G. Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) Pressure Conclusions

(U) Conclusion 83. 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.

(U) Conclusion 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 assessments.

X. WHITE PAPER ON IRAQ'S WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

PROGRAMS

(U) On October 4, 2002, three days after the National Intelligence Council (NIC) published its classified National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) published an unclassified paper, Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs. The paper was drafted and ultimately released as a white paper on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs, but the Intelligence Community (IC) intended the paper to also meet requests from Congress for an unclassified version of the classified NIE.

(U) The unclassified paper was substantively similar to, although not nearly as detailed as, the classified NIE. The key judgments were almost identical in layout and substance in both papers. The key judgments of the unclassified paper were missing many of the caveats and some references to alternative agency views that were used in the classified NIE, however. Removing caveats such as "we judge" or "we assess" changed many sentences in the unclassified paper to statements of fact rather than assessments. For example, the classified NIE said,

We judge that all key aspects - research & development (R&D), production, and
weaponization - of Iraq's offensive biological weapons (BW) program are active
and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the
Gulf War,

while the unclassified paper said,

All key aspects - research & development (R&D), production, and weaponization

of Iraq's offensive BW program are active and that most elements are larger and more advanced than they were before the Gulf War.

(U) Because so many of these caveats were removed and because the unclassified paper was presented to the American public as the IC's case that Iraq had WMD programs, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) staff examined the IC's decision to produce an unclassified paper, the paper's evolution, and how it differed from the classified NIE, particularly why most of the caveats were removed from the paper's key judgments.

(U) The IC started production of the white paper in May 2002, months before the classified NIE was requested by Members of the SSCI. On May 8, 2002, an assistant to the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence (DDCI) sent an electronic mail (e-mail) to the National Intelligence Officer (NIO) for Near East and South Asia (NESA) asking him to prepare a white paper on Iraq's WMD programs. The NIO told Committee staff that the DDCI had recently attended a meeting at the White House, and the DDCI wanted the paper as a follow-up to the meeting discussions. The Deputy Director for Central Intelligence testified at a March 4, 2004 Committee hearing that the paper was requested by the National Security Council (NSC) Deputies Committee.35

(U) The NIO tasked an Iraq military analyst in the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Office of Near East and South Asia (NESA) to prepare a draft. The NESA analyst completed an early draft by May 22, 2002, but because the DDCI did not provide a due date for the paper when it was originally tasked, the analyst and NIO staff worked intermittently on the draft for the next several months. During that time, the NIO said he and his staff came to the conclusion that the summary of the draft paper was somewhat weak, because it did not adequately summarize all of the important assessments on Iraq's WMD programs. The NIO told Committee staff that by the time he and his staff decided that the paper needed a "full-blown" key judgments section, the classified NIE was already underway. The NIO said that because his staff had not yet drafted an unclassified key judgments the National Intelligence Council (NIC) staff decided to declassify the NIE key judgments to use as the key judgments of the white paper and to make the paper the unclassified equivalent of the NIE. The NIC staff believed that this would also ensure that the two papers were as consistent as possible. The NIO told Committee staff that his deputy was charged with taking the classified NIE key judgments and, working with the staff of the NIO for Strategic and Nuclear Programs who managed production of the classified NIE, extracting the judgments that could be used in the unclassified paper.

(U) Committee staff asked the NIO why the caveats, such as "we judge" and "we assess❞ were removed from the key judgments when they were declassified for use in the unclassified paper. The NIO told Committee staff that he directed the NESA analyst and his deputy to avoid

35

The National Security Council (NSC) Deputies Committee serves as the sub-Cabinet interagency forum for consideration of policy issues affecting national security. Members include the Deputy Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, the Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs, the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, and, as needed, the Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the Assistant to the Vice President for National Security Affairs, and the Deputy Assistant to the President for Economic Policy.

using "we" in the paper because he was unsure about whether the paper would be released as an IC product or a white paper without any specific agency or government entity identified as the author. The NIO thought that if the paper was released as a white paper and did not have a designated author other than the U.S. government, "we" would not be an appropriate term to use because "we" would not refer to anyone. The NIO read to Committee staff a note that he had written to the NESA analyst in May which said, "Nice draft. One non-substantive suggestion as you revise it is to avoid the first person as in 'we believe,' 'we have information,' etcetera, that we customarily use in intelligence pubs. I am getting clarification from the DDCI's office as to exactly what guise this will be coming out under, but it would probably be best to avoid any formulations that would leave it to be figured out exactly who the 'we' are." The NIO said that he recommended this change purely for stylistic reasons. He also said that he thought that because the whole section was titled "key judgments" that it was clear to the reader all of the

contents were assessments.

(U) The IC provided an unclassified white paper from February 1998 to the Committee, Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs, which contained only one use of the word "we," but, the 1998 white paper contained other words which expressed the uncertainty behind the IC judgments without using the word "we." For example, the white paper referred to the world's experts saying "they believe" and "[the United Nations Special Commission] UNSCOM believes" and used phrases such as "the evidence strongly suggests" and "Iraq could," "Iraq has apparently," and "Iraq probably." Because the Committee's request to review other white papers has not been answered by the IC, the Committee cannot determine whether eliminating the use of the word "we" from such papers was standard IC practice.

(U) The NIO for NESA also told Committee staff that some parts of the classified NIE were not included in the unclassified paper because they were outside of the scope of the tasking for the unclassified paper. The unclassified paper had been tasked in May 2002 at the request of the Deputies Committee and the classified NIE was tasked in September 2002 at the request of Senate Select Committee on Intelligence Members. The papers' scopes were determined by those taskings. For example, the classified NIE had a section on Iraq's doctrine and WMD use in response to a specific question from Senator Carl Levin on the IC's assessment of the likelihood that Iraq would use WMD. The NIO said the unclassified paper was only supposed to address Iraq's possession of WMD, so he did not include a section on doctrine and use. The NIO for Strategic and Nuclear Programs told Committee staff that he considered including the section on use and doctrine when crafting the unclassified key judgments from the classified NIE's key judgments, but because the IC had low confidence in those judgments and thought their inclusion