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Conclusion 10. The Intelligence Community relies too heavily on foreign government services and third party reporting, thereby increasing the potential for manipulation of U.S. policy by foreign interests.

Due to the lack of unilateral sources on Iraq's links to terrorist groups like al-Qaida the Intelligence Community (IC) relied too heavily on foreign government service reporting and sources to whom it did not have direct access to determine the relationship between Iraq and terrorist groups. While much of this reporting was credible, the IC left itself open to possible manipulation by foreign governments and other parties interested in influencing U.S. policy. The Intelligence Community's collectors must develop and recruit unilateral sources with direct access to terrorist groups to confirm, complement or confront foreign government service reporting on these critical targets.

(U) Conclusion 11. Several of the allegations of pressure on Intelligence Community (IC) analysts involved repeated questioning. The Committee believes that IC 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.

(U) A number of the individuals interviewed by the Committee in conducting its review stated that Administration officials questioned analysts repeatedly on the potential for cooperation between Saddam Hussein's regime and al-Qaida. Though these allegations appeared repeatedly in the press and in other public reporting on the lead-up to the war, no analyst questioned by the Committee stated that the questions were unreasonable, or that they were encouraged by the questioning to alter their conclusions regarding Iraq's links to al-Qaida.

(U) In some cases, those interviewed stated that the questions had forced them to go back and review the intelligence reporting, and that during this exercise they came across information they had overlooked in initial readings. The Committee found that this process - the policymakers probing questions - actually improved the Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) products. The review revealed that the CIA analysts who prepared Iraqi Support for Terrorism made careful, measured assessments which did not overstate or mischaracterize the intelligence reporting upon which it was based.

(U) The Committee also found that CIA analysts are trained to expect questions from policymakers, and to tailor their analysis into a product that is useful to them. In an Occasional

Paper on improving CIA analytic performance, written by a Research Fellow at the Sherman Kent Center, the fellow states:

If the mission of intelligence analysis is to inform policymaking – to help the U.S.
government anticipate threats and seize opportunities - then customization of
analysis is the essence of the professional practice, not a defilement of it (i.e.,
politicization). In effect there is no such thing as an unprofessional
policymaker question for intelligence to address so long as the answer
reflects professional analytic trade craft (e.g., tough-minded weighing of
evidence and open-minded consideration of alternatives). (Emphasis added)

(U) The same Research Fellow commented on strategic warning stating, "Key to the warning challenge is that the substantive uncertainty surrounding threats to U.S. interests requires analysts, and policymakers, to make judgments that are inherently vulnerable to error." This vulnerability has never been so apparent as in the failure to detect and deter the attacks on September 11, 2001. While analysts cannot dismiss a threat because at first glance it seems unreasonable or it cannot be corroborated by other credible reporting, policymakers have the ultimate responsibility for making decisions based on this same fragmentary, inconclusive reporting. If policymakers did not respond to analysts' caveated judgments with pointed, probing questions, and did not require them to produce the most complete assessments possible, they would not be doing their jobs.

A. The Original Niger Reporting

II. NIGER

Reporting on a possible uranium yellowcake' sales agreement between Niger and Iraq first came to the attention of the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) on October 15, 2001. The Central Intelligence Agency's (CIA) Directorate of Operations (DO) issued an intelligence report from a foreign government service indicating that Niger planned to ship several tons of uranium to Iraq The intelligence report said the uranium sales agreement had been in negotiation between the two countries since at least early 1999, and was approved by the State Court of Niger in late 2000. According to the cable, Nigerien President Mamadou Tandja gave his stamp of approval for the agreement and communicated his decision to Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. The report also indicated that in October 2000 Nigerien Minister of Foreign Affairs Nassirou Sabo informed one of his ambassadors in Europe that Niger had concluded an accord to provide several tons of uranium to Iraq.

(U) At the time, all IC analysts interviewed by Committee staff considered this initial report to be very limited and lacking needed detail. CIA, Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and Department of Energy (DOE) analysts considered the reporting to be "possible" while the Department of State's Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) regarded the report as "highly suspect," primarily because INR analysts did not believe that Niger would be likely to engage in such a transaction and did not believe Niger would be able to transfer uranium to Iraq because a French consortium maintained control of the Nigerien uranium industry.

(U) Only the CIA wrote a finished intelligence product on the report (Senior Executive Intelligence Brief [SEIB], Iraq: Nuclear-Related Procurement Efforts, October 18, 2001). Regarding the Niger reporting the SEIB said:

According to a foreign government service, Niger as of early this year planned to
send several tons of uranium to Iraq under an agreement concluded late last year.

5 Yellowcake is extracted from uranium ore through a milling and solvent extraction process. Yellowcake requires further processing before it can be used as reactor fuel or in a nuclear weapon.

Iraq and Niger had been negotiating the shipment since at least early 1999, but the
state court of Niger only this year approved it, according to the service.

[blocks in formation]

In view of the origin, the uranium probably is in the form of yellowcake and will
need further processing to be used in an uranium enrichment plant. Iraq has no
known facilities for processing or enriching the material.

- The quantity of yellowcake to be transferred could support the
enrichment of enough uranium for at least one nuclear weapon.

On November 20, 2001, U.S. Embassy Niamey disseminated a cable on a recent meeting between the ambassador and the Director General of Niger's French-led consortium. The Director General said "there was no possibility" that the government of Niger had diverted any of the 3,000 tons of yellowcake produced in its two uranium mines.

Reporting on the uranium transaction did not surface again until February 5, 2002 when the CIA's DO issued a second intelligence report which again cited the source as a "[foreign] government service." Although not identified in the report, this source was also from the foreign service. The second report provided more details about the previously reported Iraq-Niger uranium agreement and provided what was said to be "verbatim text" of the accord.

Subsequently, the governments of Niger and Iraq signed an

agreement regarding the sale of uranium during meetings held July 5-6, 2000. The report indicated that 500 tons of uranium per year

IC analysts at the CIA and the DIA were more impressed with the detail and

substance of the second report. One analyst noted that the report provided much more information than they had seen previously in similar reporting about alleged uranium transactions to other countries. INR analysts continued to doubt the accuracy of the reporting, again because they thought Niger would be unwilling and unable to sell uranium to Iraq and because they thought Iraq would be unlikely to risk such a transaction when they were "bound to be caught." Because of these doubts, an INR analyst asked the CIA whether the source of the report could submit to a polygraph.

A CIA analyst also inquired about the source and says he was told by the CIA's DO that the report was from a "very credible source." Several analysts interviewed by Committee staff also pointed out that information

in the second intelligence report matched

reporting from 1999 which showed that an Algerian businessman, Baraka, was arranging a trip for the Iraqi Ambassador to the Vatican, Wissam al-Zahawi, to visit Niger and other African countries in early February 1999.

Based on information from the CIA report from the foreign service, on February 12, 2002, the DIA wrote a finished intelligence product titled Niamey signed an agreement to sell 500 tons of uranium a year to Baghdad (NMJIC [National Military Joint Intelligence Center] Executive Highlight, Vol 028-02, February 12, 2002). The product outlined the details in the DO intelligence report, namely, that Niger had agreed to deliver 500 tons of yellowcake uranium to Iraq The piece concluded that "Iraq probably is searching abroad for natural uranium to assist in its nuclear weapons program." The product did not include any judgments about the credibility of the reporting.

After reading the DIA report, the Vice President asked his morning briefer for the CIA's analysis of the issue. In response, the Director of Central Intelligence's (DCI) Center for Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control (WINPAC) published a Senior Publish When Ready (SPWR021402-05), an intelligence assessment with limited distribution, which said, "information on the alleged uranium contract between Iraq and Niger comes exclusively from a foreign government service report that lacks crucial details, and we are working to clarify the information and to determine whether it can be corroborated." The piece discussed the details of the DO intelligence report and indicated that "some of the information in

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