point this way on April 10, 2003: "Make no mistake. . . we have high confidence that they have weapons of mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is about. We have high confidence it will be found."

Incredibly enough, administration leaders are still saying that we found weapons of mass destruction production facilities. Just last week, Vice President Cheney said that the two trailers found in Iraq were part of a mobile biological weapons lab program and were, in his words, "conclusive evidence that he did in fact have programs for weapons of mass destruction."

But today's witness, Dr. David Kay, is reported in the New York Times as saying that the consensus in the Intelligence Community is that those two trailers were for producing hydrogen for weather balloons or possibly rocket fuel-but not for biological weapons.

Surely we should find out what is the basis for Vice President Cheney's recent statement, as well as the basis for the unqualified administration statements made before the war which I have just quoted.

Unfortunately, as of now, the leadership of the Senate will not allow an inquiry into how the administration characterized the intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The Intelligence Committee's inquiry is limited to the question of the production of intelligence. That committee is not looking into how that intelligence was used and characterized by policymakers.

We will continue to press for an inquiry looking to get the whole story, the full picture. If the only way to obtain that is to have an outside, independent, nonpartisan commission to conduct a comprehensive and objective review of the entire matter, so be it.

Whether one agreed or disagreed with the decision to proceed to war, and whether one agreed or disagreed with the decision to proceed without the support of the international community acting through the U.N., the case made by the administration for initiating the war against Iraq was not because Iraq had intentions to someday resume production of weapons of mass destruction. It was because they had in their possession weapons of mass destruction. Although the issue of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction intentions or ambitions and program-related activities is a serious issue, it is not why we went to war. The case for war was Iraq's possession, production, deployment, and stockpiling of weapons of mass destruction. A different case for war against Iraq can be made, but the case which the administration made to the American people was the presence of actual weapons of mass destruction.

When lives are at stake and our military is going to be placed in harm's way, in other words, when we decide to go to war, it is totally unacceptable to have intelligence that is this far off or to exaggerate or shape the intelligence for any purpose by anybody. Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

Chairman WARNER. Dr. Kay, we'll now receive from you any preliminary comments you wish to make.

STATEMENT OF DR. DAVID KAY, FORMER SPECIAL ADVISOR TO THE DIRECTOR OF CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE ON STRATEGY REGARDING IRAQI WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION PROGRAMS

Dr. KAY. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman. As we discussed, I do not have a written statement. This hearing came about very quickly. I do have a few preliminary comments, but I suspect you're more interested in asking questions. I'll be happy to respond to those questions to the best of my ability.

I would like to open by saying that the talent, dedication, and bravery of the staff of the ISG that was my privilege to direct is unparalleled and the country owes a great debt of gratitude to the men and women who have served over there and continue to serve doing that.

A great deal has been accomplished by the team and I do think, I echo what you said, Senator, I think it important that it goes on and that it is allowed to reach its full conclusion. In fact, I really believe it ought to be better resourced and totally focused on WMD, that that is important to do it.

But I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here, and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future.

Let me begin by saying we were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here. Senator Kennedy knows very directly. Senator Kennedy and I talked on several occasions prior to the war that my view was that the best evidence that I had seen was that Iraq indeed had weapons of mass destruction. I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war, certainly the French, President Chirac, as I recall, in April of last year referred to Iraq's possession of WMD. The Germans, certainly the intelligence service, believed that there were WMD.

It turns out we were all wrong probably in my judgment and that is most disturbing. We're also in a period in which we've had intelligence surprises in the proliferation area that go the other way. The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians had was 18 years old, that we underestimated, and that in fact we didn't discover. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed their national community to the location. The Libyan program recently discovered was far more extensive than was assessed prior to that.

There's a long record here of being wrong. There's a good reason for it, there are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don't have free and open societies.

In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point by the ISG, in fact that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities, one last chance to come clean about what it had. We have discovered hundreds of cases based on both documents, physical evidence, and the testimony of Iraqis of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under Resolution 1441 with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell

the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.

I think the aim, and certainly the aim of what I've tried to do since leaving, is not political and certainly not a witch hunt at individuals. It's to try to direct our attention at what I believe is a fundamental fault analysis that we must now examine.

Let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation. As a leader of the effort of the ISG, I spent most of my days not out in the field leading inspections, it's typically what you do at that level. I was trying to motivate, direct, find strategies.

In the course of doing that, I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance and never, not in a single case, was the explanation, I was pressured to do this. The explanation was very often, the limited data we had led one to reasonably conclude this, I now see that there's another explanation for it.

Each case was different but the conversations were sufficiently in depth and our relationship was sufficiently frank that I am convinced that at least of the analysts I dealt with, I did not come across a single one that felt it had been, in the military term, inappropriate command influence that led them to take that position. It was not that. It was the honest difficulty based on the information that had been collected and led the analyst to that conclusion. Almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence, because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who in fact were exercising that. The fact that it wasn't tells me that we have a much more fundamental problem of understanding what went wrong and we have to figure out what was there. That's what I call fundamental fault analysis.

Like I say, I think we have other cases other than Iraq. I do not think the problem of global proliferation of weapons technology of mass destruction is going to go away and that's why I think it is an urgent issue.

Let me wrap up here with just a brief summary of what I think we are now facing in Iraq. I regret to say that I think at the end of the work of the ISG there is still going to be an unresolvable ambiguity about what happened. A lot of that traces to the failure on April 9 to establish immediately physical security in Iraq, the unparalleled looting and destruction, a lot of which was directly intentional, designed by the security services to cover the tracks of the Iraq WMD program and their other programs as well, a lot of which was what we simply called "Ali Baba" looting. "It had been the regime, the regime is gone, I'm going to go take the gold toilet fixtures and everything else imaginable." I've seen looting around the world and thought I knew the best looters in the world. The Iraqis excel at that.

The result is-and document destruction-we're really not going to be able to prove beyond a truth the negatives and some of the positive conclusions that we're going to come to. There will be al

ways unresolved ambiguity here. But I do think the ISG, I think Charlie Duelfer is a great leader, I have utmost confidence in Charles, I think you will get as full an answer as you can possibly get.

Let me just conclude by my own personal tribute, both to the President and to George Tenet for having the courage to select me to do this and my successor, Charlie Duelfer, as well. Both of us are known for what is, at times, a regrettable strength-a streak of independence. I came not from within the administration and it was clear and clear in our discussions and no one asked otherwise, that I would lead this the way I thought best and I would speak the truth as we found it. I had absolutely no pressure prior, during the course of the work at the ISG, or after I left to do anything otherwise. I think that shows a level of maturity and understanding that I think bodes well for getting to the bottom of this.

But it is really up to you and your staff on behalf of the American people to take on that challenge. It's not something that anyone from the outside can do, so I look forward to these hearings and other hearings and how you will get to the conclusions.

I do believe we have to understand why reality turned out to be different than expectations and estimate. But you have more public service, certainly many of you than I have ever had and you recognize that this is not unusual. I told Senator Warner earlier that I've been drawn back as a result of a recent film of reminding me of something. At the time of the Cuban missile crisis, the combined estimate there was unanimity in the intelligence service-was that there were no Soviet warheads in Cuba at the time of the missile crisis. Fortunately, President Kennedy and Robert Kennedy disagreed with the estimate and chose a course of action less ambitious and aggressive than recommended by their advisors.

But the most important thing about that story, which is not often told, is that as a result after the Cuban missile crisis, immediate steps were taken to correct our inability to collect intelligence on the movement of nuclear material out of the Soviet Union to other places, so that by the end of the Johnson administration, the Intelligence Community had a capability to do what it had not been able to do at the time of the Cuban missile crisis.

I think you face a similar responsibility in ensuring that the community is able to do a better job in the future than it has done in the past.

Senator, I'm happy to answer your questions.

Chairman WARNER. Thank you very much. Colleagues, we'll go to a round of 6 minutes. In the event there's a vote, it's my intention to continue the hearing on a rotation basis as members come and go so we have continuity.

Doctor, I assure you that Congress, this committee, the Intelligence Committee under Senator Roberts, Senator Rockefeller, that Senator Levin and I will pursue this, but we'll wait until such time as the work of the Intelligence Committee we both serve on that committee-is completed, we've had a chance to analyze it, and then we'll sit down to determine what the next step may be. But bottom line, and you have emphasized it, and that is that we have to make such corrections as we deem necessary to the intelligence system, for the security of this country, for the safety of

the men and women in uniform who today and tonight and tomorrow and for the definite future will be out there taking risks in the cause of freedom. So I assure you it will be done.

Now, I want to pick up on your comment that we were all wrong. Let's stop to think about that. We agreed, you and I, we've had extensive discussions, that the work of the ISG has to continue, correct?

Dr. KAY. Absolutely.

Chairman WARNER. That given the size of Iraq, California, the size of Baghdad, Los Angeles, we could discover some facts that would confirm the conclusions that were reached by the Intelligence Community, not only in this country but other nations in the future. Am I not correct in that assumption?

Dr. KAY. I certainly think that's a theoretical possibility, yes, Senator Warner.

Chairman WARNER. So maybe we better not pronounce we're all wrong yet, because I think until we have finished the work, the ISG and the other nations that are working for the ISG, I think we better hold such conclusion in abeyance. That would be my thought.

Dr. KAY. Senator Warner, may I only add, it would be totally out of character for me to be against continued investigation in almost any area, that's my life. I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed, militarized chemical and biological weapons there. Is it theoretically possible in a country as vast as that that they've hidden? It's theoretically possible, but we went after this not in the way of trying to find where the weapons are hidden. When you don't find them in the obvious places, you look to see were they produced, were there people that produced them, were there the inputs to the production process?

You do that and you eliminate, and that's what I mean by unresolved ambiguity. When the ISG wraps up its work, whether it be 6 months or 6 years from now, there are still going to be people who say, you didn't look everywhere, isn't it possible it was hidden someplace? The answer has to be honestly, yes, it's possible, but you try to eliminate that by this other process, and when I reached the conclusion, which I admit is partial and is purely mine that I think there were no large stockpiles of WMD, it's based on that process. But I agree, we're not in disagreement at all. The search must continue.

Chairman WARNER. Right. But the operative word in your assumption is large. Several small caches could constitute an imminent threat. Am I not correct in that?

Dr. KAY. That's always possible and I doubt that we will everI mean, it's possible--they could be there and we could never find them.

Chairman WARNER. All right. But let's give this process a chance to continue.

Dr. KAY. Absolutely.

Chairman WARNER. We agree that there could be the discovery in some future date of the evidence which confirms, perhaps not in