorist attacks, al Qaeda training camps and safe haven in Iraq… according to a top secret U.S. government memorandum...†The article ends with the conclusion that “there can no longer be any serious argument about whether Saddam Hussein’s Iraq worked with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda to plot against Americans.â€
The article to which the Vice President referred represented that it was based on a leaked, Top Secret Defense Department document prepared by Under Secretary Feith and sent to the SSCI. By referring to the article in the way he did (including his comment that the article was “based on an assessment that was done by the Department of Defense and forwarded to the Senate Intelligence Committeeâ€), the Vice President not only implicitly condoned the unauthorized release of highly classified material; he explicitly endorsed the article’s contents.
Vice President Cheney’s view that the Feith document was the “best source of information†of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship was not shared by the IC. Director Tenet, in testimony before the SASC on March 9, 2004, said that the CIA “did not agree with the way the data was characterized in that document†and that he would speak to Vice President Cheney to inform him of the IC’s disagreements with the information. As previously discussed, the article claimed that it was based on the Feith Summary document described earlier in this report. The CIA provided numerous corrections to that Summary to Under Secretary Feith, some key ones of which he did not make before sending the purportedly corrected version to the SASC.
As the 9/11 Commission and SSCI reports convey, the intelligence appears to indicate that contacts were sporadic and not fruitful, belying a relationship (as opposed to contacts alone) between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Life and death decisions are based on the accuracy of intelligence. When intelligence is distorted or exaggerated to support the policies of an administration, it jeopardizes our nation’s security and the lives of the men and women of our armed forces. This report provides compelling evidence of the importance of objective, independent intelligence upon which to base major policy decisions. It demonstrates how intelligence relating to the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high ranking officials in the DOD to support the Administration’s decision to invade Iraq when the intelligence assessments of the professional analysts of the Intelligence Community did not provide the desired compelling case.
The IC’s analysis of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship as a relatively weak one was as definitive as reliable reporting would permit, and their conclusions were subsequently supported by the 9/11 Commission and the SSCI investigations.
Some senior DOD policymakers were predisposed to conclude that there was a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. However, the IC failed to support that conclusion in repeated analyses. An alternative intelligence assessment process was established in the office of Under Secretary for Policy Doug Feith to look at the evidence through a different lens, one that was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. His staff then conducted its own review of raw intelligence reports, including reporting of dubious quality or reliability. Drawing upon both reliable and unreliable reporting, they arrived at an “alternative†interpretation of the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration.
Misleading or inaccurate statements about the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship made by senior Administration officials were not supported by IC analyses but more closely reflected the Feith policy office views. These assessments included, among others, allegations by the President that Iraq was an “ally†of al Qaeda; assertions by National Security Advisor Rice and others that Iraq “had†provided training in WMD to al-Qaeda; and continued representations by Vice President Cheney that Mohammed Atta may have met with an Iraq intelligence officer before the 9/11 attacks when the CIA didn’t believe the meeting took place.
