The detailee's email was sent to the Deputy Chief of the CIA's Iraqi Task Force on February 4, 2003, one day before Secretary Powell delivered his speech. The detailee told Committee staff that prior to receiving a draft copy of Secretary Powell's speech he had "had many discussions with the analysts about my concerns with CURVE BALL as this whole thing was building up and taking on a life of its own. I was becoming frustrated, and when asked to go over Colin Powell's speech... and I went through the speech, and I thought, my gosh, we have got - I have got to go on record and make my concerns known. . . ."

The Deputy Chief told Committee staff that he did not believe that the detailee's e-mail contained any new information that had not already been raised previously by the detailee many times, but said he sent the detailee an e-mail inviting him to discuss his concerns. The email, which was provided to the Committee, said,

Greetings. Come on over (or I'll come over there) and we can hash this out. As I
said last night, let's keep in mind the fact that this war's going to happen
regardless of what Curve Ball said or didn't say, and that the Powers That Be
probably aren't terribly interested in whether Curve Ball knows what he's talking
about. However, in the interest of Truth, we owe somebody a sentence of two of
warning, if you honestly have reservations.

(U) In describing the intent of his e-mail, the Deputy Chief told Committee staff that he had the sense that war was inevitable from reading the newspaper and that he had not had any interactions with government officials in the CIA or with any policymakers that led him to this conclusion. He said,

I was reading the same newspapers you were. It was inevitable, it seemed to me
at the time, and to most of us, that war was coming. I was not privy to any
particular information indicating war plans or anything. My level was too low for
that.... My source of information was the Washington Post.

The Deputy Chief added,

Keep in mind [detailee's name redacted] is a personal friend of mine, and what I
was probably trying to do was to calm him down a little bit, say, look [detailee's
name redacted,] again we all know your objections to this. The war is not going
to hinge on what [detailee's name redacted] thinks about CURVE BALL. That
probably would have been my intent.

(U) When asked by Committee staff if he was aware of any pressure on IC personnel to change their assessments on Iraq, the Deputy Chief responded "No, absolutely not. Again, I can't speak for the analytical community. I can only speak for the collectors. We were never pressured, no. Quite the opposite, we were given as free a rein as we possibly wanted, as much money as we needed, as much resources as we could bring to bear to find out was there a WMD program and, if so, where are the facilities." The Deputy Chief told Committee staff that there was pressure to answer questions such as "Is there a WMD program or isn't there? Where are the facilities?" And that "underlying it all was what kinds of weapons might the Iraqis bring to bear against our troops, and there was a lot of pressure for that - a lot of it, frankly, self-imposed pressure."

According to both the detailee and the Deputy Chief, the two met later that evening to discuss the detailee's e-mail. The detailee told Committee staff that the Deputy Chief of the Iraqi Task Force told him that he understood the detailee's concerns but said the speech was too far along to bring them up at that time.

The Deputy Chief said that after meeting with the detailee and hearing his concerns, he believes he did not take any further action because he thought the CIA BW analysts and his superiors were already well aware of the detailee's concerns. He said he may have passed the detailee's concerns on to the Chief of the Iraqi Task Force, but he could not recall doing so and did not have any e-mail or other records to indicate that he did. The Deputy Chief told Committee staff that the Chief of the Iraq WMD Task Force said he was broadly aware at the time of the detailee's concerns about the BW HUMINT sources, but he did not recall the Deputy Chief raising the detailee's specific concerns about the use of the BW sources in Secretary Powell's speech.

The Deputy Chief said that he may have told the detailee that “it was too far along" to raise concerns about the use of the BW sources in Secretary Powell's speech, but could not remember whether he did. He stated, however, that if he did make this comment, it was with the intention of not hurting the detailee's feelings by telling him there was nothing new to his concerns. He said that he believed that the detailee's warning in the e-mail that the fourth source, the Iraqi Major, "was deemed a fabricator" was hyperbole and did not believe that this indicated that a fabrication notice had actually been issued. He said if a fabrication notice had been issued "WINPAC must have been aware" of it. The Deputy Chief told Committee staff that he believed that the CIA's BW analysts would not have gone forward with the information concerning Iraq's mobile BW program in the Powell speech if they had not already resolved the detailee's

concerns.

Committee staff asked the Deputy Chief if he was aware of any evidence or had any reason to believe that IC management would not have been interested in listening to the detailee's concerns if the Deputy Chief had judged them to be valid. The Deputy Chief said, "they would listen to valid concerns. They had heard [the detailee's] concerns, was our contention, and they had heard it and heard it and heard it and were not interested in hearing it again."

The Deputy Chief told Committee staff that despite not acting on his concerns, he regarded the detailee as a "useful skeptic" in that he was an independent thinker whose point of view was often different from the CIA's BW analysts. He also told Committee staff that, in retrospect, in light of the controversy over the BW HUMINT sources, he wishes that he had taken action on the detailee's concerns, for "reasons of bureaucratic self-preservation. Even today, looking at [the detailee's] e-mail, there is simply nothing new in it that would have been worth bringing to WINPAC's attention."

In an interview with the DCI, when asked by Committee staff whether Secretary Powell should have been made aware of the detailee's concerns, the DCI said, "If there were issues and concerns, they should have been raised through our process so that it could be presented to the Secretary, certainly. I don't know how they would have been adjudicated at the time, but it should have been up on the table. There could have been a healthy debate about it. But it did not come to the table."

C. Chemical Weapons

Secretary Powell's speech referenced intelligence on Iraq's chemical weapons which had been obtained after the IC published the 2002 NIE on Iraq's WMD programs. Secretary Powell noted in his speech that "... we have sources who tell us that [Saddam Hussein] recently has authorized his field commanders to use [chemical weapons]." The IC provided three HUMINT reports which substantiated this statement. The first, dated January 2003, from a CIA

said

the Iraqi government had informed

that

that it would launch missiles armed with chemical and biological agents against northern Iraq, Kuwait and Israel within the first two hours of the initiation of air strikes by U.S. and coalition forces. The

reported

that the entire Army I Corps had begun to issue atropine injectors and protective masks to soldiers and informed them they were intended to protect them against a U.S. chemical and biological weapons (CBW) attack.

A second CIA HUMINT report

said that Saddam Hussein had authorized four field commanders to use "prohibited" weapons if U.S. forces crossed the "red line," a box around Baghdad. Another report, dated September 2002, from a foreign government service, did not say that commanders had been authorized to use chemical weapons, but noted that Saddam had ordered that all resources, including chemical and biological weapons, be used to defend the regime from attack. The foreign government service report said that the SSO, under the direction of Qusay Hussein, was in charge of all of Iraq's CBW and that it took an average of 20 minutes to move CBW munitions into place for attack and that the maximum response time was 45 minutes. Both of the reports that noted Saddam Hussein had authorized field commanders to use CBW were obtained by the IC after publication of the NIE on Iraq's WMD programs.

Secretary Powell's discussion of the intelligence reporting also differed in some respects from previous IC assessments of Iraq's chemical weapons capability in several respects. First, Secretary Powell said that the al-Musayyib site, a suspect chemical munitions storage site, had been used for "at least three years to transship chemical weapons from production facilities out to the field." The CIA told Committee staff that State Department speech writers crafted this statement from CIA input that "evidence of movement activity at this site went back as early as 1999." Intelligence provided to the Committee showed only that possible chemical transshipment activity had occurred at the facility and only in the spring of 2002. There were indicators - a vehicle in 1998 and construction of

in late 2000 - which suggested that the facility may have been involved in suspicious activity, but imagery did not show transshipment or movement activity

the spring of 2002.

Second, Secretary Powell said that a HUMINT source corroborated the movement of chemical weapons at al-Musayyib at the same time that imagery had shown the suspicious activity. Referring to the imagery of the transshipment activity, Secretary Powell said, "What makes this picture significant is that we have a human source who has corroborated that movement of chemical weapons occurred at this site at that time." The Committee was provided with a single report from a CIA HUMINT which said that in early August to early November 2002, Iraq had moved possible chemical weapons materials between the al Musayyib site and another site. The report showed that a HUMINT source confirmed the movement of possible chemical munitions at al-Musayyib, as Secretary Powell said, but the

report did not show that the movement took place at the same time as shown in the imagery reporting.

Finally, Secretary Powell discussed an imagery report, which said that the ground in and around the al Musayyib storage area had been graded after the transshipment activity had been completed. Secretary Powell said the grading "literally removed the crust of the earth from large portions of this site in order to conceal chemical weapons evidence that would be there from years of chemical weapons activity." The imagery report provided to the Committee said that this type of grading is "a common fire abatement measure in ammunition deports, but could also hide evidence of CW "noting only the possibility that the purpose of the grading was to conceal chemical weapons activity.

D. Delivery Systems

(U) The information in Secretary Powell's UN speech regarding Iraq's delivery systems was largely consistent with intelligence that had previously been described in other classified and unclassified Intelligence Community products, in particular the classified October 2002 NIE and the unclassified White Paper.

E. WMD Powell Conclusions

(U) Conclusion 72. Much of the information provided or cleared by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for inclusion in Secretary Powell's speech was overstated, misleading, or incorrect.