XII. IRAQ'S LINKS TO TERRORISM A. Intelligence Products Concerning Iraq's Links to Terrorism (U) The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) produced five primary finished intelligence products on Iraq's links to terrorism: a September 2001 paper; an October 2001 paper; Iraq and al-Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, June 2002; Iraqi Support for Terrorism, September 2002 and Iraqi Support for Terrorism, January 2003. B. September and October 2001 Papers (U) Shortly after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, the Director of Central Intelligence's (DCI) Counterterrorism Center (CTC) and the CIA Near East and South Asia office (NESA)37 collaborated on a paper on Iraqi links to the September 11th attacks. This was the CIA's first attempt to summarize the Iraqi regime's ties to 9/11. The paper was disseminated to President's Daily Brief (PDB) principals on September 21, 2001. The Committee was not informed about the existence of this paper until June 2004. According to the CIA, the paper took a "Q&A❞ approach to the issue of Iraq's possible links to the September 11th attacks. (U) Soon afterward, the NESA drafted a paper that broadened the scope of the issue by looking at Iraq's overall ties to terrorism. The Committee requested a copy of this October 2001 document, but representatives of the DCI declined to provide it, stating: ... we are declining to provide a copy of the paper. It was drafted in response to a 37The Near East and South Asia (NESA) is the CIA Directorate of Intelligence (DI) office responsible for analyzing events in the Near East, including Iraq. disseminated only to the PDB readership. Accordingly, it is not available for C. Iraq and al-Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, June 2002 (U) Following the publication of the October 2001 paper, the CTC began drafting another paper that would eventually become Iraq and al-Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship. The paper was drafted based on widely expressed interest on the part of several senior policy makers, according to CIA. Throughout the drafting process (October 2001 to June 2002), the two offices took different approaches to assessing Iraq's links to terrorism as a result of their different missions and perspectives. According to the CIA's Ombudsman for Politicization, the CTC was aggressive in drawing connections to try to produce information that could be used to support counterterrorism operations, while the NESA took a traditional analytic approach, confirming intelligence with multiple sources and making assessments only based on strongly supported reporting. Analysts worked on several drafts over the eight month drafting period, but CTC management found them unsatisfactory and ultimately produced a draft without NESA's coordination. (U) The Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI) directed that Iraq and al-Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship be published on June 21, 2002, although it did not reflect the NESA's views. CTC's explanation of its approach to this study and the analysts' differing views were contained in the paper's Scope Note, which stated: (U) This intelligence assessment responds to senior policymaker interest in a 38 The President's Daily Brief (PDB) has not been provided to Congress in the past by the executive branch. Committee staff notes, however, that the National Commission on Terrorist Acts Upon the United States (known as the 9-11 Commission) reached an agreement with the White House for access to the PDB and other intelligence items. The declination to provide the October 2001 CIA paper is an expansion of the historic practice to include other documents beyond the PDB. The CIA has provided the Committee items included in the PDB as long as they were also published separately as finished intelligence or in other finished products. (U) We reviewed intelligence reporting over the past decade to determine whether Iraq had a relationship with al-Qa'ida and, if so, the dimensions of the relationship. Our knowledge of Iraqi links to al-Qa'ida still contains many critical gaps (U) Some analysts concur with the assessment that intelligence reporting provides "no conclusive evidence of cooperation on specific terrorist operations," but believe that the available signs support a conclusion that Iraq has had sporadic, wary contacts with al-Qaida since the mid1990s, rather than a relationship with al-Qaida that has developed over time. These analysts would contend that mistrust and conflicting ideologies and goals probably tempered these contacts and severely limited the opportunities for cooperation. These analysts do not rule out that Baghdad sought and obtained a nonaggression agreement or made limited offers of cooperation, training, or even safehaven (ultimately uncorroborated or withdrawn) in an effort to manipulate, penetrate, or otherwise keep tabs on al-Qaida or selected operatives. (U) The NESA believed that this edited Scope Note did not adequately capture the differences between the two offices over the weighing and interpretation of the supporting intelligence reports. (U) The CIA Ombudsman for Politicization received a confidential complaint four days after the paper was published, on June 25, 2002, claiming the CTC paper was misleading, in that it did not make clear that it was an uncoordinated product that did not reflect the NESA's views and assessments. The CIA created the position of Ombudsman for Politicization in 1992 to respond to alleged issues of politicization and analytic distortion. According to the Ombudsman's Charter, the position serves as an "independent, informal, and confidential counselor for those who have complaints about politicization, biased reporting, or the lack of objective analysis." The Ombudsman reports directly to the DCI. The complaint and subsequent inquiry is discussed later in this report under Pressure on Intelligence Community Analysts. (U) The Committee Staff interviewed the Deputy Director for Intelligence on the production of this paper, and asked specifically why the analysts' approach was purposefully aggressive. She explained that: What happened with the "murky paper" was I was asking the people who were D. Alternate Analysis in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (U) Independent of the IC's reviews of potential Iraqi links to terrorism, the Department of Defense Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy (OUSDP), established a team called the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) which was responsible for studying "... the policy implications of relationships among terrorist groups and their sources of support." Following the September 11th attacks, OUSDP brought on two individuals as consultants. According to the two consultants, their work included looking at intelligence information related to all terrorist groups, the links between them, and the roles of state sponsors. (U) One of these consultants stated that he was told that the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy and the Secretary of Defense were dissatisfied with the intelligence products they were receiving from the Intelligence Community on terrorism and linkages between terrorist groups worldwide. This individual also stated that he and a colleague had gone to the CTC and to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to review what work they were doing on link analysis and relationships between terrorist groups and state sponsors. They found that the analysis was not being done, and stated that they believed their requests for assistance were being ignored. (U) When the consultants departed, in December of 2001 and January 2002, two naval reserve intelligence officers were brought in to replace them. These two officers became the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG). The PCTEG reviewed information more specific to al-Qaida and focused partly on al-Qaida's ties to Iraq, according to one of the PCTEG members who was interviewed by Committee staff. He stated that he believed his work with the Policy Counterterrorrism Evaluation Group was "to look at the network of al-Qaida, and that includes state sponsors, that includes front companies, relations with other terrorist groups. In effect, let's figure out what al-Qaida is. And that's what I was doing." He also stated that he was brought into the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy to "do analysis of terrorist groups, their linkages" by looking at both raw and finished IC products. (U) The OUSDP also requested that the DIA Director detail a specific intelligence analyst to assist in a number of intelligence-related activities. That detail began in January 2002. She reviewed the CIA assessment Iraq and al-Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship and other intelligence reporting. The detailee also provided assessments of the IC's analysis to policymakers in the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. (U) The Under Secretary of Defense for Policy stated in his July 2003 briefing to the Committee, "In the course of reviewing old stuff [the PCTEG] found some things that looked very interesting in the year 2002 that apparently didn't register with people or were not given great prominence either at the time or in the more recent work." The Under Secretary was referring to the work done by the DIA detailee assigned to the OUSDP's Policy Support Staff, not the PCTEG. Documents provided to the Committee by the Under Secretary indicated that the detailee found some intelligence reporting that she did not believe had been adequately incorporated into finished analysis. (U) During an interview with Committee staff, the DIA detailee recounted that she had begun researching the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) on her own, and discovered intelligence reporting from the mid-1990s that had not been incorporated into more recent finished products. She indicated that she had accumulated this material and had passed it, with her own comments, up the OUSDP chain of command. The detailee also stated that she had taken the intelligence she had discovered to the DIA and asked that it be republished or incorporated into finished products, but that the DIA elements she contacted were not interested in the information. (U) The detailee also reviewed the CIA's Iraq and al-Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship assessment and provided her analysis of the paper. In her analysis of the assessment, the detailee stated that the CIA provided a great deal of evidence in support of a relationship between Iraq and al-Qaida, but stopped short of providing the bottom line. Her analysis stated: The ["Murky"] report provides evidence from numerous intelligence sources over content only - and CIA's interpretation ought to be ignored. (U) The DIA detailee's critique was sent by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy to both the Deputy Secretary of Defense and the Secretary of Defense. |