Events Leading Up to the 2003 Invasion of Iraq

US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is asked, “When do you think there might be a government in place, even a provisional government in place in Iraq?” Rumsfeld reponds, “I don’t know.” [Infinity Radio, 5/29/2003]

Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Pre-war Planning, Democracy Rhetoric

In the upcoming issue of Vanity Fair, Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz admits that the Bush administration chose the issue of Iraqi WMD as its primary justification for war, not because it was necessarily a legitimate concern, but because it was, in the words of reporter David Usbourne, “politically convenient.” Wolfowitz also acknowledges that another justification played a strong part in the decision to invade: the prospect of the US being able to withdraw all of its forces from Saudi Arabia (see August 7, 1990) once Saddam Hussein’s regime was overthrown. “Just lifting that burden from the Saudis is itself going to the door” towards making progress elsewhere in achieving Middle East peace, says Wolfowitz. The presence of US forces in Saudi Arabia has been one of the main grievances of al-Qaeda and other Islamist groups. The most controversial statement by Wolfowitz is his acknowledgement that, “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on.” Usbourne writes, “The comments suggest that, even for the US administration, the logic that was presented for going to war may have been an empty shell.” He notes that finding a rationale for attacking Iraq that was “acceptable to everyone” may refer to Secretary of State Colin Powell, the most prominent Cabinet member to vocally, if privately, oppose the invasion. Powell relied on the WMD issue in his February presentation to the UN Security Council (see February 5, 2003), which many consider to be a key element in the administration’s effort to convince the American citizenry that the invasion was necessary and justified. [Independent, 5/30/2003] Many Congressional Democrats echo the sentiments of Senator Joe Biden (D-DE), who says of the administration’s push for war: “I do think that we hyped nuclear, we hyped al-Qaeda, we hyped the ability to disperse and use these weapons. I think that tends to be done by all presidents when they are trying to accomplish a goal that they want to get broad national support for.… I think a lot of the hype here is a serious, serious, serious mistake and it hurts our credibility.” [Washington Times, 5/30/2003] Former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who quit as leader of the House of Commons to protest the war, says he never believed Iraq had the WMD claimed by US and British government officials. “The war was sold on the basis of what was described as a pre-emptive strike, ‘Hit Saddam before he hits us,’” he says. “It is now quite clear that Saddam did not have anything with which to hit us in the first place.” Former Danish Foreign Minister Niels Helveg Petersen says he is shocked by Wolfowitz’s claim. “It leaves the world with one question: What should we believe?” he says. [Associated Press, 5/30/2003] After the initial reports of the interview and the resulting storm of controversy and recriminations, Wolfowitz and his defenders will claim that Vanity Fair reporter Sam Tanenhaus misquoted his words and took his statements out of context (see June 1-9, 2003).

Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, Robin Cook, Sam Tanenhaus, Joseph Biden, David Usbourne, Colin Powell, Bush administration, Vanity Fair, Niels Helveg Petersen

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Media Coverage, Motives, Politicization of Intelligence, Biological Weapons Trailers, Powell's Speech to UN

Ahmed Chalabi, head of the Iraqi National Congress, complains about the US occupation of Iraq that he played a pivotal role in bringing about. “They told us, ‘Liberation now,’ and then they made it occupation,” he says. “Bush said he was a liberator, not an occupier, and we supported the United States on this basis.” [Philadelphia Inquirer, 5/29/2003]

Entity Tags: Ahmed Chalabi

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Chalabi and the INC, Democracy Rhetoric

The Iraq Survey Group closely inspects the Iraqi drones that the Bush administration had alleged were being developed to deploy chemical and biological weapons. ISG head David Kay later says of the investigation: “We knew the range, navigation, and payload capability. There was no way this was a threat to anyone.” [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 309]

Entity Tags: Iraq Survey Group, David Kay

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Drones

After seeing photos of the trailers hailed by the CIA as evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program, former UN weapons inspector Rod Barton tells the Australian government that US intelligence has wrongly concluded that the vessels in the trailers are biological fermenters. [Associated Press, 5/13/2006]

Entity Tags: Rod Barton, Australia

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Biological Weapons Trailers

Babel TV facility, from which Curveball stole equipment. [Source: CBS News]Curveball, the Iraqi defector (see November 4, 2007) whose claims that Saddam Hussein has mobile bioweapons became an integral part of Secretary of State Colin Powell’s presentation to the UN (see February 5, 2003) “proving” the existence of Iraqi WMDs, continues to disintegrate as a reliable intelligence source. His fundamental claims of being a senior Iraqi chemical engineer working on the secret bioweapons project falls apart as both German intelligence analysts and the CIA gather more information on him. Veteran CIA bio-weapons analyst publicly identified only as “Jerry,” who before the war had championed Curveball’s claim that Iraq had mobile biological weapons laboratories, leads a unit of the Iraq Survey Group to Baghdad to investigate Curveball’s background. His team locates Curveball’s personnel file in an Iraqi government storeroom and learns that the Iraqi defector’s allegations consisted of a string of lies. Curveball came in last in his engineering class, not first, as he had told his debriefers (see 1994 and January 2000-September 2001). Nor was he a project chief or site manager, as he had claimed. Rather he was just a low-level trainee engineer. Dr. Basil al-Sa’ati, whom Curveball cited as his supervisor at the Djerf al Nadaf seed purification plant (Curveball claimed that the plant was a secret bioweapons production facility), confirmed that Curveball did indeed work for him at the plant, where al-Sa’ati was the head of production design. But Curveball only worked there a few months, while the facility was being built, and was fired in 1995, the very year that he presumably began working on the alleged program to convert trucks into biological weapons laboratories. The following years were not auspicious for Curveball: he was jailed for a sex crime, briefly drove a taxi in Baghdad, and worked for Iraq’s Babel television production company until he was charged with stealing equipment (the charges were dropped when he agreed to reimburse the company for his theft.) He even sold “homemade cosmetics,” according to his friend Dr. Hillal al Dulaimi. Curveball claimed to have witnessed a biological accident that killed 12 people at Djerf al Nadaf in 1998, but he wasn’t even in Iraq by that time. He had left the country, traveled around the Middle East, and wound up in Morocco. No trace exists of Curveball between that time and when he defected to Germany in 1999. Curveball’s former bosses at the engineering center tell CIA officers that they got duped, falling for “water cooler gossip” and “corridor conversations.” “The Iraqis were all laughing,” a member of the Iraq Survey Group will later recall. “They were saying, ‘This guy? You’ve got to be kidding.’” The team even interviews Curveball’s childhood friends who also corroborate what others have said about him. They say he was a “great liar,” a “con artist,” and “a real operator.” Everyone’s description of Curveball is the same: “People kept saying what a rat Curveball was.” Jerry and another CIA analyst, having heard enough, end the investigation and return to Washington. According to David Kay, by this time Jerry is close to having a nervous breakdown. “They had been true believers in Curveball,” Kay says. “They absolutely believed in him. They knew every detail in his file. But it was total hokum. There was no truth in it. They said they had to go home to explain how all this was all so wrong.” But the CIA doesn’t want to hear it. Jerry is accused of “making waves” and then transferred out of the weapons center. According to Michael Scheuer, another dissident CIA analyst, “Jerry had become kind of a nonperson. There was a tremendous amount of pressure on him not to say anything. Just to sit there and shut up.” [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005; CBS News, 11/4/2007]

Entity Tags: Michael Scheuer, Bundesnachrichtendienst, Hillal al Dulaimi, United Nations, Saddam Hussein, Central Intelligence Agency, “Jerry”, Colin Powell, ’Curveball’, Basil al-Sa’ati

Category Tags: Biological Weapons Trailers, Curveball Fabrications

Hamid Bayati, spokesperson for the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), tells the Washington Post: “If [Bremer] is going to appoint an administration, we can’t be part of that. We will only be part of an administration selected by the Iraqi people. There are certain lines which we cannot cross.” [Washington Post, 6/8/2003]

Entity Tags: Hamid Bayati

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Democracy Rhetoric

Isam Khafaji, an Iraqi exile who returned to Iraq to serve on the Defense Department’s Iraq Reconstruction and Development Council, complains to the Washington Post: “Our role is very limited. We’re not allowed to make any decisions.” [Washington Post, 6/8/2003]

Entity Tags: Isam Khafaji

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Democracy Rhetoric

A senior British source tells the Independent of London that British intelligence has kept records of its communications with Tony Blair’s staff, demonstrating that they were under pressure to produce reports that supported Blair’s claims that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction. “A smoking gun may well exist over WMDs, but it may not be to the Government’s liking,” one senior British official will say to the Independent a few months after the invasion. “Minuted details will show exactly what went on. Because of the frequency and, at times, unusual nature of the demands from Downing Street, people have made sure records were kept. There is a certain amount of self-preservation in this, of course.” [Independent, 6/8/2003]

Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence

Several newspapers report that a number of US and British intelligence experts do not believe that the two trailers recently found in Iraq (see April 19, 2003; May 9, 2003) are mobile biological weapons factories. According to the London Observer, experts believe the trailers were probably “designed to be used for hydrogen production to fill artillery balloons.” The newspaper also reports that the Iraqi army purchased its original hydrogen producing system, known as an Artillery Meteorological System, in 1987 from the British-owned Marconi Command & Control. [Observer, 6/8/2003] The experts offer the following reasons for why they do not believe the trailers were intended to produce biological weapons:
No trace of pathogens are detected in the trailers’ suspected fermentation tanks. [Observer, 6/8/2003]
The trailers have canvas sides which would not have made sense if they were meant to be used as biological weapon labs. [Observer, 6/8/2003] “The canvas tarps covering the sides of the trucks appeared designed to be pulled away to let excess heat and gas escape during the production of hydrogen. The tarps would allow in far too much road dust and other contamination if the equipment inside were meant to produce biowarfare agents.” [Los Angeles Times, 6/21/2003]
There is a “shortage of pumps required to create vacuum conditions required for working with germ cultures and other processes usually associated with making biological weapons.” [Observer, 6/8/2003]
The trailers have no “autoclave for steam sterilization, normally a prerequisite for any kind of biological production.” Without a means to sterilize “between production runs would threaten to let in germ contaminants, resulting in failed weapons.” [New York Times, 6/7/2003; Observer, 6/8/2003]
There is no “easy way for technicians to remove germ fluids from the processing tank.” [New York Times, 6/7/2003; Observer, 6/8/2003]

Entity Tags: AMS

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Biological Weapons Trailers

In St. Petersburg, Russia, Bush says, in response to a US reporter’s question, “Yes, we found a biological laboratory in Iraq (see April 19, 2003) (see May 9, 2003) which the UN prohibited.” [Rosbalt News Agency, 1/6/2003]

Entity Tags: George W. Bush

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Chemical & Bio Weapons Allegations, Alleged WMDs, Biological Weapons Trailers

Conservative defenders of the Bush administration contend that Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz was misquoted by Vanity Fair reporter Sam Tanenhaus. In an upcoming profile of Wolfowitz, Tanenhaus quotes him as saying, “For bureaucratic reasons we settled on one issue, weapons of mass destruction, because it was the one reason everyone could agree on” (see May 30, 2003). [Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 150] According to a Defense Department transcript of the original May 9, 2003 interview, Wolfowitz’s actual words were: “The truth is that for reasons that have a lot to do with the US government bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that everyone could agree on which was weapons of mass destruction as the core reason, but… there have always been three fundamental concerns. One is weapons of mass destruction, the second is support for terrorism, the third is the criminal treatment of the Iraqi people. Actually I guess you could say there’s a fourth overriding one, which is the connection between the first two.” [Vanity Fair, 5/9/2003] Some of the controversy centers on which portions of the interview were on the record and which were not. [Talking Points Memo, 6/7/2003] Neoconservative pundit and columnist William Kristol is at the forefront of the counterattacks on Wolfowitz’s behalf. After appearing on Fox News where he accuses Tanenhaus of “misquot[ing]” Wolfowitz’s words and “taking [them] out of context,” he writes a column railing against “[l]azy reporters” who don’t bother to accurately report Wolfowitz’s words, and noting, “Tanenhaus has mischaracterized Wolfowitz’s remarks,… Vanity Fair’s publicists have mischaracterized Tanenhaus’s mischaracterization, and… Bush administration critics are now indulging in an orgy of righteous indignation that is dishonest in triplicate.” Kristol concludes: “In short, Wolfowitz made the perfectly sensible observation that more than just WMD was of concern, but that among several serious reasons for war, WMD was the issue about which there was widest domestic (and international) agreement.… Tanenhaus has taken a straightforward and conventional observation about strategic arrangements in a post-Saddam Middle East and juiced it up into a vaguely sinister ‘admission’ about America’s motives for going to war in the first place.” Kristol is joined by the Wall Street Journal editorial board, which calls the Tanenhaus piece “spin.” [Weekly Standard, 6/9/2003; Jamieson and Cappella, 2008, pp. 150]

Entity Tags: William Kristol, Sam Tanenhaus, Paul Wolfowitz, Bush administration, US Department of Defense, Wall Street Journal

Category Tags: Media Coverage, Politicization of Intelligence, Public Opinion on Iraqi Threat

Carl Ford Jr. [Source: PBS]Carl Ford Jr., head of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, authors a classified memo addressed to Colin Powell, informing him that current intelligence does not support the conclusion of the joint CIA-DIA May 28 white paper (see May 28, 2003) which concluded that the two trailers found in Iraq (see April 19, 2003 and May 9, 2003) were mobile biological weapon factories. The memo also says that the CIA and DIA were wrong in asserting that there were no other plausible uses for the trailer, suggesting that the two pieces of equipment may have been designed for refueling Iraqi missiles. [New York Times, 6/26/2003; Fox News, 6/26/2003; CBS News, 6/27/2003]

Entity Tags: Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Colin Powell, Carl W. Ford, Jr.

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Biological Weapons Trailers

Mahdi Obeidi, the Iraqi nuclear scientist who once headed Iraq’s gas centrifuge program for uranium enrichment, leads US investigators to the rose garden behind his house where they dig up “200 blueprints of gas centrifuge components, 180 documents describing their use and samples of a few sensitive parts.” These items had been buried under orders from Qusay Hussein in 1991. (see February 5, 2004). [CNN, 6/26/2003; Newsweek, 8/8/2003; Washington Post, 10/26/2003 Sources: David Albright]

Entity Tags: Qusay Hussein, Mahdi Obeidi

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs

Mahdi Obeidi. [Source: CNN]Mahdi Obeidi is taken into custody by US Special Forces. He is released on June 17, 2003. During his detention, Obeidi is interviewed by US authorities seeking to learn more about Saddam’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons. But instead of meeting with a US nuclear physicist as Obeidi expects, he is interviewed by CIA agent Joe T., the main proponent of the theory that the 81mm aluminum tubes Iraq attempted to import in July 2001 (see July 2001) had been meant for a centrifuge program. Joe’s area of expertise, however, is not nuclear physics. His background relates to export controls (see Early 1980s) (see 1999). When asked about Saddam’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons, Obeidi does not tell Joe T. what he wants to hear. Instead, he tells him that Saddam abandoned the program in 1991 as the Iraqi government had claimed in its December 7 declaration to the UN. He adds that if the program had been restarted, he would have known about it. He also says that the tube shipment confiscated by the CIA in July 2001 was completely unrelated to nuclear weapons. Those tubes—with a diameter of 81mm—could not have been used in the gas centrifuge designed by Obeidi, which specified tubes with a 145mm diameter. “The physics of a centrifuge would not permit a simple substitution of aluminum tubes for the maraging steel and carbon fiber designs used by Obeidi,” the Washington Post will later report. Obeidi and his family will later move to a CIA safe house in Kuwait. [Newsweek, 8/8/2003; Washington Post, 10/26/2003 Sources: David Albright] At the end of the summer, he will receive permission to move to an East Coast suburb on the basis of Public Law 110 , which allows “those who help the United States by providing valuable intelligence information” to resettle in the US. [Central Intelligence Agency, 11/2/2003 Sources: David Kay]

Entity Tags: Joe Turner, Mahdi Obeidi

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Aluminum Tubes Allegation

Speaking on CNBC’s Capital Report, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says the trailers recently discovered in Iraq (see April 19, 2003; May 9, 2003) were designed to produce biological weapons. “But let’s remember what we’ve already found. Secretary Powell on February 5 (see February 5, 2003) talked about a mobile, biological weapons capability. That has now been found and this is a weapons laboratory trailers capable of making a lot of agent that—dry agent, dry biological agent that can kill a lot of people. So we are finding these pieces that were described… We know that these trailers look exactly like what was described to us by multiple sources as the capabilities for building or for making biological agents. We know that we have from multiple sources who told us that then and sources who have confirmed it now. Now the Iraqis were not stupid about this. They were able to conceal a lot. They’ve been able to scrub things down. But I think when the whole picture comes out, we will see that this was an active program.” [CNBC, 6/3/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004]

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Biological Weapons Trailers, Chemical & Bio Weapons Allegations

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice, appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, says: “We are confident that we—I believe that we will find [weapons of mass destruction in Iraq]. I think that we have already found important clues like the biological weapons laboratories that look surprisingly like what Colin Powell described in his speech (see February 5, 2003).” [Meet the Press, 6/8/2003; American Forces Press Service, 6/9/2003]

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Biological Weapons Trailers, Chemical & Bio Weapons Allegations

Appearing on ABC’s This Week, Condoleezza Rice defends the Bush administration’s prewar intelligence. For example, she tells host George Stephanopoulos, “Already, we’ve discovered… trailers… that look remarkably similar to what Colin Powell described in his February 5 speech (see February 5, 2003).” [This Week with George Stephanopoulos, 6/8/2003; American Forces Press Service, 6/9/2003] Asked why the Africa-uranium claim was included in Bush’s 2003 State of the Union Address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) even though it had been debunked by the CIA several months earlier (see October 6, 2002), Rice claims the administration had “other sources” which supported the claim that Hussein was determined to obtain uranium from somewhere in Africa. “At the time that the State of the Union address was prepared, there were also other sources that said that they were, the Iraqis were seeking yellow cake, uranium oxide from Africa.” [This Week with George Stephanopoulos, 6/8/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004] When Stephanopoulos notes that there were several people in the US government who doubted the Africa-uranium claim, Rice responds, “The intelligence community did not know at that time or at levels that got to us that this, that there was serious questions about this report.” [This Week with George Stephanopoulos, 6/8/2003; Washington Post, 7/26/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004]

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice

Category Tags: Nuclear Weapons Allegations, Africa-Uranium Allegation, Biological Weapons Trailers, Chemical & Bio Weapons Allegations

Commenting on the recent revelation (see May 6, 2003) that former diplomat Joseph Wilson’s 2002 trip to Niger (see February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002) had determined that Iraq did not conclude a deal with Niger to supply it with uranium, Condoleezza Rice says during an appearance on Meet the Press, “Maybe someone knew down in the bowels of the agency, but no one in our circles knew that there were doubts and suspicions that this might be a forgery.” [Washington Post, 6/13/2003; Knight Ridder, 6/13/2003; ABC News, 6/16/2003]

Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Condoleezza Rice

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson is infuriated by Condoleezza Rice’s June 9 claim (see June 9, 2003) that top officials were unaware of doubts over the Niger uranium claim. He contacts friends in the government and asks them to pass on the message that if Rice does not correct the record, he will (see May 29, 2003). [Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pp. 282]

Entity Tags: Joseph C. Wilson, Condoleezza Rice

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation

Congressional Republicans reject Democratic calls for a formal investigation into pre-war US intelligence and allegations that the White House exaggerated the threat posed by Iraq. The Republicans contend that an investigation is not needed because there is no evidence of wrongdoing. [Associated Press, 6/11/2003; Seattle Post-Intelligencer, 6/12/2003; Washington Post, 6/12/2003]

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Politicization of Intelligence

The Defense Intelligence Agency sends an information memorandum to Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz, responding to questions he has about Iraq’s alleged nuclear program. The memo states that “while the Intelligence Committee agrees that documents the IAEA reviewed were likely ‘fake,’ other unconfirmed reporting suggested that Iraq attempted to obtain uranium and yellowcake from African nations after 1998.” The memo also informs Wolfowitz of a November 2002 Navy report (see November 25, 2002) alleging that uranium held in a Benin warehouse was destined for Iraq. But the DIA fails to mention that this allegation was debunked two months earlier in a memo published by the National Intelligence Council (see April 5, 2003). [US Congress, 7/7/2004, pp. 71]

Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, Defense Intelligence Agency

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation, Politicization of Intelligence

The Los Angeles Times reports that the US military owns a fleet of 20 Humvees equipped with AN/TMQ-42 Hydrogen Generators that produce hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. The vehicles were purchased from Environmental Technologies Group of Baltimore in 1998. The revelation calls into question US intelligence’s rejection of claims by Iraqi scientists that the two trailers discovered in Iraq were designed to produce hydrogen for balloons. A recent CIA and DIA white paper suggested that the Iraqi scientists’ explanation was just a convenient “cover story” . But some US intelligence officials agree with the Iraqi scientists’ assessment . [Los Angeles Times, 6/21/2003]

Entity Tags: US Department of Defense

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Biological Weapons Trailers

Sean McCormack, spokesman for the National Security Council, says: “We have acknowledged that some documents detailing a transaction between Iraq and Niger were forged and we no longer give them credence,” he says. “They were, however, only one piece of evidence in a larger body of evidence suggesting Iraq attempted to purchase uranium from Africa. The issue of Iraq’s pursuit of uranium in Africa is supported by multiple sources of intelligence. The other sources of evidence did and do support the president’s statement.” [Washington Post, 6/13/2003; Associated Press, 6/13/2003]

Entity Tags: Sean McCormack

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation

A few months after being publicly, and humiliatingly, contradicted by his top civilian Pentagon bosses Donald Rumsfeld and Paul Wolfowitz (see February 27, 2003), Army Chief of Staff Eric Shinseki retires. Neither Rumsfeld nor Wolfowitz attend Shinseki’s retirement ceremony, a choice which many see as another public snubbing of the retiring general. Shinseki spends 20 minutes listing the people who had helped the Army during his tenure as Army chief of staff; Rumsfeld’s name is conspicuously absent from the listing. And in a veiled jab at his former boss, Shinseki says that “arrogance of power” is the worst substitute for true leadership. In another unusual move, Rumsfeld had already named Shinseki’s replacement, General Peter Schoomaker, nearly a year before Shinseki’s retirement. [Honolulu Advertiser, 6/13/2003; US News and World Report, 6/15/2003]

Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz, Eric Shinseki, Peter J. Schoomaker, US Department of the Army, Donald Rumsfeld

Timeline Tags: US Military

Category Tags: Internal Opposition, Politicization of Intelligence, The Decision to Invade

An investigation sponsored by British intelligence and headed by British defense officers and technical experts from the Porton Down microbiological research establishment determines that two trailers recently discovered in Iraq by US forces (see April 19, 2003; May 9, 2003) are not mobile biological weapons factories as has been alleged. Rather the team concludes that they are for producing hydrogen for artillery weather balloons. “They are not mobile germ warfare laboratories,” says one British scientist and biological weapons expert who has seen the trailers. “You could not use them for making biological weapons. They do not even look like them. They are exactly what the Iraqis said they were—facilities for the production of hydrogen gas to fill balloons.” [Observer, 6/8/2003; Observer, 6/15/2003]

Entity Tags: UK Secret Intelligence Service (MI6)

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Biological Weapons Trailers

David Kay. [Source: Publicity photo]David Kay, just recently appointed to head the Iraq Survey Group, is given access to all the CIA’s prewar intelligence on Iraq’s weapons programs. “Now I’ll get the good stuff,” he thinks to himself. But after reviewing the CIA’s reports he realizes that the agency’s evidence is not too solid. He is disappointed to see that the mobile biological weapons trailer allegation was based on just one source—and an iffy one at that, Curveball (see Late January, 2003)—and that the US intelligence community had sided with CIA WINPAC over the Energy Department’s nuclear scientists in the aluminum tubes debate (see October 1, 2002). As he continues reading the WMD material, a favorite song of his comes to mind—Peggy Lee’s “Is That All There Is?” [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 233-234]

Entity Tags: ’Curveball’, Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation, and Arms Control, David Kay, Iraq Survey Group

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Aluminum Tubes Allegation, Biological Weapons Trailers, Curveball Fabrications

Abu Adel, a senior tribal leader in Ramadi, Iraq, tells the Associated Press: “We are a proud people and we will not accept this humiliation. The Americans should beware the wrath of the Iraqi people.” [Associated Press, 6/17/2003]

Entity Tags: Abu Adel

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Democracy Rhetoric

An internal CIA memorandum addressed to CIA Director George Tenet states “[S]ince learning that the Iraq-Niger uranium deal was based on false documents earlier this spring we no longer believe that there is sufficient other reporting to conclude that Iraq pursued uranium from abroad.” [The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (aka 'Robb-Silberman Commission'), 3/31/2005]

Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, George J. Tenet

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation

US administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer describes US as occupying power in an interview with the Washington Post. “As long as we’re here, we are the occupying power. It’s a very ugly word, but it’s true.” [Washington Post, 6/18/2003]

Entity Tags: L. Paul Bremer

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Democracy Rhetoric

A Pentagon-sponsored fact-finding mission (see May 25, 2003) completes its final report on a three-week long investigation of the two trailers that were found in Iraq in April and May (see April 19, 2003; May 9, 2003). The team, led by American and British biological weapons experts, determined (see May 27, 2003) that the trailers were not intended to produce biological weapons, as top US and British government officials, including both President Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, have publicly stated. According to sources interviewed by the Washington Post, members of the team were asked to alter the conclusions of the 122-page report. “The questioners generally wanted to know the same thing: Could the report’s conclusions be softened, to leave open a possibility that the trailers might have been intended for weapons?” [Washington Post, 4/12/2006]

Entity Tags: Jefferson Project

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Biological Weapons Trailers

Andrew Wilkie, an analyst for the Australian Office of National Assessments, says in testimony before British Parliament that the British and Australian governments had backed US allegations despite reports from their respective intelligence agencies that Iraq was not a serious threat. In fact, Wilkie goes so far as to say that the two governments deliberately distorted and doctored evidence to support US claims, which he describes as “ridiculous,” “preposterous” and “fundamentally flawed.” According to him, there was an “over-reliance” on “garbage grade human intelligence” by individuals he says were “desperate to encourage intervention.” [Mirror, 6/20/2003]

Entity Tags: Andrew Wilkie

Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence

Paul Bremer, the US administrator for Iraq, tells the Washington Post: “I’m not opposed to [self-rule], but I want to do it a way that takes care of our concerns…. In a postwar situation like this, if you start holding elections, the people who are rejectionists tend to win… It’s often the best-organized who win, and the best-organized right now are the former Baathists and to some extent the Islamists.” [Washington Post, 6/28/2003]

Entity Tags: L. Paul Bremer

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Democracy Rhetoric

In a BBC interview, US administrator for Iraq Paul Bremer says, “We are going to fight them and impose our will on them and we will capture or, if necessary, kill them until we have imposed law and order upon this country.” [Guardian, 6/30/2003]

Entity Tags: L. Paul Bremer

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Democracy Rhetoric

The Iraq Survey Group (ISG) visits the Nasr munitions plant where the Iraqis used to manufacture 81mm artillery rockets. The plant’s inventory includes a large supply of 81mm aluminum tubes. ISG investigators conclude that the aluminum tubes confiscated in Jordan two years earlier (see July 2001) had been purchased by the Iraqis for use as artillery rocket bodies, not centrifuge rotors as alleged by the Bush administration. As reporters Michael Isikoff and David Corn will explain in their book Hubris, “ISG investigators questioned the Iraqi plant managers. They also interrogated the senior official who had overseen Saddam’s military industrial commission. All the Iraqis told a consistent story: the rockets had been falling short. The problem was the propellant. But changing the propellant—the obvious solution—wasn’t an option. The propellant was produced at a facility run by a friend of one of Saddam’s sons. So to avoid interfering with the flow of business to a regime crony, the engineers devised a Rube Goldberg solution: lower the mass of the rockets and use tubes that had a higher strength than otherwise necessary, that was why the Iraqis had been using the Internet to procure tubes with unusually precise specifications (The whole thing reminded [David] Kay of some of the Pentagon’s own procurement messes.) ‘We had this down,’ Kay later said. ‘The system was corrupt.’” Kay will also say of the tubes fiasco, “The tubes issue was an absolute fraud.” [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 306-307] Some observers find it telling that US forces never attempted to secure the Nasr facility or its inventory of tubes. “They’re not acting as if they take their own analysis seriously,” Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, will later tell the Washington Post. “If they were so worried about these tubes, that would be the kind of sensitive equipment you’d think the administration would want to seize, to prevent it from going somewhere else—Iran, Syria, Egypt.” [Washington Post, 10/26/2003]

Entity Tags: Joseph Cirincione, David Kay, Iraq Survey Group

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Aluminum Tubes Allegation

The cover of ‘Bush Vs. the Beltway.’ [Source: Oferton de Libros]Neoconservative author Laurie Mylroie, who believes that Saddam Hussein was behind every terrorist attack on the US from 1993 through 2001 (see 1990 and October 2000), publishes her latest book, Bush vs. the Beltway: How the CIA and the State Department Tried to Stop the War on Terror. Mylroie accuses those agencies of suppressing information about Iraq’s role in 9/11, names 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed (KSM) as an Iraqi agent (whose identity as such is being hidden by shadowy forces within the Bush administration), and calls President Bush “an actual hero… who could not be rolled, spun, or otherwise diverted from his most solemn obligation” to overthrow Saddam Hussein. However, like Mylroie’s other theories, her belief that KSM was an Iraqi agent is not popularly accepted. Author and war correspondent Peter Bergen is contemptuous of her theorizing, noting that Mylroie claims “a senior administration official told me in specific that the question of the identities of the terrorist masterminds could not be pursued because of bureaucratic obstructionism.” Bergen will write: “So we are expected to believe that the senior Bush administration officials whom Mylroie knows so well could not find anyone in intelligence or law enforcement to investigate the supposed Iraqi intelligence background of the mastermind of 9/11, at the same time that 150,000 American soldiers had been sent to fight a war in Iraq under the rubric of the war on terrorism. Please.” Bergen also notes that repeated interrogations of KSM—sometimes verging on torture (see Shortly After March 1, 2003)—have failed to produce a shred of evidence connecting him with Iraq. [Washington Monthly, 12/2003]

Entity Tags: Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, Bush administration, Central Intelligence Agency, Laurie Mylroie, George W. Bush, Saddam Hussein, Peter Bergen, US Department of State

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties

Hamish Killip, a British army officer and biological weapons expert working with the CIA-led Iraq Survey Group, inspects the alleged mobile biological weapons labs that were found by US forces in April (see May 9, 2003) and May (see April 19, 2003) and is immediately skeptical. “The equipment was singularly inappropriate,” he later recalls. “We were in hysterics over this. You’d have better luck putting a couple of dust bins on the back of the truck and brewing it in there.” The trailers were clearly built for the purpose of producing hydrogen. [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005]

Entity Tags: Hamish Killip

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Biological Weapons Trailers

The United Nations’ highest administrative tribunal condemns the removal (see April 21-22, 2002) of Jose Bustani from his post as director-general of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) calling the dismissal “unlawful” and an “unacceptable violation” of principles protecting international civil servants. It adds that people in positions such as Bustani’s should not be made “vulnerable to pressures and to political change.” Additionally, the three-member UN tribunal says the Bush administration’s allegations were “extremely vague.” The tribunal awards Bustani his unpaid salary plus an additional 50,000 euros, or $61,500, in damages, which the former OPCW chief says he will donate to an OPCW technical aid fund for poorer countries. [Associated Press, 6/5/2005]

Entity Tags: Jose M. Bustani

Category Tags: Outing of Jose Bustani

An anonymous Bush administration official tells the Associated Press, “The relationships that were plotted [between al-Qaeda and Iraq] were episodic, not continuous.” [Associated Press, 7/12/2003 Sources: Unnamed Bush administration official]

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties

The Pentagon announces that the Office of Special Plans will revert to its previous name, the “Northern Gulf Affairs Office,” explaining that this name more accurately reflects the activities and mission of that office. [Tom Paine (.com), 8/27/2003]

Entity Tags: US Department of Defense, Office of Special Plans

Category Tags: Office of Special Plans

In a classified report, the CIA states: “Requests for reporting and analysis of [Iraq’s link to al-Qaeda] were steady and heavy in the period leading up to the war, creating significant pressure on the Intelligence Community to find evidence that supported a connection.” This comment will not be publicly mentioned until September 2006, in a media leak of still classified material. [Newsweek, 9/13/2006]

Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Politicization of Intelligence, Atta in Prague Connection

Count Hans von Sponeck, the UN’s former co-coordinator in Iraq and former UN under-secretary general, during a trip to Iraq, visits two factories near Baghdad which US surveillance equipment has identified as possible biological and chemical weapons production sites. The first plant he visits is the Al-Dora plant, which at one time had produced vaccines for foot-and-mouth disease, but which was destroyed by the UNSCOM weapons inspectors. Hans von Sponeck, who is not an expert in biological or chemical weapons, says of the Al-Dora plant: “‘There is nothing. It is in the same destroyed status. It is a totally locked up institution where there is not one sign of a resumed activity.” Von Sponeck also visits the Al-Fallouja factory, where he witnesses the production of “pesticides, insecticides and material for hygienic purpose in households, on very minor scale,” reports CNN. “Most of the buildings are destroyed,” he tells the news network. [CNN Europe, 7/13/2002]

Entity Tags: Hans von Sponeck

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs

Former ambassador Joseph Wilson writes an op-ed piece in the New York Times describing in detail his 2002 visit to Niger (see June 9, 2003) and debunking the administration’s claims that Iraq sought to buy uranium from Niger. He makes it very clear that he believes his findings had been “circulated to the appropriate officials within… [the] government.” [New York Times, 7/6/2003] Former Nixon White House counsel John Dean will write in 2004 that after Wilson’s editorial appears, he checks out the evidence behind the story himself. It only takes Dean a few hours of online research using source documents that Bush officials themselves had cited, from the International Atomic Energy Agency, the Department of Energy, the CIA, and the United Nations. He will write, “I was amazed at the patently misleading use of the material Bush had presented to Congress. Did he believe no one would check? The falsification was not merely self-evident, it was feeble and disturbing. The president was playing Congress and the public for fools.” [Dean, 2004, pp. 145-146]

Entity Tags: Central Intelligence Agency, Joseph C. Wilson, John Dean, International Atomic Energy Agency, US Department of Energy, United Nations

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Media Coverage, Politicization of Intelligence, Africa-Uranium Allegation

The White House releases the following statement in reference to a claim made in President Bush’s State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to procure uranium from Africa: “There is other reporting to suggest that Iraq tried to obtain uranium from Africa. However, the information is not detailed or specific enough for us to be certain that attempts were in fact made.” [New York Times, 7/8/2003]

Entity Tags: Bush administration

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation

While some find neoconservative author Laurie Mylroie’s testimony before the 9/11 Commission of a terrorist conspiracy between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda to be compelling (see July 9, 2003), others do not. One group that is not convinced is the so-called “Jersey Girls,” the group of widows who lost their husbands in the 9/11 attacks and then worked to force the Bush administration to create the Commission (see 9:15 a.m. - 9:45 a.m. March 31, 2003). They lambast Commission director Philip Zelikow for allowing Mylroie to testify. “Jersey Girl” Lorie Van Auken, who has learned a great deal about Mylroie’s theories in her research, confronts Zelikow shortly after the hearings. “That took a lot of nerve putting someone like that on the panel,” she tells Zelikow. “Laurie Mylroie? This is supposed to be an investigation of September 11. This is not supposed to be a sales pitch for the Iraq war.” Van Auken later recalls “a sly smile” crossing Zelikow’s face, as he refuses to answer. “He knew exactly what he was doing,” Van Auken will say. “He was selling the war.” After the hearing, Zelikow informs the staff that he wants them to aggressively pursue the idea of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Author Philip Shenon will later write, “To some members of the staff, Zelikow seemed determined to demonstrate that whatever the evidence to the contrary, Iraq and al-Qaeda had a close relationship that justified the toppling of Saddam Hussein.” [Shenon, 2008, pp. 130-134]

Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, ’Jersey Girls’, 9/11 Commission, Philip Shenon, Al-Qaeda, Lorie Van Auken, Laurie Mylroie, Philip Zelikow

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties

Judith Yaphe testifies before the 9/11 Commission. Yaphe, a CIA veteran who now teaches at the Pentagon’s National Defense University, is considered one of the agency’s most experienced and knowledgeable Iraq analysts. Yaphe states that while Saddam Hussein was indeed a sponsor of terrorism, it is improbable, based on what is currently known, that Hussein and Iraq had any connections to the 9/11 attacks, nor that a connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda is believable. [National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 7/9/2003] Yaphe is disturbed by the commission’s apparent acceptance of the testimony of Laurie Mylroie (see July 9, 2003), whose theories about connections between Iraq and al-Qaeda have long been discredited by both intelligence analysts and outside experts. She wonders why Mylroie’s “crazed theories” were being heard at all, and why the commission would risk its credibility by giving Mylroie this kind of exposure. She even speculates that Mylroie’s testimony is some sort of setup by the commission or the staff, and hopes that her own testimony can offset Mylroie’s theories and help discredit Mylroie before the commission. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 130-134] Yaphe tells the commission, in apparent reference to Mylroie, that the use of circumstantial evidence is “troubling” and that there is a “lack of credible evidence to jump to extraordinary conclusions on Iraqi support for al-Qaeda.” She also calls Mylroie’s theories of Iraqi spies using false identities to help execute the 1993 World Trade Center bombings (see February 26, 1993) worthy of a fiction novel and completely unsupported by fact. [National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States, 7/9/2003]

Entity Tags: Saddam Hussein, Al-Qaeda, 9/11 Commission, Central Intelligence Agency, Judith Yaphe, Laurie Mylroie, National Defense University

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties

Facing criticisms that the Bush administration lacked accurate and specific intelligence about Iraq’s alleged arsenal of illicit weapons, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld provides the Senate Armed Services Committee with a new reason for why it was necessary for the US to invade Iraq. “The coalition did not act in Iraq because we had discovered dramatic new evidence of Iraq’s pursuit of weapons of mass murder,” he says. “We acted because we saw the evidence in a dramatic new light, through the prism of our experience on 9/11.” [BBC, 7/9/2003; USA Today, 7/9/2003; Washington Times, 7/10/2003] When asked when he learned that the reports about Iraq attempting to obtain uranium from Niger were false, Rumsfeld replies, “Oh, within recent days, since the information started becoming available.” [Slate, 7/10/2003; WorldNetDaily, 7/15/2003] He later revises his statement twice, first saying that he had learned “weeks,” and then “months,” before. [WorldNetDaily, 7/15/2003]

Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation

Referring to President Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address (see Mid-January 2003 and 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), CIA director George Tenet says in a written statement, “These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.” Tenet denies that the White House is responsible for the mistake, putting the blame squarely on himself and his agency. Tenet’s statement comes hours after Bush blamed the CIA for the words making it into the speech (see July 11, 2003).
White House Joins in Blaming CIA - Condoleezza Rice also blames the CIA, “If the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, ‘Take this out of the speech,’ it could have been gone, without question. If there were doubts about the underlying intelligence, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president or to me.” Another senior White House official, defending the president and his advisors, tells ABC news: “We were very careful with what the president said. We vetted the information at the highest levels.” But an intelligence official, also interviewed by ABC, dismisses this version of events. [CNN, 7/11/2003; Washington Post, 7/12/2003; New York Times, 7/12/2003]
News Reports Reveal Warnings Not to Use Claim - Following Tenet’s statement, a barrage of news reports citing unnamed CIA officials reveal that the White House had in fact been explicitly warned not to include the African-uranium claim. These reports indicate that at the time Bush delivered his State of the Union address, it had been widely understood in US intelligence circles that the Africa-uranium claim had little evidence supporting it. [Boston Globe, 3/16/2003; New York Times, 3/23/2003; Associated Press, 6/12/2003; Knight Ridder, 6/12/2003; Associated Press, 6/12/2003; Knight Ridder, 6/13/2003; ABC News, 6/16/2003; Newsday, 7/12/2003; Washington Post, 7/20/2003] For example, CBS News reports, “CIA officials warned members of the president’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.” And a Washington Post article cites an unnamed intelligence source who says, “We consulted about the paper [September 2002 British dossier] and recommended against using that material.” [CBS News, 7/10/2003; CNN, 7/10/2003; Washington Post, 7/11/2003]
Claim 'Technically True' since British, not US, Actually Made Claim - White House officials respond that the dossier issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: “Iraq has… sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa” and that the officials had argued that as long as the statement was attributed to the British Intelligence, it would be technically true. Similarly, ABC News reports: “A CIA official has an idea about how the Niger information got into the president’s speech. He said he is not sure the sentence was ever cleared by the agency, but said he heard speechwriters wanted it included, so they attributed it to the British.” The same version of events is told to the New York Times by a senior administration official, who claims, “The decision to mention uranium came from White House speechwriters, not from senior White House officials.” [ABC News, 6/12/2003; CBS News, 7/10/2003; New York Times, 7/14/2003; New York Times, 7/19/2003]
Decision Influenced by Office of Special Plans - But according to a CIA intelligence official and four members of the Senate Intelligence Committee who are investigating the issue, the decision to include the Africa-uranium claim was influenced by the people associated with the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans (see September 2002). [Information Clearing House, 7/16/2003]
Former Ambassador Considers Matter Settled - Former ambassador Joseph Wilson, who recently printed an op-ed in the New York Times revealing his failure to find any validity in the claims during his fact-finding trip to Niger (see July 6, 2003 and February 21, 2002-March 4, 2002), is pleased at Tenet’s admission. According to his wife, CIA analyst Valerie Plame Wilson, “Joe felt his work was done; he had made his point.” [Wilson, 2007, pp. 140]

Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, George J. Tenet, Joseph C. Wilson, George W. Bush, Valerie Plame Wilson, Central Intelligence Agency, CBS News, Condoleezza Rice, Office of Special Plans, ABC News, Bush administration

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence, Africa-Uranium Allegation, Nuclear Weapons Allegations

While President Bush is in Uganda, a reporter asks him, “Why—can you explain how an erroneous piece of intelligence on the Iraq-Niger connection got into your State of the Union speech? Are you upset about it? And should somebody be held accountable, sir?” Bush replies, “I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services…” National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice responds more specifically a short time later, “I can tell you, if the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said ‘take this out of the speech,’ it would have been gone, without question,” Instead, after some changes sought by the CIA were made, “the agency cleared the speech and cleared it in its entirety.” Later in the day, CIA Director George Tenet accepts blame for allowing the allegations into the January 2003 speech (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003), saying the information “did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches and the CIA should have ensured that it was removed” (see July 11, 2003). [Washington Post, 7/12/2003] Reporter Steve Coll will later comment, “I don’t know what George Tenet felt as he saw that unfold, but I can imagine that he was dismayed and increasingly resentful that he was being singled out for blame. At the same time, he’s such an operator and such a student of Washington that surely, he understood what was happening, that he was being asked, in effect, to fall on his shield so that the president could be reelected.” [PBS Frontline, 6/20/2006]

Entity Tags: Steve Coll, George J. Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation

When asked about the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq (see October 1, 2002) and whether Bush knew of the dissenting views among US intelligence agencies regarding the now-infamous aluminum tubes supposedly being used by Iraq to produce nuclear weapons, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice says that in preparation for his February 2003 speech to the UN (see February 5, 2003), Secretary of State Colin Powell chose to “caveat,” or mention, the dissents. “The only thing that was there in the NIE was a kind of a standard INR footnote, which is kind of 59 pages away from the bulk of the NIE. That’s the only thing that’s there. And you have footnotes all the time in CIA—I mean, in NIEs. So if there was a concern about the underlying intelligence there, the president was unaware of that concern and as was I.… Now, if there were any doubts about the underlying intelligence to that NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the president, to the vice president, or to me.” Rice is incorrect. The President’s Summary from that NIE (see Early October 2002) specifically told Bush of the dissenting views, and the much lengthier NIE went into far more detail about the dissenting views. Rice, along with Vice President Cheney and other senior White House officials, received a memo months before giving them the same material, including the dissents (see January 10, 2003). (Cheney, as a matter of course, receives essentially the same intelligence information as Bush receives.) And the NIE itself contained the following caveat: “In [the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, or INR]‘s view, Iraq’s efforts to acquire aluminum tubes is central to the argument that Baghdad is reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, but INR is not persuaded that the tubes in question are intended for use as centrifuge rotors. INR accepts the judgment of technical experts at the US Department of Energy (DOE) who have concluded that the tubes Iraq seeks to acquire are poorly suited for use in gas centrifuges to be used for uranium enrichment and finds unpersuasive the arguments advanced by others to make the case that they are intended for that purpose. INR considers it far more likely that the tubes are intended for another purpose, most likely the production of artillery rockets.” This passage, among other sections of the NIE, will be declassified on July 18, one week from Rice’s denials.
A Pattern of Deception - There are numerous examples of Bush and Cheney citing the “imminent threat” of Saddam Hussein against the US and the Middle East. Some of those include: Cheney’s assertion that Hussein “now has weapons of mass destruction [and] is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies, and against us” (see August 26, 2002); Bush’s assertion to the UN that Iraq has WMDs and is likely to share them with terrorists (see September 12, 2002); a farrago of assertions from Bush that includes assertions about Iraq’s fleet of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles ready to disperse chemical and biological weapons, perhaps over the US, its consorting with al-Qaeda, and more (see October 7, 2002); a State of the Union address loaded with false, misleading, and incorrect allegations (see October 7, 2002); and a speech on the eve of the Iraq invasion that asserted “[t]he danger is clear” that Iraq will “kill thousands or hundreds of thousands of innocent” Americans (see March 17, 2003). [White House, 7/11/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004; National Journal, 3/2/2006]

Entity Tags: George W. Bush, US Department of Energy, Colin Powell, Al-Qaeda, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Saddam Hussein, Bureau of Intelligence and Research, Central Intelligence Agency

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Aluminum Tubes Allegation, Nuclear Weapons Allegations

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice persists in asserting there is an underlying truth to the Niger documents even though they have been proven to be a forgery. “And there were other attempts to, to get yellow cake from Africa,” she says. [White House, 7/11/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004]

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation, Nuclear Weapons Allegations

Challenged to explain why the president was permitted to say in his 2003 State of the Union address (see 9:01 pm January 28, 2003) that Iraq had reportedly attempted to purchase uranium from Africa, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice blames CIA director George Tenet. “My only point is that, in retrospect, knowing that some of the documents underneath may have been—were, indeed, forgeries, and knowing that apparently there were concerns swirling around about this, had we known that at the time, we would not have put it in.…And had there been even a peep that the agency did not want that sentence in or that George Tenet did not want that sentence in, that the director of Central Intelligence did not want it in, it would have been gone.” [Face the Nation, 7/13/2003; Washington Post, 7/26/2003]

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation, Nuclear Weapons Allegations

An unnamed Western diplomat close to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) tells the Daily Mail that the agency believes that Britain’s Africa-uranium claim is based on the same alleged transaction referred to in the forged Niger documents (see March 2000). “I understand that it concerned the same group of documents and the same transaction,” the source says. [Agence France-Presse, 7/15/2003]

Entity Tags: International Atomic Energy Agency

Timeline Tags: Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence, Propaganda, Africa-Uranium Allegation

Lieutenant-General Michael Moseley gives a briefing assessing the lessons of the war with Iraq to US and allied military officers at Nellis airbase in Nevada. He says that as part of Operation Southern Focus, US and British aerial attacks on Iraq southern and northern no-fly zones laid the foundations for the invasion of Iraq. He explains that during the nine-month period spanning mid-2002 to early 2003 (see June 2002-March 2003), US and British planes flew 21,736 sorties, dropping 606 bombs on 391 carefully selected targets. The pre-invasion bombing campaign made it possible for the official invasion (see March 19, 2003) to begin without a protracted bombardment of Iraqi positions. “It provided a set of opportunities and options for General Franks,” Mosely says. [New York Times, 7/20/2003; London Times, 6/27/2005; Raw Story, 6/27/2005]

Entity Tags: Michael Moseley

Category Tags: Pre-war Attacks against Iraq, Key Events Related to DSM

Map of Iraqi oil fields included in released documents. [Source: Judicial Watch]The conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch releases documents recently turned over by the US Commerce Department through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request. The documents show some of the activities of the secretive energy task force chaired by Vice President Dick Cheney (the National Energy Policy Development Group—see May 16, 2001). Cheney and the White House successfully blocked Congress from learning even the most basic information about the task force’s activities (see February 22, 2002). The Commerce Department documents include maps of Iraqi oil fields and oil infrastructure, and other charts showing Iraqi oil and gas projects, and a document entitled “Foreign Suitors for Iraqi Oilfield Contracts.” Other maps and documents show detailed information about oil fields and infrastructure in Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. All of the documents are dated March 2001. Judicial Watch has sought these documents under FOIA since April 2001, and only secured them after a federal judge ordered their release in March 2002. (The Judicial Watch lawsuit was consolidated with a similar suit from the Natural Resources Defense Council.) Why the government waited over a year to release the documents, even after a court order compelling them to do so, is unclear. “These documents show the importance of the Energy Task Force and why its operations should be open to the public,” says Judicial Watch’s Tom Fitton. “This was not about national security. This was about an undersecretary talking to a lobbyist.” [Judicial Watch, 7/17/2003; Judicial Watch, 7/17/2003; Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 14-15] Authors Lou Dubose and Jake Bernstein call the Iraqi oil field documents “stunning,” and ask: “Why were the vice president and a group of oilmen poring over maps of Iraq long before there was any pretext to invade the country? Iraq’s oil was technically embargoed and under UN control—why make plans for divvying up oil reserves?” Dubose and Bernstein believe that Cheney may have been planning for US control of Iraq long before the Bush administration’s public push for war with that nation. Fitton is not so sure, but says worriedly: “We don’t know because we weren’t given the context. We have no way of knowing what they were deliberating.” [Dubose and Bernstein, 2006, pp. 14-15] Judicial Watch, with other public interest groups such as the Sierra Club, will continue to seek information about the Cheney task force (see December 15, 2003 and April 27, 2004).

Entity Tags: US Department of Commerce, Lou Dubose, Judicial Watch, Jake Bernstein, National Energy Policy Development Group, Natural Resources Defense Council, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Tom Fitton, Sierra Club

Timeline Tags: Bush's Environmental Record

Category Tags: The Decision to Invade, Motives

Numerous US and British, current and former, intelligence, military, and other government officials who have inside knowledge continue to refute claims made by the Bush administration that Saddam Hussein’s regime had or was developing nuclear weapons. [CBS News, 7/19/2003; Washington Post, 8/10/2003]

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs

President George Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice meet with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas. [ABC News, 7/21/2003; US President, 7/28/2003]

Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Silvio Berlusconi

Category Tags: Africa-Uranium Allegation

In a briefing to the president and other top officials, Kay says that he has found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction, and says the disputed trailers (see April 19, 2003 and May 9, 2003) were probably not mobile biological factories, as the CIA and White House had claimed (see May 28, 2003 and May 29, 2003). Present at the briefing are Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, George Tenet, Condoleezza Rice, Andrew Card, and other White House aides. Kay’s briefing provokes little response from his audience. Describing the president’s reaction, Kay later says: “I’m not sure I’ve spoken to anyone at that level who seemed less inquisitive. He was interested but not pressing any questions. .. I cannot stress too much that the president was the one in the room who was the least unhappy and the least disappointed about the lack of WMDs. I came out of the Oval Office uncertain as to how to read the president. Here was an individual who was oblivious to the problems created by the failure to find WMDs. Or was this an individual who was completely at peace with himself on the decision to go to war, who didn’t question that, and who was totally focused on the here and now of what was to come?” [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 310]

Entity Tags: George J. Tenet, Andrew Card, David Kay, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, Paul Wolfowitz, Richard (“Dick”) Cheney

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice offers the discovery of aluminum tubes as proof of Hussein’s intentions to develop nuclear weapons on PBS’ NewsHour with Jim Lehrer: “[H]e had… an active procurement network to procure items, many of which, by the way, were on the prohibited list of the nuclear suppliers group. There’s a reason that they were on the prohibited list of the nuclear supplies group: magnets, balancing machines, yes, aluminum tubes, about which the consensus view was that they were suitable for use in centrifuges to spin material for nuclear weapons.” [NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, 7/30/2003]

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Aluminum Tubes Allegation, Nuclear Weapons Allegations

The US Department of Commerce prepares a memo for the president concerning the US-UK Energy Dialog, a bilateral initiative that was established during the April 2002 meeting of Prime Minister Blair and President Bush to “enhance coordination and cooperation on energy issues” (see April 6-7, 2002). The memo states: “Current forecasts for the oil sector put global demand by 2030 at about 120 million barrels per day (mbd), which is roughly 45 mbd higher than today. While recognizing that the increasing role of Russia and other non-OPEC producers, a large proportion of the world’s additional demand will likely be met by the Middle East (mainly Middle East Gulf) producers. They hold over half of current proven reserves, exploration and production costs are the lowest in the world, and production in many mature fields in the OECD area is likely to fall. To meet future world energy demand, the current installed capacity in the Gulf (currently 23 mbd) may need to rise to as much as 52 mbd by 2030.” [Muttitt, 2005]

Entity Tags: US Department of Commerce

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Motives

During a press conference, Bush is asked if the White House is planning to provide the public with “definitive evidence that Saddam was working with al-Qaeda terrorists” or if the alleged al-Qaeda links had been “exaggerated to justify war.” Bush responds that the US needs more time to analyze documents uncovered in Iraq. Bush explains: “Yes, I think, first of all, remember I just said we’ve been there for 90 days since the cessation of major military operations. Now, I know in our world where news comes and goes and there’s this kind of instant-instant news and you must have done this, you must do that yesterday, that there’s a level of frustration by some in the media. I’m not suggesting you’re frustrated. You don’t look frustrated to me at all. But it’s going to take time for us to gather the evidence and analyze the mounds of evidence, literally, the miles of documents that we have uncovered.” [US Newswire, 7/30/2003; US President, 8/4/2003]

Entity Tags: George W. Bush

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice asserts that the intelligence community is convinced Saddam Hussein had been trying to reconstitute a nuclear weapon’s program. “Going into the war against Iraq, we had very strong intelligence,” Rice says. “I’ve been in this business for 20 years. And some of the strongest intelligence cases that I’ve seen, key judgments by our intelligence community that Saddam Hussein could have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade, if left unchecked… that he was trying to reconstitute his nuclear program.” Answering questions as to why no evidence of nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons has yet been found, Rice says: “What we knew going into the war was that this man was a threat. He had weapons of mass destruction. He had used them before. He was continuing to try to improve his weapons programs. He was sitting astride one of the most volatile regions in the world, a region out of which the ideologies of hatred had come that led people to slam airplanes into buildings in New York and Washington. Something had to be done about that threat and the president to simply allow this brutal dictator, with dangerous weapons, to continue to destabilize the Middle East.” [ZDF German Television, 7/31/2003; Talon News, 8/1/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004; Center for Public Integrity, 1/23/2008] The day before, UN weapons inspector David Kay reported that no evidence of Iraqi WMD had been unearthed (see July 29, 2003). Rice was at that briefing.

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Saddam Hussein, David Kay

Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence, Propaganda, The Decision to Invade, Aluminum Tubes Allegation, Nuclear Weapons Allegations

Defending the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice tells ZDF television that there was “very strong intelligence” that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction “Going into the war against Iraq, we had very strong intelligence. I’ve been in this business for 20 years. And some of the strongest intelligence cases that I’ve seen, key judgments by our intelligence community that Saddam Hussein… had biological and chemical weapons….” [ZDF German Television, 7/31/2003]

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Chemical & Bio Weapons Allegations

Paul Wolfowitz says in an interview with Nancy Collins of the Laura Ingraham Show: “I’m not sure even now that I would say Iraq had something to do with [9/11]. I think what the realization to me is—the fundamental point was that terrorism had reached the scale completely different from what we had thought of it up until then. And that it would only get worse when these people got access to weapons of mass destruction which would be only a matter of time.” [Laura Ingraham Show, 8/1/2003]

Entity Tags: Paul Wolfowitz

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties

According to a Washington Post survey, 7 in 10 Americans believe that it is “likely or very likely Saddam Hussein was involved in September 11.” Sixty-two percent of Democrats, 80 percent of Republicans and 67 percent of independents polled suspect there is a link between Saddam Hussein and 9/11. Additionally, eight in 10 Americans believe that it was likely that Saddam had provided assistance to al-Qaeda, and a similar percentage say the believe he developed weapons of mass destruction. [Washington Post, 9/6/2003]

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Category Tags: Public Opinion on Iraqi Threat

A previously unrevealed document shows that British Prime Minister Tony Blair’s claim that Iraq could strike a target with weapons of mass destruction within 45 minutes of an order to deploy was based on hearsay information. The claim had already been shown to be the product of an unreliable Iraqi defector from Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress (see Late May 2003), but an internal Foreign Service document released by the Hutton inquiry undercuts the original claim even further. British and US officials had stated that the 45-minute claim came from an Iraqi officer high in Saddam Hussein’s command structure; the document shows, however, that it came from an informant who passed it on to British intelligence agency MI6. The Guardian writes, “[T]he foundation for the government’s claim was… a single anonymous uncorroborated source quoting another single anonymous uncorroborated source.” Liberal Democrat Menzies Campbell says: “This is classic hearsay. It provides an even thinner justification to go to war. If this is true, neither the prime minister nor the government have been entirely forthcoming.” [Guardian, 8/16/2003]

Entity Tags: Walter Menzies Campbell, Ahmed Chalabi, Foreign Service (UK), Tony Blair, Iraqi National Congress, Guardian

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Politicization of Intelligence, Propaganda

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld directs his undersecretary of defense for intelligence, Stephen Cambone, to send Maj. Gen. Geoffrey Miller to Iraq to review the US military prison system in Iraq and make suggestions on how the prisons can be used to obtain “actionable intelligence” from detainees. Cambone passes the order on to his deputy Lt. Gen. William Boykin who meets with Miller to plan the trip. [Washington Post, 5/21/2004; Newsweek, 5/24/2004]

Entity Tags: William Boykin, Stephen A. Cambone, Donald Rumsfeld, Geoffrey D. Miller

Timeline Tags: Torture in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere

Category Tags: Legal Justification

Brady Kiesling, a former political counselor at the US embassy in Athens who resigned from his post in protest of the invasion of Iraq (see Late February 2003), writes in an open letter published in the Greek daily, To Vima, that President George W. Bush is a “very weak” man and that his decision to invade Iraq was made under pressure from Donald Rumsfeld, who used the war to increase his own power. “Easy to convince, [Bush] blindly believed in Rumsfeld’s assurances that the occupation of Iraq would pay for itself,” the former diplomat writes. [Agence France-Presse, 8/17/2003 Sources: John Brady Kiesling]

Entity Tags: John Brady Kiesling

Category Tags: Internal Opposition, The Decision to Invade

Andrew Wilkie, an analyst for the Australian Office of National Assessments, tells an Australian parliamentary inquiry investigating pre-war claims about Iraq, that the Australian government manipulated intelligence in an effort to build support for the March 2003 US-led invasion. He explains that the government misrepresented intelligence by concealing from the public ambiguities that were present in its intelligence assessments. [Tom Paine (.com), 8/22/2003; Age (Melbourne), 8/23/2003; Independent, 8/23/2003]

Entity Tags: Andrew Wilkie

Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence

Michael Massing, the author of a probing New York Review of Books article on the poor quality of US reporting on Iraq prior to the Iraq war, will say that in the autumn of 2003, “I ran into a senior editor at the [New York] Times and asked him” why journalists were so uncritical about information from defectors like Ahmed Chalabi. “Well, he said, some reporters at the paper had relied heavily on Chalabi as a source and so were not going to write too critically about him.” Massing comments, “The editor did not name names, but he did not have to,” and notes that New York Times reporter Judith Miller has been heavily criticized for publishing stories based on information from defectors that later proved completely false. [New York Review of Books, 2/26/2004]

Entity Tags: Judith Miller, Ahmed Chalabi

Timeline Tags: Domestic Propaganda

Category Tags: Media Coverage, Politicization of Intelligence, Chalabi and the INC

Undersecretary of State for Arms Control John Bolton changes the procedures for handling intelligence in the Pentagon so that his office will receive more classified documents. “I found that there was lots of stuff that I wasn’t getting and that the INR [State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research] analysts weren’t including,” Bolton later recalls in an interview with Seymour Hersh. “I didn’t want it filtered. I wanted to see everything—to be fully informed. If that puts someone’s nose out of joint, sorry about that.” [New Yorker, 10/27/2003 Sources: John R. Bolton]

Entity Tags: John R. Bolton, Bureau of Intelligence and Research

Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence

The CIA advises President Bush of “problems with the sourcing” for prewar allegations that Iraq was producing biological weapons. [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005]

Entity Tags: George W. Bush, Central Intelligence Agency

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs

Philip Carroll, the chief adviser to the new Iraqi government’s oil ministry, and Gary Vogler, another adviser, resign and are replaced by Rob McKee, a former vice president of ConocoPhillips, and Terry Adams of BP Oil. [Muttitt, 2005; Harper's, 4/2005, pp. 75]

Entity Tags: Gary Vogler, Philip J. Carroll, Rob McKee, Terry Adams

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Motives

Iraqi oil minister Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum tells the Financial Times that Iraq is preparing plans for the privatization of the country’s oil sector. He says he supports the “full privatization of downstream installations, such as refineries, but [says] he would back production-sharing contracts upstream,” the newspaper reports. He adds that US, possibly European, oil companies will be given priority. But he also says the decision will not be made until Iraq has an elected government. “The new elected government at the end of the transitional period will decide this issue,” he tells the Times. “The Iraqi oil sector needs privatization, but it’s a cultural issue,” he explains. “People lived for the last 30 to 40 years with this idea of nationalism.” Al-Ulum—a US-trained petroleum engineer who lived in London from 1992 until the overthrow of Hussein—was part of a working group organized by the State Department’s Future of Iraq Project before the invasion (see December 20-21, 2002). [Financial Times, 9/5/2003]

Entity Tags: Ibrahim Bahr al-Ulum

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Motives

National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice says there is “absolutely” a connection between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda “[W]e know that there was training of al-Qaeda in chemical and perhaps biological warfare. We know that [Abu Musab] al-Zarqawi was networked out of there, this poisons network that was trying to spread poisons throughout…. And there was an Ansar al-Islam, which appears also to try to be operating in Iraq. So yes, the al-Qaeda link was there.” [Fox News Sunday, 9/7/2003; Global Views, 9/26/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004]

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Ansar al-Islam

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Category Tags: Iraq Ties to Terrorists Allegations, Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Al Zarqawi Allegation

Vice President Dick Cheney brings up the long discredited claim that Mohamed Atta had met with a senior Iraqi intelligence official in April of 2001. He says, “With respect to 9/11, of course, we’ve had the story… the Czechs alleged that Mohamed Atta, the lead attacker, met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence official five months before the attack, but we’ve never been able to develop anymore of that yet, either in terms of confirming it or discrediting it.” [Democracy Now!, 9/16/2003; Washington Post, 9/29/2003] But at the same time, he cites the meeting to support his contention that Iraq’s support for al-Qaeda was official government policy (see September 14, 2003).

Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Atta in Prague Connection

Vice President Dick Cheney appears on Meet the Press and tells host Tim Russert that Iraq’s support for al-Qaeda was “clearly official policy.” As evidence, he cites the alleged meeting between Mohamed Atta and Iraqi diplomat Ahmed Khalil Ibrahim Samir al-Ani (see April 8, 2001). Cheney also insists that the two trailers found in Baghdad (see April 19, 2003 and May 9, 2003) were mobile biological weapon factories, even though he was told by David Kay, the head of the Iraq Survey Group, that that was probably not the case (see July 29, 2003). [Meet the Press, 9/14/2003; Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 313]

Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Biological Weapons Trailers, Atta in Prague Connection, Chemical & Bio Weapons Allegations, Iraq Ties to Terrorists Allegations

Vice President Cheney says on NBC’s Meet the Press, “I think it’s not surprising that people make [the] connection” between Iraq and 9/11. He adds, “If we’re successful in Iraq… then we will have struck a major blow right at the heart of The Base, if you will, the geographic base of the terrorists who had us under assault now for many years, but most especially on 9/11.” However, two days later, Defense Secretary Rumsfeld states that he hasn’t “seen any indication that would lead” him to believe there was an Iraq-9/11 link. [Associated Press, 9/16/2003] National Security Adviser Rice says the administration has never accused Hussein of directing the 9/11 attacks. [Reuters, 9/16/2003] The next day, Bush also disavows the Cheney statement, stating, “We’ve had no evidence that Saddam Hussein was involved with September the 11th… [but] there’s no question that Saddam Hussein has al-Qaeda ties.” [CBS News, 9/17/2003; Washington Post, 9/18/2003]

Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush, Donald Rumsfeld

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Category Tags: Iraq Ties to Terrorists Allegations

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld says, “I’ve not seen any indication that would lead me to believe that” Iraq had a hand in the 9/11 attacks. [Associated Press, 9/16/2003]

Entity Tags: Donald Rumsfeld

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Iraq Ties to Terrorists Allegations

Representatives Porter Goss (R-FL) and Jane Harman (D-CA) of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence send a letter to CIA Director George Tenet, criticizing his agency for providing poor intelligence on Iraq during the months leading up to the invasion of Iraq. They were prompted to write the letter after spending “four months combing through 19 volumes of classified material” and discovering how poorly the evidence supported the White House’s assertions about Iraq. Bush administration officials downplay the charges. In the letter, they say the CIA provided intelligence based on “circumstantial,” “fragmentary,” and ambiguous evidence. “Thus far, it appears that these judgments were based on too many uncertainties,” they note in their letter. [Washington Post, 9/28/2003; Reuters, 9/29/2003]
Outdated, 'Piecemeal' Intelligence Used - They also accuse the CIA of using intelligence that was outdated, including assessments dating back to 1998 when the UN was forced to leave Iraq ahead of US bombing. Evidence that was recent often consisted of “piecemeal” intelligence. “Intelligence assessments that Iraq continued to pursue chemical and biological weapons… were long-standing judgments,” which “remained constant and static over the past ten years,” they complain in the letter. [Washington Post, 9/28/2003; Reuters, 9/29/2003]
'Absence of Proof' - Another criticism they have is that the intelligence agency sometimes drew conclusions based on faulty logic. “The absence of proof that chemical and biological weapons and their related development programs had been destroyed was considered proof that they continued to exist,” they say. [Washington Post, 9/28/2003; Reuters, 9/29/2003]
Dubious Sources - Lastly, they complain that the CIA uncritically accepted claims from dubious sources. In the agency’s assessments, it failed to clarify which reports “were from sources that were credible and which were from sources that would otherwise be dismissed in the absence of any other corroborating intelligence.” [Washington Post, 9/28/2003]
No 'Definitive' Intelligence - Significantly, the authors assert, “We have not found any information in the assessments that are still classified that was any more definitive.” [Washington Post, 9/28/2003]
White House Ignores Criticism - The White House dismisses the criticisms.

Entity Tags: Jane Harman, George J. Tenet, Porter J. Goss

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Politicization of Intelligence

Appearing on Meet the Press, National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice presumes to link Hussein to Osama bin Laden. “Saddam Hussein—no one has said that there is evidence that Saddam Hussein directed or controlled 9/11, but let’s be very clear, he had ties to al-Qaeda, he had al-Qaeda operatives who had operated out of Baghdad.” [MSNBC, 9/28/2003; US House Committee on Government Reform, 3/16/2004]

Entity Tags: Condoleezza Rice

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline

Category Tags: Iraq Ties to Terrorists Allegations, Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties

Robin Cook (see March 17-18, 2003) publishes portions of a diary he had kept when he was Tony Blair’s foreign minister. The published memoirs reveal—among other things—that Blair had intentionally misled the British population. [Sunday Times (London), 10/5/2003; Guardian, 10/6/2003; Cook, 8/2/2004] The diary reveals how before the war intelligence provided to Cook by British intelligence chief John Scarlett indicated that Saddam Hussein probably did not have weapons of mass destruction that could be used to attack the US or Britain. [Sunday Times (London), 10/5/2003; Guardian, 10/6/2003; Cook, 8/2/2004] Cook’s entries also show that before the war, Blair did not believe that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that could be used to attack the US or Britain. [Sunday Times (London), 10/5/2003; Guardian, 10/6/2003; Cook, 8/2/2004] Additionally, the diary shows that Tony Blair ignored the “large number of ministers who spoke up against the war.” He says that the officials in the foreign ministry were consistently opposed to the invasion of Iraq. [Sunday Times (London), 10/5/2003; Cook, 8/2/2004]

Entity Tags: Robin Cook, Tony Blair, John Scarlett

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Politicization of Intelligence

David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, tells Congress that his investigation has found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Nor has he uncovered anything to support the theory that two trailers discovered in Iraq (see April 19, 2003; May 9, 2003) were mobile biological weapons factories. [US Congress, 10/2/2003; Washington Post, 4/12/2006] After Kay’s testimony, White House officials call George Tenet and John McLaughlin and ask why Kay included such a blunt statement that the Iraq Survey Group had not found any weapons of mass destruction in the beginning of his report. Couldn’t he have buried that statement elsewhere in the report they ask. [Isikoff and Corn, 2006, pp. 329]

Entity Tags: US Congress, David Kay

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Biological Weapons Trailers

PIPA poll results by media source. [Source: PIPA] (click image to enlarge)A poll conducted by the Program on International Policy (PIPA) at the University of Maryland reveals that a majority of Americans have misperceptions about the Iraq war, and these vary significantly depending on people’s primary source of news.
48% of Americans incorrectly believe that evidence of links between Iraq and al-Qaeda has been found.
22% incorrectly believe that weapons of mass destruction have been found in Iraq.
25% incorrectly believe that world public opinion favored the US going to war with Iraq.
Overall, 60% have at least one of these misperceptions. For those who believe none of these misperceptions, only 23% support the war. But 86% of those who believe all three misperceptions support the war.
Furthermore, those who get most of their news by watching Fox News are much more likely to believe one or more of the misperceptions. Those who get their news mainly from National Public Radio (NPR) or PBS are much less likely to believe one or more of the misperceptions. The other major television networks fall in between. Such variations are also found within demographic subgroups of each audience. Interestingly, the more one watches Fox News, the more likely a person believes such misperceptions, whereas the more a person reads a newspaper, the less likely they are to believe such misperceptions. [Program on International Policy Attitudes, 10/2/2003]

Entity Tags: Program on International Policy Attitudes

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation, Domestic Propaganda

Category Tags: Media Coverage, Politicization of Intelligence, Public Opinion on Iraqi Threat

Rob McKee, chief advisor to Iraq’s oil ministry, commissions a new plan for Iraq’s oil industry, which is intended to replace the Pentagon’s original plan for privatization. The plan is written by State Department Contractor BearingPoint, but significant input comes from oil industry consultants and executives. BearingPoint’s work is overseen by Amy Jaffe of the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy of Rice University. [Democracy Now!, 3/21/2005; Harper's, 4/2005, pp. 75]

Entity Tags: Rob McKee, Amy Myers Jaffe, BearingPoint

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Motives

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern says: “The war on Iraq was just as much prompted by the strategic objectives of the state of Israel as it was the strategic objectives of the United States of America. Indeed, the people running this war are people who have worked for the government of Israel in the past, people who have prepared position papers for former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and others. These are people who are well attuned to Israel’s objectives. The authors of the Project for the New American Century [PNAC—see September 2000] have set out for the United States to become the dominant power in the world. And, Israel, for its own part, is hell bent on remaining the dominant power in the Middle East.” [Sojourners, 11/2003]

Entity Tags: Benjamin Netanyahu, Project for the New American Century, Ray McGovern

Category Tags: Motives

“Case Closed” magazine cover. [Source: Slate]On November 14, 2003, the neoconservative magazine the Weekly Standard prints a cover story by Stephen Hayes entitled “Case Closed” that attempts to revive allegations that there was a link between the Iraqi government and al-Qaeda. It claims to have new evidence of the link, based on a “top secret US government memorandum obtained by The Weekly Standard.” It quotes extensively from a classified October 27, 2003, 16-page memo written by Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith. [Weekly Standard, 11/14/2003] But the story is immediately discredited. The next day, the Defense Department issues a press release stating, “news reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaeda and Iraq… are inaccurate.” But several conservative media outlets, including the New York Post, the Washington Times, and Fox News, run with the story anyway. Conservative New York Times columnist William Safire also endorses the story. Most of the outlets that report on the story are owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns the Weekly Standard. However, most other outlets either ignore the story or write articles completely dismissing it. [Slate, 11/18/2003; Editor & Publisher, 11/18/2003] For instance, on November 19, Newsweek posts an article called “Case Decidedly Not Closed.” It notes that the Feith memo “is mostly based on unverified claims that were first advanced by some top Bush administration officials more than a year ago—and were largely discounted at the time by the US intelligence community (see August 2002), according to current and former US intelligence officials.” [Newsweek, 11/19/2003] The New York Times and Washington Post also print stories largely discrediting the Weekly Standard piece. [Slate, 11/18/2003] But nonetheless, in January 2004, Vice President Cheney will cite the article and call it the “best source of information” about the supposed pre-war Iraq-al-Qaeda link (see January 9, 2004).

Entity Tags: Douglas Feith, Stephen Hayes, US Department of Defense

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Neoconservative Influence

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Media Coverage, Politicization of Intelligence

Prominent neoconservative Richard Perle, speaking at an event organized by the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, says of the invasion of Iraq: “I think in this case international law stood in the way of doing the right thing.” According to Perle, who is a member of the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, “international law… would have required us to leave Saddam Hussein alone.” [Guardian, 11/20/2003]

Entity Tags: Richard Perle

Category Tags: Legal Justification

Former UN chief weapons inspector and US Marine intelligence officer Scott Ritter tells reporters in the British House of Commons about the existence of two secret British disinformation campaigns—Operation Mass Appeal (see 1991-2003) and Operation Rockingham (see 1991-March 2003)—which planted stories based on dubious intelligence in the domestic and foreign media between 1991 and 2003. [Guardian, 11/21/2003; BBC, 11/21/2003; Press Association (London), 11/21/2003; Guardian, 11/29/2003]

Entity Tags: Scott Ritter

Category Tags: Politicization of Intelligence

David Kay, head of the Iraq Survey Group, returns to Washington and informs CIA director George Tenet that Curveball lied about the mobile biological weapons laboratories and that he believes Iraq had no mobile labs or banned weapons. Shortly thereafter he is assigned to a windowless office without a working telephone. [Los Angeles Times, 11/20/2005]

Entity Tags: David Kay, George J. Tenet

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Biological Weapons Trailers, Alleged WMDs, Curveball Fabrications

The Mexican government sends a series of diplomatic letters to British Foreign Minister Jack Straw asking the minister if the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) had spied on UN Security Council member states prior to the US-British invasion of Iraq. [Reuters, 2/14/2004; Observer, 2/15/2004] To date, no response has been received. Nor has the British Foreign Office responded to inquiries from the press.

Entity Tags: Thomas Franks

Category Tags: Legal Justification, Spying on the UN

The American Academy of Arts and Sciences publishes a study, titled “War with Iraq: Costs, Consequences, and Alternatives,” in which one of its authors, D. Nordhaus of Yale University, writes that the Bush administration’s planned invasion of Iraq and post-invasion occupation could cost anywhere from $99 billion to more than $1.9 trillion over a decade. The study notes that the macroeconomic cost of such a military operation could be as high as $400 billion as a result of a disruption in oil markets and an ensuing recession. [Kaysen et al., 12/2002 ; Associated Press, 12/6/2002]

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Predictions

The London Daily Telegraph reports that it has obtained a copy of a memo purportedly written to Saddam Hussein by Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, the former head of the Iraqi Intelligence Service, describing a three-day “work program” Atta participated in at Abu Nidal’s base in Baghdad. The memo, dated July 1, 2001, also includes a report about a shipment sent to Iraq by way of Libya and Syria. The Telegraph asserts that the shipment is “believed to be uranium.” Future Iraqi interim Prime Minister Ayad Allawi backs the validity of the document. [Daily Telegraph, 12/14/2003] But Newsweek quickly reports that the document is probably a fabrication, citing both the FBI’s detailed Atta timeline and a document expert who, amongst other things, distrusts an unrelated second “item” on the same document, which supports a discredited claim that Iraq sought uranium from Niger. [Newsweek, 12/17/2003] Very few media outlets pick up the Telegraph’s story. It will later be revealed that many forged documents purporting a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda were left in places for US troops to find (see Shortly After April 9, 2003).

Entity Tags: Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, Mohamed Atta, Abu Nidal, Iyad Allawi, Saddam Hussein

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Niger Uranium and Plame Outing

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Atta in Prague Connection

The existence of a June 2002 memo—revealing that intelligence from the Iraqi National Congress (INC) was being sent directly to the offices of Vice President Dick Cheney and William Luti—is reported in Newsweek magazine, which also reports that Francis Brooke, a DC lobbyist for the INC, admits having supplied Cheney’s office with information pertaining to Iraq’s alleged arsenal of weapons of mass destruction and Saddam’s supposed ties to militant Islamic groups. [Newsweek, 12/15/2003 Sources: Memo, Francis Brooke] Furthermore, he acknowledges that the information provided by the INC was driven by an agenda. “I’m a smart man. I saw what they wanted, and I adapted my strategy,” he later admits. “I told them [the INC], as their campaign manager, ‘Go get me a terrorist and some WMD, because that’s what the Bush administration is interested in.’” [Vanity Fair, 5/2004, pp. 230; New Yorker, 6/7/2004] Brooke had previously worked for the Rendon Group, “a shadowy CIA-connected public-relations firm.” [Mother Jones, 1/2004] However, an unnamed Cheney aid interviewed by the same magazine flatly denies that his boss’ office had received raw intelligence on Iraq. [Newsweek, 12/15/2003 Sources: Unnamed staff aid of Dick Cheney’s office]

Entity Tags: Richard (“Dick”) Cheney, William Luti, Francis Brooke

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties, Politicization of Intelligence, Office of Special Plans

Diane Sawyer with President Bush. [Source: USA Today]President Bush gives a rare one-on-one interview to ABC’s Diane Sawyer. Among other topics addressed, he reaffirms his belief that terrorists operated in Iraq before the March 2003 invasion (citing Ansar al-Islam, “a al-Qaeda affiliate, I would call them al-Qaeda, was active in Iraq before the war, hence—a terrorist tie with Iraq…”) and that his insistence that Iraq had an active and threatening WMD program was based on “good solid intelligence[, t]he same intelligence that my predecessor [Bill Clinton] operated on.” [ABC News, 12/17/2003] In 2004, former Nixon White House counsel John Dean will respond, “His predecessor, however, never claimed that Saddam [Hussein] had imminent… nuclear capacity, nor did his predecessor say that Iraq had ties to al-Qaeda.” [Dean, 2004, pp. 153]
Iraq Had WMD Program, Bush Insists - He insists that weapons inspector David Kay proved Iraq did have a burgeoning and active WMD program (see October 2, 2003), and implies that it is just a matter of time before the actual weapons are found. Sawyer says, “But stated as a hard fact, that there were weapons of mass destruction as opposed to the possibility that he could move to acquire those weapons still,” to which Bush replies, “So what’s the difference?” Sawyer appears taken aback by the answer, and Bush continues that since it was possible Hussein would acquire WMDs, it was necessary to “get rid of him” to make “the world a safer, freer place.” Sawyer presses the point home: “What would it take to convince you he didn’t have weapons of mass destruction?” and Bush responds: “Saddam Hussein was a threat. And the fact that he is gone means America is a safer country.” Sawyer asks, “And if he doesn’t have weapons of mass destruction?” and Bush replies tartly, “Diane, you can keep asking the question. I’m telling you, I made the right decision for America. Because Saddam Hussein used weapons of mass destruction, invaded Kuwait (see August 2, 1990). But the fact that he is not there is, means America’s a more secure country.”
Why Read the News? - Sawyer later asks Bush about his reported penchant for not reading the news for himself. He confirms that he gets his news from National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, who, Sawyer says, “give you a flavor of what’s in the news.” Bush agrees that this is the case, and says, “Yeah. I get my news from people who don’t editorialize. They give me the actual news. And it makes it easier to digest, on a daily basis, the facts.” Sawyer asks, “Is it just harder to read constant criticism or to read?” to which Bush replies, “Why even put up with it when you can get the facts elsewhere? I’m a lucky man. I’ve got, it’s not just Condi and Andy. It’s all kinds of people in my administration who are charged with different responsibilities. And they come in and say, ‘this is what’s happening, this isn’t what’s happening.’” Laura Bush, who joins her husband halfway through the interview, says she reads the newspapers, including the opinion columns, but says, “I agree with him that we can actually get what is really happening from the people who really know what’s happening. And that isn’t always what you get in the newspapers.… There are certain columnists I won’t read. I mean, what, you know, why would I?” [ABC News, 12/17/2003]

Entity Tags: Diane Sawyer, Andrew Card, Al-Qaeda, Ansar al-Islam, David Kay, Saddam Hussein, William Jefferson (“Bill”) Clinton, Condoleezza Rice, Laura Bush, George W. Bush

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Alleged WMDs, Media Coverage, Politicization of Intelligence

BearingPoint and Amy Jaffe complete the State Department-commissioned plan for Iraq’s oil industry (see November 2003). The 323-page document, titled Options for Developing a Long Term Sustainable Iraqi Oil Industry, lays out seven possible models for Iraq’s oil industry, none of which is privatization. “The seven options [range] from the Saudi Aramco model, in which the government owns the whole operation from reserves to pipelines, to the Azerbaijan model, in which the state-owned assets are operated almost entirely by ‘OICs’ (International Oil Companies),” Greg Palast reports. The plan seems to favor the production-sharing agreement (PSA) model, in which oil reserves are owned by the state but operated and controlled by foreign oil companies that earn a percentage of oil sales. [Harper's, 4/2005, pp. 75] “Using some form of [production sharing agreements] with a competitive rate of return has proved the most successful way to attract [international oil company] investment to expand oil productive capacity significantly and quickly,” the report says. [United States Agency for International Development, 12/19/2005, pp. 50 ] The document makes it clear that in order to secure sufficient investment, the Iraqi government will have to offer OICs a generous portion of the oil proceeds. “Countries that do not offer risk-adjusted rates of return equal to or above other nations will be unlikely to achieve significant levels of investment, regardless of the richness of their geology,” the plan states flatly. As a case in point, the plan highlights the Azerbaijan system which it notes has “been able to partially overcome their risk profile and attract billions of dollars of investment but offering a contractual balance of commercial interests within the risk contract.” [BBC Newsnight, 3/17/2005; Democracy Now!, 3/21/2005; Harper's, 4/2005, pp. 75; United States Agency for International Development, 12/19/2005 ] Jaffe later explains to reporter Greg Palast that the oil industry prefers state ownership of Iraq’s oil over privatization because it fears a repeat of Russia’s energy privatization, which barred US oil companies from bidding on its reserves. Furthermore, another reason the oil companies oppose the neoconservatives’ privatization scheme is because they have no desire to undermine OPEC as they have no problem with high oil prices. “I’m not sure that if I’m the chair of an American company, and you put me on a lie detector test, I would say high oil prices are bad for me or my company,” she acknowledges to Palast. Similarly, a former Shell oil boss tells Palast that the interests of the neoconservatives, who were calling for total privatization, and the oil companies are “absolutely poles apart.” He says: “Many neoconservatives are people who have certain ideological beliefs about markets, about democracy, about this, that and the other. International oil companies, without exception, are very pragmatic commercial organizations. They don’t have a theology.… They are going to do what is in the best interest of their shareholders.” [Democracy Now!, 3/21/2005; Harper's, 4/2005, pp. 75] The State Department will deny the existence of this oil plan “for months,” according to Palast, who will only obtain it after identifying its title and threatening legal action against the government. [Democracy Now!, 3/21/2005; Harper's, 4/2005, pp. 75]

Entity Tags: Amy Myers Jaffe, BearingPoint

Timeline Tags: Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Motives

Journalist Andrew Cockburn asks an investigator who spent several years looking into the collapse of Ahmed Chalabi’s Petra Bank if the US government has ever questioned him about the scandal. “No, not once,” he replies, adding that journalists have also avoided reporting about Chalabi’s involvement in Petra Bank. [CounterPunch, 5/20/2004]

Entity Tags: Ahmed Chalabi, Petra Bank

Category Tags: Chalabi and the INC

Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA’s Bin Laden unit, writes in the introduction to his book Imperial Hubris, “The US invasion of Iraq was not preemption; it was—like our war on Mexico in 1846—an avaricious, premeditated, unprovoked war against a foe who posed no immediate threat but whose defeat did offer economic advantages.” [Scheuer, 2005, pp. xvi-xvii]

Entity Tags: Michael Scheuer

Category Tags: Motives

In 2005, Hutaifa Azzam, son of Abdullah Azzam, Osama bin Laden’s mentor and a longtime acquaintance of militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, says al-Zarqawi had “no relations with Osama until he left to Iraq. His relation with Osama started [in 2004] through the Internet.” [Bergen, 2006, pp. 363-364] The Atlantic Monthly will later report that negotiations between al-Zarqawi and bin Laden about an alliance between them begin in early 2004. Al-Zarqawi will pledge loyalty to bin Laden in October, “but only after eight months of often stormy negotiations” (see October 17, 2004). [Atlantic Monthly, 6/8/2006]

Entity Tags: Hutaifa Azzam, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, Iraq under US Occupation

Category Tags: Al Zarqawi Allegation, Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties

After 9/11 Commission executive director Philip Zelikow rewrites a staff report to allege links between Iraq and al-Qaeda (see January 2004), the staff confront Zelikow over the rewrite (see January 2004). The meeting between Zelikow and the staffers becomes somewhat heated, but Zelikow capitulates in the end, replacing the allegations of a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda with far more neutral language, and agreeing to let the entire issue lay until a later staff report. Author Philip Shenon will later write: “The staff suspected that Zelikow realized at the meeting that he had been caught in a clear-cut act of helping his friends in the Bush White House—that he had tried to twist the wording of the report to serve the needs of the Bush administration and its stumbling military campaign. Zelikow said later it was nothing of the sort.” Zelikow will deny allegations that he is a “White House mole,” and insist that all he wanted to do was help the commission keep “an open mind” on the subject. [Shenon, 2008, pp. 317-324]

Entity Tags: Philip Zelikow, 9/11 Commission, Al-Qaeda, Bush administration, Philip Shenon

Timeline Tags: Complete 911 Timeline, 9/11 Timeline

Category Tags: Alleged Al-Qaeda Ties