Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on Postwar Findings About Iraq's WMD Programs and Links to Terrorism and How They Compare with Prewar Assessments together with additional and Minority Views; 109th Congress 2d Session Senate S. Report 109-331
Washington DC: United States Senate, 2006. Presumed First Edition, First printing. Wraps. Format is approximately 8.25 inches by 11 inches. 148, [4] pages. Footnotes. Blacked out portions/redactions. A study conducted by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that reviewed U.S. intelligence on the existence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs, Iraq's ties to terrorist groups, Saddam Hussein's threat to stability and security in the region, and his violations of human rights. The Senate Report on Iraqi WMD Intelligence (formally, the Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq) was the report by the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concerning the U.S. intelligence community's assessments of Iraq during the time leading up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The report, which was released on July 9, 2004, identified numerous failures in the intelligence-gathering and -analysis process. The report found that these failures led to the creation of inaccurate materials that misled both government policy makers and the American public. The Committee's nine Republicans and eight Democrats agreed on the report's major conclusions and unanimously endorsed its findings. They disagreed, though, on the impact that statements on Iraq by senior members of the Bush administration had on the intelligence process. The second phase of the investigation, addressing the way senior policymakers used the intelligence, was published on May 25, 2007. Portions of the phase II report not released at that time include the review of public statements by U.S. government leaders prior to the war, and the assessment of the activities of Douglas Feith and the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans. The report's "additional views"
The Republican and Democratic members of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence voted unanimously to approve the finished report. There were, however, significant areas of disagreement, with those disagreements being expressed in the form of "additional views" attached at the end of the report proper. In the first "additional view" attached to the report, Chairman Pat Roberts (R-KS), joined by Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT) and Christopher Bond (R-MO), presents two conclusions that Democratic members of the Committee were unwilling to include in the report, even though, according to Roberts, "there was no dispute with the underlying facts." Those two conclusions related to the actions of Joseph Wilson, the former ambassador who was sent to Niger in 2002 to investigate allegations that the Iraqi government was attempting to purchase "yellowcake" uranium, presumably as part of an attempt to revive Iraq's nuclear weapons program. The two conclusions were that the plan to send Wilson to investigate the Niger allegation was suggested by Wilson's wife, a CIA employee, and that in his later public statements criticizing the Bush administration, Wilson included information he had learned from press accounts, misrepresenting it as firsthand knowledge. This additional view also discusses the question of pressure on analysts, and recommends caution in implementing reforms in the intelligence community. Senators John D. Rockefeller (D-WV) (the Committee's vice-chairman), Carl Levin (D-MI), and Richard Durbin (D-IL), used their additional view to say that the report painted an incomplete picture, because the Committee had put off until phase two of the investigation the key question of "how intelligence on Iraq was used or misused by Administration officials in public statements and reports." Because of this, they said, "the Committee's phase one report fails to fully explain the environment of intense pressure in which Intelligence Community officials were asked to render judgments on matters relating to Iraq when policy officials had already forcefully stated their own conclusions in public." The third additional view in the report is by Senator Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), with Senators Orrin Hatch (R-UT), Trent Lott (R-MS), Chuck Hagel (R-NE), and Christopher Bond (R-MO). It focuses on the issues of information sharing and Human Intelligence (HUMINT), and rebuts the allegation of "pressure" contained in the additional view by Senators Rockefeller, Levin, and Durbin. Senator Olympia Snow (R-ME) wrote in her additional view that the Committee's report revealed poor management and a lack of accountability in the intelligence community, and she called for strong reforms. Condition: Very good / No dust jacket issued.
Keywords: WMD, Weapons of Mass Destruction, Nuclear Weapons, Biological Weapons, Chemical Weapons, Delivery Systems, Al Qaeda, Terrorism, Salman Pak, Safehaven, Iraq Survey Group
[Book #85185]
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