VII. IRAQ WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION INTELLIGENCE IN SECRETARY POWELL'S UNITED NATIONS SPEECH (U) On February 5, 2003, Secretary Powell delivered a speech before the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) which outlined Iraq's noncompliance with UNSC Resolutions and provided a detailed presentation of intelligence in each of the areas of Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction programs. Secretary Powell told the United Nations (UN) that, ...every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These (U) The speech originated in early December 2002, according to Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts and Intelligence Community (IC) officials, when the National Security Council (NSC) tasked the CIA to prepare a presentation in response to Iraq's declaration to the UN. At the time, it was not clear exactly how the information would be used, but the CIA was aware that they were preparing the NSC to respond to the declaration in some public manner. An Iraq analyst from the Director of Central Intelligence's (DCI) Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) prepared an initial presentation on Iraq's noncompliance with UN resolutions regarding weapons of mass destruction (WMD). According to the analyst, CIA analysts and officials worked on this draft for the next several weeks. (U) On December 28, 2002, the Deputy Director for Central Intelligence (DDCI) and the National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Strategic and Nuclear Programs presented the information to the NSC. The CIA told Committee staff that the NSC believed that the draft did not provide the same level of detail or evidence of Iraq's WMD programs as had been in the 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's WMD programs and asked the DDCI to take the presentation and rework it to include information from the NIE and new intelligence that had been collected since the NIE. That day, the NIO took the CIA input and combined it with additional information. At this point, it had become clear that the NSC intended the information to be presented in a public speech, but it was not clear in what format or by whom the speech would be presented. The NIO wrote the draft as a speech, rather than as an intelligence report. This new draft was circulated for comment within the CIA. Near the end of January, the DDCI provided the revised input back to the NSC. The NIO told Committee staff that the DDCI had advised the NSC that the IC had done all it could do with the presentation and that the NSC speech writers would have to take the input and work it into a policy speech. In some cases, information in the CIA draft provided information that had not been reported in previously coordinated IC assessments. For example, the draft said that imports of "highly specialized aluminum tubes are costing Iraq between $20 and $35 a piece, whereas steel tubes sufficient for the expendable rockets cost as little as $.50 a piece." As previously discussed in the nuclear section of this report, Iraq had not agreed to pay such high prices and had negotiated prices as low as per tube. As also noted previously, U.S. Department of Defense rocket experts said that aluminum is one of the cheapest materials from which to make rocket motor cases and said, “everything else is higher cost to manufacture, like steels." The draft also said that the "Iraqi specifications on roundness of these high-strength aluminum tubes is such that the tubes would be rejected as defective if I rolled one under my hand on this table - because the mere pressure of my hand would deform it." Department of Energy (DOE) engineers have told Committee staff that this statement is incorrect. The tubes, made of high-strength aluminum and 3.3 mm thick, will not defect or deform from the specified tolerances from the pressure of one's hand. Neither of these statements about the cost or specifications of the tubes were included in Secretary Powell's final speech. (U) On January 24, 2003, the NSC requested additional information from the IC. The NIO told Committee staff that the NSC believed the nuclear case was weak and asked for additional information on what Iraq would need for a nuclear weapons program and also asked for additional on Iraq's biological and chemical weapons programs. The same day, the NIO faxed additional information on Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons programs to the NSC. (U) The material included a short history of Iraq's nuclear program and a section on what Iraq would need to make a nuclear weapon. This section contained text drawn from the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) which noted that Iraq would need a cadre of scientists, a weapon design, and fissile material. It included the NIE text that Iraq began "... vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake,” and outlined possible uranium acquisition attempts in Niger, Somalia, and possibly the Congo. The NIE text that the IC did not know the status of the Niger arrangement was included. The material also included information on "Iraq's plans to use WMD in a conflict" noting that "Saddam has established redlines for using weapons of mass destruction in a conflict. Why would Saddam establish these redlines if he did not have such a weapon?," and included information on Iraq's biological weapons program, mainly sources on Iraq's mobile biological weapons facilities and information on biological weapons accounting discrepancies documented by the UN. (U) On January 28, 2003, the NIO learned that a decision had been made at the White House that the speech would be delivered by Secretary of State Powell at the UN. Secretary Powell and State Department officials met with IC officials and CIA and National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA)30 analysts at CIA headquarters for several days in late January and early February to work on the draft version of the speech that had been modified by NSC speech writers. In the meetings at the CIA and a meeting in New York the day before the Secretary's UN presentation, the NIO said that they worked with Secretary Powell to develop speech language with which the Secretary and the IC were comfortable. (U) According to a State Department foreign affairs officer in the Bureau of Nonproliferation and the NIO, the general operating principle set by Secretary Powell in preparing his presentation was that any intelligence that was included had to be corroborated. The foreign affairs officer told Committee staff that "single source information did not go in the speech." CIA analysts who participated in these meetings told Committee staff that the Secretary only wanted to use solid intelligence in the speech and wanted the language carefully reviewed by the analysts. One CIA analyst and one official told the Committee they were not aware of any guidance that single source information should not be used in the speech. The NIO for Science and Technology, who also worked on Secretary Powell's speech, told Committee staff that DCI Tenet specifically told him to check the speech for classification issues and to "back [] up the material and mak[e] sure we had good solid stuff to support everything." (U) The Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) prepared comments on the speech draft on January 31, 2003 that were forwarded to the Secretary of State. The comments outlined specific ideas for the Secretary to include in the speech and presented a "scorecard" on the draft to address the analytic merits of the arguments in the speech. Of the thirty eight items that INR considered "weak" or "unsubstantiated," twenty eight were either removed from the draft or changed to eliminate the problem INR had with the draft. (See appendix A for INR's full comments.) CIA analysts told Committee staff that during the coordination meetings on the speech, information was removed in some instances because Secretary Powell was not comfortable with it and because some information was based on single source raw reporting which the CIA could not corroborate. (U) On Monday, February 3, 2003, INR prepared more comments on the latest draft of the speech. INR noted that the draft was "vastly improved over Friday's draft, and many or most 30 NIMA has recently been renamed the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA). of the incorrect or dubious claims have been removed." INR's comments described seven of the "most problematic" issues from the previous draft of the speech. Of the seven, the Committee believes three were either removed or modified. INR's remaining concerns were 1) the numerous references to human intelligence (HUMINT) reporting as fact, including use of the phrase "we know that . . .", 2) the report that key files were being driven around in cars to avoid inspectors, which INR said was highly questionable, 3) the report that an Iraqi missile brigade was dispersing rocket launchers and biological weapons warheads, which INR also said was highly questionable, and 4) the claim that the aluminum tubes Iraq was seeking "far exceed US requirements for comparable rockets." The INR comments said that the tube tolerances were similar to those of a U.S. rocket system. (See appendix B for INR's full comments.) (U) The NIO told Committee staff that the CIA concurred with all of the intelligence information that was included in the final draft of the speech and could not think of any intelligence that was used in the speech that the CIA had wanted removed. (U) Because of the CIA's central role in preparing input for and checking the accuracy of Secretary Powell's speech and because the speech was intended as an explanation of the intelligence the IC had on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, the Committee reviewed the language in the speech and the intelligence that supported the assessments and statements made in the speech. (U) Almost all of the information in the speech was from intelligence that had previously been described in IC finished intelligence assessments, in particular from the 2002 NIE on Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction. As described previously in this report, Committee staff found that several of the IC judgments in the NIE were not substantiated by intelligence source reporting. Many of those judgments that were included in Secretary Powell's speech, therefore, are also not substantiated by the intelligence source reporting. Those issues are outlined in detail in the sections of this report on Iraq's suspected nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons programs and delivery systems. Rather than reexamine those issues, this section of the report focuses on identifying the statements in Secretary Powell's speech which were new or differed from previous intelligence analysis. A. Nuclear Program (U) Secretary Powell's speech included information about Iraq's attempts to procure a magnet production plant for magnets weighing 20-30 grams. He said the magnets were, “. . . the same weight as the magnets used in Iraq's gas centrifuge program before the Gulf War," and that "This incident along with [Iraq's attempts to procure high-strength aluminum tubes] is another indicator of Iraq's attempts to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program." Previous IC products discussed Iraq's attempts to acquire a magnet procurement plant, but did not say that the magnets were the same as those used in Iraq's pre-Gulf War centrifuge program. (U) According to the Department of Energy (DOE), Iraq used four magnets in different designs for the upper dampers on its pre-Gulf War carbon fiber centrifuge program. Two of the magnets weighed approximately 24 grams, one weighed 60 grams and the other 90 grams. The Intelligence Community does not know which damper design Iraq used in the two centrifuges it operated prior to the Gulf War. The 24 gram magnets used in two of the damper designs were made of samarium cobalt (SmCo), however. The magnets for which Iraq was seeking a production capability were between 20-30 grams, but were made of aluminum-nickel-cobalt (Alnico), which have a lower strength to weight ratio than SmCo magnets. The Alnico magnets used in Iraq's pre-Gulf War centrifuge damper designs were 60 grams, not 20-30 grams as referenced in Secretary Powell's speech. The DOE told Committee staff that there is no known centrifuge damper design with an Alnico magnet weighing less than 60 grams. (U) Furthermore, Iraq's pre-Gulf War centrifuge, which used 146 mm carbon fiber tubes, is not a design Iraq could have pursued using the 81 mm aluminum tubes Iraq was trying to procure. Therefore, the weight of the magnets Iraq used in its pre-Gulf War program is irrelevant. Engineers from the DOE judged that an acceptable magnet and damper design for use with the 81 mm aluminum tubes Iraq was trying to procure would have to be made from SmCo, because it has greater magnet strength for its weight than Alnico, and "would weigh much more than 30 grams." B. Biological Weapons (U) Secretary Powell's speech referenced intelligence on Iraq's biological weapons program, some of which had been obtained after the IC published the 2002 NIE on Iraq's WMD programs. 66 Secretary Powell said, “. . . we know from sources that a missile brigade outside Baghdad was disbursing rocket launchers and warheads containing biological warfare agents to various locations in western Iraq. Most of the launchers and warheads have been hidden in large groves of palm trees and were moved every one to four weeks to escape detection." While the speech text referenced "sources," the IC provided the Committee with only one CIA HUMINT report, dated January 11, 2003, to support this statement. the report, |