Iraq: Tenet defends US decision for war

In offering what he called a ‘‘provisional bottom line,’’ he said US spy agencies ‘‘were generally on target’’ in prewar warnings about Iraq’s missile and unmanned aerial vehicle programs, but ‘‘may have overestimated Iraq’s progress’’ toward development of nuclear weapons.

Tenet also made clear that the failure so far to find chemical and biological weapons had raised questions about prewar intelligence that the stockpiles existed.

He insisted that intelligence agencies had acted independently of policy-makers, noting that intelligence analysts had never portrayed Iraq as an imminent threat to the US. ‘‘No one told us what to say or how to say it,’’ he said.

Tenet made clear that the prewar assessment that Iraq possessed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons was based to a significant degree on reports relayed by a friendly foreign government from human sources whose information the US has still been unable to corroborate.

‘‘We did not ourselves penetrate the inner sanctum,’’ Tenet acknowledged, saying that US agents remained ‘‘on the periphery’’ of Iraq’s illicit weapons activities. ‘‘What we did not collect ourselves, we evaluated as carefully as we could,’’ he added. In their tone, Tenet’s remarks on Thursday were different from those of a year ago, when in strong and unwavering testimony to Congress he spoke of a ‘‘solid foundation of intelligence’’ on Iraq’s arms.

Tenet distanced himself from chief weapons hunter David Kay’s conclusions, saying it was too soon for anyone to say anything with certainty and insisted that the agency had honoured its obligation to play an independent role in the prewar debate.

On biological weapons, Tenet contradicted recent remarks by Kay and said there was still ‘‘no consensus’’ within the intelligence community as to whether mobile trailers discovered in Iraq after the war were for making biological weapons or for making hydrogen, as many intelligence analysts now believe.

He said he currently believed that Iraq ‘‘intended to develop biological weapons’’ but that ‘‘we do not know if production took place’’.

On chemical weapons, which intelligence agencies had judged with ‘‘high confidence’’ that Iraq possessed, Tenet said the US had ‘‘not yet found the weapons we expected.’’ He said his ‘‘provisional bottom line’’ was that Saddam ‘‘had the intent and capability to convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production’’.