[Pages S7948-S7951]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

Mr. BOND. Mr. President, I thank the deputy majority leader for his
excellent comments. As a member of the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence, I congratulate him on his very thorough and thoughtful
discussion of the work of the Intelligence Committee.
Last week, as we all recall, the committee released a remarkable
report unanimously supported by the Democrat and Republican members of
the committee. However, despite the findings of fact, which took a year
of interviews by staff of over 200 people reviewing 15,000 documents,
the campaign continues to attempt to politicize this process perfectly
consistent with the political strategy memo uncovered last November
designed by minority staff to show how the Intelligence Committee could
be manipulated in order to hamper the President and his administration
during the election year. The fact this is a time of war is apparently
insufficient justification for leaving politics at the water's edge.
No rule of law should ever stifle honest debate, discourse, or
dissent in this country, but somewhere public leaders can recognize
self-discipline can be a benefit to our troops and our Nation. I saw a
report recently that in the 1944 election, as Republican candidate
Thomas Dewey was set to blame President Roosevelt for what transpired
at Pearl Harbor, General Marshall appealed to Dewey, arguing that the
Nation should be united against the real enemy. Dewey acted on behalf
of the country. I guess times were different then.
In this country, we need to make sure our service men and women
understand that while we can have our debate, we can demonstrate more
disdain for the enemy than we have for the opposition party.
Since Friday, we have heard the suggestions that the efforts of our
troops to depose Saddam Hussein and set the long-term stage for peace
and democracy in the most dangerous region in the world was not--yes,
not--warranted. Besides being wrong, what kind

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of horrible message is this to send our troops and their families, not
to mention the enemy, whose only hope is to win in Washington what they
cannot win from our troops on the battlefield?
If it is the will of this body that we cut and run, then let's debate
and vote on it. Maybe we need a sense-of-the-Senate resolution, in any
case, to send a message to our troops and the enemy that we intend to
see this through. If we agree on it, as I believe we do, we should let
our troops do what they are doing, and we should spend our time
supporting their efforts, not retracting from their mission.
Of course, we should be focused on the need to provide better
intelligence, but some of us have been saying that since the 1970s when
our intelligence collection was destroyed. Some of us had said that
when we failed to predict the Iraqi Army would amass on the Kuwaiti
border and when intelligence failed to predict they would cross over
and overtake Kuwait and threaten Saudi Arabia. Some of us said that
when we learned the estimates of Saddam Hussein's nuclear capability
were not 5 to 10 years in the future but less than 1 year. All we need
to know about the quality of intelligence in the region is to know we
did not have one single agent on the ground.
As said in today's editorial in Investor's Business Daily,
intelligence spending was cut, the number of spies sharply dropped, so
sharply, in fact, that after 9/11 the CIA had to create a 5-year plan
to undo the damage. During President Clinton's two terms, the number of
spies fell an estimated 20 percent, the budget tumbled by some
estimates as much as 30 percent--it is classified--spy satellites got
taken down, experienced analysts got fired.
Well, much has been said of the pressure that policymakers allegedly
put on the intelligence community to get hard answers to important
questions. We just heard that repeated in the Chamber. They are talking
about pressure to change the analysis. Let's go back to what the
bipartisan committee unanimously concluded.
Conclusion No. 11.

Several of the allegations of pressure on the intelligence
community analysts involved repeated questioning. The
committee--

That is the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence--

believes that the intelligence community analysts should
expect difficult and repeated questions regarding threat
information. Just as the post-9/11 environment lowered the
intelligence community's reporting threshold, it has also
affected the intensity with which policymakers will review
and question threat information.

With respect to the Vice President, conclusion No. 84:

The committee found no evidence that the Vice President's
visits to the Central Intelligence Agency were attempts to
pressure analysts, were perceived as intended to pressure
analysts by those who participated in the briefings on Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction programs or did pressure analysts
to change their conclusions.

Conclusion No. 102:

The committee found that none of the analysts or other
people interviewed by the committee said they were pressured
to change their conclusions related to Iraq's links to
terrorism.

Now, talking to the people who work in the intelligence community,
they are expected to get tough questions. They need to be able to
defend what they have produced, and a good policymaker will challenge
them not to change the evidence, and there was no evidence--zip, zero,
none--of pressure to change.
I ought to mention Ambassador Wilson's name was raised. The committee
also found that his so-called review was inadequate and did not
conclusively determine that there was not an effort--in fact, some
analysts were led to conclude from what he brought back that it was
more likely that Iraq was trying to get uranium from Africa, and I
would refer my colleagues to Chairman Roberts' additional views.
The partisan suggestions continue nevertheless, as administration
officials are accused of making the same charges against Saddam's
regime as the Senators themselves made in 1998 and during the debate
for war which was overwhelmingly adopted in 2002. Candidates accuse our
President and Vice President of having little swing with our so-called
allies. Yet somehow they must have had enough swing to intimidate the
English, French, Swiss, German, U.N. and Russian intelligence agencies
to fall for the same WMD charge. This notion did not survive
investigative scrutiny, and it does not survive common sense.
Furthermore, it is a gross insult to analysts in the intelligence
community to suggest they conform their views to the pleasure of
policymakers.
Again, I would draw the attention of my colleagues to yesterday's
Wall Street Journal editorial on this subject, which says something
that I said in the Chamber last Friday. A few apologies would seem to
be in order. I think apologies are owed to the Vice President and to
the administration. And yet we are still continuing to hear the same
misguided, unsubstantiated charges made. Some Senators trying to win
the White House away are criticizing the President for looking at the
same intelligence they did and coming to the same conclusion they did.
Is political victory more important than victory in Iraq? Has political
victory become so important that some believe it necessary to divide
America with this blame game while their sons and daughters are risking
their lives abroad? If we are going to blame someone, I recommend we
all agree to start with Saddam and bin Laden. Have we forgotten who the
real enemy of peace, democracy, and humanity really is?
Recall what President Clinton said who saw the intelligence in 1998.
President Clinton said:

The fact is that so long as Saddam remains in power, he
threatens the well-being of his people, the peace of this
region, the security of the world. The best way to end that
threat once and for all is with the new Iraqi Government, a
government ready to live in peace with its neighbors, a
government that respects the rights of its people. Saddam
will strike again at his neighbors and he will make war on
his own people, and mark my words, he will develop weapons of
mass destruction. He will deploy them and he will use them.

My colleague, the deputy majority leader from Kentucky, has already
pointed out the words of the Senators in this body, and I agree with
him and I endorse that reference. But as we focus to the point of
obsession on intelligence--and we must make it better if we are to stop
future acts of terror--we cannot leave behind our own personal
intelligence. We do not exist to swallow whole what the intelligence
community feeds us. Sometimes they are wrong, sometimes lazy, but most
of the time they work tirelessly under dangerous conditions and are
dead right, and other times their guesses, which is much of what
intelligence is all about, may not be as good as ours. But in the case
of Saddam, who in this body needed a CIA report to understand that the
man and his despicable sons set to lead Iraq through the first half of
the new century? Ordinary citizens need not have a security clearance
but need only to have watched or read the news over the previous 20
years.
What don't we know about this man's evil intention, his hatred for
the U.S., his willingness not only to pursue but use weapons of mass
destruction? Is his track record of insanity meaningless?

By the time a crazed maniac invades two foreign countries, defies
repeatedly the mandates of the U.N., fires missiles at Israel, fires
missiles at our patrol aircraft, pays suicide bombers to blow up
innocent women and children, not only builds and stockpiles weapons of
mass destruction but uses them, fills mass graves by the tens of
thousands, attempts to assassinate our former President, and suggests
that perhaps his only regret in 1990 was not waiting a few more months
so he would have the nuclear capability to confront our troops, what
else do we really need to know about this man? Do we really need the
CIA to introduce Saddam to the Senate? Can it be true that there is
this signal that unless WMD are found, Saddam is somehow acquitted?
Look at the thousands and thousands of people he killed with the WMD.
In retrospect, many things are more clear, including that we would
have been better off taking care of him in 1991, but in post-9/11 could
we really afford to trust him, to let him continue to fester
indefinitely? Were we prepared to wait until the threat was imminent?
President Bush said we can't wait until the threat is imminent, meaning
to wait until the threat is executed which is too late. We didn't know
his invasion of Kuwait was imminent until we saw his tanks through the
dust of the Kuwaiti desert. We knew bin Laden was a threat but the

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threat did not appear imminent until after the USS Cole was bombed,
after the embassies were bombed, after the towers were dropped, killing
3,000 innocent Americans.
While it may be lost on some perhaps in this body, but in our
national news media, the burdens of leadership are not lost on this
President. While no one else may see the irony, President Bush does. He
sees a 9/11 commission asking: Why didn't the administration act on
sketchy intelligence at the very same time some on the other side are
asking why did the administration act on sketchy intelligence? The
first investigation answers the second to anyone sitting in the hottest
political seat in America. Meanwhile, the hottest job abroad is being
faithfully executed by our soldiers, marines, airmen, and civilian
support personnel.
I am proud my son is a marine who expects to get his turn to serve in
the sandbox. I want him to return safely, but I want him to win, and I
want our troops abroad to win, and I want them to know that America is
behind them and to know that addressing the most dangerous nation in
the most dangerous region of the world makes this world safer because
it will if Washington will let it.
Winning the real war on terror is more important than winning the
political war for the White House. We want to win the war on terror and
we must. The continued charges of pressure and misinformation are
totally off the mark based on what the Intelligence Committee found.
There is no question that we are better off. The region is safer, the
Iraqi people are much safer, and we in the United States are much safer
because we have deposed Saddam Hussein, because we have enacted the
PATRIOT Act, because we have pursued very vigorously the war on terror.
We ought to be strengthening that war, supporting our troops,
supporting our agencies here at home and not trying to phony up charges
of pressure to win political points.
I ask unanimous consent that two editorials, one from the Wall Street
Journal and one from Investor's Business Daily, be printed in the
Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in
the Record, as follows:

[From the Investor's Business Daily, July 13, 2004]

Pointing Fingers

It's a little funny watching some of the very same people
who voted repeatedly in the 1990s to strip the CIA of its
spies and slash its budget now taking it to task for not
doing its job.
It is true the CIA failed to anticipate Sept. 11--though
it's not clear any organization operating in a democratic
society could have done so.
It's also true the CIA made mistakes in estimating the
scope of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
programs--and in suggesting the U.S. would find stockpiles of
WMDs when it invaded.
(Although, it's equally clear the CIA wasn't entirely
wrong: Iraq did have WMD programs, and coalition troops did
find weapons of mass destruction--namely, deadly sarin and
mustard gas--in Iraq, though not in the amounts the CIA
hinted they would).
Nonetheless, in a predictable game of political tag, some
try to pin the blame for the CIA's failures on President
Bush--as if the eight years of massive intelligence cuts in
the 1990s played no role at all.
It's a matter of record: President Clinton slashed
intelligence spending and cut the number of spies sharply--so
sharply, in fact, the CIA after 9-11 had to create a five-
year plan to undo the damage.
During his two terms, the number of spies fell an estimated
20%. The budget tumbled, by some estimates as much as 30%
(it's classified). Spy satellites got taken down. Experienced
analysts got fired.
That doesn't mean Clinton had no spying priorities. He did:
the economy. In place of a relentless focus on the growing
terror threat, the Clinton White House made ``economic
security'' its top priority.
Typical was this comment from then-Secretary of State
Warren Christopher: ``Our national security is inseparable
from our economic security.''
So much for terrorism.
Unfortunately, terrorists found the U.S. an easy target
during the decade. They started with the World Trade Center
bombing in 1993, killing six and wounding a thousand more.
They kept at it, blowing up a U.S. barracks in Saudi Arabia,
attacking U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, and bombing
the USS Cole in port in Yemen. They murdered hundreds in
these and other terror attacks.
Yet, it was still ``the economy stupid'' in the White
House--an attitude that found many allies among Congress'
Democrats.
That includes Sen. John Kerry. He proposed deep cuts for
the CIA in 1994 and 1995.
We mention this because the report on the CIA's
shortcomings has been the source of a good deal of finger-
pointing. Bush often gets the blame, even though the weakened
intelligence community he inherited was Clinton's creation.
The CIA, no doubt, needs reforms. But its troubles didn't
arise in just the last three years. And playing political
football with America's intelligence failures won't make us
more secure.
____

[From the Wall Street Journal, July 12, 2004]

Of ``Lies'' and WMD

``The Committee did not find any evidence that
Administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or
pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's
weapons of mass destruction capabilities.''
So reads Conclusion 83 of the Senate Intelligence
Committee's report on prewar intelligence on Iraq. The
committee likewise found no evidence of pressure to link Iraq
to al Qaeda. So it appears that some of the claims about WMD
used by the Bush Administration and others to argue for war
in Iraq were mistaken because they were based on erroneous
information provided by the CIA.
A few apologies would seem to be in order. Allegations of
lying or misleading the nation to war are about the most
serious charge that can be leveled against a President. But
according to this unanimous study, signed by Jay Rockefeller
and seven other Democrats, those frequent charges from
prominent Democrats and the media are without merit.
Or to put it more directly, if President Bush was ``lying''
about WMD, then so was Mr. Rockefeller when he relied on CIA
evidence to claim in October 2002 that Saddam Hussein's
weapons ``pose a very real threat to America.'' Also lying at
the time were John Kerry, John Edwards, Bill and Hillary
Clinton, and so on. Yet, Mr. Rockefeller is still suggesting
on the talk shows, based on nothing but inference and
innuendo, that there was undue political Bush ``pressure'' on
CIA analysts.
The West Virginia Democrat also asserted on Friday that
Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith has been running a
rogue intelligence operation that is ``not lawful.'' Mr.
Feith's shop has spent more than 1,800 hours responding to
queries from the Senate and has submitted thousands of pages
of documents--none of which supports such a charge. Shouldn't
even hyper-partisan Senators have to meet some minimum
standard of honesty?
In fact, the report shows that one of the first allegations
of false intelligence was itself a distortion: Mr. Bush's
allegedly misleading claim in the 2003 State of the Union
address that Iraq has been seeking uranium ore from Africa.
The Senate report notes that Presidential accuser and former
CIA consultant Joe Wilson returned from his trip to Africa
with no information that cast serious doubt on such a claim;
and that, contrary to Mr. Wilson's public claims, his wife (a
CIA employee) was involved in helping arrange his mission.
``When coordinating the State of the Union, no Central
Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts or officials told the
National Security Council (NSC) to remove the `16 words' or
that there were concerns about the credibility of the Iraq-
Niger Uranium reporting,'' the report says. In short, Joe
Wilson is a partisan fraud whose trip disproved nothing, and
what CIA doubts there were on Niger weren't shared with the
White House.
The broader CIA failure on Iraq's WMD is troubling, though
it is important to keep in mind that this was a global
failure. Every serious intelligence service thought Saddam
still had WMD, and the same consensus existed across the
entire U.S. intelligence community. One very alarming
explanation, says the report, is that the CIA had ``no
[human] sources collecting against weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq after 1998.'' That's right. Not one
source.
When asked why not, a CIA officer replied ``because it's
very hard to sustain.'' The report's rather obvious answer is
that spying ``should be within the norm of the CIA's
activities and capabilities,'' and some blame for this human
intelligence failure has to fall on recently departed
Director George Tenet and his predecessor, John Deutch.
The Senate report blames these CIA failures not just on
management but also on ``a risk averse corporate culture.''
This sound right, and Acting Director John McLaughlin's
rejection of this criticism on Friday is all the more reason
for Mr. Bush to name a real replacement. Richard Armitage has
been mentioned for the job, but the Deputy Secretary of State
has been consistently wrong about Iran, which will be a
principal threat going forward, and his and Colin Powell's
philosophy at the State Department has been to let the
bureaucrats run the place. We can think of better choices.
One real danger now is that the intelligence community will
react to this Iraq criticism by taking even fewer risks, or
by underestimating future threats as it has so often in the
past. (The failure to detect that Saddam was within a year of
having a nuclear bomb prior to the 1991 Gulf War is a prime
example.) The process of developing ``national intelligence
estimates,'' or NIEs, will only reinforce this sense of
internal lowest-common-denominator, conformity. If the Senate
is looking for a place to recommend long-term reform,
dispensing with NIEs would be a good place to start.
Above all, it's important to remember that the Senate
report does not claim that the

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overall assessment of Iraq as a threat was mistaken. U.N.
Resolution 1441 gave Saddam ample opportunity to come clean
about his weapons, but he refused. The reports from David Kay
and his WMD task force have since shown that Saddam violated
1441 in multiple ways.
Saddam retained a ``just-in-time'' capability to make WMD,
even if he destroyed, hid or removed the ``stockpiles'' that
the CIA believed he had. It's fanciful to think, especially
in light of the Oil for Food scandal, that U.N.-led
containment was a realistic option for another 12 years, or
that once containment ended Saddam wouldn't have expanded his
weapons capacity very quickly. The Senate report makes clear
we need a better CIA, not that we should have left in power a
homicidal, WMD-using dictator.

Mr. BOND. I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Enzi). Who yields time? The time is under
the control of the majority.
Mr. REID. Mr. President, on behalf of the minority, are we now on the
constitutional amendment?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. No, we have 4 minutes 45 seconds left on the
Republican side.
The Senator from Montana.

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