a

debriefings.'”” On March 20, 2002, the DIA directed that all contact with Source
Two cease.!”!

(U) In March 2002, CIA’s Directorate of Operations notified CIA BW
analysts in an e-mail about the DIA and the foreign service’s concerns about
Source Two. All three CIA BW analysts told the Committee that they either
received the e-mail or knew about the concerns.'”

iy) In April 2002, the CIA published two assessments on Source Two.
The first assessment, titled
noted that DIA debriefings of Source Two “ceased because of recent disclosures to
the press of the defector’s name and location and his relationship with the U.S.
Intelligence Community.” The assessment noted that the CIA assessed that some
of Source Two’s information may be accurate, especially regarding Iraq’s
procurement and construction of mobile laboratories, but added that he could have
learned that information from press reports. The assessment said that Source Two
passed a DIA administered polygraph, but the DIA debriefer had expressed
concern that Source Two was being coached by the INC to further its goals.'”

(GH) The second assessment was more expansive, stating that the DIA
had “terminated contact with Source Two after four meetings because of
suspicions he was a fabricator and because Source Two, against direction of his
handlers, continued to cultivate a public profile after the media disclosed his

17] CIA, Assessment of the Iraqi defector April R002;
NIC Memorandum, The Iraqi National Congress Defector Program, July 10, 2002, p.4; and CIA internal
TT March 8, 2004

13ClA response to questions from Committee staff, July 18, 2006.
CIA, Iraqi defector in (iE April 2002.

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ee

report a press statement by Brigadier General Brooks, of the United States Central
Command, regarding information purportedly discovered in April 2003 at the
Salman Pak facility. The votes in person or by proxy were as follows: Chairman
Roberts — no; Senator Hatch — no; Senator DeWine — no; Senator Bond — no;
Senator Lott — no; Senator Snowe — no; Senator Hagel — aye; Senator Chambliss —
no; Vice Chairman Rockefeller — aye; Senator Levin — aye; Senator Feinstein —
aye; Senator Wyden — aye; Senator Bayh — aye; Senator Mikulski — aye; Senator
Feingold — aye.

Adoption of findings and conclusions of the report: The Use by the Intelligence
Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress.

On August 2, 2006, on motion by Vice Chairman Rockefeller, by a vote of
11 ayes and 4 noes, the Committee agreed to adopt the findings and conclusions of
the report, The Use by the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the
Iraqi National Congress. The votes in person or by proxy were as follows:
Chairman Roberts — aye; Senator Hatch — no; Senator DeWine — aye; Senator
Bond — no; Senator Lott — no; Senator Snowe — aye; Senator Hagel — aye; Senator
Chambliss — no; Vice Chairman Rockefeller — aye; Senator Levin — aye; Senator
Feinstein — aye; Senator Wyden — aye; Senator Bayh — aye; Senator Mikulski —
aye; Senator Feingold — aye.

————

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a

(U) From the outset, the Department of State was uncomfortable with part
of the INC’s original proposal that called for an INC office inside regime-
controlled Iraq. According to a General Accounting Office (GAO) report that
examined issues affecting funding of the INCSF, State officials said, “the presence
of U.S.-funded INCSF staff within Iraq could open the door to potentially
disastrous diplomatic situations if INCSF operatives were caught and/or killed by
Iraqi troops.””’ The Department of State told the Committee it was concerned
about funding what it believed constituted a clandestine intelligence capability
inside Iraq. According to the former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near
East Affairs, the bureau that handled the INC grant, he believed there was an
incompatibility between the use of State Department Economic Support Funds —
which usually fund economic and social development activities — for the INC and
the INC’s sense of its own mission, which was a national liberation movement.

He told Committee staff that operations inside regime-controlled Iraq “whether for
espionage purposes or for other purposes wasn’t clear to me, but that was a
constant element of tension between us and the INC. And I make no judgments on
the validity of their agenda, simply that for an ESF-funded program it did not seem
to me to be a good fit.”

(U) The INC resisted the policy prohibiting operations inside Iraq, believing
that doing so was essential for the success of its programs. The conflict between
State and the INCSF about this issue delayed authorization and funding for INC
collection activities until a March 2001 amendment to the cooperative agreement

until March 2001.

According to Department of State responses to questions from Committee staff, the policy prohibiting
INC programs inside regime-controlled Iraq was set by the Principals’ Committee after extensive and thorough
consideration of the risks and rewards of such action by the INC. The policy was reviewed on a number of
occasions, but remained unchanged until just prior to start of Operation Iraqi Freedom. August 24, 2004,

GAO Report to Congressional Requesters, State Department, Jssues Affecting Funding of Iraqi National
Congress Support Foundation (GAO-04-559), April 2004, p. 9-10.

Committee staff interview with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Near East Asia, July 14, 2006.

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re [eee

The Intelligence Community does not fully understand why CURVE
BALL provided false information, and may never know. While the
Committee cannot rule out that CURVE BALL was influenced by the
INC, the available information supports CIA’s conclusion that the
INC probably played no role in CURVE BALL’s fabrication.

Conclusion

The findings contained in this report are, for the most part, an accurate
depiction of the results of the Committee’s inquiry. The findings tell the actual
story of the Intelligence Community’s use of information obtained from the INC.
It is our hope that the American people will read the factual findings contained in
the body of the report and reach their own conclusions. They should not rely on
the adopted conclusions attached to this report. These conclusions are replete with
inaccuracies and omissions; they are not consistent with the facts found by the
Committee’s inquiry. These conclusions do not meet the Committee’s obligations
to the Senate and to the American people.

We are concerned that members of the Committee have perpetrated the very
offense for which they so often charge the Intelligence Community and the
Administration. Whether these actions were based on politics, a lack of
objectivity, or the desire to meet theoretical public expectations, a majority of the
Committee chose to support amended conclusions that rely upon “cherry-picked”
facts to validate preconceived notions concerning the INC’s relationship with the
Intelligence Community.

We find this action alarming. When the Select Committee on Intelligence
knowingly approves facts and conclusions that contain the inaccuracies, omissions
and mischaracterizations outlined above, it begins to diminish its own credibility.
Once diminished, that credibility will be difficult to regain.

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opportunities. For example, an INC-affiliated defector told the CIA
in February 2003 that an Iraqi intelligence officer told him that “Iraq
was providing true and accurate information to the UN inspectors and
noted that Iraq was ready for war.” The CIA headquarters told the
CIA Station involved that given several concerns, including the
defector’s past exposure in the media and his employment with the
INC, “we do not have any operational interest in further pursuing [the
Iraqi] at this time.” The information was never disseminated in
intelligence reporting to analysts or policymakers.

CURVE BALL and the INC

Myth: There is an insufficient basis to determine whether CURVE
BALL, the key source of intelligence about Iraq’s alleged mobile
biological weapons program, provided his information at the
behest of the INC.

Reality: While we cannot rule out that CURVE BALL provided his
information at the behest of the INC, we have enough information
to judge that it is unlikely.

While we certainly cannot rule out that CURVE BALL provided his
information at the behest of the INC, the INC’s modus operandi leads to the
conclusion that it is unlikely. Several of the facts related to this issue were
omitted in amended Conclusion 8. This is unfortunate. While we can understand
that reasonable people may come to different opinions based on the same
evidence, the decision to distort the facts, by eliminating some of them from the
final conclusion, is not in keeping with this Committee’s record of forthrightness.

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Page 150


PAT ROBERTS, KANSAS, CHAIRMAN.
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, WEST VIRGINIA, VICE CHAIRMAN

ORRIN G. HATCH, UTAH ‘CARL LEVIN, MICHIGAN
‘MIKE DEWINE, OHIO DIANNE FEINSTEIN, CALIFORNIA

rade reve a
pint art ae a waren ni enate
ain Sie Ca Ee

SAXBY CHAMBLISS, GEORGIA

SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE

‘BILL FRIST, TENNESSEE, EX OFFICIO WASHINGTON, DC 20510-6475

HARRY REID, NEVADA, EX OFFICIO

JAMES D, HENSLER, JR, STAFF DIRECTOR AND CHIEF COUNSEL September 8, 2006
SRONEWW. IGUNSON, MNORITY STAFF RECTOR
KATHLGEN F MCGHEE. CME CLERK

The Honorable Ted Stevens
President Pro Tempore
United States Senate
Washington, D.C. 20510

Dear Mr. President:

On behalf of the Select Committee on Intelligence, we submit the following
unclassified reports, together with additional and minority views, for filing with
the Senate: (1) Postwar Findings about Iraq’s WMD Programs and Links to
Terrorism and How they Compare with Prewar Assessments and (2) The Use by
the Intelligence Community of Information Provided by the Iraqi National
Congress.

Senate Resolution 400 of the 94" Congress (1976) charges the Committee
with the duty to oversee and make continuing studies of the intelligence activities
and programs of the United States Government, and to report to the Senate
concerning those activities and programs. Pursuant to its responsibilities under
Senate Resolution 400, the Committee has undertaken an in-depth examination of
the matters described in the reports.

Both reports have been approved by the Committee in both classified and
unclassified form. The classified reports are available to Members for reading at
the Committee. The classified reports will also be provided to appropriately
cleared officials of the Executive branch.

The unclassified versions of the reports, which are hereby transmitted for
printing, are intended to provide the Senate, and through it, the American public, a
substantial factual record upon which to consider the issues covered by the
reports.

fle noe

t Roberts John D. Rockefeller IV
Chairman Vice Chairman


only on the sources who were members of the INC. However, in some cases, the
DIA neglected to describe even INC members as members of an opposition group
in their reporting. In some reports the DIA would describe a defector as a member
of the Iraqi opposition, while other reports about the same defector would not.
This suggests that the failure to identify the defectors in some reports as members
of the opposition was not the result of concerns about identifying the source, but
was probably the result of carelessness. It is even more surprising that CIA
collectors, who were extremely skeptical of INC sources and even resisted dealing
with them due to lingering concerns from the agency’s mid-1990s relationship
with the INC, failed to identify a INC-linked defector’s opposition affiliation in its
disseminated reporting.

(U) The Committee believes that a source’s opposition affiliation, whether a
member of an opposition group or referred by a member of an opposition group,
should be characterized in a report’s source description. In its July 2004 Iraq
report the Committee explained the responsibility of intelligence analysts to
clearly convey to the policymaker what they know, what they do not know, what
they think, and to make sure the policymaker understands the difference.
Intelligence analysts will never succeed in this task if they remain uninformed
about significant source information, such as the source’s affiliation with an
opposition group. Such information will help analysts understand the source’s
motivation for providing information. In the INC-affiliated defector cases, the
failure to identify the sources as affiliated with an opposition group was largely
inconsequential because extensive media reporting about the INC-affiliated
defectors alerted intelligence analysts to their INC-affiliation. Nonetheless,
collectors cannot rely on the media to provide information about their sources to
intelligence analysts and must, therefore, ensure that they provide all pertinent
information to the analysts.

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a i i —

the United States. The e-mail said the FBI Legal Attache should expect a call
from an unnamed INC representative who had information on “Iraqi efforts to
train non-Iraqi Arabs to conduct airplane hijackings and other terrorist acts against
Americans.””"! Later that morning, an INC representative called the FBI Legal
Attache. The INC representative said he only had second or third hand knowledge
of the defector’s information and said his role was only in brokering an
introduction. The two made arrangements for a debriefing of Source Three.”

| On October 10, 2001, the FBI Legal Attache debriefed Source
Three. According to the FBI reports about the debriefing, Source Three told the
FBI that he had worked for Mand was not a member of
the IIS. The FBI, which had primacy on the debrief because of Source Three’s
information on the individual in the United States, did not continue to pursue
discussions with him, noting that he was unable to provide specific information
pertaining to terrorist training activities.

(U) The FBI referred Source Three to the CIA and the DIA because he
demonstrated “a great deal of knowledge about Iraqi politics.””°? The FBI did
contact the individual in the United States who had been identified by Source
Three. The results of those interactions and other FBI] and CIA contact with that
individual are outlined in the next section of the report.

(U) The CIA and the DIA continued to debrief Source Three about
information related to the Fedayeen Saddam organization and training. In
response to questions from the debriefers about INC attempts to coach Source
Three, he told the debriefers that his INC handler did not prime him with

oe CIA operational cable, ctober 001.
203 CIA operational cable, tober 001.

FBI, October 9, 2001.

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But, the Committee has uncovered no such evidence. Just as there is no evidence
that INC information was the basis for the Intelligence Community’s judgments
about Iraq’s WMD programs.

Accordingly, we would have concluded the following with respect to
CURVE BALL’s relationship with the INC:

Conclusion: It is unlikely that the HUMINT source CURVE
BALL, the Intelligence Community’s primary source of
intelligence about Iraq’s alleged biological weapons program,
provided his information at the behest of the INC. Beginning in
2000, CURVE BALL provided information to a foreign liaison
intelligence service alleging that Iraq had a mobile biolgical weapons
program. CURVE BALL was the key source that led the Intelligence
Community to judge in the October 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that “Baghdad has mobile
facilities for producing bacterial and toxin BW agents.” The Iraq
Survey Group’s (ISG) investigation of CURVE BALL’s information
in the summer and fall of 2003 revealed that CURVE BALL provided
false information to the Intelligence Community prior to the war. The
ISG also discovered that CURVE BALL had a relative who had
worked for the INC since 1992, which led to initial suspicion in the
Central Intelligence Agency that CURVE BALL may have provided
false information at the INC’s behest.

The CIA has since concluded that CURVE BALL’s relative’s
connection to the INC was coincidental. The CIA based its
conclusion, in part, on the fact that CURVE BALL’s relative said he
maintained minimal contact with CURVE BALL but that he did call
CURVE BALL in 2001 on behalf of the INC to ascertain whether

——— ——__  _—_—

Page 153


(U) Despite the assertion in Jragi Support to Terrorism that the “defectors
claimed that al-Qa’ida and other non-Iraqis” trained at Salman Pak, Committee
staff found no reports from these defectors claiming that it was members of al-
Qa’ida who received the training. In fact, Source Three and Source Four (who is
discussed below) specifically told their debriefers that they did not know whether
the non-Iraqi Arabs were al-Qa’ida members.”

(B The Intelligence Community did not have any further direct contact with

Source Three after
e Intelligence Community has no information on his

location after that time. 7°”

23:

CIA intelligence reports.

37 CA operational cable EEE, SeptemberfJ 2002.

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ee

assassination of Saddam Hussein.” Senior CIA officials immediately sought to
ascertain whether there was any truth to the information.”

(U) In early March 1995, CIA elements confirmed that they continued to
tell the parties involved that:

This is not a U.S.-backed action. It is purely an Iraqi “plan.” No money or
material support has been or will be given to it. The U.S. military will not
provide a no-fly zone, or in any way will the U.S. military support the
action. The U.S. will not support assassinations or unnecessary bloodshed.
[A CIA representative] has underscored the point that the U.S. is opposed to
an action that leads to civil war or a popular uprising. The U.S. strongly
opposes the Kurds attempting to occupy Mawsil and Kirkuk for the sake of
making these Kurdish cities.>!

(U) This was the first time the CIA representative reported that opposition
leaders had been informed that the U.S. would not provide a no-fly zone or that
the U.S. opposed an action that would lead to a popular uprising.

(U) In early March 1995, on the day the operation was set to go forward,
the U.S. Government, at the instruction of the National Security Council (NSC),
delivered to all of the opposition members involved a message which outlined two
points:

A) The action you have planned for this weekend has been totally

compromised; and

se Staff interviews with CIA officers.
3 Staff interview with CIA officer.
CIA Operational Cable, March 1995.

ss

Page 16


converted to passivity and a reluctance to exploit future opportunities. This
misinterpretation of some of the flawed conclusions of this report would serve to

undermine future intelligence opportunities, without which we could be
unnecessarily disarmed.

ORRIN G. HATCH,
PAT ROBERTS.

Page 198


Iraq’s WMD programs or links to terrorism. As it relates to prewar assessments of
Iraq’s WMD programs, INC information did not significantly affect intelligence
judgments. Only one key judgment in the October 2002 National Intelligence
Estimate (NIE), /raq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction
contained corroborating information from an INC-affiliated source and, according
to the CIA, that judgment would not have changed had the information from that
source not been considered. Indeed, of the 45 human intelligence (HUMINT)
sources cited in the WMD NIE, only two were affiliated with the INC — and that
does not account for the vast amount of information in the WMD NIE derived
from signals intelligence, imagery, and HUMINT sources not specifically cited.
The INC did not supply information used to support the Intelligence Community’s
key judgments about Iraq’s links to terrorism.

These facts should be sufficient to lay to rest the myth that INC information
led to the intelligence failure on Iraq. Indeed, the popular misconception is likely
based on past, and continued, media reporting on these INC sources. Given the
level of media attention the INC sources have received, it would be quite easy for
an uninformed observer to conclude that these sources formed the bulk of
intelligence supporting prewar intelligence assessments on Iraq. The conclusion is
seemingly buttressed by several media organizations that reported the accounts
that INC sources had provided to the Intelligence Community, often with
embellishments that never made their way into intelligence products. Although
the media chose to highlight the information provided by these INC sources, the
facts demonstrate that the Intelligence Community did not.

Unfortunately, if the public focuses only on the conclusions adopted by
several members of this Committee, they will not get the full story. The adopted
conclusions are not supported by fact. Taken as a whole, they misrepresent the
INC’s relationship to the Intelligence Community, leaving the impression that the
INC (with the knowledge and acquiescence of intelligence officials and policy

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a

defectors as not having direct access to the information and in some
cases described the information they provided as “questionable” or
“exaggerated.” Ironically, despite describing that reporting as
exaggerated, three of the CIA assessments which used INC-affiliated
information actually mischaracterized both the content and some of
the concerns about the reporting, making it appear more sensational
and questionable than it was. The CIA assessments said the defectors
alleged that “al-Qa’ida and other non-Iraqis engaged in special
operations training at Salman Pak,” but the defectors had reported the
training of only non-Iraqi Arabs, not al-Qa’ida members. In addition,
the assessments said that two of the defectors did not have direct
access to the reporting they provided. In one case, the defector did
have direct access. In the other case, the CIA was not in a position to
judge the access of the defector because the CIA had never spoken to
the defector and did not know his identity. The analysts used the
information from a magazine article which described an unnamed
defector.

Characterization of INC-related Sources and Information

As with most HUMINT reporting, information provided by INC sources to
the Intelligence Community was a mixed bag — some was accurate, some
inaccurate, and some, even in hindsight, remains ambiguous. What is clear,
however, is that the Intelligence Community used information from only one INC-
affiliated defector to support only one key assessment in prewar intelligence
products. No other INC information, inaccurate or accurate, was used to support
any other key assessments.

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Page 135


MINORITY VIEWS OF SENATOR HATCH JOINED BY
CHAIRMAN ROBERTS

(U) The Committee’s work on this subject adds much needed granularity to
a complex story that has been the subject of much speculation and, in some
quarters, denunciation. The responsibility of the Committee was to examine, in
documents and interviews, the use of information provided by the Iraqi National
Congress (INC) to the U.S. Intelligence Community. Such a review required an
examination of the INC’s contribution to our collection efforts and the role such
collection played in our analysis. This examination needed, as well, to examine
questions of counterintelligence procedures and the possibility of failures. Finally,
the question of the INC’s role with our Intelligence Community involves the use
of influence activities and actions to change the Iraqi leadership. In examining all
of these aspects, the Committee’s investigation sheds light on strengths and
weaknesses of past Intelligence Community actions.

(U) Beyond this scope, however, lies the question of the interaction of
intelligence and policy. While intelligence founders when disconnected from
policy, policy success or failure rarely weighs solely on intelligence. The
intelligence process has been fraught enough with weaknesses and failures without
bearing this burden. For an exposition of those weaknesses and failures, the
reader is directed to the Committee’s first report, U.S. Intelligence Community’s
Prewar Intelligence Assessment on Iraq, July, 2004. This report, while
contributing specificity on the question of the use of INC information by the
Intelligence Community, provides additional examples to support the conclusions
of the previous report, without, in my opinion, revealing new failures or
weaknesses as a result of our relations with an emigre group.

(U) While the findings of this report are well-founded, I cannot support the
Conclusions, as amended. It is my own assessment that these conclusions

i

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—_—SE

training, because of difficulties with the sources and the fact that, at the time, al-
Qa’ ida could have offered such training at its own camps in Afghanistan. The
DIA reported in November 2003 that postwar exploitation of the facility found it
“devoid of valuable intelligence.” The assessment added that CIA exploitation
“found nothing of intelligence value remained and assessed the Iraqi Intelligence
Service (IIS) cleaned it out.” The DIA assessment concluded that “we do not
know whether the ex-regime trained terrorists on the aircraft at Salman Pak.”
Intelligence reporting on the Salman Pak facility in late April 2003 indicated the
plane had been dismantled. The CIA and the DIA told the Committee in 2006
that postwar site exploitation of Salman Pak has yielded no indications that
training of al-Qa’ida linked individuals took place there. In June 2006, the DIA
told the Committee that is has no “credible reports that non-Iraqis were trained to
conduct or support transnational terrorist operations at Salman Pak after 1991.
The Committee’s investigation supports the DIA assessment that there was no
credible reporting on al-Qa’ida training at Salman Pak or anywhere else in Iraq.

c. Operational alliance of Irag and al-Qa'ida against the United States

° “There is certainly clear evidence that Saddam Hussein cavorts with terrorists. I think
that if you asked, do we know that he had a role in 9/11, no, we don’t know that he had a
role in 9/11. But I think this is a test that sets a bar that is far too high.” — National
Security Advisor Rice, September 8, 2002

. “Al-Qa’ida hides. Saddam doesn’t, but the danger is, is that they work in concert. The
danger is, is that al-Qa’ida becomes an extension of Saddam’s madness and his hatred
and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world...[Y]ou can’t
distinguish between al-Qa’ida and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror.” —
President Bush, September 25, 2002.

. “We know that al-Qa’ida is operating in Iraq today, and that little happens in Iraq without

the knowledge of the Saddam Hussein regime...Moreover, if he decided it was in his
interest to conceal his responsibility for an attack on the U.S., providing WMD to

—————  i—_——

Page 179


The intelligence assessment concluded that:

Source Three’s claim that the Fedayeen has a special unit trained for
special operations, iM, is consistent with
other intelligence reporting, but the precise mission, size, location,
equipment, and intended targets of this unit are unclear. [Other

intelligence] shows a special operations training
facility hat includes a village mock-up, a derelict

aircraft, and string of three railcars identified by Source Three.

— Several Iraqi security organizations use the facility.
Source Three’s report of non-Iraqis training there is possible, but

Source Three was clear that he had no firsthand information linking
activities at [the facility] to 11 September.”

(GMD) In February 2002, a CIA station MEdrafted another

intelligence report based on information from Source Three about suicide

CIA, Iraq: Defector January [i 2002.
CIA, Iraq: Defector , Janu: 2002.

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222
223


—EEE

documentation to support its contention that concerns about INC reliability were
expressed to DIA counterparts in writing or that there were a “series” of concerns
expressed to DIA.

(U) DIA officers who were responsible for the program said they were
already aware of these issues, and made sure to incorporate them into their
assumptions and briefings about the program.” October 2002 DIA briefing slides
about its plans for the program noted that two of DIA’s assumptions were that the
“INC will use the relationship to promote its agenda” and the “INC is penetrated
by hostile intelligence services.”

(GD D1A’s briefing about its intentions for the ICP also said that DIA
planned to have strong counterintelligence support Pt
ee: it implemented the program. DIA told the
Committee that it used analysts in debriefing sessions, sometimes meeting directly
with sources, to obtain first-hand feedback on intelligence information. DIA
counterintelligence officers reviewed DIA’s operations and monitored intelligence
and open source information for potential threats to DIA’s efforts. | |

(HEBD The DIA provided the ICP monthly payments

throughout its operation of the program. In exchange, the ICP provided the DIA

x Interview with DIA Officials, November 16, 2005.
7 DIA Operational Proposal, October 21, 2002, p.11.
DIA response to Committee staff questions, April 27, 2006.

ee —

Page 33


from [RE 1021 source who said that on the way to the

meeting he heard the INC representative tell Source Eighteen to “deliver the act of
a lifetime.” The case officer said that he did not act on the information,
“understanding the level of jealousy/animosity between the INC and the [local
source].”*!° The next day, the CIA and DIA debriefed Source Eighteen. Source
Eighteen was supposed to have a nuclear engineering background, but was unable
to discuss advanced mathematics or physics and described types of “nuclear”
reactors that do not exist. Source Eighteen used the bathroom frequently,
particularly when he appeared to be flustered by a line of questioning, suddenly
remembering a new piece of information upon his return. During one such
incident Source Eighteen appeared to be reviewing notes.*”

(GRD The case officers judged that Source Eighteen was a fabricator.
The Intelligence Community had no further contact with him and did not
disseminate any reporting from him.

|

he CIA contacted DIA headquarters to inform DIA of the
results of the meeting, and DIA concurred with CIA’s intent to discontinue
contact.*?!

319

52 pclA operations cable, ebruaryil, 2003.
321 CIA operations cable, ‘ebruary ff 2003.
CIA operations cable, ‘ebruary 2003 and CIA responses to questions from Committee

staff, May 25, 2006.

|

Page 104


 ———_--- —_—

information was corroborated by a credible body of reporting from other
sources.'!” The specific uses of INC-affiliated defector reporting related to these

issues are described in more detail below.
(U) The following section of the report provides detailed information on the
INC-affiliated sources, the information they provided, and how Intelligence

Community analysts and collectors used their information.

1. Source One

ty) Source One,

n Iraqi ho lived
and worked in Baghdad until e defected to Syria. In
December 2001, Source One met with INC representatives who
facilitated his travel to Asia and his introduction to the international media.
According to the DIA, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for
Command, Control, Communications and Intelligence notified the Director of DIA
that he had been contacted by former Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) James
Woolsey about Source One.'® Mr. Woolsey told Committee staff that he did not
recall making this referral to the Department of Defense, though he did not rule it
out"?

7

118
19

CIA response to Committee questions, January 10, 2006, p. 2.

Responses to questions from Committee staff, August 26, 2005.

Former DCI James Woolsey met Ahmed Chalabi in the late 1990s when both men were witnesses
during a Senate Foreign Relations Subcommittee on Near Eastern and South Asian Affairs hearing on Iraq. Shortly
after the hearing, Mr. Chalabi called Mr. Woolsey seeking his legal assistance for eight members of the Iraqi
Opposition, including members of the INC, who had been detained in California by the Immigration and
Naturalization Service. Mr. Woolsey agreed to become co-counsel in the case, eventually winning the release of all
eight Iraqis by early 2001. Mr. Woolsey told Committee staff that he came to know Mr. Chalabi slightly in the
course of that representation and came to know his clients well. Mr. Woolsey recalled receiving information on two
sources, and believed he received the information on one of them from one of his clients or from an INC
representative. He did not recall receiving any information on the sources from Mr. Chalabi, but said it was possible

Page 40


He February 2004, INC Source #1 showed

deception on questions related to his continued contact with the INC, whether the
INC provided him with information to give to the U.S. government, whether the
INC provided him information on the suspect nuclear facility at | to give
to the U.S. government, and whether the | | facility even existed. In July
2004, the CIA concluded the intelligence reporting of INC Source #1 on weapons
of mass destruction facilities in Iraq “remains questionable and, on a nuclear
facility at MM, demonstrably incorrect.”

The Committee’s investigation concluded that postwar findings do not
support the October 2002 NIE judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear
weapons program. The Committee concluded further that the intelligence
community failed to reconsider its assessment on the suspect nuclear facility at [lf
HE based on the findings of the IAEA inspectors. This also is an example of
information from an INC defector that purported to show evidence of Iraq
weapons of mass destruction but was subsequently determined to be false.

2. Iraq’s mobile biological weapons laboratories

. “From three Iraqi defectors we know that Iraq, in the late 1990's, had several mobile
biological weapons labs. These are designed to produce germ warfare agents, and can be
moved from place to place to evade inspectors.” — President Bush, January 28, 2003

. “One of the most worrisome things that emerges from the thick intelligence file we have
on Iraq’s biological weapons is the existence of mobile production facilities used to make
biological agents. Let me take you inside that intelligence file and share with you what
we know from eyewitnesses....His [the source codenamed Curveball] eyewitness account

a —___—- —_—

Page 165


a —_—

to Secretary Powell, the analyst who coordinated the speech said that “we lost the
thread of concern .. . as time progressed I don’t think we remembered.” A CIA
supervisor noted that, “clearly we had it at one point, we understood, we had
concerns about the source, but over time it started getting used again and there
really was a loss of corporate awareness that we had a problem with the source.”"*

(U) The analysts also noted that the original reporting was not recalled and
was not altered in any way to reflect the fact that a fabrication notice had been
issued. In addition, there was not a practice in Intelligence Community at the time
of electronically attaching a fabrication notice to the original reporting. Asa
result, when analysts searched their electronic files even after the fabrication
notice had been issued, there was no indication of the notice.'®®

(U) The CIA and the DIA told the Committee in the January 2004 joint
notification that the May 2002 fabrication notice, “was intended to warn analysts
reviewing the IIRs that the source may be unreliable. Regrettably, the fabrication
notice overstated the reservation DIA had about the source.” The notification
added that the decision to issue the notice was based on a “determination he had
been coached by the INC,'®’ the fact that he was conveying similar information to
the news media, and the foreign intelligence service concerns, regarding the
veracity of Source Two’s reporting based on its prior experience with him. DIA
debriefers believed further questioning was appropriate.”'** Since Operation Iraqi

185
186
187

Staff interview with CIA analysts, July 26, 2006, (2006-3248).

Staff interview with CIA analysts, July 26, 2006, (2006-3248).

The DIA officer who debriefed Source Two told Committee staff that he believed Source Two showed
indications of having been coached, but that he had not assessed that the INC had coached him. Staff interview with
DIA officer, March 31, 2006.

Letter to SSCI Chairman Roberts from DIA and CIA, January 27, 2004.

a — —

Page 65


These hallmark reports were appropriate, well-written, and deserved our foremost
attention. Yet, for the past two years, rather than pursue our oversight role to
ensure that some of the key findings and recommendations of these reports and
others were enacted, this Committee’s usefulness as an oversight body and as a
key element in our national security apparatus has been consumed by a rear-view
mirror investigation pursued for political ends. If this second-round investigation
had offered the Congress and the American people additional insights that the
plethora of previous reports had overlooked, then we would have stood together in
full support of it. The truth is, however, that it does not. Consequently, we are at
this juncture — five years since 9/11 and months since terrorists in the United
Kingdom attempted a potentially even more devastating and horrible attack on this
nation and our British allies — wasting valuable time that could be used to conduct
intensive oversight of our new intelligence structure. The cement is still wet on
intelligence reform, and it should be the primary business of the Committee to
oversee it aggressively.

(U) The report the Committee produced in July 2004 resulted in the
Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act of 2004, which reorganized the
Intelligence Community and created the Office of the Director of National
Intelligence. All 15 members of the Committee signed on to this bipartisan effort.
That report highlighted areas for follow-up that the Executive Branch and the
Congress could use to improve our national security. We applauded the
Committee for its collaborative efforts in producing that report and looked to get
to work overseeing the Intelligence Community, instead we found ourselves
bogged down with yet another investigation.

(U) Simply stated, this second series of reports is designed to point fingers
in Washington and at the Administration. The conclusions in the reports were
crafted with more partisan bias than we have witnessed in a long time in Congress.
The “Phase II” investigation has turned the Senate Intelligence Committee, a

a

Page 204


ee

decision was “ill-advised,” perhaps they should have written to Mr. Wolfowitz or
the DIA Director, or taken some other action, to express their concerns.

We believed then, as we do today, that the Intelligence Community should
not disregard potential sources of information simply because they have an
agenda, or because of counterintelligence concerns. Intelligence is a tough
business, especially when dealing with HUMINT sources. They all have agendas;
they all raise counterintelligence concerns. Accordingly, we would have
concluded the following:

Conclusion: The Committee believes that intelligence collectors
should seek to exploit all potential sources of human intelligence
(HUMINT) regardless of their agenda. Furthermore, the
Committee rejects the idea that opposition sources are inherently
more unreliable than other HUMINT sources. While opposition
sources usually have a clearly articulated agenda — removal of the
regime to which they are opposed — all HUMINT sources should be
presumed to have an agenda. The Intelligence Community often tells
the Committee that HUMINT sources take great risks when they
cooperate with U.S. intelligence officers. They are motivated to do
this for a reason, whether to make money, be relocated, or undermine
a government. It is the responsibility of intelligence officers to
determine and understand that motivation, exploit it if possible, and
accurately report what the source says with appropriate warnings or
caveats about the source’s agenda. It is the responsibility of analysts
to assess the information, take account of the warnings, and convey
the information and their judgments to policymakers accordingly.

The CIA’s resistence to dealing with the INC because of the group’s
agenda may have caused the agency to miss potential collection

Page 149


The written material provided to the Intelligence Community (IC) by
the Iraqi National Congress contains little of current intelligence

value.

. Overall, the order of battle information throughout the documents was
generally accurate — matching existing IC holdings that are based on
all-source reporting. In some significant areas that information,
although correct, is out of date and no longer useful.

. An extensive report on the Iraqi Special Security Organization
contained numerous errors.

. Some of the documents include long lists of names and titles, but few

have addresses or phone numbers that would increase their value.

The intelligence value of almost all the data provided by the INC is
diminished by our inability to assess the origin and authenticity of the
documents. None of the documents, except press clippings, has
sourcing or attribution that can be verified or traced.

. The numerous press clippings included are openly available through
the Internet or the Foreign Broadcast Information Service.!””

(U) The DIA received documents from INC-affiliated sources before and
during its official management of the ICP. In each case documents were
disseminated as reporting from sources or as attachments to the source

107 Iraq: Evaluation of Documents Provided by the Iraqi National Congress, National Intelligence Council,
August 9, 2002.

a —___—_—

Page 36


(U) DIA analysts used the first intelligence report in which Source Three
was the subsource in a Defense Intelligence Terrorism Summary (DITSUM) on
September 30, 2001, titled Terrorists Allegedly Training at Iraqi Camps.’ The
DITSUM said “Salman Pak was purportedly used to train non-Iraqi Arabs in
hijacking operations while underwater demolition training took place at Lake
Tharthar.” The DITSUM comment noted that “there is presently no other
indication that terrorists are training at these facilities.”!*

(U) On October 3, 2001, a CIA station which had been contacted about
Source Three by both the DIA and the CIA, asked CIA headquarters to have the
INC’s Washington representatives instruct Source Three to come to the U.S.
embassy in that country for an interview. On October 4, 2001, the INC’s
Washington representative went to the Department of State to discuss Source
Three. A CIA officer also attended the meeting. The INC’s Washington
representative again noted that Source Three had information about an Iraqi
HE © fficer who had worked at a terrorist training facility, Salman Pak. An
operations cable about the meeting said, “this officer specialized in training non-
Iraqi Arabs in hijacking civil aircraft” and had relocated to the United States.’ At
the meeting, the Department of State provided the INC’s Washington
representative with the telephone number of the FBI Legal Attache in the same
foreign country, with the direction that the INC’s representatives in that country
contact the Attache.”

(U) On October 5, 2001, U.S. embassy officials received a Department of
State e-mail outlining Source Three’s information about the individual living in

197 DIA, DITSUM, Terrorists Allegedly Training at Iragi Camps, September 30, 2001.

199 DIA, DITSUM, Terrorists Allegedly Training at Iraqi Camps, September 30, 2001.
200 CIA operational cable,
CIA operational cable,

Page 68


extrapolate from the substance of the findings. (I direct the reader to the detailed
“Additional Views” of Chairman Roberts, which J endorse.) Whether by varying
but unsubstantiated analysis, or a “group think” that has developed that perceives
the INC as nefarious in motives or practices, or the mere commission of
extrapolation from a small sample of contradicted examples, I believe the
Committee’s conclusions come dangerously close to committing the errors in
analysis we have previously exposed in the first phase of investigation concluded
in July, 2004. To commit these errors, in my opinion, seriously undermines the
role of the Committee in conducting constructive oversight that will have
long-term positive support for the Intelligence Community.

(U) In reviewing the use of INC-provided information, it is useful to read
the findings in the context of the four traditional practices of intelligence:

(U) Collection: It is difficult to conclude that the INC did not make a
positive, but limited, contribution to our collection efforts. While keeping in mind
that intelligence collected is rarely pure, and rarely does a source — or, in the case
of the INC, a compilation of sources over an extended period of time — give clear
or complete or even uncontradicted information, it is hard to imagine, however,
that the INC should have been ignored as a source of intelligence, given
established requirements related to actions directed to changing the Iraqi
leadership. It is well-known that, at the time, our sources in Iraq and the region
were slight, at best. The INC, an organization of disparate representatives from
across Iraq’s sectarian, cultural and generational lines that shared our opposition to
the Saddam Hussein regime, provided a natural opportunity to exploit sources at a
time when we suffered a dearth of such access. To not have collected from the
INC would have been an unacceptable failure.

(U) As the report reveals, the quality of intelligence gathered through the
INC was of a wide variety in subject and quality. Throughout the relationship

a - -—- — —

Page 191


(U) In conclusion, the Iraqi National Congress did not seek to deceive the
US. Intelligence Community, nor were they primary sources of the majority of our
intelligence assessments — accurate and inaccurate — leading up to the Iraq war.
The quality of the information they provided to the Intelligence Community at a
time when we had limited intelligence access to Iraq varied — from important
tactical information, to mostly incidental information, to occasions of inaccurate
and incorrect reporting. In that sense their record is indistinguishable from the
historical record of intelligence relationships with emigre groups. Certain
analytical mistakes were made by our Intelligence Community analysts — along the
lines the Committee has previously exposed in our July, 2004 report.

(U) My concern is that, with the amended conclusions, which I and others
argue in additional remarks here extend beyond the findings of the report, we
signal to the Intelligence Community an unfounded caution against working with
emigre groups in the future. Emigre groups have agendas, about which we
certainly must be aware. As a result, reporting from emigre groups poses analytic
challenges, to which our analysts must be trained to scrutinize. Emigre groups
pose counterintelligence challenges — and opportunities — that our Intelligence
Community must be trained to detect — and exploit. And emigre groups are rarely
easy to control, even were it desirable to do so. But these cautions should not be

a

Page 197


IV. ALLEGED INC-LINKED SOURCES
A, CURVE BALL

(U) The Senate Intelligence Committee’s July 2004 report, the U.S.
Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, examined the
role of a foreign liaison service source, code named CURVE BALL, in the
Intelligence Community’s judgments about Iraq’s biological weapons program.
CURVE BALL was the source that led the Intelligence Community to judge in the
2002 NIE on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that “Baghdad has mobile facilities for
producing bacterial and toxin BW agents.” There were three other sources who
the Intelligence Community believed corroborated CURVE BALL’s reporting*”,
but CURVE BALL was the Intelligence Community’s primary source on the BW
program, providing more than 100 reports on Iraq’s alleged BW program while the
other sources provided one each. As one analyst described to Committee staff,
without CURVE BALL, “. . . you probably could only honestly say that Iraq
would be motivated to have a mobile BW program and that it was attempting to
procure components that would support that.”°TM

(U) The Committee noted in its July 2004 report that uncertainties about
CURVE BALL’s reliability had been raised in CIA operations cables but were not
disseminated to analysts outside the CIA. Despite these warnings, and perhaps in
part because of the limited dissemination of those warnings, the Intelligence

322 National Intelligence Estimate, Jraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, October
2002.
323506 pages 148-161 of the Committee’s July 2004 Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the
US. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq for a discussion of all four sources and their
role in thg Iptelligence Community’s judgments about a mobile biological weapons program.
Report of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar

Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, July 9, 2004.

a a

Page 105


a -  _—

serious consideration” before using Curveball’s information publicly.” Despite
these concerns, Curveball’s reporting was included, without caveat, in Secretary
Powell’s UN speech. On May 26, 2004, the CIA officially issued a fabrication
notice and recalled Curveball’s reporting.

One source used by the intelligence community to corroborate Curveball’s
reporting about Iraq’s mobile biologicals weapons program was INC Source #2.
The Committee investigation found three separate intelligence community
assessments from April to July 2002 that suggested INC Source #2 fabricated
information he provided the intelligence community, which included a claim that
in 1996 Iraq decided to establish mobile biological laboratories to evade UN
inspections. In two separate April 2002 assessments on INC Source #2’s
reporting, the CIA reported the concerns of the DIA debriefer that INC Source #2
was being coached by the INC and stated that the DIA had terminated contact with
INC Source #2 because of suspicions he was a fabricator.

[The Committee was told that the decision to classify the information in the
above paragraph explaining the existence of an Intelligence Community document
about the claims made by INC Source #2 was made by the Office of the Vice
President. We have concluded that there is no justifiable basis for classifying this
information. ]

In May 2002, the DIA issued a formal fabrication notice on INC Source #2
stating that “his information is assessed as unreliable, and, in some instances, pure
fabrication. We have determined that he had also been coached by the Iraqi
National Congress (INC) prior to the meeting with western intelligence services.”

ee

Page 168


a —____— _—_—

ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF CHAIRMAN ROBERTS JOINED BY SENATORS HATCH,
DEWINE, LOTT, CHAMBLISS, AND WARNER

If you’re trying to say that the INC is the one that pushed us to go to war because
of the WMD reporting, that’s wrong.
— CIA Officer, Directorate of Operations

Over thirty years ago, the Select Committee on Intelligence was established
to “oversee and make continuing studies of the intelligence activities and
programs of the United States Government.” To meet our obligations to the
Senate and the American people, the members of this Committee are provided
with access to some of the most sensitive intelligence information possessed, and
reporting produced, by the United States Government. We have a responsibility to
ground our oversight in fact. Recommendations or conclusions drawn from our
oversight should be based on these facts and sound intelligence policy — free from
partisan political bias.

We met our obligations and responsibilities when the Committee produced
the first phase of its review of prewar intelligence on Iraq. The Committee
employed an exacting and thorough methodology in the first phase of our review.
The hard work of members and staff culminated in the adoption of a unanimous
report. That report identified significant, systemic failures in prewar intelligence
on Iraq, and its conclusions contributed to needed reforms of our Intelligence
Community. When we expanded the scope of our review, Committee staff were
instructed to use that same approach for all five elements of “Phase II.”

Regrettably, with the adoption of the amended conclusions now contained
in this report, the Committee has failed to meet its obligations and responsibilities
as they relate to our review of the use by the Intelligence Community of
information provided by the Iraqi National Congress (INC). These failures are

a

Page 127


the eastern side of the Tigris iver DT  _ __

(U) The Intelligence Community identified a site they believed matched
Source One’s description, however, there were several inconsistencies between
Source One’s reporting and the identified site. Source One reported that the
construction of the facility had begun in 1999, but construction on the site
identified by intelligence began in the summer of 1998. In addition, the facility
identified was located on the eastern side of the Tigris river, but Source One told
his debriefers he did not recall seeing the river adjacent to the construction site.
He described a concrete pit that exited one of the buildings and drained into an
open pit, which intelligence could neither confirm nor deny. Finally, Source One
drew a sketch of the site indicating at least six small buildings, but intelligence of
the site did not match his sketch. In each case these inconsistencies were included
in the reporting.’

(U) Source One’s reporting specifically on this facility was included in two
finished intelligence assessments, the October 2002 NIE on Jraq’s Continuing
Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, and a DIA assessment, Iraq ’s
Reemerging Nuclear Weapon Program, published a month earlier. The NIE
included a text box on the reporting on the facility entitled “New Nuclear
Facility?” The text box outlined several points about Source One’s reporting that
drove the Intelligence Community’s concerns that the facility may have been
nuclear related.

B4 ra Intelligence Reports, July 200:
135 DIA Intelligence Reports, July 200:

Page 46


the plane had been dismantled. DIA and CENTCOM assess the plane was sold for
99258
scrap.

(U) In a June 2006 response to questions from Committee staff, DIA said it
has “no credible reports that non-Iraqis were trained to conduct or support
transnational terrorist operations at Salman Pak after 1991. DIA assessed that
following Operation Desert Storm, Salman Pak became well known to the general
public as a center for terrorist training, weapons of mass destruction storage and
other sensitive activities. As a result, “fabricators and unestablished sources who
reported hearsay or thirdhand information created a large volume of human
intelligence reporting. This type of reporting surged after September 2001 and
continued well after the capture of Salman Pak.”””

(U) In June 2006, CIA told the Committee that:

There was information developed after OIF that indicated terrorists
were trained at Salman Pak; there was an apparent surge of such
reporting. As with past information, however, the reporting is vague
and difficult to substantiate. As was the case with the prewar
reporting, however, the postwar sources provided few details, and it is
difficult to conclude from their second-hand accounts whether Iraq
was training al-Qa’ida members, as opposed to other foreign
nationals. Postwar site exploitation of Salman Pak has yielded no
indications that training of al-Qa’ida linked individuals took place
there, and we have no information from detainees on this issue.

258
259
260

Director for Intelligence (J2) Memo to DEPSECDEF, The Salman Pak Facility, November 10, 2003.
DIA Response to SSCI Question, June 7, 2006.
CIA notes on Committee draft report, June 2006.

a

Page 88


the only INC leader willing to devote his time and energy to the organization.”””

The CIA awarded Chalabi for his efforts in 1994 in recognition of his
distinguished service in facilitating a cease-fire agreement between two warring
Kurdish groups in northern Iraq. The award submission praised Chalabi and
another INC leadership council member noting:

Their display of perseverance and fortitude during this trying and dangerous
time was invaluable in helping concerned parties to bring about a cease-fire
and establish mechanisms for policing a sustained period of calm. Due to
their combined efforts, negotiations were successfully carried out between
the two principal Kurdish leaders and the viability and integrity of INC
efforts in Northern Iraq were sustained.

(U) Despite this process, problems between Chalabi and the CIA escalated
in late 1994 and early 1995 when a tenuous ease-fire between the two Kurdish
parties in northern Iraq was breaking down while, at the same time, the opposition
was making plans to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

(U) In December 1994, the INC leadership council member reportedly made
claims that the U.S. supported a plan to lead an opposition force into Iraq to join
with military commanders of an Iraqi Corp in an attack against the regime. This
plan was reportedly an attempt to prevent renewed fighting between Kurdish
opposition groups, by telling the two groups that renewed fighting would interfere
with the operation against the Saddam regime. The plan was soon abandoned due
to an admonishment from CIA.”

RCIA's Relationship with Ahmad Chalabi, July 1997.
CIA Operational cable, January 1995.

— i+.

Page 9


V. CONCLUSIONS .... 0... cece ccc nent ees 113
COMMITTEE ACTION . 2.0.0... 0c cece eee teen t ene nen enes 123
ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF CHAIRMAN ROBERTS ........ 0-0 essere eres 125

ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF CHAIRMAN ROBERTS JOINED BY SENATORS HATCH,
DEWINE, LOTT, CHAMBLISS, AND WARNER... 0.000000 eee eens 127

ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF VICE CHAIRMAN JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV,
SENATORS CARL LEVIN, DIANNE FEINSTEIN, RON WYDEN, EVAN BAYH,
BARBARA MIKULSKI, AND RUSS FEINGOLD ........0--- 0500s e eee 158

MINORITY VIEWS OF SENATOR HATCH JOINED BY
CHAIRMAN ROBERTS ....... 0000 eee ete eee te teen e ete nee 190

ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF SENATOR DEWINE



Amended Conclusion 8 kept the portion of the Committee staff's drafted
conclusion which said, “CJA also assessed that CURVE BALL did not fit the
pattern of the typical INC-influenced defection in that the INC did not broker his
introduction to the Intelligence Community and did not put him in front of the
media.” But, the amended conclusion struck the next portion of explanation:

Throughout its history with the Intelligence Community, until
October 2002 when the INC agreed to refrain from media exposure
for its defectors, the INC actively and persistently courted the media
with its defector information. Almost immediately upon locating a
defector with information deemed pertinent, the INC brought the
defector to the media to tell his or her story and ensure that the INC’s
role in finding the defector was acknowledged. The INC was even
more adamant about maintaining an intermediary role when it brought
defectors to the Intelligence Community. CURVE BALL’s case, in
which a foreign intelligence service approached him, does not fit this
pattern.

This is significant because the amended conclusion omits the explanation
that CURVE BALL was not paraded before the media nor did he have his
relationship brokered with the Intelligence Community, as was the case with all of
the other INC-affiliated defectors. CURVE BALL was not even a walk-in source
who offered up a story about Iraq’s mobile biological weapons program. CURVE
BALL was identified by a foreign government service when he applied for
asylum. During a standard screening process, the foreign government service
reviewed the paperwork he submitted as part of his asylum application and noticed
that he had previously been a civil engineer in Iraq.

To conclude that the INC played a role in CURVE BALL’s introduction to
the Intelligence Community, one must ignore all of the facts regarding the INC’s

a

Page 151


ss

account while traveling the highway from one of his work sites to his home. The
other information was “common knowledge.”!”°

(U) In early 2002, after an article outlining Source One’s information about
suspect WMD facilities appeared in the media, foreign intelligence services began
contacting CIA for information about Source One.'”” In mid-February, the CIA
began forwarding Source One’s reporting to two foreign intelligence services.'”*

(U) In March 2002, in preparation for a video teleconference to discuss the
new source, the DIA provided Intelligence Community counterparts with
information on Source One which noted that much of his information “has been
corroborated by the IC” and that he had been “vetted extensively” but noted that
he “does NOT have specific knowledge of concealed WMD/ballistic missile
locations.”!”°

(GE On March 6, 2002, after receiving the DIA information, a
Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) nuclear analyst,
who had access to a copy of an (that referenced Source One’s
information,'*° forwarded the information to an INR chemical/biological weapons
analyst noting the following:

On the nuclear side, the source indeed has a remarkable memory and
has clearly been to many sites. His information is useful. But

ed DIA intelligence report March [ji2002.
128 CIA operational cable February 2002.
CIA operational cable February[il2002.

129 DIA briefing slides, March 6, 2002.

30 The Department of State informed the Committee that the INR nuclear analyst does not recall how he
came into possession of theffJ document. The analyst presumed copies were distributed to other Intelligence
Community agenices.

a i

Page 43



—————  —s—

National Security Advisor Rice stated that there were shipments to Iraq of
aluminum tubes that were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs.”
Twelve days later, the Vice President referred to the aluminum tubes as
“irrefutable evidence” that Saddam had reconstituted his nuclear weapons
program. At the time of those statements, there were significant differences of
opinion in the intelligence community about the purpose of the tubes. In fact, both
the Department of Energy’s Office of Intelligence and the State Department’s
Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) assessed that the aluminum tubes
sought by Iraq were probably not intended for a nuclear program. Those DOE and
INR assessments were discussed both in the October 2002 NIE and in the
President’s one-page summary of that NIE. The President’s summary stated that
“State/INR and DOE believe that the tubes more likely are intended for
conventional weapons uses.”

Despite the fact that clear differences of opinion on the purpose for the
tubes were included in both the NIE and the President’s summary, Dr. Rice stated
on July 11, 2003 that “If there were any doubts about the underlying intelligence
to the NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the President, to the Vice
President, or to me.”

Just weeks later, on July 30th, Dr. Rice stated that it had been the
“consensus view” that the tubes were suitable for use in an Iraqi nuclear weapons
program. Dr. Rice’s statement, like those made nearly a year earlier, was not
consistent with underlying intelligence.

Postwar findings support the assessment of the Departments of Energy and
State that the aluminum tubes were probably not intended for a nuclear program.

The intelligence community was so skeptical of the claim that Iraq was
seeking uranium from Niger that Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) George

a eee

Page 162


influence/control of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and is not considered to be
very credible.”?”°

(GD Following his debriefings with U.S. intelligence, Source Three’s
story began to appear in the press. The CIA judged the press reports to be more
sensational than the accounts provided to the Intelligence Community. In January
2002, the CIA published an intelligence assessment which described the
Intelligence Community’s contact with Source Three and a description of the
contents of a media story. i? The assessment
said, “the information Source Three provided to debriefers was less sensational,
more detailed, and more credible than depicted in recent [press].” The assessment
pointed out several discrepancies between the two accounts:

The magazine reported that Source Three was a Brigadier General in
the Iraqi intelligence service who personally directed a special
operations unit in Saddam’s Fedayeen, the al-Qarai’a Force, which
trained to conduct airborne operations, underwater demolition,
sabotage, and VIP security. Source Three told debriefers that he was
never an intelligence officer and never controlled these forces.

The magazine indicated that the al-Qaria’a force consisted of 1,200
personnel stationed at the IIS’s Salman Pak special operations facility
who were trained for suicide missions. Source Three told debriefers
that the al-Qaria’a force was composed of only 520 personnel capable
of unconventional warfare missions but trained more as an internal
security force. He opined that perhaps two men out of a hundred
would actually perform suicide missions if directed.

221
221

Page 74


a

Operation Iraqi Freedom, however. The first report, dated October 31, 2001, said
that the former Fedayeen Saddam captain said U.S. news accounts of his activities
at the training camp Mad been distorted because the INC
translator involved in the press interviews had distorted what he said. This was
the only mention of the source’s INC-affiliation in any of the three disseminated
reports.” The report said that Source Four had never provided training in terrorist
techniques. He oversaw two groups of Fedayeen Saddam trainees, taking care of
their administrative needs and providing rifle and pistol training. He was at the
camp for only eight months, but did observe Iraqi intelligence trainers teaching
techniques for hijacking aircraft, buses and trains. The report also said he
occasionally observed men he believed to be non-Iraqi Arabs receiving terrorist
training in these tactics. He observed between 70-75 non-Iraqi Arab trainees. He
could not evaluate their nationalities, nor whether any of them participated in the
September 11 attacks. The source description said Source Four was “a contact
with excellent access who spoke in confidence but who does not have an
established reporting record.”?"

(U) The second report described details of a typical training day at the
camp. The report described a typical camp hijacking scenario which would
involve a five-member team, two to control the crew and three to control the
passengers. The report said that between 1994 and 1995 approximately 75 non-
Iraqi Arabs or Arab extremists trained at the camp.“ The third report provided
information on the Fedayeen Saddam and locations associated with the Fedayeen
Saddam and the Ba’ath Party in Baghdad and another Iraqi city.”

24, a response to questions from Committee staff, CIA said it omitted Source Four’s INC affiliation from
its reporting because CIA did not know how much, if any, support Source Four had received from the INC.

24 CIA intelligence report, November! 001.
245 CIA intelligence report, November 2001.
CIA intelligence report, November f§-2001.

i  2=_————s

Page 83


109" Congress
2d Session SENATE

REPORT
OF THE
SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
ON

THE USE BY THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY OF
INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE
IRAQI NATIONAL CONGRESS

together with

ADDITIONAL VIEWS

September 8, 2006 - Ordered to be printed



officials told Committee staff that they were able to observe how the INC operated
openly and that the judgments about CURVE BALL were made from those
observations.**° The CIA acknowledged that there is no concrete evidence that
CURVE BALL was not working at the behest of or influenced by the INC, but
assessed that “CURVE BALL’s connection to the INC was coincidental.”

(U) Ahmed Chalabi and two other INC officials have told Committee staff
that the INC had no involvement with CURVE BALL and, to this day, they do not
know who CURVE BALL is. Chalabi said that the INC had done their own
investigation to find out “who he was” and whether there was any truth to
suggestions that he had a close relative in the INC. Chalabi said the investigation
did not turn up anyone in the INC who had this close relative in the European
country, where CURVE BALL resides. CIA officers told the Committee that it
was hard to believe that no one Chalabi knew in the INC did not have this close
relative in the European country. One officer added, “I find that a non-credible
statement.” When asked if they had any examples of any INC officials who do
have this close relative in the European country in question, a CIA officer said,
“we didn’t follow the INC with that kind of detail so I can’t answer that.”

(U) Chalabi and two other INC officials denied ever attempting to bring any
sources to the Intelligence Community, or anyone else, without openly identifying
the INC’s involvement.***

336
337
338

Interview with CIA officers, July 20, 2006.
CIA response to questions from Committee staff, January 10, 2006.
Staff interviews with INC officials.

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counselor for those who have complaints about politicization, biased reporting or
the lack of objective analysis. After interviewing about two dozen analysts and
managers involved in the CIA’s June 2002 analytical paper entitled Jraq and al-
Qaida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, the CIA Ombudsman told the
Committee that he felt the “hammering” by the Bush Administration on Iraq
intelligence was harder than he had previously witnessed in his 32-year career
with the agency. Director Tenet confirmed to the Committee that some agency
officials raised with him personally the matter of the repetitive tasking and the
pressure it created during this time. The Director’s counsel to those who raised
the issue was to “relieve the pressure” by refusing to respond to repeated questions
where no additional information existed. He confirmed to the Committee that:
“The issue where there was intense focus and questioning where analysts felt
pressure was Iraq and al-Qa’ida.”

In Congressional testimony in June 2006, Paul Pillar, the National
Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia from 2000-2005 and a key
participant in analytical judgments on Iraq before the war, described how this
pressure was brought to bear:

“Unfortunately, this issue [of pressure] has been reduced in some post-
mortem inquiries to a question of whether policy-makers twisted analysts’
arms. That question is insufficient. Such blatant attempts at politicization
are relatively rare, and when they do occur are almost never successful. It is
more important to ask about the overall environment in which intelligence
analysts worked.

“Tt is one thing to work in an environment in which policy-makers are
known to want the most objective analysis, wherever the evidence may lead.
It is quite another thing to work in an environment in which the policy-
maker has already set his course, is using intelligence to publicly justify the

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The CIA told the Committee that its analysts tended not to rely on non-
specific prewar opposition reporting alleging WMD or terrorism-related activities
“because they were not first-hand accounts from sources with verifiable access.”
A CIA review of 23 INC-affiliated defector reports which contained WMD,
terrorism, or other potentially significant information, said “few of the 23 reports
were cited in CIA finished intelligence production or affected prewar assessments.
As [the Committee] is already aware, reporting from [two sources] was used in
assessments of Salman Pak, but our analytic judgments on those substantive issues
did not rely solely on reports from those sources. Aside from those two sources,
most of the other reports were of marginal value to the CIA finished intelligence
production and had almost no impact on CIA analytic assessments.”>”

The CIA comments corroborate the finding of the Commission on the
Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass
Destruction (WMD Commission). In its report, the WMD Commission wrote,
“Over all, CIA’s post-war investigations revealed that INC-related sources had a
minimal impact on pre-war assessments.” The WMD Commission noted that two
INC-affiliated defectors whose information was included in the WMD NIE “had a
negligible impact on the overall assessments.”

The Committee’s review supports the comments of the WMD Commission
and the responses from the Intelligence Community. For example, as the findings
portion of this report shows, the Committee found that only one Intelligence
Community assessment used INC-affiliated reporting at all — the WMD NIE. In
that NIE, the Intelligence Community used information from only one INC-
affiliated source in support of only one key judgment — that Iraq had a mobile

342 The CIA initiated this review at the request of Committee staff. Committee staff did not request that the
CIA review reporting from the two defectors used in the WMD NIE because at this request, Committee staff was
already aware that the reporting from these two sources had been used.

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The Committee has uncovered information in its investigation that shows
that the Administration ignored warnings prior to the war about the veracity of the
intelligence it trumpeted publicly to support its case that Iraq was an imminent
threat to the security of the United States. Key justifications used by the
Administration to strengthen the case for military action against Iraq —i.e., (1)
reconstitution of its nuclear weapons program, (2) construction of mobile
biological weapons laboratories, (3) support for al-Qa’ida and links to the 9/11
plot — relied at least in part on information known at the time to be suspect or
outright false.

1. Reconstitution of Iraq’s nuclear weapons program

. “[Saddam] is a dangerous man who possesses the world’s most dangerous weapons.” —
President Bush, March 22, 2002

. “Many of us are convinced that Saddam will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.” — Vice
President Cheney, August 26, 2002

. “We do know that there have been shipments going...into Iraq...of aluminum tubes that
really are only suited to — high-quality aluminum tubes that are only really suited for
nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.” — National Security Advisor Rice,
September 8, 2002

° “...he [Saddam] has been seeking to acquire ...the kinds of tubes that are necessary to
build a centrifuge....But we do know, with absolute certainty, that he is using his
procurement system to acquire the equipment he needs in order to enrich uranium to build
a nuclear weapon.” — Vice President Cheney, September 8, 2002

. “Very likely all they need to complete a weapon is fissile material — and they are, at this

moment, seeking that material — both from foreign sources and the capability to produce
it indigenously.” — Secretary Rumsfeld, September 19, 2002

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a ——____—__ _—_—_—

TABLE OF CONTENTS
TL. INTRODUCTION ........ 0.00 cece eee nee tenes 3
Il. BACKGROUND ON IC RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE INC ......... 5
Il. INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE INC .............-.---500- 35
A. INC Documents .. 0c. c cnet een ttn 35
B. INC-Affiliated Sources 0.00.0 cc cece tenets 37
1. Source One... ... cece eee eee een nen e nee 40
a. Suspect Nuclear Facility Reporting ................. 45

d. Postwar Findings .....60 0 ccc cece e eee 50

2. Source TWO 2... cece cc eee eee eee e ete een ene 57

3. Source Three ........ eee cee cette eee eens 66

a. Mistaken Identity 0.0.6.0 60 cccccceeeenee 76

b. Intelligence Assessments ... 0.6 c cece v ene ees 78

4. Source Four .. 0... cece cece ete ete etree ene es 81

a. Postwar Information on Salman Pak .....++0+ 000000 87

5. Source Five ..... eee cece eee ete eee ete nee 89

6. The Would-Be Defector .......... 0.0 cece eee creer eens 92

C. INC Reporting During DIA’s Management of the ICP ........++++ 93
1. CIA Debrief of INC-walk in (Source Eighteen) ............ 103

IV. ALLEGED INC-LINKED SOURCES .............000 eee 105
A. CURVE BALL... cc cece tne ees 105
B. Source Nineteen .... 0. ccc cet eee eens 110

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between the CIA and the INC, there are reports to the lack of value gained from
INC sources. However, in other instances, both CIA and DIA report, at various
times during their relationships, to the value of intelligence gathered. DIA
perhaps best summarizes when indicating that “its experience with the INC ICP
(Information Collection Program) sources is similar to that with many HUMINT
sources.” While it appears that the most valuable information appears to be related
to tactical military issues, this information cannot be discounted when considering
that such information was used, for example, to attempt to track movements by
key members of the regime in the days before Operation Iraqi Freedom, or perhaps
more importantly, to avoid civilian casualties by identifying important medical
facilities during our planning of air strikes.

(U) Analysis: The question should be: How was the information collected
by the INC used by our own analysts? As a point of departure on this question, a
sense of proportion should be applied: Between 1997 and the beginning of
Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Intelligence Community provided tens of thousands
of assessments on the key questions of Iraq’s WMD programs and Iraq’s ties to
terrorism. For this period, the Committee has reviewed over 40,000 finished
intelligence products from the CIA alone. As revealed in the findings of this
report, INC-affiliated reporting contributed to less than 20 products of finished
intelligence. As the report reveals, CIA, DIA and Department of State all reported
to the Committee that INC-affiliated intelligence contributed minimally to finished
intelligence. The amended conclusion to this report, therefore, that information
from INC-affiliated sources was “widely distributed” appears to exaggerate the
truth. It is worthwhile noting that the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities
of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction (the so-called WMD
Commission) similarly concluded: “Over all, CIA’s post-war investigations
revealed that INC-related sources had a minimal impact on pre-war assessments.”

 —  —— ——

Page 192


B. Source Nineteen

iy On February 27, 2002, Source Nineteen an Iraqi defector. (|

alked in to a third country [ED
. Officers from both the CIA and the

Embassy in the Middle Eas!
third country’s intelligence service
debriefed him four times. Source Nineteen claimed to have worked as a civilian
employee in the IIS from 1988 to 2001, initially as a driver. He claimed that he
was aware of four trucks in Iraq that carried biological and nuclear material and
that in 1995 al-Qa’ida sent some of its members to receive training at a Baghdad
intelligence school. He also provided the names of individuals he said were Iraqi
intelligence agents posted abroad. The July 2002 NIC Memorandum noted that he
“provided somewhat sensational information on subjects to which he seemed
unlikely to have access,” including Iraqi involvement in terrorist training, IIS
assassination techniques, locations of biological and nuclear weapons material,
subsonic bullets, and a secret weapon that fired poison darts. He was also unable
to provide basic organizational information on the IIS that would show familiarity
with the organization.*?

(U) Operations traffic regarding Source Nineteen said that while he “has not
apparently been associated with the Iraqi opposition, his purported access to the
several areas of sensational information reminds us of another high-profile case
that was run... by the INC. There may be no INC angle to this case, but subject’s
claims regarding al-Qa’ida and Iraqi atrocities could easily wind up in the press.”
Another operations cable noted that Source Nineteen did speak with a journalist
from an unnamed Iraqi opposition newspaper while in the Middle East [i but
said he broke contact because the journalist refused to pay him for interviews.

339 NIC Memorandum, The Iraqi National Congress Defector Program, July 10, 2002, p.3.

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a

(U) During the time it managed the program, the Department of State did
not interview or debrief INC-affiliated sources. The Department of State did
receive documents from the ICP, which it provided to the Intelligence Community
for review and analysis. A discussion of the analysis of those documents follows
later in this report. Several Intelligence Community agencies conducted debriefs
of INC-affiliated sources during this time period, details of which are also
discussed later in this report.

(U) In late October 2002, the DIA assumed formal responsibility for the
program. The letter of agreement between the Department of Defense and the INC
stated that “the information collection effort will place primary emphasis upon
debriefing Iraqi citizens worldwide who can establish and maintain a continuous
flow of tactical and strategic information regarding Iraq, in general, and the
Saddam Hussein regime, in particular.” Under the terms of the agreement between
the DIA and the INC, the INC committed to “NOT publicize or communicate in
any way with anyone any of its information collection operations or announce the
names and activities of Iraqi expatriates without prior written authorization from
DIA.” This was a distinct departure from the INC’s publicity activities under
Department of State management. The INC also agreed to “NOT conduct any
intelligence collection operations in Iraq without prior authorization from DIA.””
In a letter to the Committee in September 2002, Deputy Secretary of Defense
Wolfowitz said the program would, “debrief Iraqi citizens presented by the Iraqi
National Congress” as having information on key military and intelligence
questions.®' The letter added:

89 Department of State responses to questions from Committee staff, February 7, 2006.
Letter Agreement between the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the Iraqi National Congress’
Information Collection Program (INC/ICP) on the Provision of Intelligence Support to INC/ICP, October 25, 2002.
Letter to Committee Chairman Bob Graham, September 12, 2002.

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a

One DIA report described a debrief with Source Five in which the source claimed
to have seen Saddam meeting with a man, who Uday Hussein identified as bin
Ladin. Uday told Source Five he was there to discuss training of some of his
people in Iraq.” Source Five passed a DIA administered polygraph in which the
source was questioned about provided reports, including the report on having seen
bin Ladin meeting with Saddam.”

(U) The comment section of the bin Ladin meeting report noted that it
appeared to the reporting officer that Source Five may have reconsidered how the
bin Ladin information was presented during the public disclosures and in the
interim, had prepared for the reporting officer a careful, somewhat circumscribed,
delivery of this part of the story. “Based on a preliminary examination, [Source
Five’s] travel documents appear to support the basic facts of how [Source Five]
left Iraq. The documents neither confirm nor deny the claim of long-term close
personal access to Saddam and his inner circle. Significant further vetting of
source is appropriate.”?°”

valuation in October 2002 which indicated
that Source Five’ bin Ladin story appeared to be more or less cogent, but was

perhaps contaminated with pockets of coached fabrications. DIA administered a
polygraph of Source Five in November 2002 in which the source was assessed to

264
265,

66D IA intelligence report, eptember! 002.

DIA intelligence report, September [2002, and staff interview with DIA officers,
November, 005

DIA intelligence report NE, September p002.

Page 90


resources that were allocated to support the Iraqi National Congress with relatively
little pay-off, should have been taken into more account by the National Security
Council. This was a failure of policy in determining the appropriate allocation of
intelligence resources, however, and not of the Intelligence Community in
carrying out its mission to collect against the Iraqi target.

Impact on Policymakers of Intelligence Obtained from the Iragi National
Congress_

While the first three conclusions of the report find that information provided
by defectors affiliated with the Iraqi National Congress had a great impact on our
intelligence estimates produced prior to the War, I do not believe that the
Committee’s report actually has made a convincing case for those conclusions.

The Committee was able to identify only two sources with ties to the Iraqi
National Congress who provided information that arguably had an impact on pre-
war U.S. intelligence, Source 1 and Source 2. Information from both Source 1 and
Source 2 was used in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate titled Jraq’s
Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, and Source 2's
information was used in Secretary of State Powell’s February 2003 UN Speech.

Source 1 provided information on a facility that the Intelligence Community
alleged to be a suspect Iraqi nuclear facility. Regarding the National Intelligence
Estimate, however, Source 1’s information on the alleged suspect nuclear facility
was only included in a text box that advised readers that a new nuclear facility
may have been identified. The information provided by Source 1 was not in fact
used in the key judgments or full text of the NIE.

Source 2 was one of four sources for the now discredited assessment that
Iraq had a biological program based on mobile labs. Source 2, however, was not a

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—[ESE

responded to the question previously. Much of the interview involved the INC
officials providing information about another INC-affiliated source.”

(U) The CIA included the intelligence reports from Source Four’s
Intelligence Community debriefs in three comprehensive assessments about Iraq’s
links to al-Qa’ida that included Source Three’s information: the June 2002, Iraq
and al-Qa’ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, and September 2002 and
January 2003 versions of Iraqi Support for Terrorism.”

fy Source Four is one of the two “other” defectors cited in the Jraqi
Support for Terrorism papers as follows:

[Three] defectors claimed that al-Qa’ida and other non-
Iraqis engaged in special operations training at

HE was subsequently determined, however, that at
least one of these defectors, whose story appeared in the

media (I, had embellished and

exaggerated his access. The other two reported similar
information but apparently did not have first-hand access
to it.

(U) Because Source Four’s source description said he had “excellent

access,” Committee staff asked for the basis for saying in Jraqi Support to
Terrorism that he “apparently did not have first-hand access to” the information.

x Source Four press interview.
250 CIA, Iraq and al-Qa'ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, June 21, 2002, p 6.
CIA, /raqi Support to Terrorism, September 19, 2002, p. 14 and January 29, 2003, p. 17-18.

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Page 85


Saddam could be removed simply by detaining him in Ujah and waiting for the
Iraqi people to rise up. The plan would only be workable if there were large
diversions in Mosul and Kirkuk, coordinated with uprisings in the Shi’a south.
Accordingly, the cable noted that Chalabi was in close contact with the Kurdish
groups about these plans and was attempting to reinvigorate ties with Iran and
Shi’a opposition exiles in Iran. The cable said that the KDP and PUK were too
busy fighting each other to think much about Chalabi’s plan. The field report
concluded that instability in Iraq could “provoke the opposition to implement its
‘plan’ on very short notice. CIA Field elements estimated that opposition
‘planning’ that may seem farfetched at this point could, with another sharp
downturn of the situation in Iraq, come to pass.”

(U) In early March, field reports noted a deteriorating situation in northern
Iraq, including the movement of Turkish troops along the Iraqi border and Iraqi
tanks shelling the town of Kifri. Unilateral CIA reporting indicated that the KDP
intended to attack PUK positions, and might have been cooperating in a Turkish
plan to launch large-scale counterinsurgency operations against the Kurdistan
Workers Party (PKK), a militant Kurdish terrorist group, in PUK controlled
areas. The reporting also noted that the plan to detain Saddam in Ujah appeared
to be gaining support in the south and the north. In early March, a CIA
representative met with a representative of the Supreme Council for the Islamic
Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), who said SCIRI’s armed wing, the Badr Corps, Shi’a
tribes, and other Shi’a resistance groups in the south would support the early
March coup attempt.” The details of the plan were outlined in a March 2, 1995
CIA intelligence report.

aca Operational cable, February 1995.
26ClA Operational cables, March 1995.
CIA Operational cable, March 1995,

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Page 13


auspices of DIA was a prudent effort to more fully evaluate the INC information.
As noted in the preceding report, the Department of State’s Bureau of Near
Eastern Affairs (NEA), “believed it was unable to determine, without a
professional assessment by the Intelligence Community, the value of the
information the ICP did share. NEA believed, therefore, that the program should
be managed by other agencies more experienced in managing intelligence
collection.” The recognition that the Intelligence Community provided a
mechanism to allow for more in-depth assessment of the ICP information was
correct; however, the Community’s lack of management controls and adherence to
its own procedures resulted in critical errors. These mistakes point to the urgent
need for increased attention to asset validation procedures and the strengthening of
those procedures throughout the Intelligence Community.

(U) Concerns raised by the CIA and the State Department prior to DIA
assuming control of the ICP should have alerted DIA that dealing with the INC
and reporting any information they offered would require the most stringent
attention to asset validation procedures to ensure the correct source descriptions
and proper caveats were placed on all information derived from the INC.
Although it is apparent that the Intelligence Community did undertake some
attempts at asset validation, it is clear that these efforts were uneven. For
example, DIA provided an adequate source description in some of its reports, but
inexplicably failed to do so in others. The Committee found that DIA and CIA
“were inconsistent in identifying their reporting from INC-affiliated defectors and
INC members as opposition-affiliated reporting.” This demonstrates the lack of
attention in the field and oversight by managers to proper asset validation and
reporting procedures.

(U) It is the responsibility of organizations charged with collecting and

reporting information from human sources to employ rigorous validation
procedures and to ensure sources are thoroughly vetted before incorporating their

—— i Ze

Page 206


know, and what he suspected, and why. We believed he was credible
because much of his information could be corroborated and his
information did not go beyond his purported access nor did he try to
embellish his reporting.’

(U) Finally, the analysts’ memorandum commented that Source One’s
prolific reporting was “not due to his wealth of knowledge, but partly to a
conscious effort to produce as many reports as possible . . . even if it meant
splitting up reporting on a particular topic.” The analysts told Committee staff
that they did not intend to suggest that Source One did not have a wealth of
knowledge, just that his wealth of knowledge did not pertain to WMD. The
analysts said they did not believe that breaking up the reporting hampered the
reporting and said “it didn’t really change anything.” !*

(U) DIA officers dispute the analysts’ assertion that DIA collectors alone
were responsible for incorrectly characterizing Source One’s reporting. They told
Committee staff that DIA and CIA analysts were part of the debriefing team
because they were the subject matter experts. These analysts worked side by side
with the collectors, “collaboratively producing the reports, and before the reports
were released to us or before the reports were released for dissemination as formal
IIRs and they were [coordinated] by CIA . . . , there was a lot of scrutiny that went
into that reporting.” They told Committee staff that the source description which
said Source One worked on “several Iraqi WMD sites” was written overseas by
the debriefing team of analysts, collectors, and a reports officer.'"’ DIA officers
also said the reason analysts were asked to split Source One’s reporting into many

°°5 CIA internal memorandum, coo
BEE ebrvary 5, 2004.

CIA internal memorandum, February 5, 2004 and staff interview with CIA analysts.
Staff interview with DIA officers, November 2005 and staff interview with DIA officers, February 10,
2006.

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a ——-—_—- -__—

reliable reporting casts doubt on this possibility” and said they were “increasingly
skeptical that Atta traveled to Prague in 2001 or met with IIS officer al-Ani.” The
CIA reports were widely disseminated inside the government and are reported to
have been reviewed by the staff of the National Security Council and the Office of
the Vice President.

In testimony before the Senate Democratic Policy Committee on June 26,
2006, Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.), Secretary of State Powell’s Chief of
Staff from 2001-2005, and the person responsible for coordinating the drafting of
the Secretary’s historic February 5, 2003, speech to the UN Security Council,
described how the White House persistently tried to include the alleged Atta-al-
Ani meeting in public statements over the objections of senior intelligence
officials:

“[The alleged Prague meeting] was one of the matters that kept working its
way back into his [Secretary Powell’s] presentation and one of the dramatic
moments at the DCI’s conference room at Langley when we were doing, as I
recall, the last rehearsal with the Secretary before we went to New York.
And the Secretary was stopped in mid-presentation, and [Deputy National
Security Advisor] Mr. Hadley asked what had happened to the Mohammed
Atta story. And the Secretary fixed him and essentially said: “We took it
out and it’s staying out.” And it was just an example of the tenacity with
which certain people tried to get information into the script, repeatedly, that
either the DCI [Tenet] or the DDCI [McLaughlin] or Secretary Powell
himself simply didn’t find credible and left out.”

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ee

perception. The source said the Iraqi people will want a new government created
from officials in Iraq, not from Iraqi exiles who may “be seen as spies that are not
loyal to Iraq and are placed into a position by the USG as a puppet government.”””’
The CIA included this report in a March 13, 2003 paper, Jraq: Diaspora Brings
Tensions, Hope, as one of many sources used to support the judgment that Iraqis
would be threatened by an exile-led transitional authority. The citation said, “an
Iraqi businessman with high-level contacts inside Iraq says most Iraqis prefer a
new government composed of those now living in the country.”

@ Source Seven[ Gan INC member, provided

thirteen prewar reports on a variety of topics including a three part report on
prominent Iraqi tribes, Iraqi smuggling of prohibited materials, Iraqi intelligence
assassination teams sent to kill Iraqi opposition members, infighting within the
INC, and two reports on Iraq’s missiles. Source Seven is described in the
reporting as a Middle Eastern businessman with indirect access to the information.
After the first three reports, which did not indicate Source Seven’s INC affiliation,
all subsequent reporting carried the comment, “the source of this report is a
member of the Iraqi opposition who was aware that his/her comments would reach
the U.S. government and who may have intended the comments to influence as
well as inform.”

(U) An October 2002 report from a Source Seven subsource said three Iraqi
Scud missile systems had recently deployed to Mosul, Iraq. The subsource
reported that the Scuds were capable of delivering chemical or biological
warheads and that the units were believed to have orders to fire on Turkey in the

ep DIA intelligence report MEF ebruary [P.003.

CIA, Diaspora Bring Tension, Hope, March [2003 and CIA response to questions from Committee

293 DTA intelligence report AAEM ctober [P002.

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staff.


a

letter also declassified DDCI McLaughlin’s testimony that the likelihood of
Saddam Hussein using weapons of mass destruction, if he did not feel threatened
by an attack, was “low.”

The same day, October 7", at a speech in Cincinnati, the President said that
“Iraq could decide on any given day to provide a biological or chemical weapon to
a terrorist group or individual terrorist.” The next day, DCI Tenet issued a
statement that “There is no inconsistency between our view of Saddam’s growing
threat and the view as expressed by the President in his speech.” In his testimony
before the Committee on July 26, 2006, former DCI Tenet stated that “there was
some concern about the letter, and they [policymakers] wanted me to say
something about [the declassified October 7" letter] not being inconsistent with
what the President had said, and I did. And it was the wrong thing to do.” Former
DCI Tenet also said he spoke with the New York Times on the matter and stated to
the Committee his belief that the newspaper was “directed to talk to me.” We
concur with former DCI Tenet’s recent acknowledgment that issuing the statement
was the wrong thing for him to do and we find the Administration’s use of our
nation’s senior intelligence official to undermine CIA assessments that were
inconsistent with the President’s public statements to be deeply troubling,
particularly given the fact that the Tenet statement was issued on the eve of the
congressional debate on the question of authorizing military force against Iraq.

* * *

The Committee’s Phase II investigation has been significantly limited by the
majority’s refusal to examine issues and documents relevant to our inquiry when
the issues and documents come close to the White House. While a quarter of the
Committee’s INC report is devoted to a lengthy examination of the CIA’s
relationship with the INC in the early and mid-1990's, the Committee majority
voted down requests to investigate the flow of intelligence information from the

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Czechoslovakia last April, several months before the attack.” — Vice President Cheney,
December 9, 2001

. “We discovered, and it’s since been public, the allegation that one of the lead hijackers,
Mohammed Atta, had, in fact, met with Iraqi intelligence in Prague...” Vice President
Cheney, March 24, 2002

. “And on at least one occasion, we have reporting that places him [Atta] in Prague with a
senior Iraqi intelligence official a few months before the attack on the World Trade
Center. The debates about, you know, was he there or wasn’t he there, again, it’s the
intelligence business.” Question: “What does the CIA say about that? Is it credible?”
“It’s credible.” — Vice President Cheney, September 8, 2002

. “The strongest link of — of Saddam Hussein to al-Qa’ida — we’ve never said that he
somehow masterminded 9/11 or was even invloved in 9/11. But the strongest — although
there are a lot of tantalizing meetings that — with people who were involved in 9/11.” —
National Security Advisor Rice, March 9, 2003

The Committee’s report demonstrates that the prewar statements of the Vice
President that the Prague meeting had been “pretty well confirmed” and that 9/11
hijacker Muhammad Atta had “in fact” met with Iraqi Intelligence Services Chief
in 2001 were not substantiated by the intelligence assessment at the time the
statements were made. Likewise, the statement by National Security Advisor Rice
that “there are a lot of tantalizing meetings” between Iraq and “people who were
involved in 9/11" was clearly false based on what was known prior to the war.

Czech intelligence reporting in the fall of 2001 alleged a meeting in Prague
between September 11" hijacker Muhammad Atta and the Iraqi Intelligence
Services Chief in Prague, Ahmed al-Ani in 2001. Prewar assessments described
reporting on the Atta lead as “contradictory” and “not verified.” In September
2002, the CIA assessed that some evidence asserted that the two met, and some
cast doubt on the possibility. By January 2003, CIA assessed that “the most

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commandos preparing for missions abroad in 2000, this time from a station
contact.“ An operations cable accompanying the report said that the station
contact attributed the information to a subsource, Source Three, and noted that
headquarters had previously decided not to disseminate comparable information
from the same subsource.”* CIA operations cables do not clarify whether the
station contact obtained the information directly from Source Three, or from press
accounts of Source Three’s information. The station contact said that he was not
affiliated with the INC, but was a member of the Officers Movement for Salvation
of Iraq, a separate Iraqi opposition group. He said his group was being actively
courted by, but had not joined with, the INC.

(U) On February 6, 2002, CIA’s Iraq Operations Group (IOG) disseminated
a cable attempting to summarize the Intelligence Community’s various
interactions with Source Three and the station contact. The cable outlined the
10G’s conclusion regarding Source Three that:

Although we can verify a few elements of his story, we have
determined that much of his information is inaccurate and appears
aimed at influencing U.S. (and probably western) policy on Iraq. The
fact that he has reiterated this same story to numerous
audiences—including the media—had further damaged his credibility
with our service

a. Mistaken Identity

(U) On June 7, 2002, another CIA station requested a name trace ona

former Iraqi military officer ME According to a station
224 5
5 CIA operational cable, ‘ebruary 2002.
CIA operational cable, ‘ebruary 2002.

a

Page 76


——————- —_——

reporting.’* Such reporting is described below in more detail. The CIA told the
Committee it did not receive any documents from the INC after 1998.'”

B. INC-Affiliated Sources

(U) The primary goals of the ICP were to maintain contact with Iraqi
dissidents, collect information from them on the activities of the Saddam Hussein
regime, and disseminate that information as widely as possible." At the time the
Department of State managed and funded the program, it did not act as a
mechanism for the ICP to get its information to the Intelligence Community,
except in the one case described above when it received ICP documents. Instead,
the ICP used a “publicity campaign” to bring sources to the attention of “anyone
who would listen,” which included the media, Congress, members of the
Intelligence Community and other government agencies, think-tanks, and other
interested parties.'!!

(U) Through this publicity campaign, the INC brought six sources to the
attention of the U.S. Intelligence Community, either directly or through current
and former U.S. officials. Intelligence Community agencies met with and
debriefed five of the six individuals. The sixth individual was said to be planning
to defect, but never did. Details of the reporting from all five sources, their use in

108 DIA Response to questions from Committee staff, January 17, 2006. After the start of Operation Iraqi
Freedom, the DIA did receive caches of documents from the INC, totaling over 3,000 boxes. These documents were
reviewed through DIA’s document exploitation program. Documents were examined for content and those of
potential intelligence value are summarized, digitized, and posted to the IC’s HARMONY database. Post-Operation
Traqi Freedgm information, including documents, provided by the INC is not the subject of this inquiry.

CIA Response to questions from Committee staff, December 1, 2005.
INC Proposal for a Grant Awarded by the U.S. Department of State to the INCSF to Advance and
Establish Operational Programs, 2000,and staff interview with INC official, December 6, 2006).

Staff interview with INC official, December 6, 2005 and Staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January

110

31, 2006.

a

Page 37


Baghdad had not controlled since 1991, to support claims of links between the
regime and al-Qa’ ida.

Many of the Administration’s statements in support of the Administration’s
policy of regime change were made in advance of the production of the
intelligence community’s October 2002 NIE on Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction programs and the CIA’s September 2002 and January 2003 Iraqi
Support for Terrorism documents. The drumbeat of statements throughout 2002
that characterized the threat posed by Iraq in the starkest of terms created pressure
on the intelligence community to conform to the certainty contained in these
statements. It is no coincidence that the analytical errors and omissions in the NIE
all broke in one direction. The NIE and related analytical papers assessing Iraqi
links to terrorism were produced by the intelligence community in a highly-
pressurized climate wherein senior Administration officials were making the case
for military action against Iraq through public and often definitive
pronouncements.

During the build-up to war, the intelligence community was placed under
pressure to support the Administration’s position that there was a link between
Iraq and al-Qa’ida. This pressure took the form of policymakers repetitively
tasking analysts to review, reconsider, and revise their analytical judgments. The
CIA’s July 2003 independent review on U.S. intelligence on Iraq reported:
“Requests for reporting and analysis of [Iraq’s link to al-Qa’ida] 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.” General
Michael Hayden, during testimony for his confirmation as Director of the CIA,
told the committee that, as Director of the National Security Agency, he had
experienced similar repeated requests for information about a potential
connection. This finding of pressure was confirmed by the CIA’s Ombudsman, an
individual who is chartered to serve as an “independent, informal, and confidential

- ——  —  —

Page 182


WMD-related equipment installed in any sites he visited because his
work was usually
completed as the building was being constructed.'*

138

139 CIA, SPWR, Terrorism: Question About the Two Iraqi Defectors, October 17, 2002.

SSCI transcript, Hearing on the History and Continuity of Weapons of Mass Destruction Assessments
Pertaining to Iraq, June 19, 2003, p.79.
M1 CIA, Response to questions from Committee staff, July 6, 2006.

ee ————_  _—_—

Page 49


(U) Conclusion 5: The July 2002 decision by the National Security Council
Deputies Committee directing the renewed funding of the Iraqi National
Congress (INC) Intelligence Collection Program under Defense Intelligence
Agency (DIA) management was ill-advised given the counterintelligence
concerns of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and warnings of financial
mismanagement from the Department of State. At the time it assumed
responsibility for funding and managing the INC’s collection effort in
October 2002, the DIA cautioned that the INC was penetrated by hostile
intelligence services and would use the relationship to promote its own
agenda. Beginning in March 2000, the Department of State entered into an
agreement with the INC, amended over time, to fund the Intelligence Collection
Program (ICP), a program established to collect evidence on Saddam Hussein’s
regime and promote human rights and democracy in Iraq. A September 2001 State
Department of Inspector General audit of the program found financial
management and internal control weaknesses. State Department officials were
concerned about the lack of financial accountability and the potential of fraud in
the program. In addition, State Department began to doubt the value of the
information the INC was providing and was unable to judge the program’s

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——  ii|

a picture of them by another CIA analyst, “one of the best, documented examples
of how [Source One] was asked leading questions by debriefers.” The
memorandum cites several instances of reports that described Source One as
having worked on “several Iraqi WMD sites” although the sites were not known to
have been WMD-related.'?

(U) In the memorandum, the analysts admitted that they knew of no effort to
correct the mischaracterizations of Source One’s reporting. They said that the
“daily press of business and the fact that-with one well-known exception-his
reporting was not used in finished DI products, we did not fight to correct how
[his] reporting was characterized by collectors.” The memorandum did note that
there was one instance in which an effort was made to correct a factual error in
one of the reports. One of the CIA analysts told Committee staff that after
returning to Washington, he reviewed a report that incorrectly described the length
of a missile or rocket as ten meters long when Source One had said it was six
meters long and wrote to DIA about the error. The analyst did not know whether
the correction was made.’

(GER) Whe memorandum also discussed Source One’s connections
to the INC, noting that at the time of the debriefs he was:

... up front about his ties to the INC, describing how the INC helped
him escape from Iraq, got him in contact with [DIA ]
made him do an interview with [the press], and then abandoned him.
He explained that some of his earlier reporting was much more
inflammatory because that was what the INC told him to do, but
during our debriefs he carefully explained what he knew, did not

153

154 CIA internal memorandum, Februrary 5, 2004 and staff interview with CIA analysts.

Staff interview with CIA analysts, November 28, 2005.

Page 54


EEE

committee initially designed to be the most bipartisan committee in the Senate,
into a political playground stripped of its bipartisan power, and this fact has not
gone unnoticed in the Intelligence Community. The Committee will only return to
proper and aggressive intelligence oversight once its membership determines to
get back to its primary function for the betterment of our national security.
Although the structure of the Committee provides for effective bipartisan
oversight, the recent agenda of its membership has not fallen in line with the
Committee’s primary purpose.

(U) The Chairman’s additional views in this first report lay out the factual
discrepancies, false impressions, and inaccurate emphases impregnating its
partisan conclusions; we support these views. Regrettably, the conclusions
reached in this report do not constitute, in our view, a useful guide for the
Intelligence Community in its ongoing efforts to improve our intelligence
capabilities. Misleading conclusions not only misrepresent the facts, but fail to
address, for example, how inaccurate intelligence assessments might be avoided in
the future. This Committee must conduct forward-looking oversight, even when
addressing matters of the past. In the current threat environment, amidst a struggle
against international terrorists and their state sponsors, we cannot afford to
sacrifice opportunities to improve our intelligence capability for the sake of
rehashing history to build a case for partisan politics.

(U) While the INC provided information that proved inaccurate, there is no
evidence to suggest the INC knowingly provided fictitious information. Even
despite allegations of dubious motivations of INC leader Ahmed Chalabi, there is
no evidence that the INC engaged in a systematic deception campaign against the
U.S. Government.

(U) The July 2002 decision by the National Security Council Deputies
Committee to continue the INC’s intelligence collection program (ICP) under the

a — — — ——

Page 205


Myth: Claims to the Intelligence Community from two defectors that
non-Iragi Arabs trained at Salman Pak were false.

Reality: The Iraq Survey Group found that an Iraqi intelligence
directorate trained “Palestinians, Syrians, Yemeni, Lebanese,
Egyptian, and Sudanese operatives in counterterrorism,
explosives, marksmanship, and foreign operations at its facilities
at Salman Pak.”

Information from the two sources highlighted in amended Conclusion 2,
who reported on the training of non-Iraqi Arabs at the Salman Pak training facility
in the mid-1990s, has not been proven false. The Committee has received no
evidence that either confirms or denies whether such training of non-Iraqis took
place at Salman Pak.

The Committee has been able to confirm the presence of an aircraft at the
facility and that the Iraqis used the facility for special operations training, as
described by the defectors. In addition, the ISG found that an Iraqi intelligence
directorate, M14, which was responsible for training and special operations
missions, used the Salman Pak facility to train Iraqi, Palestinian, Syrian, Yemeni,
Lebanese, Egyptian, and Sudanese operatives in counterterrorism, explosives,
marksmanship, and foreign operations. Thus, it is clear that amended Conclusion
2 overstates what is known about training at Salman Pak and mischaracterizes
what can be concluded about the information provided by the INC-affiliated
sources who reported on the facility.

Myth: These INC-affiliated defectors exaggerated claims to the
Intelligence Community.

SS ———

Page 139


d. Postwar Findings

(U) According to the DIA, the U.S. 75" Exploitation Task Force and the
Iraq Survey Group (ISG) visited the suspect facility in the spring and summer of
2003 respectively. Inspectors “reported a walled probable government compound
with multiple security posts. Samples collected from the site tested positive for
naturally occurring uranium and U.S.-origin depleted uranium consistent with
samples collected elsewhere in Iraq and reflecting probably local soils and
contamination from U.S. depleted-uranium munitions. The samples did not reveal
any enriched uranium or non-U.S. depleted uranium.” No evidence was found to
support intelligence assessments that the site may have been involved in nuclear

142

143 staff interview with CIA analysts, April 21, 2006.

Page 50


first-hand access to it. No al-Qa’ida associates detained since 11 September
have said they trained at Salman Pak.”!

(U) All three defectors referenced were affiliated with the INC. The first of
the three defectors, described as having embellished and exaggerated his access, is
Source Three. CIA officials told Committee staff that the comment that he had
“embellished and exaggerated” his access referred to the press stories, not to his
debriefings with the Intelligence Community. In addition, these officials
acknowledged that they do not know that it was Source Three who exaggerated,
only that they believe the press story was an exaggerated verison of what Source
Three told his Intelligence Community debriefers.”” The second of the three
defectors referenced in the paper was also debriefed by the Intelligence
Community agencies and is described in further detail below as Source Four.

(GHD The Intelligence Community did not debrief the third defector and
does not know his identity. The CIA paper’s reference to his reports refers to
information from the defector that appeared in media stories. When asked by
Committee staff how the CIA could judge that this defector “apparently did not
have first-hand access” when no CIA personnel had ever spoken to him, CIA
officials

231 CLA, Iraqi Support for Terrorism, September 19, 2002, p. 14 and January 29, 2003, p. 17-18. The last
sentence of the September version stated “no al-Qa’ida associates detained since 11 September reinforced them.”
Interview with CIA officials, February 2006.

Interview with CIA officials, February 2006.

a i=

Page 79

233


a

(U) The Iraq Survey Group found that an Iraqi intelligence directorate,
M14, which was responsible for training and special operations missions, used the
Salman Pak facility to train Iraqis, Palestinians, Syrians, Yemeni, Lebanese,
Eqyptian, and Sudanese operatives in counterterrorism, explosives, marksmanship,
and foreign operations.”

5. Source Five

cy Source Five

as referred to the DIA by the INC through the Assistant Secretary of
Defense for International Security Affairs. The Assistant Secretary of Defense did
not recall making this referral to DIA. According to the DIA, Source Five had
been smuggled out of Iraq by the INC. The DIA debriefed the source from late
September through October 2002 and produced sixteen intelligence reports based
on Source Five’s debriefs on leadership atmospherics, routines, and various social
activities.??

(U) The source descriptions in the intelligence reports varied to some
extent. Most described Source Five as “a naturalized Iraqi citizen with direct
access to the highest levels of the Iraqi leadership. Source reliability has not yet
been determined.” Some of the reports added “information may be intended to
disinform.”?®

= Source Five had claimed publicly Ps
hat Osama bin Ladin came to Baghdad. J

261 Comprehensive Report of the Special Advisor to the DCI on Iraq’s WMD, Regime Strategic Intent
section ap, 78.
DIA response to questions from Committee staff, December 14, 2005.
DIA intelligence reports,

Ss i

Page 89

263


a

beware, because he thinks any site being constructed by personnel
formerly connected to the nuclear-weapon program is, by definition, a
site for ongoing clandestine nuclear work. (Not necessarily so, esp.
since so many nuclear personnel have, since the early 1990s, been
assigned to non-nuclear infrastructure related tasks.) ... Don’t know

iy A July 2002 NIC Memorandum, The Iraqi National Congress
Defector Program, described Source One as “the most successful INC referral”
with “exceptional access to information of interest to the U.S. Intelligence
Community.” The assessment, coordinated only with the DIA, the CIA, and the
FBI said, “4

, he had access to as many as 150 facilities
associated with conventional weapons and, to a lesser extent, to facilities
associated with Iraqi WMD programs.” The assessment further noted that Source
One’s:

Information is deemed highly credible and includes reports on a wide
range of subjects including conventional weapons facilities, denial
and deception; communications security; suspected terrorist training
locations; illicit trade and smuggling; Saddam’s palaces; the Iraqi
prison system; and Iraqi petrochemical plants. Many reports included
geo-coordinates, diagrams, and hand drawings. The source provided

13! Department of State Bureau of Intelligence and Research e-mail, March 6, 2002.

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Page 44


makers) intentionally provided the Intelligence Community with false information
in an effort to push the United States to war with Iraq. These conclusions — and
the misconceptions they support — are a myth. The reality — while politically
unappealing for some — is quite different.

To correct these errors, these additional views set forth the most troubling
and significant examples of how the adopted conclusions misrepresent the
relationship of the INC to the Intelligence Community and how the Intelligence
Community used the information provided by the INC in prewar assessments.

The Intelligence Community’s Use of INC Information

The amended conclusions suggest that the INC intentionally provided false
information to the Intelligence Community and that the Intelligence Community
used that information to support key judgments about Iraq’s WMD programs and
links to terrorism. These conclusions not only distort the extent to which the
Intelligence Community used INC information, they mischaracterize the
significance of the information that was used. As with most HUMINT reporting,
some of the information provided by the INC was inaccurate, some was accurate,
and some remains ambiguous, even today. The Committee, however, has no
evidence to suggest that the INC intentionally provided false information.

The following section addresses the myths — either expressed or implied — in
the amended conclusions.

Myth: The Intelligence Community made extensive use of INC
information and that information played a Key role in
assessments about Iraq’s WMD programs and links to
terrorism.

——————  _—_

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a

facilities in Iraq “remains questionable and, on a nuclear facility,
demonstrably incorrect.” 7 ———— paren February 2004,
Source One appeared deceptiv m questions related to his
continued contact with the INC, whether the INC provided him with information
to give to the U.S. government, whether the INC provided him information on the

suspect facility to give to the U.S. government, and whether the suspect facility
even existed.

(U) Three separate Intelligence Community assessments from April to July 2002
suggested INC-affiliated defector Source Two fabricated information he provided
the Intelligence Community, which included a claim that in 1996 Iraq decided to
establish mobile biological weapons laboratories to evade United Nations
inspections. In two separate April 2002 assessments on Source Two’s reporting,
the CIA reported the concerns of the DIA debriefer that Source Two was being
coached by the INC and stating that the DIA had terminated contact with Source
Two because of suspicions he was a fabricator. In May 2002, the DIA issued a
fabrication notice on Source Two stating that “his information is assessed as
unreliable, and, in some instances, pure fabrication. We have determined that he
had also been coached by the Iraqi National Congress (INC) prior to the meeting
with western intelligence services.” A July 2002 National Intelligence Council
Memorandum also outlined the Intelligence Community’s concerns about
information from Source Two, and noted that a foreign intelligence service
elieved his information was unreliable.

(U) INC-affiliated defector Source Three told Intelligence Community officials in
October 2001 that he observed non-Iraqi Arabs training in abandoned aircraft shell
at the Salman Pak training facility in Iraq in 1994-1995. Haydr al Bander, the
INC’s Washington representative and the person who referred Source Three to the
Intelligence Community, told DIA officers that the non-Iraq Arabs that Source
Three observed were terrorists and that they were receiving training on aircraft

SS

Page 114


a ———$$_

COMMITTEE ACTION

Amendments to draft report, The Use by the Intelligence Community of
Information Provided by the Iraqi National Congress.

On August 2, 2006, by a vote of 9 ayes and 6 noes, the Committee agreed to
an amendment by Vice Chairman Rockefeller, with a modification, related to the
conclusions of the report. The amendment (1) struck proposed Conclusion 1,
inserting a substitute conclusion; (2) inserted a new Conclusion 2, Conclusion 3,
Conclusion 4, Conclusion 5, Conclusion 6; (3) struck proposed Conclusion 2; (4)
renumbered proposed Conclusion 3 as Conclusion 7; (5) renumbered proposed
Conclusion 4 as Conclusion 8 and, as renumbered, modified the proposed text;
and (6) struck proposed Conclusion 5. The votes in person or by proxy were as
follows: Chairman Roberts — no; Senator Hatch — no; Senator DeWine — no;
Senator Bond — no; Senator Lott — no; Senator Snowe — aye; Senator Hagel — aye;
Senator Chambliss — no; Vice Chairman Rockefeller — aye; Senator Levin — aye;
Senator Feinstein — aye; Senator Wyden — aye; Senator Bayh — aye; Senator
Mikulski — aye; Senator Feingold — aye.

On August 2, 2006, by unanimous consent, the Committee agreed to an
amendment proposed by Senator Wyden, as modified by a second degree
amendment proposed by Chairman Roberts and adopted by unanimous consent.
The amendment, as modified, inserted text on page 61 of the report concerning the
production by CIA analysts of a Memorandum or PDB for the Vice President
using an INC-affiliated source’s information to support the mobile BW program
judgment. As modified, the amendment clarified that the PDB did not include
caveats related to the source’s reporting.

On August 2, 2006, by a vote of 8 ayes and 7 noes, the Committee agreed to
an amendment by Senator Wyden. The amendment struck from page 87 of the

SS | ee

Page 123


ee ——__

borne out by the sharp divide between the findings and conclusions adopted by
several members of the Committee, and the findings and conclusions — drawn
from the fine work of Committee staff — that I, along with several of my
colleagues, supported as the Committee considered this report. This failure led
several members to vote against the adoption of the findings and conclusions of
the report.

Despite many misgivings, the adoption of the findings and conclusions of
this report allows the facts and circumstances to be presented to the entire Senate
and, in unclassified form, to the public. Together with these additional views, this
report represents a comprehensive understanding of the relationship of the
Intelligence Community to the INC.

The Committee’s review focused on how information provided by the INC
was used by the Intelligence Community. Was the information included in
Intelligence Community assessments? Did the information play a role in the
Intelligence Community’s judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
(WMD) capabilities or its links to terrorism?

Understanding the role of INC information in Intelligence Community
assessments was critical to the Committee’s efforts. As the Committee began its
review, there seemed to be a growing number of individuals charging that the INC
engaged in a disinformation campaign to supply erroneous information to the
Intelligence Community and that such information led to the Intelligence
Community’s failures in its prewar assessments on Iraq, particularly in its WMD
assessments.

The facts detailed in the findings portion of this report (and outlined more

briefly below) do not support this theory. Information supplied by the INC played
only a minor role in the Intelligence Community’s prewar judgments concerning

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Page 128


standard methods of introducing potential sources to the Intelligence Community
and their record of taking credit for those introductions in the media. More
significantly, one must also embrace the notion that the INC encouraged CURVE
BALL to apply for asylum in the hope that the foreign government would spot
him, question him, and find his information so valuable that they would pass it to
the U.S. Intelligence Community. This tortured scenario does not pass the
common-sense test, particularly when the INC was having no difficulty
introducing sources directly to the U.S. Intelligence Community.

The only connection of any kind between CURVE BALL and the INC is
that the ISG determined that CURVE BALL’s relative was an INC member. The
ISG learned that the relative had contacted CURVE BALL in 2001, on behalf of
the INC, to ascertain whether CURVE BALL had any information on secret or
sensitive Iraqi projects that would have helped boost the case against Iraq at the
UN. CURVE BALL told his relative he did not. The relative also said that he had
minimal contact with CURVE BALL since CURVE BALL defected, which the
CIA says is consistent with phone records they have been able to locate. By the
time the relative called CURVE BALL in 2001, CURVE BALL had already
provided extensive information about the alleged mobile biological weapons
program to debriefers.

We are left to conclude that the CIA’s assessment is correct — that CURVE
BALL did not fit the pattern of the typical INC-influenced defection and that the
INC probably played no role in CURVE BALL’s fabrication.

We understand the desire to blame someone else for CURVE BALL, and we
understand the intent in the amended conclusion — to leave the door open to the
possibility that our own Intelligence Community was not responsible for this
intelligence failure. It would be somewhat of a relief if there was evidence that the
INC tricked the Intelligence Community into believing CURVE BALL’s story.

es ee

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a ~~ -—-—_

These distorted facts and conclusions are enough to call into question the
utility of the INC report, but we also believe these facts demonstrate that Phase II
has devolved to an exercise with no oversight value. It does nothing to advance
the Senate’s oversight of the intelligence activities of the U.S. Government.

Make no mistake, the Intelligence Community needs oversight. Rather than
perpetuating an ongoing effort to rewrite history, the Committee should be
focusing all its resources on a host of troubling issues: monitoring Intelligence
Community reforms, balancing acquisition requirements with budgetary
constraints, correcting the flawed tradecraft which led to the Iraq intelligence
failure, and assessing collection and analysis of intelligence on Iran, North Korea,
and al-Qa’ida. If anything, the recently revealed terrorist plot in Britain
underscores the continuing threat facing the nation. Our enemies are focused.
They continue to develop innovative and insidious methods to kill Americans and
attack our way of life. The terrorist threat should be the primary focus of all the
members of the Committee — Democrat and Republican alike.

The facts are clear — the prewar assessments of Iraq’s WMD programs were
a tragic intelligence failure. However, the real causes of that failure, explained in
detail in the Committee’s exhaustive 2004 report on prewar assessments on Iraq,
had nothing to do with Ahmed Chalabi and the INC. Instead of focusing on the

Page 156


OLYMPIA J. SNOWE, MAINE
CHUCK HAGEL, NEBRASKA

REPORT

ON

THE USE BY THE INTELLIGENCE COMMUNITY OF
INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE
IRAQI NATIONAL CONGRESS

together with
ADDITIONAL VIEWS

September 8, 2006 - Ordered to be printed

SELECT COMMITTEE ON INTELLIGENCE
United States Senate

109" Congress

PAT ROBERTS, KANSAS, CHAIRMAN
JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV, WEST VIRGINIA, VICE CHAIRMAN

ORRIN G. HATCH, UTAH CARL LEVIN, MICHIGAN

MIKE DEWINE, OHIO DIANNE FEINSTEIN, CALIFORNIA
CHRISTOPHER S. BOND, MISSOURI RON WYDEN, OREGON

TRENT LOTT, MISSISSIPPI EVAN BAYH, INDIANA

SAXBY CHAMBLISS, GEORGIA

BILL FRIST, TENNESSEE, EX OFFICIO
HARRY REID, NEVADA, EX OFFICIO
JOHN WARNER, VIRGINIA, EX OFFICIO

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI, MARYLAND
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD, WISCONSIN


“Warnings” from U.S. Government Agencies about the INC

Myth: The National Security Council Deputies Committee ignored
“warnings” from several agencies about counterintelligence and
financial problems with the INC.

Reality: | The Committee has no information that the Deputies Committee

received any warnings about continuing the government’s
relationship with the INC.

Amended Conclusion 5 suggests that the Deputies Committee had specific
“warnings” prior to its decision to move the INC Information Collection Program

Page 146


a

jointly issued a congressional notification in June 2004 noting that CURVE BALL
was assessed to have fabricated his claimed access to a mobile BW production
project and that his reporting had been recalled.”

(U) During the ISG’s investigation of CURVE BALL, the group learned
that CURVE BALL had a close relative who had worked for the INC since 1992,
for at least some period in a senior position.*” This revelation, combined with the
fact that CURVE BALL was determined to have fabricated substantial portions of
his reporting, led to suspicion that CURVE BALL may have been coached on his
story by the INC.*°

(U) According to a March 2004 CIA review, in the fall of 2003, CURVE
BALL’s close relative, then working in INC offices in Iraq, willingly met with
ISG officers. CURVE BALL’s close relative stated that he had contacted CURVE
BALL in 2001 on behalf of the INC to ascertain whether CURVE BALL, in the
course of his employment with Iraq’s Organization of Military Industry, had any
information on secret or sensitive projects that would help boost the case against
Iraq at the UN. CURVE BALL told his close relative he did not. The close
relative also said that he had minimal contact with CURVE BALL since CURVE
BALL defected to a European country, which the CIA says is consistent with
Mrecords they have been able to locate.**!

(U) When the CIA was finally given access to CURVE BALL in March
2004, CURVE BALL refused to discuss anything about his family. In a response
to questions from Committee staff, the CIA said its officers did not ask about

328 CIA and DIA Congressional Affairs Notification, June 7, 2004.

March 8, 2004, d CIA operational cable,

Page 107


a

non-Iraqi Arabs.'” Later the same day, DIA officers sent a request to a CIA

station requesting the station’s opinion on meeting with Source Three in the
Embassy to debrief him on possible terrorist related information.'

(U) Using the information from al Bandar, the DIA disseminated two
intelligence reports. Both reports described the information from Bandar as from
“a former Iraqi citizen, [who] received this information from a subsource. Source
and subsource’s credibility have not been determined.” The reports did not
indicate that the source was a member of the INC or that the subsource was Source
Three.'TM

(U) The first report, disseminated on September 29, 2001, stated that Iraq
trained terrorists in hijacking operations at the Salman Pak intelligence training
facility and that seventy non-Iraqi Arabs trained at the camp, also in hijacking
procedures. The report said that the Iraqis used a second camp at Lake Tharthar
for underwater demolition training and that 34 individuals from this camp were
sent to the UAE in the winter of 2000. The report also said that Faruq Hijazi was
the liaison between Saddam and the terrorists and noted that Hijazi had met Usama
bin Ladin in Khandahar in December 1998.'% It is unclear if the report was
suggesting that Hijazi was Saddam’s liaison to the training camp terrorist or
terrorists in general. The second report from Bandar provided only one paragraph
of text identifying an Egyptian businessman who maintained a relationship with
the Iraqi intelligence service.'”°

DIA intelligence reports, September and October 2001

196 DIA intelligence report, ‘September 2001.
DIA intelligence report, tober 2001.

ee

Page 67

He DIA operational cab} September [-200.
194 CIA operational cable, September 001.
a


a

(GERM A July 2004 CIA review concluded that “while the subject has
provided a good deal of generally corroborated information relating to military
infrastructure and conventional facilities, his limited reporting on WMD-related
matters remains questionable and, on a nuclear facility [, demonstrably
incorrect. In the absence of any further [information from Source One we are] left
uncertain about the extent to which the INC influenced intelligence information
subject passed to the USG.”"!

(U) An earlier CIA study on possible Iraqi opposition deception efforts,
dated March 8, 2004, said that there were misconceptions about Source One’s
reporting that were related to possible “extrapolations” by analysts and case
officers." The CIA study cited a February 5, 2004 memorandum prepared by
CIA analysts who had participated in Source One’s debriefings from late January
to early February 2002. The memorandum stated that Source One did not provide
direct reporting on Iraqi WMD programs, but did provide reporting on Iraq’s
military-industrial facilities, many of which were assessed as capable of
supporting a WMD effort. The analysts wrote that Source One “did not [repeat]
not claim that any facility produced or worked on chemical, biological, or nuclear
weapons. Those WMD connections were made by analysts and at times DIA
officers writing and disseminating the reporting.” The memorandum said that
Source One “never claimed any knowledge of nuclear weapons program-related
work at the facility. He simply identified what he thought was a suspect facility
and claimed that he saw engineers from the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission
there.” In addition, the memorandum noted that Source One had said he thought
he had seen something like uranium hexaflouride cylinders only after being shown

12 CIA review, SN, July 12, 2004, conclusions.

CIA internal memorandum,
March 8, 2004,

a —--——_

Page 53


[We have concluded that the intelligence community’s decision to classify
the CIA document about the alleged Atta-al-Ani meeting in Prague discussed in
the three paragraphs above and the underlying Committee report to be without
justification. The intelligence community is unable to demonstrate to the
Committee that disclosing the information would reveal sources and methods or
otherwise harm national security. We believe the decision to keep from the public
this revealing information about the use of intelligence information prior to the
war represents an improper use of classification authority by the intelligence
community to shield the White House.]

is
reminiscent of the Niger uranium story a month and a half earlier. While
intelligence officials set aside objections and bowed to White House pressure to
include the uranium claim in the President’s January 28, 2003, State of the Union
Address, there is no indication that the intelligence community backed down from
its belief that the Atta meeting did not occur. The Committee has no knowledge
that the President made reference to the alleged Atta meeting in a public speech on
or after March 14, 2003, iE However, the Vice
President made repeated public statements after this date asserting that the meeting
may have occurred and that no information had been obtained to discredit the
original report.

a $$ —_—

Page 174


Vy The DIA disseminated three reports from Source Fifteen ; |
HE cscribed as an Iraqi citizen with direct access to the information.
One report identified four Iraqi Intelligence Service officers serving in Iraqi
embassies in Europe, the Middle East and Africa.

HE") The other two reports, dated late January and early February 2003,
discussed Iraqi smuggling efforts of prohibited items including missiles, military
spare parts, small arms, computer equipment and tools for the previous two years.
One of the reports included enclosures of tender bids for an Iraqi company
involved in the smuggling efforts.*”

(U) In January 2003, the DIA disseminated two reports from two different
sources containing information that was over ten years old. One report provided
information from 1985 on the construction of fifteen underground arsenal facilities
near Tikrit Iraq.*’? The other report provided information from 1990 about a
nuclear facility located north of Salman Pak. The source did not provide
information about the type of nuclear facility he was describing.*" Neither report
noted the sources’ opposition affiliations.

(HE) The DIA disseminated two reports from Source Sixteen
HE, 2 former Iraqi army officer and U.S. citizen]. The source

description identified the source as a member of the Iraqi opposition and Free Iraq
Force (FIF) member. The first report from Source Sixteen provided information
from 1989 about a project to produce chemical protection masks and possibly
suits. The report included hand drawings of the facility.** The second report said

311

312 DIA intelligence report, lanuary 003.
DIA intelligence reports, ebruary [P2003 andi anuary il

Ma DIA intelligence report, january 003.
315 DIA intelligence report, january 003.
DIA intelligence report, larch 003.

Page 102

2003.


a

when the INCSF agreed that it would not operate in Iraq.” This cleared the way to
finding the Information Collection Program (ICP). The March 2001 amendment
authorized the INC to “continue its Information Collection Program from
countries surrounding Iraq” and provided an office in Washington, D.C. for the
“purpose of testing, analyzing, translating and distributing information received
from Iraq.”””

(U) Under the ICP, the INC used offices in Tehran, Damascus, and Cairo to
maintain contact with Iraqi dissidents and collect information from them on the
political, economic, and military activities of the Saddam Hussein regime. One of
the goals was to “collect evidence on the Saddam regime’s war crimes and crimes
against humanity and conduct media work to promote human rights and
democracy in Iraq.””! The information collected under the program was
disseminated primarily through an aggressive publicity campaign that relied on
media outlets to bring defectors and their information to the public. The
Department of State told the Committee that it was generally aware that the INCSF
was using the information from the ICP in the media, but did not provide the
INCSF specific guidance in this area.”

(U) In an October 2001 report to the Department of State, the INCSF
provided information on ICP activities. The report, in outline form, included
under field activities and training, “Release of internal reports,” “Collect sensitive
information that reveal Iraq’s link with September 11" aftermath and anthrax

Gao Report to Congressional Requesters, State Department, Issues Affecting Funding of Iraqi National
Congress Support Foundation (GAO-04-559), April 2004, p. 10.
U.S. Department of State, Amendment to Federal Assistance Award, Iraqi National Congress Support
Foundatign, March 31, 2001, p.3.
INC Proposal for a Grant Awarded by the U.S. Department of State to the INCSF to Advance and
Establish Operational Programs, 2000.
Department of State responses to questions from Committee staff, August 24, 2004.

a $$$ —_—

Page 27


——__— _—_—_——

would tell us or not tell us and what we might pick up through corroborating
intelligence.”

(U) The CIA reduced contact and support for the INC after the failed
uprising and began intensifying efforts to develop contacts within the Iraqi
military and other opposition groups.*

(U) Chalabi said that despite his problems with the CIA, he still tried to
warn them of specific Iraqi intelligence operations targeting U.S. intelligence
capabilities. He said that in March of 1996 he arranged a meeting with then DCI
John Deutch and the NE Chief and alerted them of one such attempt.’ The NE
Chief told Committee staff that he did attend the meeting with Chalabi and the
DCI, but did not recall Chalabi making this point. He remembered Chalabi trying
to sell himself as the only trusted opposition figure.** The CIA was unable to
locate any operations traffic outlining the details of this meeting, but did provide a
cable written in response to a news story about the meeting. The cable stated that
the NE Division Chief said Chalabi made only perfunctory and general comments
that CIA’s activities against Saddam were ineffectual and that whatever the CIA
hoped to do against Saddam would not succeed without Chalabi’s involvement.

(U) The risk allegedly articulated by Chalabi was real and intelligence
capabilities and assets were exposed. CIA officers told Committee staff that
Saddam’s regime did use this vulnerability to communicate to a CIA asset in a
Middle Eastern country that the CIA operation was exposed and that his children

>? Staff interview with CIA officer.
5qstatt interview with CIA officers.
‘Staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006.
Staff interview with CIA officer.
CIA Operational cable, April 2000.

lc

Page 23

56


a —— — ee

Community judged CURVE BALL to be “credible” or “very credible” in its
reporting. The Committee concluded that uncertainties about his reliability should
have been taken into account by operations officers who provided the initial
judgment of his credibility, should have made the analysts who were aware of
them wary about relying so heavily on his reporting, and should have been noted
in the NIE. In addition, these concerns should have been passed on to
policymakers, who used CURVE BALL’s information publicly. *”

(U) Following publication of the first report, the Committee learned of
additional prewar concerns about CURVE BALL’s reliability within the CIA.
Those issues are discussed briefly in the accuracy section of this report and are the
subject of a continuing Committee inquiry.

(U) In the summer and fall of 2003, the Iraq Survey Group (ISG)
investigated whether Iraq had a mobile biological weapons program as part of its
overall investigation into Iraq’s WMD capabilities. The primary focus was
investigating sites and individuals identified by CURVE BALL and later, CURVE
BALL himself. The ISG located and debriefed over sixty individuals who could
have been involved in a mobile program, were linked to suspect sites, or to
CURVE BALL. Many of the individuals corroborated some of the reporting on
personnel and some legitimate activities CURVE BALL claimed were cover
activities, but none provided evidence to substantiate the claim of a mobile BW
program.*° Inspections of the facilities CURVE BALL had described also did not
support his story. A CIA assessment dated May 26, 2004 states that
“investigations since the war in Iraq and debriefings of the key source indicate he
lied about his access to a mobile BW production project.”*”” The CIA and DIA

joel. at pp. 188-189.
3274 at p. 74.
CIA, Key Mobile BW Source Deemed Unreliable, May 26, 2004

a ———

Page 106


a

Tenet personally interceded by calling Deputy National Security Advisor Stephen
Hadley and having a reference to the alleged attempts removed from President’s
Cincinnati speech in October 2002, warning that the “President should not be a
fact witness on this issue” because CIA analysts found the “reporting to be weak.”
Nevertheless, White House officials included the disputed claim in the President’s
State of the Union Address three months later, this time assigning the assessment
to the British government, but packaging it as fact.

On March 7, 2003, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA)
reported publicly that “documents which formed the basis for the reports of recent
uranium transactions between Iraq and Niger are in fact not authentic. We have
therefore concluded that these specific allegations are unfounded.” Four days
later, the CIA issued a classified assessment which stated that “we do not dispute
the IAEA Director General’s conclusion”, noting that the U.S. government “on
several occasions has cautioned IAEA inspectors that available information on this
issue was fragmentary and unconfirmed.” There was, however, no public
correction of the President’s speech following that classified assessment.

On September 12, 2002, the White House disseminated a background paper
entitled Decade of Deception and Defiance to support President Bush’s address to
the United Nations. The paper was not produced or cleared by the intelligence
community and it used the New York Times as a source. It purported to provide
“specific examples” of Iraqi violations of United Nations Security Council
resolutions. One source of reporting on Iraq’s nuclear program in the background
paper was an INC-affiliated defector Adnan Said Haideri. In the paper’s section
on weapons of mass destruction, the first item was a reference to claims by Haideri
of having “visited twenty secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons.” Haideri, according to the White House paper, “supported his claims
with stacks of Iraqi government contracts, complete with technical specifications”
and that he “said Iraq used companies to purchase equipment with the blessing of

Page 163


a —— $e

of these mobile production facilities has been corroborated by other sources...We know
that Iraq has at least seven of these mobile, biological agent factories...these are
sophisticated facilities. For example, they can produce anthrax and botulinum toxin. In
fact, they can produce enough dry, biological agent in a single month to kill thousands
upon thousands of people.” — Secretary Powell, February 5, 2003

. “Firsthand witnesses have informed us that Iraq has at least seven mobile factories for the
production of biological agents, equipment mounted on trucks and rails to evade
discovery. Using these factories, Iraq could produce within just months hundreds of
pounds of biological poisons.” — President Bush, February 6, 2003

. “Biological Weapons — In 2001, an Iraqi defector...al-Haideri, said he had visited twenty
secret facilities for chemical, biological and nuclear weapons.” — White House paper,
Decade of Deception and Defiance, September 12, 2002.

[Certain information redacted in the above paragraph is unclassified and
drawn from a prewar document prepared by the White House but not cleared by
the intelligence community before its release to the public. We find the
intelligence community's decision to classify this information to be without
Justification. ]

In its July 2004 report, the Committee concluded that the judgment in the
intelligence community’s October 2002 NIE that “Baghdad has biological
weapons” overstated what was known about Iraq’s biological weapons holdings,
did not explain the uncertainties underlying the statement, and did not explain that

a -

Page 166


————  - —_——

Repeated prewar statements by Administration officials sought to connect
Iraq and al-Qa’ida in ways that the underlying intelligence did not support. The
Administration’s repeated allegations of a past, present and future relationship
between al-Qa’ida and Iraq exploited the deep sense of insecurity among
Americans in the immediate aftermath of the September 1 1" attacks, leading a
large majority of Americans to believe, contrary to the intelligence assessments at
the time, that Iraq had a role in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Using exaggeration and
hyperbole, the Administration sought and succeeded in creating the impression
that al-Qa’ida and Iraq worked in concert and presented a single unified threat to
the United States. The Committee’s investigation revealed something completely
different. The Committee found that there was no credible information that Iraq
was complicit in or had foreknowledge of the September 11 attacks or any other
al-Qa’ida strike. The Committee also found that Iraq did not provide chemical or
biological weapons or any material or operational support to al-Qa’ida prior to the
war. No evidence was found of any meeting between al-Qa’ida and the Iraq
regime before the war other than a single meeting that took place years earlier in
1995 in the Sudan, and that meeting did not lead to any operational cooperation.
Key pieces of evidence asserting links between Iraq and al-Qa’ida were a report of
a meeting in Prague between a 9/11 hijacker and an Iraqi intelligence officer and a
claim that Iraq provided biological and chemical weapons training to al-Qaida in
the late 1990's. This claim of training came from a single source who, according to
an intelligence assessment at the time, may have been intentionally misleading his
debriefers. The source recanted his claims soon after the war and was determined
by the CIA to be a fabricator.

a. Link to the 9/11 plot — Atta meeting in Prague

. “it’s been pretty well confirmed that he [9/11 hijacker Mohammed Atta] did go to
Prague and he did meet with a senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service in

a ee

Page 170


questions at the time about the reliability of the INC/ICP, and its utility for U.S.
military operations in Iraq.'* The arrest warrant was subsequently suspended.

Il. INFORMATION PROVIDED BY THE INC
A, INC Documents

(U) In early 2002, while managing the ICP, the Department of State
received one bundle of approximately 300 pages of mostly Arabic language
materials from the INC. This material was transferred to the Intelligence
Community for analysis in March 2002. The Department of State has informed
the Committee that it received no other documents from the INC."

(U) In August 2002, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) published a
memorandum, Iraq: Evaluation of Documents Provided by the Iraqi National
Congress, which offered a coordinated Intelligence Community assessment of the
material’s contribution to intelligence on Iraq. The Intelligence Community made
summary translations of the data — in some cases verbatim translations — and
analysts with Arabic language capability also reviewed the documents. The
material included reports on the Iraqi military order of battle and the Special
Security Organization, press clippings, meeting notes, and lists of alleged political
victims of the Ba’ath party.'°° The following are the key points from the NIC
memorandum:

104,

10 Letter to SSCI Chairman Roberts from the Under Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, April 25, 2006.

Department of State responses to questions from Committee staff, April 24, 2004 and Responses to
questions from Committee staff, November 25, 2005.

Iraq: Evaluation of Documents Provided by the Iraqi National Congress, National Intelligence Council,
August 9, 2002

————— ee

Page 35


a

° “We know too that several of the detainees, in particular some high ranking detainees,
have said that Iraq provided some training to al-Qa’ida in chemical weapons
development.” — National Security Advisor Rice, September 25, 2002

. Question: “Do you have more than one source that indicate this [chemical weapons
training of al-Qa’ida]? “On that particular matter — yes.” Secretary Rumsfeld,
September 26, 2002

. “We've learned that Iraq has trained al-Qa’ida members in bomb making and poisons and
deadly gases.” — President Bush, October 7, 2002

. “The support that this detainee describes included Iraq offering chemical or biological
weapons training for two al-Qa’ida associates beginning in December 2000.” — Secretary
Powell, February 5, 2003

. “Traq has also provided al-Qa’ida with chemical and biological weapons training.” —
President Bush, February 6, 2003

. “And secondly, a very strong link to training al-Qa’ida in chemical and biological
weapons techniques, we know from a detainee that — the head of training for al-Qaida,
that they sought help in developing chemical and biological weapons because they
weren’t doing very well on their own. They sought it in Iraq. They received the help.” —
National Security Advisor Rice, March 9, 2003

Intelligence community analysts based assessments about possible Iraqi
provision of chemical and biological weapons training to al-Qa’ida largely on
reporting from a single source, the al-Qa’ida detainee who was referred to by
National Security Advisor Rice, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi. DIA assessments in
February 2002, soon after debriefings of al-Libi began, questioned al-Libi’s
inability to provide details about Iraq’s involvement. An assessment noted that it
was possible that al-Libi did not know any further details, but assessed “it is more
likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers.” In a July 2002
assessment the DIA called reports from al-Libi “plausible,” but noted, however,

a

Page 176


the information Source Five was providing “may be intended to disinform.” At
the DIA’s request, the CIA conducted a [EEMevaluation of Source Five
in October 2002 which indicated the bin Ladin story appeared more or less cogent,
but was perhaps contaminated with pockets of coached fabrications. Following
the test, the DIA terminated its relationship with Source Five and included in
disseminated reporting that Source Five was connected to the Iraqi opposition and
that the source’s comments may have been intended to influence as well as inform
U.S. government decision makers.

iy) Conclusion 3: The Intelligence Community’s use in intelligence
assessments of information provided by Iraqi National Congress (INC)-
affiliated defector Source Two was a serious error.
The use of the Source Two information came after three Intelligence
Community assessments raised questions about his reliability as a source and
the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) issued a fabrication notice. Despite two
April 2002 CIA assessments, the May 2002 DIA fabrication notice, and the July
2002 National Intelligence Council assessment warning that Source Two may
have been coached by the INC and fabricated information to his debriefers, the
Source Two reporting was cited specifically in three subsequent CIA intelligence
assessments issued from July 2002 to November 2002 and the Intelligence
Community’s October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, as corroborating other
source reporting about Iraq’s mobile biological weapons program. Source Two
also was one of the four human intelligence sources specifically referred to in the
part of Secretary of State Powell’s February 2003 speech before the United
Nations Security Council that discussed mobile biological weapons production
units. This use of the Source Two information constituted a serious error.

(U) The continued use of Source Two’s information was also a systemic failure.
Prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom, the Intelligence Community did not have a

<<

Page 116


challenges. Certainly, as the report reveals, elements in the Intelligence
Community voiced concerns about this, demonstrating the proper awareness to
counterintelligence issue:

(U) It is also necessary to recall, however, that the INC is comprised of
numerous Iraqi parties, interests and individuals who all co-existed in close
proximity to Iran. Two key elements within the INC, the Kurdish parties of the
KDP and PUK, had both fought and made accommodations with Iran. Ahmed
Chalabi and numerous other individuals of the INC were open with our
Intelligence Community about their interactions with Iran.

(U) That such interactions should raise counterintelligence concerns is
proper; that the Intelligence Community should hold concerns about Iranian
penetration is similarly understandable and to be expected. This should remind us,
however, of one of the most common failures in the practice of counterintelligence
— that it is essentially practiced defensively, rather than offensively.
Counterintelligence must be used not only to preserve our secrets and intelligence
practices, but it can also be used to find opportunities to penetrate, manipulate or
exploit our adversaries. Today we need to be more focused on the threat we face
from Iran than ever before. It is my opinion that we should be seeking
opportunities for intelligence access exploitation of that regime, and that this
should have been a goal since at least 1979.

(U) In this area, I am particularly disturbed by the report’s amended
conclusion criticizing the National Security Council’s July 2002 decision to direct
renewed funding for the INC to DIA management as “ill-advised given the
counterintelligence concerns of the CIA.” Not only is this conclusion an
extrapolation beyond the facts of counterintelligence assessments at the time, not

a

Page 195


a ii; #$£%@-—_————

Importantly, in his reporting about the “suspect facility,” the
source never claimed it was a suspect nuclear facility.

The source who provided information about an Iraqi facility, described by
the Intelligence Community in the NIE as a possible suspect nuclear facility, has
never been determined to be a fabricator and his reporting has not been recalled. It
is also important to note that the defector never claimed that the facility was a
nuclear facility. According to analysts involved in his debriefings, the source
identified what he thought was a suspect facility, but he never claimed any
knowledge of work at the facility related to a nuclear weapons program.
Intelligence Community analysts judged that the facility was a possible suspect
nuclear site, not the source.

After the war, the CIA took the defector to the facility the Intelligence
Community believed he had identified as the suspect facility based on his
description. While at the facility, the defector could not identify where he was.
According to one CIA analyst, many of the details about the facility were exactly
as the defector had described. The analysts could not explain why the defector did
not recognize his surroundings. Some analysts have speculated that the defector
was provided with the information about the facility by someone else. On the
other hand, it is also possible that the Intelligence Community identified the wrong
facility.

This defector provided information for over 250 raw intelligence reports
prior to the war. Only four were related to the possible suspect facility. Although
postwar information indicates that the defector had likely never been to the facility
that the Intelligence Community identified based on his description, the ISG
visited several other sites identified by the defector and confirmed his information
pertaining to those facilities. The CIA also took the defector to another facility he
had identified prior to the war, and the defector was able to quickly identify the

a

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ss  —— — ee

Two INC-affiliated defectors also made claims that Iraq provided terrorist
training prior to the war. INC Source #3 told intelligence community officials in
October 2001 that he observed non-Iraqi Arabs training in an abandoned aircraft
shell at the Salman Pak training facility in Iraq in 1994-1995. Haydr al Bander,
the INC’s Washington representative and the person who referred INC Source #3
to the Intelligence Community, told DIA officers that the non-Iraq Arabs that INC
Source #3 observed were terrorists and that they were receiving training on aircraft
hijackings. In December 2001, a CIA intelligence report stated that INC Source
#3 “is under the influence/control of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and is not
considered to be very credible.” In February 2002, the CIA’s Iraq Operations
Group concluded that: “Although we can verify a few elements of his story, we
have determined that much of his information is inaccurate and appears aimed at
influencing U.S. (and probably western) policy on Iraq.”

During his debriefings in October 2001, INC Source #3 referred INC Source
#4, an Iraqi walk-in and former deputy to the NNN training camp’s
commander, to the Intelligence Community as someone who could confirm his,
INC Source #3’s, story about the training of non-Iraqi Arabs at the facility in
1994-1995. Later that month, INC Source #4 was debriefed by Intelligence
Community officials and said Iraqi intelligence trained Iraqi soldiers and 70-75
non-Iraqi Arabs in hijacking techniques at the Salman Pak facility. In October
2001, the CIA reported that INC Source #4 complained that his earlier accounts to
the press about terrorist training had been distorted and mistranslated by the INC
translator involved in the interviews. The CIA’s Iraqi Operations Group lost
operational interest in INC Source #4, citing, in a February 2003 cable, INC
Source #4’s past exposure in the media and his employment with the INC.

In April 2002, the DIA assessed that “there was no credible reporting on al-

Qa’ ida training at Salman Pak or anywhere else in Iraq.” In January 2003, the CIA
noted that additional information was needed before validating the claim of

—— ——__

Page 178


processes. The report did not state that the research pertained to biological
weapons research, just biological laboratories." Source Two’s DIA debriefer told
Committee staff he had the impression that Source Two was saying that the
purpose of the mobile biological labs was for weapons, but said that he is
confident the intelligence report said exactly what Source Two told him.'®

iy In both reports, Source Two was described as an “Iraqi J
HM fficer with direct access. First-time reporter who is considered to be

reliable.” In the report on Iraq’s mobile biological research labs the comment
section also noted that the “source passed a [DIA]-administered polygraph
regarding information included in this report.”!

= In mid-March 2002, the Intelligence Community learned that the
INC had arranged a press interview for Source Two.

(U) On March 18, 2002, the CIA told the DIA that, during a liaison meeting
earlier the same day, a foreign government intelligence service informed the CIA
that it had debriefed Source Two in December 2001 and believed he was largely
unreliable and partially fabricated the information he provided. The foreign
service reported that Source Two was unable to provide specific details on his
chain-of-command or the facilities where he claimed to have worked. The foreign
service said it did not publish any intelligence reports resulting from these

ie DIA intelligence report, March 92002.

88 staff interview with DIA officer, March 31, 2006.

169 DIA intelligence report, [II Viarchil002.

ee

Page 59


———— i—

V. CONCLUSIONS

(U) Conclusion 1: False information from the Iraqi National Congress (INC)
-affiliated sources was used to support key Intelligence Community
assessments on Iraq and was widely distributed in intelligence products prior
to the war. Information provided by INC-affiliated sources resulted in the
production and distribution of a large body of intelligence reports and assessments
on Iraq prior to the war. The DIA produced and disseminated over 250
intelligence information reports on the debriefings of INC-affiliated defector
Source One alone. Information provided by these sources was used by the
Intelligence Community to support key judgments about Iraq’s nuclear and
biological weapons programs in the Intelligence Community’s October 2002
National Intelligence Estimate, the CIA’s 2002 and 2003 widely-distributed
assessments about Iraq’s support for terrorism and alleged links to al-Qa’ida, and
Secretary of State Powell’s February 2003 speech before the United Nations
Security Council.

(U) Conclusion 2: The Iraqi National Congress (INC) attempted to influence
United States policy on Iraq by providing false information through defectors
directed at convincing the United States that Iraq possessed weapons of mass
destruction and had links to terrorists. According to INC officials interviewed
by the Committee, the INC had an aggressive “publicity campaign” prior to the
war to bring defectors to the attention of “anyone who would listen,” which
included the media, the Congress, members of the Intelligence Community, and
other U.S. government agencies. The Committee found that the INC brought six
defectors to the attention of the Intelligence Community. The Intelligence
Community met with and debriefed five of the six individuals.

(HD A July 2004 CIA EEE review concluded the intelligence

reporting of INC-affiliated defector Source One on weapons of mass destruction

a ij i

Page 113


asset, the , individual fled Iraq to Europe [via a number
of other countries. The same day, the CIA’s

Iraq Operations Group responded to the station that headquarters “is quite familiar
with subject ... whose name is [Source Three.] . . . [Two other CIA stations] are
likewise very familiar with Source Three, and we find it rather telling that he
neglected to mention to the Immigration Service [in the country where the station
was located] that he has been debriefed in both of those locations. We have no
information that he has spent any time in [one of the countries mentioned in the
cable], and we assess his story in ref to be entirely fabricated.” The cable advised
the station against any contact with him.””° In a response to Committee staff
questions about why the Iraq Operations Group was so certain that the station
contact was the same individual as Source Three, especially considering that the
personal data and the reporting from the two did not match, CIA noted that “in
hindsight, it is possible that there were in fact two individuals, as Arabic names
are often very alike.””””

(U) Similarly, in August 2002, a CIA domestic station wrote to CIA
headquarters requesting assistance in accessing or interviewing an unnamed
defector discussed in the media. The station noted that an FBI office was very
interested in information the defector was said to have on the Mujahideen e Khalq
(MEK), an Iranian opposition grou

8 The CIA’s Iraq
Operations Group responded on September 6, 2002 that “the individual referred to
in ref is [Source Three], a former Iraqi Fedayeen Saddam officer who did, in fact,
flee to Europe in mid-2001.” The Iraq Operations Group outlined its assessment

226 CIA operational cable, A, Junell, 2002.

sod Responses to Additional Requests Concerning the Iraqi National Congress, February 28, 2006.
CIA operational cable, ad August fii, 2002.

a So a

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—————  —S=s—ssa——

implement OIG’s recommendations.” The INCSF had not fully implemented all
portions of the two recommendations, in part, because a lack of funding from the
Department of State prevented them from paying for full implementation of
several accounting upgrades.”

(U) The April 2004 GAO report also said that State “doubted the value of
information obtained through the information program.””” However, the former
Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs told Committee staff that
“my view all along was that there was apparently information being collected that
I didn’t see and therefore couldn’t evaluate. I never held the view that I doubted
whether the information was useful or not. I simply didn’t know what it was, and
therefore couldn’t make an assessment.” He added “my people were totally
professional throughout, but I think there was clearly a greater degree of
frustration farther down the line than I had to feel, and that probably led people
from time to time to express a view that they doubted there was anything there,
that there was really any substance in the [ICP] program at all.”®°

(U) Ina written response to the Committee, the State Department said the
Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs (NEA), which had overall
responsibility for the program, believed it was unable to judge the ICP’s
“effectiveness because it did not have sufficient access to the information being
produced.” For example, in early 2002, Department of State staff visited the
Washington, D.C. offices of the INCSF to observe INCSF operations. According
to the Department of State, INCSF staff refused to allow the Department of State

8 Department of State, Office of Inspector General, Follow Up Review of Iraqi National Congress Support
Foundation, report number AUD/CG-02-44, September 2002, summary.
GAO Report to Congressional Requesters, State Department, /ssues Affecting Funding of Iraqi National
Congress, Support Foundation (GAO-04-559), April 200, p. 8.
Committee staff interview with former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Near East Asia, July 14, 2006.

a

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Iraq. The exact contaminant was not identified, but “is believed to be a biological
agent, possibly anthrax or a derivative of anthrax.”*®

(U) The fourteen other sources reported on a variety of topics including
regime biographic and personality information, Saddam’s palaces, tribe loyalties,
Iraqi concealment efforts, prohibited procurement, the Fedayeen Saddam, military
order of battle, Iraqi intelligence, the movement of prohibited weapons, and the
locations of suspect WMD facilities.”®*

(U) According to DIA, the impact of reporting from INC-affiliated sources
varied substantially by issue. The quality and impact were higher for leadership
tracking, prisoners of war, and identification of medical facilities as compared to
military issues and WMD.” INC sources in some cases provided verified and
useful information that directly supported contingency planning and operations for
Operation Iraqi Freedom. In other instances, the information was vague, incorrect,
or unverifiable.”**

(U) INC-affiliated reporting was “highly useful,” according to the DIA, in
identifying important medical facilities. Reporting confirmed facility locations,
identified new facilities, and providing a means for de-conflicting previously
erroneous geographic coordinates provided by other sources. Most of the
information was used for no-strike targeting to avoid civilian casualties.”*’

283 DIA intelligence report, J anvaryi2003.

284 DIA, response to Committee staff request.

he DIA response to Committee staff questions, February 2004.

287 DIA, Iraq: INC Source Pre-War Intelligence Reporting, Response to SSCI request, December 13, 2005.
DIA response to Committee staff questions, February 2004.

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a _

(U) At the same time, Chalabi was also concerned about the continuation of
Kurdish fighting and reports that the Iranians intended to send their own
“mediators” into northern Iraq. In late January 1995, a senior Department of State
officer went to northern Iraq to meet with Chalabi and the Kurdish leaders to
discuss a possible cease-fire. In response, the US encouraged a cease-fire
agreement by offering U.S. funding for INC mediation efforts and suggesting that
the U.S. would cease enforcing the northern Iraq no-fly zone if the two groups did
not agree. The Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan
(PUK) agreed to accept a cease-fire based on that understanding."°

(U) In early February 1995, the CIA learned of a new opposition plan to
remove Saddam Hussein from power. A former senior Iraqi intelligence official
said the plan centered on seizing Saddam when he visited his residence in the
town of Ujah, where he assessed Saddam would go if he felt vulnerable in
Baghdad. A clan member of the former official and military instructor at a nearby
tank school was to provide armor to take Saddam’s Ujah residence complex.
Another military officer, who was assigned to Saddam’s special security detail,
was responsible for informing them of when Saddam was about to leave for Ujah.
The CIA learned that the former official wanted to implement the plan within two-
to-three weeks and said nothing other than minimal assistance was needed,
although the former official would expect strong U.S. public support for the coup
immediately after Saddam would be seized.'®

(U) Immediately thereafter, the CIA received many additional details about
the plan, including the fact that “the coup will occur on either 4 or 5 March,
depending on when Saddam travels to Ujah” and that the former official expected

CIA operational cable, January 1995 and staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi.
1 eClA operational cable, January 1995 and staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi.
CIA Operational cable, February 1995.

——— — ae

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Pe

that Source Three embellished his access and advised against further contact.” In
fact, the subject of the media article was not Source Three, it was Source Two.

b. Intelligence Assessments

(U) CIA analysts included Source Three’s information in three extensive
assessments about Iraq’s links to al-Qa’ida, a June 2002 paper, Iraq and al-
Qa’ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, and September 2002 and January 2003
versions of Jragi Support for Terrorism. All three assessments noted that
reporting surged after September 11, 2001 from Iraqi defectors claiming that al-
Qa’ida and other non-Iraqi Arabs engaged in special operations training at Salman
Pak.” The two Jragi Support for Terrorism papers more explicitly described the
information as:

Press and sensitive reporting about al-Qa’ida activity at
Salman Pak—ultimately sourced to three Iraqi
defectors—surged after 11 September. The defectors
claimed that al-Qa’ida and other non-Iraqis engaged in
special operations training at Salman Pak. It was
subsequently determined, however, that at least one of
these defectors, whose story appeared in [the media], had
embellished and exaggerated his access. The other two
reported similar information but apparently did not have

oo CIA operational cable, September 2002.
CIA, Iraq and al-Qa'ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, June 21, 2002, p. 6, CIA, Jragi Support
for Terrorism, September 19, 2002, p. 14; and January 29, 2003, p. 17-18.

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EE

(QD The CIA included reporting from Source Four’s debriefs in the
assessment on the [facility describing him as a former Iraqi Saddam
Fedayeen captain who observed 70-75 non-Iraqi Arabs receiving terrorist training
at Salman Pak from October 1994 to May 1995. “According to the former captain,
his role has been distorted in open source accounts, which described him as
training members of Saddam’s Fedayeen to conduct kidnappings, assassinations,
and hijacking operations. He insists his duties were strictly administrative in
nature, aside from instructing recruits in marksmanship training.”

(U) The CIA case officer who debriefed Source Four told Committee staff
that Source Four did not say that he knew his remarks had been distorted, rather
that Source Four believed he had been distorted because after some of Source
Four’s short responses, the INC translator would speak in English for long
periods.4”

(U) Committee staff reviewed a tape recording of a press interview with
Source Four in which several INC officials participated and an INC member
translated. A U.S. government contract translator reviewed the tape recording and
told Committee staff that the defector was not mistranslated. In a few cases the
translator added “definitely” to the defector’s response and added “all over the
world” to his comment that the terrorist training was intended to target American
interests and the American military. Neither Source Four, nor the translator, ever
claimed that the defector provided the terrorist training himself, only that he was at
the camp where such training was provided and that he was at the camp for only a
year. In several instances the translator responded to the reporter’s questions
without actually asking the defector, most often because the defector had already

46 CIA intelligence assessment, io ermber
B00 apd, CIA, Iraq and al-Qa'ida: Interpreting a Murky Relationship, June 21, 2002, p 6.
Staff interview with CIA officer.

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(U) In response to the authorization, and in an effort to reach out to
opposition groups and generate ideas to carry out the efforts, in May 1991, the
CIA approached Dr. Ahmed Chalabi, a secular Iraqi Shiite Muslim, who had been
living in exile since 1956 and was already a well known opposition figure. With
mutual goals of establishing a focal point for rallying the Iraqi opposition, Chalabi
and the CIA began to work together.

(U) In June of 1992, more than 200 Iraqi opposition leaders met in Vienna.
This conference saw the creation of the INC and established a general committee,
and smaller leadership and executive committees, to direct opposition efforts
against the Iraqi regime.”

(U) After the Vienna meeting, Ahmed Chalabi says he began to plan for a
larger conference that would include a wider spectrum of opposition parties,
including the Islamic groups, which had not participated in the Vienna conference.
In October 1992, several hundred representatives attended the INC’s conference in
Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq. The INC elected a three-member leadership
council, chose a 25-member executive council, and elected Chalabi as its
Chairman. The INC also established an office in northern Iraq and announced its
political program which included three primary goals: 1) the overthrow of the
Saddam Hussein regime; 2) the establishment of democracy in Iraq; and 3) putting
Saddam Hussein and his regime on trial?

(U) While the US and the INC continued to work toward mutual goals of
undermining Saddam Hussein, the relationship experienced some difficulties, in
part due to differing views of Chalabi’s role in CIA’s Iraq intelligence efforts.
The CIA officers interviewed by Committee staff commented that Chalabi was

Staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006.
Staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006

EE  —-

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a }£=_ae

classification restrictions, but asked Chalabi if he had suggested that anyone walk-
in to a U.S. Embassy. Chalabi did not recall making that suggestion to any
defectors."

34] staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006.

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noted that CIA debriefers had been notified about Source Four from another Iraqi
defector, Source Three (see previous discussion), who had referred Source Four
because he was MMCommander’s deputy at the training camp and
would have a good overview of the training there. Source Three said that Source
Four had no terrorist connections. 7”

(® The FBI and the CIA debriefed Source Four in October 2001. The FBI
report from the interview says that Source Four was an Iraqi army Captain who

brought his
personnel to} he camp as part of their training in 1995. The FBI report

said that the purpose of the Fedayeen, according to Uday Hussein, was to strike
against America and American interests. Source Four said the camp had a train, a
bus, and a Boeing 707 aircraft to train in hijacking operations. Source Four was
not a terrorist instructor, but did provide his soldiers with weapons training.”

(U) The FBI report said Source Four saw the hijacking training of his
soldiers which included training to gain control of the cockpit using any type of
weapons they could get, including guns, knives, sticks, or toy guns. Source Four
said Iraqi intelligence also trained non-Iraqi Arabs in hijacking techniques at this
facility. Source Four told the FBI that he had no specific information that tied the
training he observed directly to the September 11 attacks, but said the training he
saw was nearly identical to the methods used by the September 11 terrorists."

iy The CIA has not provided the Committee with contemporaneous
operations traffic that discusses its interview with Source Four. The CIA did
disseminate three intelligence reports from Source Four’s debriefs prior to

ne CIA operational cable, JIEENNO ctober [2001.

21 FBI, Interview of Source Four, October 30, 2001.
FBI, Interview of Source Four, October 30, 2001.

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It is our expectation that the Committee can complete its remaining work on
Phase II of its Iraq inquiry in a manner that is complete, objective, and
expeditious. It should not have taken nearly three years to reach this point.

JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV,
CARL LEVIN,

DIANNE FEINSTEIN,

RON WYDEN,

EVAN BAYH,

BARBARA A. MIKULSKI,
RUSSELL D. FEINGOLD.

———

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a

CURVE BALL’s close relative’s INC connections, fearing that CURVE BALL
would terminate discussions with the CIA. CIA never asked CURVE BALL about
any affiliation with the INC, judging that he would have terminated the discussion
if they had.>”

(U) The CIA believes that CURVE BALL’s close relative’s connection to
the INC is coincidental, and is not an explanation for his fabrications. The CIA
told Committee staff in a written response to questions that CURVE BALL’s
defection did not fit the pattern of the typical INC-influenced defection in that the
INC did not broker his introduction to the Intelligence Community and did not put
him in front of the media.>* In 2003, a CIA analyst told the Committee that
CURVE BALL was located when he sought asylum in a European country, when
officials reviewed his asylum paperwork, noticed that he was an Iraqi chemical
engineer, and approached him to be interviewed. The analyst said CURVE BALL
did not come forward with information himself. In explaining why she did not
think CURVE BALL was affiliated with the INC she said that the INC would
“shop their good sources around town, but they weren’t known for sneaking
people out of countries into some asylum system. This isn’t the way they were
known to operate. It would have been more blatant if the INC-at least in our
estimation—had been putting him forward.>**

(U) A study of possible Iraqi opposition deception efforts against the U.S.
noted that CIA has never formally collected against the INC and has no
information on their processes and procedures for disseminating information, a
key element to assess potential deception programs and tactics.*> However, CIA

332
333
334
335

CIA response to questions from Committee staff, January 10, 2006.
CIA response to questions from Committee staff, January 10, 2006.
Interview with CIA analysts, December 4, 2003.

CIA internal memorandum,

March 8, 2004.

———  ——___ _——

Page 108


diplomat never defected and neither CIA nor DIA officers ever met with him.”
No reporting resulted from this referral.””

C. INC Reporting During DIA’s Management of the ICP

(U) As noted previously, the DIA officially took over management of the
ICP from the Department of State in late October 2002. Between that time and
before the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the DIA disseminated reporting from
fourteen other sources who were either members of or were associated with the
INC. In addition to the fourteen individuals, the DIA also disseminated four
prewar intelligence reports from a source number assigned to the INC organization
itself. The reports assigned to this source number resulted from CIA and DIA
meetings with several INC officials who “provided composites of what the INC
ICP had on hand concerning Iraq. . . . [DIA] is unable to attribute the reporting to
any single source within the INC’s ICP.”?”

(U) According to the DIA, reporting from sources provided by the ICP
“covered a myriad of information and was not uniform in quality, accuracy, and
utility. In some cases it provided solid intelligence leads, corroborated other
information, and contributed to our knowledge base. In other cases, the
information was of low or no value.”?”” DIA said its “experience with INC ICP
sources is similar to that with many HUMINT sources.”?”8

274 NIC Memorandum, The Iraqi National Congress Defector Program, July 10, 2002, p.4.

oe CIA response to questions from Committee staff, January 18, 2006.
277 DIA response to questions from Committee staff, March 2006.
DIA Response to Questions for the Record, March 23, 2004.

278 DIA Response to Questions for the Record, March 23, 2004.

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a  ——

. “And, worst of all, his connections with terrorists, which go back decades, and which
started some 10 years ago with al-Qa’ida, are growing every day.” Deputy Secretary of
Defense Wolfowitz, February 6, 2003

. “He provides funding and training and safe haven to terrorists, terrorists who would
willingly use weapons of mass destruction against America and other peace-loving
countries.” — President Bush, March 6, 2003

Prior to the war, the intelligence community assessed that it would be “an
extreme step” for Iraq to assist Islamist terrorists in conducting a chemical or
biological weapon attack against the United States. The key judgements of the
October 2002 NIE stated that Saddam had no current intentions of conducting
terrorist attacks against the U.S. The Committee’s investigation revealed no
postwar information indicating that Iraq considered using al-Qa’ida or any other
terrorist group to attack the United States.

The Committee investigation concluded that, in fact, Saddam Hussein was
distrustful of al-Qa’ida and viewed Islamic extremists as a threat to his regime,
refusing all requests from al-Qa’ida to provide material or operational support.
Debriefings of key leaders of the former Iraqi regime indicate that Saddam
distrusted Islamic radicals in general, and al-Qa’ida in particular. Postwar findings
indicate that Saddam Hussein refused all al-Qa’ida overtures for material or
operational support and issued a general order that Iraq should not deal with al-
Qa’ida. In addition, Iraq was unaware that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was in
Baghdad (under an assumed identity) until the regime was alerted to his presence
by a foreign intelligence service in spring 2002. Saddam viewed al-Zarqawi as an
outlaw and attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture him. Similarly,
Saddam Hussein viewed the al-Qa’ida affiliate group Ansar al-Islam operating in
Kurdish-controlled northeastern Iraq as a threat to his regime. A May 2002 Iraqi
intelligence document indicates that the Iraqi regime was concerned that the
United States would use the presence of Ansar al-Islam, operating in an area that

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a saa

course, will welcome analysis that supports the policy, and will spurn
analysis that does not support it. The latter environment was what prevailed
on Iraq in the year before the war.

“Intelligence analysis being human, such an environment has subtle but
significant effects on the shape of the intelligence product. With analysts
throughout the community feeling a policy wind always blowing in one
direction, there is a bias in the way countless calls about ambiguous
evidence are made. Caveats are strengthened or weakened. And judgments
are worded.

“As the Silberman-Robb Commission observed about work on the Iraqi
weapons program, draft assessments that conformed with the
Administration’s picture of Iraq had an easier time making it through the
process of coordination and review than draft assessments that did not. And
just through sheer repetition of the demands and requests the Administration
placed on the intelligence community to support certain lines of argument,
such as the one about alleged links between Iraq and al-Qa’ida, a further
bias is introduced into the direction of the community’s work.”

Colonel Lawrence Wilkerson (Ret.), Secretary of State Powell’s Chief of
Staff from 2001-2005, described this selective use of intelligence to support policy
goals in the context of the Secretary’s February 5, 2003 speech to the UN as
“perpetration of a hoax” and “what I would call...cherry-picking, or shaping the
intelligence in new and unique ways in order to support political objectives.”
Wilkerson added: “...] was dismayed to see, that, unquestionably in my mind ~ and
I’m a Republican, so this is difficult for me to say — our national leaders were
using intelligence in a way that was not as discriminating as it should be.”

The decision to go to war

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a ee

contact with the U.S. Intelligence Community.” The assessment noted that the
foreign intelligence service also debriefed Source Two and assessed that he
fabricated at least some of his information.’ The assessment stated:

Source Two demonstrated a general understanding of Iraq’s WMD
infrastructure and procurement networks both in his public statements
and in his debriefings, but much of his information was in the public
domain, lacked sufficient detail to verify his access, or was incorrect.
His position as a midlevel EB fficer suggests that he would
not have had direct access to a broad spectrum of compartmented
weapons programs. We have not used his information in finished
intelligence products.”!”

(U) In May 2002, after lengthy coordination with the CIA’s Iraqi Operations
Group and Counterproliferation Division, the DIA issued a “fabrication notice”
which said “we have determined that [Source Two] is a fabricator/provocateur”
and advised consumers that “his information is assessed as unreliable and, in some
instances, pure fabrication. We have determined that he had also been coached by

174
175
17

CIA, Assessment of the Iraqi defector
CIA, Assessment of the Iraqi defector

April 2002.
April 2002.

Page 61


a i ———

2. Source Two

(EE Source Two EEE former Iraqi major,

was referred to DIA on February 8, 2002. According to the DIA, the Principal
Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications
and Intelligence had been contacted by former DCI James Woolsey who said that
the INC had access to a potential source. The Principal Deputy passed the
information on to the DIA.! DIA officials met with INC representatives to
establish contact with Source Two.

(U) In February 2002, the CIA notified DIA that a private researcher had
interviewed Source Two earlier in the month. The CIA provided the DIA with a
copy of Source Two’s interview transcript which was reviewed by DIA analysts.
The interview contained information related to Iraqi biological, chemical, and
missile programs. DIA analysts prepared an assessment which noted that the
“source does not appear to have direct access to new Iraqi CW program
information” and “we question the source’s credibility on the CW-related activity
unless he can provide more compelling evidence to support his claim on chemical
weapons.” Regarding biological weapons, the assessment said, “the source
reported no new information on Iraq’s BW program. This source appears to have
information that-if deemed credible—-may corroborate previous reporting
indicating Iraq employs transportable production trailers and mobile R&D
laboratories in its BW program.” The assessment said the source provided some
new reporting on a recent al-Abbas missile location and that the missile is

weaponized with VX, a claim considered suspect by the chemical analysts.'®!

160 DIA response to questions from Committee staff, December 14, 2005 (SSCI# 2005-4899). Mr.
Woolsey did not recall making this referral to the Department of Defense but did not rule it out. Staff interview with
Mr. Woolsey.
DIA, Analyst Review - February 2002 Iraqi National Congress Interview Transcript.

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a

B) As you know, we were surprised by your plan to move this weekend and
were very concemed about claims that this plan had U.S. support.

C) This cannot happen again if we are to work together. The U.S.
government must not be put in the position of having its name invoked, or
having to make decisions which could involve American lives, without
adequate prior consultation.

D) We are concerned that in the aftermath, a desire to assign blame will lead
to the weakening of the opposition to Saddam Hussein. We hope this urge
will be resisted.

E) The task now is to regroup around our common objective. Saddam
Hussein is increasingly isolated. Our efforts among UNSC members have
helped ensure the maintenance of sanctions.

F) Saddam has to believe his position is eroding. Efforts in the period ahead
need to be focused on exploiting his weaknesses rather than on
recrimations.”°

(U) CIA field and headquarters officials responsible for Iraq told Committee
staff they believed that the NSC had been surprised by the opposition plans
because the Chief of CIA’s Near East (NE) Division made himself the only
channel of communication with the NSC and did not tell the NSC about the
uprising plans.*’ The Chief of NE told Committee staff that he made himself the
point of contact with the NSC to avoid mixed messages coming from the NE
Division, but he said that his role in no way limited the CIA Iraq Headquarters
element’s ability to disseminate intelligence reporting on their activities. The
Chief of NE also said he did not recall field elements sending in a “sharply
articulated plan” and did not believe that the plan would succeed.”

cla Operational cable, March 1995.
Staff interview with CIA officers.
Staff interview with CIA officer, March 10, 2006.

Page 19


a i i i(%Q—_ae

(U) In contrast to the carefully worded description of the suspect facility as
a possible nuclear facility in the NIE, the September 2002 DIA assessment said an
Iraqi defector “described a nuclear site near Baghdad” and “reportedly observed
new cylinders similar to those used to hold UF6.” The report noted that the
defector saw special security at the facility and individuals formerly associated
with Iraq’s nuclear program. The assessment concluded that the defector’s report
“suggests this site is either a uranium conversion or gas centrifuge facility.” A
picture of the site identified as possibly the suspect facility was included with a
caption that stated “this facility, just north of Baghdad, apparently is either a
uranium conversion facility or gas centrifuge uranium enrichment facility.”'*”

(HD In addition to the these two assessments, on October 17, 2002, the
CIA published an assessment detailing the overall reporting of two Iraq sources,
one of which was Source One. The assessment noted that Source One was
debriefed by the CIA and the DIA and said the debriefers described him as
“cooperative and straightforward.” The assessment said that Source One did not
have access to information on the nature of the work being done at the facilities
where he worked, but then added:

Reporting Es} ows a complex that

Source One alleged was involved in nuclear-related activities. He
reportedly observed known nuclear-associated personnel and steel
containers labeled with radiation warning markings near two small
laboratories. We cannot determine the facility’s function [i
HE, but its location and heavy security are consistent with other
Iraqi WMD-capable facilities. We do not know what was in the
containers, but it could have been uranium hexaflouride or another
radioactive substance. Source One reported that he never observed

7 DIA, Iraq’s Reemerging Nuclear Weapon Program, September 2002, p. 10, 12.

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———— 42

from the CIA and the DIA assessed that Source One may have been provided
information about the facility second hand.'”

pat ___y questioning, Source One acknowledged contact

with the INC’s Washington Director [M, but denied that the
Washington Director directed Source One to provide any false information.

ie 7 Staff interview with CLA analysts.

Page 52



4. Source Four

(U) In October 2001, Source Four, a

former Iraqi Fedayeen Saddam captain, living in the United States, was referred to
the Intelligence Community by Source Three as someone who could confirm
Source Three’s story. He provided Source Four’s name, address and telephone
number to the debriefers.

(GD) Before the any members of the Intelligence Community met with
Source Four, the INC arranged a meeting between him and a U.S. journalist.
During the meeting, an INC member acted as the interpreter and several INC
officials participated in the discussion. The CIA received an advance copy of a
draft media article based on the interview with Source Four. According to a CIA
cable about the article, it said Source Four was an Iraqi terror school instructor and
said that the methods used at the training school, in [EEE rag, were similar
to those used by September 11 hijackers. A CIA cable discussing the draft article


————-  _—

While the Intelligence Community’s handling of the INC Information
Collection Program after the start of OIF was not within the scope of this report, it
is important to note that the program’s source handlers contacted, and brought in
for debriefing, fourteen nuclear specialists sought by the ISG. The INC
Information Collection Program led to numerous force protection leads, including
credible threats against coalition forces and the arrest of two high value targets
from the “top-55 blacklist.” The INC provided access to a large volume of
material including Ba’ath Party military records, Baghdad police records, and
thirty-one footlockers of Iraqi Intelligence Service records. The INC provided
information used by CENTCOM for target lists and battle damage assessments.

Myth: The INC, through defectors, provided false information aimed at
influencing U.S. policy.

Reality: | The Committee has no evidence that the INC intentionally
provided false information.

The INC had a clearly articulated agenda, publicly outlined in 1992: (1) the
overthrow of the Saddam Hussein regime; (2) the establishment of democracy in
Iraq; and (3) the trial of Saddam Hussein and his regime. Having evidence that
the INC had an agenda is one thing. Proving that the INC intentionally
provided false information to achieve that agenda — as suggested in amended
Conclusion 2 — is something quite different.

Much like reporting from 45 other HUMINT sources cited in the October
2002 NIE, information from some INC-affiliated defectors proved to be wrong.
The Committee has no indication, however, that the INC-affiliated sources
intentionally provided false information. In fact, several officers from the CIA —
some of whom were clearly not supporters of Ahmed Chalabi or his agenda — told
Committee staff that they believed that INC individuals who were engaged in the

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Page 143


Myth: False information was used to support key assessments.

Reality: The Intelligence Community used only one claim from an INC-
affiliated defector in support of one NIE key judgment. While
postwar findings indicate that information from this one defector
did turn out to be wrong, the Intelligence Community likely
would not have altered its judgment even without his
information.

As discussed previously, the only INC-affiliated defector who has been
determined to be a “fabricator” was the source who reported on Iraqi efforts to
establish mobile biological laboratories. The Intelligence Community used his
reporting to corroborate information from another source, code-named CURVE
BALL, for the Intelligence Community’s key judgment that Iraq had mobile
facilities for producing bacterial and toxin BW agents. It should also be noted that
the source, contrary to the claim in amended Conclusion 2, reported on biological
laboratories, not biological weapons laboratories. The postwar findings of the
Iraq Survey Group (ISG), which included no evidence of any mobile biological
programs for weapons or research, do not support the defector’s prewar claim.

While information from this one defector was wrong, the CIA said the
judgment that Iraq had a mobile biological weapons program would not have
changed even without this source’s information.

Myth: One INC-affiliated defector provided false information about a
suspect nuclear facility.

Reality: Although there are several questions raised by postwar findings

about one INC-affiliated defector, the source has not been labeled
a fabricator and his reporting has not been recalled.

=

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a

(U) ACIA representative accompanied Chalabi to discuss the plan and seek
the participation of other senior opposition figures. According to Chalabi and CIA
officials, the CIA representative went to these meetings to imply U.S. support for
the planned effort.’ These senior opposition officials told the CIA representative
they would support the plan. One promised to send 15,000 troops to create a
diversion and the another promised to move its own troops around Mosul.

(U) On March 3, 1995, Chalabi made contact with Iranian intelligence
officials to discuss Iran’s position on the proposed action and their support for
possible action against southern Iraq. In response to questions from Committee
staff, the CIA representative who had been liaising with Chalabi said he was aware
of the meeting ahead of time and was aware that the purpose of the meeting was to
gain both Iranian support for the opposition action and signal to the Iranians that
the U.S. was supportive of the plan. CIA headquarters denied his request to join
the meeting. He was informed, however, that it was not a problem for Chalabi to
seek the help of the Iranians. Nonetheless, the CIA representative said that he was
present outside the meeting space, was seen by the Iranians, and was aware that
Chalabi intended for the Iranians to see him there as a signal of U.S. support.”

(U) In early March 1995, a foreign government provided the U.S.
information on the Iranians’ view of this meeting. It was indicated that Iran
thought that the U.S. was seeking Iranian support for the Iraqi oppositionist
uprising against Saddam Hussein planned for early March 1995. Iranian officials
also believed that the U.S. person involved in the matter was a CIA officer.
Indications were that Chalabi “handed” the Iranians a message at the meeting,
purportedly from the U.S., that said America would welcome the involvement of
Islamic forces in the operations against Saddam Hussein, on the condition that the

5 Staft interviews with CIA officers, and staff interview of Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006.
2 Staff interview with CIA officer, February 17, 2006.

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specific room where he said he had worked. The CIA was able to corroborate this
information.

Regarding the overall authenticity of his reporting, a CIA postwar review
said, “[T]here is little doubt that the subject was in fact [a contractor who worked
at various Iraqi facilities]; and his reporting on Iraq’s military infrastructure and
conventional facilities, areas that are commensurate with his access, has generally
been corroborated.”

We simply do not know, and probably will never know, the reason the
source could not identify the facility to which the CIA took him. It is possible that
he was provided information about the facility by someone else. In that case, the
information he provided about the facility might still have been accurate — even if
his direct relationship to the facility was false. It is also possible that the
Intelligence Community identified the wrong facility. The Intelligence
Community’s identification was based on the source’s verbal description and
written diagrams. When the facility was first identified by the Intelligence
Community in 2002, there were discrepancies between his reporting and the
identified facility. For example, the defector reported that construction of the
facility had begun in 1999, but construction on the site identified by the
Intelligence Community began in the summer of 1998. In addition, the facility
identified by the Intelligence Community was located on the eastern side of a
specific river, but the defector told his debriefers he did not recall seeing the river
adjacent to the construction site. We do not know whether these discrepancies are
because the source had never been to the facility or because the Intelligence
Community identified a different facility. When all of these facts are considered,
it is clear that the Committee’s adopted conclusion fails to accurately describe the
source and the information he provided.

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|

reports was that DIA attempts to write one report on one subject. The DIA codes
its reports to link them to specific collection requirements, so that one report will
respond to one specific requirement. The DIA officers said this was not an effort
to inflate report numbers for Source One.'*

(U) The CIA analysts told Committee staff that the analysts were not
involved in writing source descriptions or summaries. The analysts drafted the
main text of the reports and the DIA reports officer would take that text and cut
and paste it into a template for the intelligence report. The analysts said that after
they submitted the text, they did not have access to the reports again until they
were disseminated.'°°

(iy Regarding the overall authenticity of Source One’s reporting, the
DIA and the CIA agree with the conclusion of the CIA review that “there is little
doubt that subject was in fact a [contractor who worked at several Iraqi facilities]

ae and his reporting on Iraq’s military infrastructure and

conventional facilities, areas that are commensurate with his access, has generally
been corroborated.” The agencies believe that Source One had never been to the
facility they identified as the suspect facility and some believe he may have been
provided with information about the facility by someone else. The Intelligence
Community has never deemed Source One to be a fabricator and has not recalled
his reporting.

No Staff interview with DIA officers, February 10, 2006.

Staff interview with CIA analysts, November 28, 2005.

|

Page 56


a ——____  —_—

1. INTRODUCTION

(U) On February 12, 2004, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
agreed to refine the terms of reference of the Committee’s ongoing inquiry into
prewar intelligence with regard to Iraq. The Committee agreed that five of the
new elements, including “the use by the Intelligence Community of information
provided by the Iraqi National Congress (INC),” would be reviewed in “phase IT”
of the Iraq inquiry. The Committee released the first phase of the Iraqi review, the
Report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence
Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq, on July 9, 2004.

(U) In reviewing the “use by the Intelligence Community of information
provided by the INC,” Committee staff endeavored to keep the scope of the review
consistent with specific terms of reference to which Committee Members
unanimously agreed on February 12, 2004. Consistent with the overall scope of
the inquiry — “prewar intelligence with regard to Iraq” — this report focuses only
on the Intelligence Community’s use of prewar INC information, information
provided to the Intelligence Community prior to the March 19, 2003 start of
Operation Iraqi Freedom. The report describes, in brief, the fact that the
Intelligence Community did continue to use and fund the collection of INC
information for over a year after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, but does not
provide details regarding how the Intelligence Community used that information
and does not include a review of the quality or utility of INC information after the
start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

(U) This report also does not focus on the Intelligence Community’s use of
INC information in the early and mid-1990s. The Central Intelligence Agency
(CIA), which was the agency with primacy in handling the INC following the
1991 Gulf War, has had a long and tumultuous relationship with the INC, in
particular, with the INC’s executive council Chairman Ahmed Chalabi. In

a

Page 3


[During the declassification review of these additional views, the
intelligence community determined that the paragraph above was entirely
unclassified. On the day the Committee met to release the report, the intelligence
community reversed itself and made the indicated redactions. We believe this
last-minute decision is without merit and represents an improper use of
classification authority, the effect of which is to shield the White House.]

The Committee Chairman declined a request of the Vice Chairman for the
Committee to interview White House officials, including speechwriters, to fully
understand how and why intelligence assessments were included in major prewar
speeches, such as President’s State of the Union Address and Secretary Powell
speech to the UN Security Council.

Postwar debriefings of al-Ani indicate that he had never seen or heard of
Atta until after September 11, 2001, when Atta’s face appeared on the news. [jj

[The intelligence community’s decision to classify the information in the
above paragraph is not consistent with its decision to declassify similar
information described elsewhere in the report. Based on this inconsistency and
the inability of the intelligence community to demonstrate that sensitive sources or
methods would be revealed if the information was disclosed, we have concluded
the redaction to be without justification. ]

b._Irag providing al-Qa'ida with training

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ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF SENATOR DEWINE
Introduction

1 offer these additional views because with the adoption of most of the
conclusions to this report, I think the Committee missed an opportunity here to
perform real oversight over how our Intelligence Community operates.
Unfortunately, despite the work the Committee put into this, it could not produce a
report providing more meaningful guidance to our intelligence agencies in how
they conduct their business.

Use of HUMINT Sources with Possible Agendas

The duty of HUMINT intelligence collectors is to exploit all potential
sources of intelligence regardless of agendas. I reject the notion that sources from
opposition groups are somehow inherently more unreliable than other HUMINT
sources. We look to our intelligence professionals to use their best judgments in
handling HUMINT sources, including reporting possible agendas and then
identifying those bias in intelligence reports with caveats. We expect our analysts,
in turn, to carefully weigh the information they receive, including caveats, when
crafting their assessments. I am concerned, however, that the Committee’s final
message in this report is a warning to intelligence agencies against recruiting
HUMINT sources with opposition or other agendas, or face criticism from
Congress.

I want to be clear, though, that I agree with the substance of the conclusion
that it was a mistake for the National Security Council to order the Intelligence
Community to continue working with the Iraqi National Congress after 2002. The
bad experience of the CIA in trying to work with the Iraqi National Congress in
the 1990s, followed by the State Department in the period 1998-2002, and the

a

Page 199


the United Nations — and then secretly used the equipment for their weapons
programs.” The paper clearly left the impression that Haideri had specific
knowledge of the location of Iraqi WMD.

[The intelligence community’s decision to classify the information in the
above paragraph is not consistent with its decision to declassify similar
information described elsewhere in the report. Based on this inconsistency and
the inability of the intelligence community to demonstrate that sensitive sources
and methods would be revealed if the information was disclosed, we have
concluded the redaction to be without justification. ]

However, INC Source #1’s reporting on a suspect nuclear facility at |

HE 2s included in the intelligence community’s October

2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq as well. A text box in the NIE
outlined several points from INC Source #1's reporting that drove the intelligence
community’s concerns that activity at was nuclear related.

 ——- -——_

Page 164


A response from CIA’s Counterterrorism Center stated that the
information would not be disseminated because the information was previously
reported in DIA channels. The response added that Source Three “is under the

 ——--—-—__

Page 73


exposures in USA,” “Successfully chasing after the Iraq intelligence activities in
both Europe and USA,” and “Contacting defected Iraqi officers and held a meeting
with them for better coordination.”

(U) The Department of State remained generally uncomfortable with
handling the ICP, despite the INC’s agreement to stay out of Iraq. The April 2004
GAO report noted that “concerns grew in State that there were serious
mishandling of money issues that needed to be examined in INCSF to avoid a
potentially embarrassing situation for the administration and for State.” In
addition, allegations of fraud circulated within State. The GAO report said that
“in State’s view, the potential for fraud in an officially State-sponsored program
posed a risk that State was not prepared to take.”

(U) A State Department Office of Inspector General (OIG) audit conducted
September 2001 found financial management and internal control weaknesses. In
particular the audit identified concerns about INCSF’s travel reimbursement
procedures and its cash payment practices, but found no evidence of fraud.”> The
OIG found that many of the deficiencies occurred because of a lack of
understanding of and unfamiliarity with U.S. government laws and regulations
related to Federal Assistance awards.”° For example, the OIG found that INCSF
did not use U.S. flag carriers for overseas travel or always certify when non-U.S.
flag carriers were used as required by federal travel regulations.” In a mid-2002
follow-up audit, OIG found that the INCSF had taken “significant steps to

2 Office of Information Collection Program (ICP) Monthly Report from October/November 10" 200.
GAO Report to Congressional Requesters, State Department, Issues Affecting Funding of Iraqi National
Congress Support Foundation (GAO-04-559), April 200, p. 8.
6. Id, at 8-9.
Department of State, Office of Inspector General, Review of Awards to Iraqi National Congress Support
Foundatign, report number 01-FMA-R-092, September 2001, p. 6.
Id. at 16.

a — -—-——_ _—_—_—

Page 28


received training in “explosives to booby-trap vehicles, preparation of suitcase
bombs, and aircraft security operations” which Source Three believed involved
both defensive and offensive training.” The DIA told the Committee that
analysts determined the intelligence reports related to the Fedayeen Saddam
organization and training were “of value.”

(U) In November 2001, the CIA published an assessment of the Salman Pak
facility titled Jrag: Salman Pak Unconventional Warfare Training Facility. The
assessment noted that since the September 11 attacks, defectors of questionable
reliability claimed that Salman Pak was used to train non-Iraqis. The report
included Source Three’s information that:

Approximately 520 Special Operations recruits of the Saddam
Fedayeen were permanently based at Salman Pak, where they
received training on the use of explosives to booby trap vehicles,
preparation of suitcase bombs, and aircraft security operations. The
same source indicated that in 2000 he observed non-Iraqi Arabs —
reportedly Egyptians or Gulf Arabs— training on the abandoned
aircraft at the facility. 2”

(U) The report concluded that “since the Salman Pak facility is used by a
number of different organizations—and various reports have indicated foreign
activity at the site in the past—the reports of non-Iraqi Arabs receiving training
cannot be discounted.”?!?

soe. DIA intelligence report 200? ii

210 CIA, Iraq: Salman Pak Unconventional Warfare Training Facility, November 2001.
CIA, Iraq: Salman Pak Unconventional Warfare Training Facility, Novemberffj2001

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Page 71


to the Department of Defense. The conclusion asserts that the State Department
“warned” of INC financial mismanagement and that the DIA “cautioned” that the
INC was penetrated by hostile intelligence services. The Committee has no
information that the Deputies Committee was warned or cautioned at all.

A State Department Inspector General (OIG) audit in September 2001 did
find financial management and internal control weaknesses related to the INC
grant. The audit found, however,that these problems occurred due to a lack of
understanding of, or lack of familiarity with, cumbersome laws and regulations
related to federal assistance awards, such as the requirement to use U.S. flag
carriers for overseas travel. In a mid-2002 follow-up audit, OIG found that the
INC had taken “significant steps to implement OIG’s recommendations.” The
Committee has no information that the State Department “warned” the Deputies
Committee about this issue.

The State Department told the Committee that it believed the INC
Information Collection Program contained a clandestine collection capability and,
“therefore, should be managed by other agencies more experienced in managing
covert intelligence collection.” Rather than ignoring an alleged State Department
“warning,” the Deputies Committee appears to have done exactly what the State
Department wanted — it transferred responsibility for the program to the
Department of Defense, which had the DIA manage and operate the program.

DIA officials told the Committee that they did not have advanced notice of
the Deputies Committee decision. The DIA, therefore, was not in a position to
“caution” the Deputies Committee about its decision. Regardless, the Committee
has no information that the DIA “cautioned” anyone at any time about INC
counterintelligence issues. The DIA was aware that the INC may have been
penetrated by foreign intelligence services and was aware that the INC had an
agenda. The DIA did include this information in its own “assumptions” about the

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Page 147


Powell speech coordination meetings on February 2 and 3, 2003, he told
Committee staff that he was unaware that the source mentioned in the speech was
the same source about whom the fabrication notice had been issued and, therefore,
he did not raise any concerns about it. He told Committee staff that he was not
provided with the speech until he arrived at the meeting, that the source was not
specifically discussed, and that the speech did not indicate that the source was a
DIA source. He was later asked to clear about twenty reports for declassification,
including the Source Two report, but said he and a DIA declassification team only
examined the reports to determine whether their release would expose sources and
methods and did not notice that the report was the one on which the fabrication
notice had been issued.'®

(U) The Iraq BW analysts from CIA, DIA, and State INR all acknowledged
that the fabrication notice was available in their message handling systems, but
they all said they did not see the notice. A joint CIA/DIA notification to the
Committee on January 27, 2004 said that the fabrication notice had not come to
the attention of relevant analysts from the DIA or the CIA when Source Two’s
information was included in the NIE and Secretary Powell’s speech.'TM*

(U) Two CIA analysts, one who was involved in coordinating the Powell
speech, said although they were aware in early 2002 that DIA and the foreign
intelligence service had concerns about Source Two’s reporting, they believed that
the reporting about the mobile labs remained plausible. They said that even
fabricators will usually have some truth in their stories. They said that if the
reporting has not been recalled, as long as the information was used with
appropriate caveats, it could continue to be used in finished intelligence reporting.
When asked why the caveats were not included in the Powell speech or explained

183

184 Staff interview with DIA officers, June 3, 2004.

Letter to SSCI Chairman Roberts from DIA and CIA, January 27, 2004.

Page 64


a ee

(U) Ina June 1998 letter to the Committee in response to the questions
from Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, the CIA stated:

The failed uprising with [a former regime official] in March 1995 caused us
to reassess our relationship with Chalabi because he had unilaterally entered
into this plan without consulting CIA while at the same time claiming that
the United States supported the uprising.

(U) Yet, CIA’s reporting outlined previously shows that Chalabi did not
enter the plan unilaterally and did consult CIA from the beginning. Both field
elements and CIA Headquarters’ Iraq officials told Committee staff that Chalabi
did inform field elements about the plan and that the CIA representative’s role in
working with Chalabi to seek the support of the Kurdish leaders did signal to the
opposition that the plan had U.S. support.”

(U) Concerns about Chalabi’s meeting with the Iranians also fueled CIA
resentment toward Chalabi. A 2004 assessment of Chalabi says the CIA placed
him under scrutiny following this incident due to concerns about his “coziness”
with Iranian intelligence and accused Chalabi of fraudulently acting on behalf of
the U.S. Government when he alleged to Iranian intelligence that Washington was
interested in enlisting Tehran’s support for operations against Saddam. The
assessment said, “Chalabi passed a fabricated message from the White House to an
MOIS officer in northern Iraq. In addition, Chalabi claimed that U.S. warplanes
would come to the aid of oppositionists.”*” The CIA representative that
communicated with Chalabi in this period told Committee staff he had learned
from investigators of this incident in which Chalabi had fabricated a message on
National Security Council stationary that Chalabi let the Iranians see. He also told

<< Staff interview with CIA officers.
Ahmad Chalabi’s Ties to CIA, Central Intelligence Agency, Directorate of Operations, July 1, 2004. p. 2.

a

Page 21


finished intelligence products, and a description of the would-be defector are
outlined in detail below.

(U) None of the intelligence reports from the five sources indicated that the
individuals were affiliated with the INC in the reports’ source descriptions. The
DIA said they did not note an opposition affiliation because the sources were not
INC members.'” The CIA, which disseminated reporting from one of the sources,
did not note the defector’s INC affiliation, although one CIA report from this
defector did comment that an INC-affiliated translator participated in a press
interview with the source. CIA told the Committee that although the source was a
referral from an INC-affiliated defector, CIA did not know how much, if any,
support the source received from the INC. Although not specifically identified as
INC-affiliated in the intelligence reporting, the information from all five sources,
in some cases including their names and information about their contact with the
Intelligence Community, appeared in numerous press articles as a result of the
INC publicity campaign. Accordingly, the press stories alerted analysts to the
sources’ INC affiliations which were noted in numerous intelligence assessments
that used the information from the INC sources.'!?

(U) The Intelligence Community, particularly the CIA, believed that the
INC’s efforts to publicize defector information undermined the INC’s credibility.
A July 2002 NIC Memorandum noted, “the INC’s pursuit of publicity has
undermined intelligence exploitation of these sources. The INC encouraged and
sometimes abetted the sources in contravening their agreements with the U.S.

112

13 Staff interview with DIA officers, November 2005.

NIC Memorandum, The Iraqi National Congress Defector Program, July 10, 2002, CIA Internal
Memorandum, February 5, 2004, staff interview with CIA analysts, C/A, SPWR, Assessment of the Iraqi defector

April 22, 2002; CIA, SPWR, Iraqi defector ir/_
pril 8, 2002; CIA, Jraqi Support to Terrorism, September 19, 2002, p. 14, and January 29, 2003, p.

17-18.

Page 38


a eee

ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF VICE CHAIRMAN JOHN D. ROCKEFELLER IV,
SENATORS CARL LEVIN, DIANNE FEINSTEIN, RON WYDEN, EVAN BAYH,
BARBARA MIKULSKI, AND RUSS FEINGOLD

In the aftermath of the September 11" terrorist attacks, the Bush
Administration embarked on a public campaign to use the war against al-Qa’ida as
a justification for overthrowing the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq. In January
2002, President George W. Bush portrayed Iraq as a “grave and growing danger”
to the United States in his State of the Union Address and promised the 50 million
Americans watching “I will not wait on events while dangers gather.” In the
weeks and months that followed, the President, Vice President Dick Cheney and
senior Administration officials advocated the overthrow of the Baghdad regime in
statements that asserted the United States knew with certainty that Iraq possessed
and was increasing its stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, that Iraq
was aggressively pursuing the production of nuclear weapons, and, most
threatening of all, that Saddam Hussein was linked to the perpetrators of the
September 11" attacks and would transfer weapons of mass destruction to al-

Qa’ ida or other terrorist groups for use against the United States. The
Administration built the case for military action by characterizing the threat posed
by Iraq as imminent in significant part because of Iraq’s alleged alliance with
terrorists. This nexus between Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs and
al-Qa’ida was effectively exploited by the Bush Administration in increasingly
urgent and ominous pronouncements prior to the war.

The Committee’s investigation into prewar intelligence on Iraq has revealed
that the Administration’s case for war in Iraq was fundamentally misleading.
Administration officials repeatedly characterized Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction programs in more conclusive and threatening terms than were
substantiated by the underlying intelligence assessments. Analytical judgments of
the intelligence community that were not in line with the more strident

a |

Page 158


(U) DIA debriefed Source Two in the Middle East in late February 2002.
Source Two told DIA debriefers he was involved in procuring dual-use technology
in support of Iraq’s WMD program. During these debriefings, DIA asked Source
Two to refrain from talking to the media.’”

(U) After several meetings with Source Two, the DIA debriefer began to
have concerns about his reliability, in particular that he may have been coached
and had embellished information. The DIA debriefer told Committee staff that
Source Two acted strangely and seemed “affected.”!®? These concerns prompted
DIA to conduct a polygraph, which Source Two successfully passed.’

(U) In March 2002, with the DIA debriefer’s original concerns partly
allayed by the polygraph results, DIA disseminated two intelligence reports based
on Source Two’s information.'® One of the reports relayed information about the
activities of a department in the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) charged with
developing foreign business contacts willing to sell prohibited goods and
equipment to Iraq and to develop methods to secure hard currency in order to
finance illegal procurement.’ The other report stated that in mid-1996 Iraq
decided to establish mobile biological research laboratories to evade United
Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) inspections. The report contained
information on the planning, acquisition, manufacture, and storage of mobile
biological laboratories in Iraq and organizations and individuals involved in these

162
163
164

Staff interview with DIA officers, February 20, 2004.

Staff interview with DIA officer, March 31, 2006.

Staff interview with DIA, February 20, 2004; CIA, SPWR, Assessment of the Iraqi defector [i
pril lJ 2002; and Letter to SSCI Chairman Roberts from DIA and CIA, January

Staff interview with DIA officer, March 31, 2006.
DIA intelligence report, J MEViarch 6, 2002.

Page 58


would be executed. Saddam arrested hundreds of Iraqi solders and executed many
of them, including the CIA asset’s three children.*”

(U) Fighting between the Kurds continued into the summer of 1996.
Chalabi told Committee staff that he learned that one Kurdish leader intended to
invite Saddam’s forces into northern Iraq to help him topple the other Kurdish
group and that Chalabi alerted the CIA.® CIA officers told Committee staff that
they were aware, from intelligence reporting, that Saddam was massing forces
toward the border with northern Iraq.” In August 1996, Saddam’s forces entered
northern Iraq, executed 100 members of the INC, and forced the rest to evacuate.”

(U) In December 1996, the Deputies Committee met and approved the
termination of the CIA’s relationship with the INC. According to a January 1997
memorandum:

As a result, however, of the incursion of the Iraqi army into Northern
Iraq in August 96 and the subsequent evacuation of INC employees
from Iraq, the INC lost its ability to serve as a unifying force in the
Northern Iraq opposition milieu. Dr. Chalabi’s general credibility
within the Iraqi opposition, in particular with the KDP, as well as
with USG’s regional partners, has also diminished. Since the INC
can no longer serve as a neutral arbiter in Northern Iraq and has
limited effectiveness as an umbrella opposition organization, we
concluded that the CIA should cease funding of the INC."

2 Staff interviews with NE Division Chief, and Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006.
‘Staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006.

> staff interviews with C1A officers.
Staff interviews with CIA officer.
CIA Memorand vr ee, January 6, 1997.

a —

Page 24

61


a a

possessed WMD and had links to terrorists — does not make sense given the
actions of the INC-affiliated defectors. If INC-affiliated defectors were directed to
convince the United States that Iraq possessed WMD, certainly they would have
actually reported to have seen WMD materials or efforts. If INC-affiliated
defectors were directed at convincing the United States that Iraq had links to
terrorists, surely they would have provided more concrete links of al-Qa’ida or
terrorist connections. If INC-affiliated defectors were directed to convince the
United States that Iraq possessed WMD and had links to terrorists, these issues
should have made up the bulk of INC-affiliated defector reporting. In fact, the
majority of the INC-affiliated defectors reported on non-WMD and non-terrorism
topics and some reported on issues that were not helpful to the INC’s agenda.

The same CIA review team that said the INC did try to influence U.S. policy
concluded:

We did not, however, find evidence that the INC had conducted a
classic disinformation/deception campaign against the US
government. We do not see classic warning markers of such a
campaign, such as an unambiguous, clear, and concrete chain of
evidence showing Iraq in absolute violation of UN WMD resolutions,
and multiple, corroborative sources presenting consistent
unambiguous information in support.

When all these facts are viewed together and in context, it is clear that

there is no support for the implication of amended Conclusion 2 — that the INC
intentionally provided false information to the U.S. government.

—  --—_—_

Page 145


SE

believe what the source said to be true. Test administrators indicated that the
source had emotional and psychological issues which could affect test reliability
and the source’s perception of past events. DIA said that in light of the above
information, DIA officers included in disseminated reporting the notification that
Source Five was connected to the Iraqi opposition, was aware information was
being provided to the U.S. government, and that Source Five’s comments may
have been intended to influence as well as inform decision makers.”

(U) The bin Ladin-Saddam meeting report was the only terrorism related
report from this source. Source Five’s other reports focused on Saddam’s family
and associates and identified multiple facilities associated with the senior regime
leadership and security services. None of the reports related to WMD.”

(® Following Source Five’s media appearance in 2002, CIA published an
assessment ii 1c
assessment noted that Source Five’s reports of a meeting between Saddam and bin
Ladin “have not been corroborated.” The assessment added that “sensitive
reporting of meetings between senior Iraqi officials and al-Qa’ida members
provide no indication that Saddam and Bin Ladin have met each other.”””

(U) CIA published another assessment after the DIA debriefed Source Five.
CIA noted that the source provided documents which substantiated the basic
framework of the story that Source Five lived and fled from Iraq. Source Five
provided telephone numbers, some of which were determined to be accurate and
showed familiarity with members of Saddam’s family. The assessment noted that
Source Five’s claims to DIA about meetings between Saddam and bin Ladin

268
269
270

DIA, Response to questions from Committee staff, April 27, 2006.
DIA, response to questions from Committee staff, September 30, 2005.
CA nee September IH2002, p. 1.

SS i —_——

Page 91


Page 173


limited information regarding WMD facilities in Iraq, but he did not
have access to more specific information on Iraq’s WMD programs."

(U) Following publication of the NIC Memorandum, the Director of the
Office of Analysis for Strategic, Proliferation, and Military Issues in INR
prepared, but never sent, a memorandum to the National Intelligence Officer for
Near East and South Asia to convey concerns about the NIC Memorandum, in
particular about the discussion of Source One’s information. The memorandum
outlined the concerns discussed in the INR analyst’s e-mail discussed previously
that Source One frequently assigned WMD purposes to facilities in which he
worked.

in short, his information is often very useful, but his
claims about WMD work at various facilities are not adequately substantiated in

our view.”

a. Suspect Nuclear Facility Reporting

(GD) The reports from Source One which garnered the most interest from
Intelligence Community analysts pertained specifically to a facility described in
the reports as the “[suspect] nuclear-related facility.” The intelligence reports,
dated in early 2002, described the location of the facility and security measures,
including high bridge walls to prevent drivers from viewing the site and the
presence of Iraqi intelligence security. Source One reported that there were
individuals associated with the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission who were
working on the project. One of the reports noted that the facility was located on

132

133 NIC Memorandum, The Iraqi National Congress Defector Program, July 10, 2002, p.2.

Draft INR Memorandum for NIO/NESAF, July 29, 2002.

a —

Page 45


a

CIA officials told Committee staff the description was meant to indicate that he
did not personally provide the training.”

fy In October 2002, the CIA published an assessment titled,
Terrorism: Question About the Two Iraqi Defectors. The assessment noted that
the CIA and the FBI debriefed Source Four in October 2001 and found him to be
“forthcoming and cooperative and assessed he was a dedicated regime opponent.”
The assessment outlined Source Four’s account to debriefers that media stories of
his activities at [MMthe training camp “were distorted because his
statements had been mistranslated by the Iraqi National Congress (INC).”?>?

(GH) The CIA and the FBI continued discussions with Source Four until
and during Operation Iraqi Freedom, particularly for assistance in contacting other
former Iraqi military officers.? The CIA stopped contact with Source Four for
several months when Source Four moved in March 2002,
HR tending to work for the INC. Source Four retumed to his
original location in December 2002, saying he had become disillusioned with the
INC and “its hollow promises of meaningful employment.”?TM

(U) In January 2003, Source Four told CIA and FBI debriefers that he had
received menacing phone calls from an individual he believed was Iraqi
intelligence requesting unspecified assistance. The individual called for a third
time on February 10, 2003 and asserted that he was calling on behalf of the Iraqi
government which wanted a peaceful resolution to tensions with the U.S. Source
Four speculated that the Iraqi believed Source Four had a relationship with the

251 staff interview of CIA officials, February 6, 2006.
252 CA, Terrorism: Question About the Two Iraqi Defectors, October [P2002.

xu CIA operational cable, February ff 2002.
CIA operational cable, December 002.

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Page 86


that al-Libi’s information lacked details concerning the individual Iraqis involved,
the specific chemical and biological materials associated with the assistance, and
the location where the alleged training occurred. The DIA also assessed that the
information was second hand and not derived from al-Libi’s personal experience.
An internal Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy communication
indicates that office was aware of the DIA assessment that al-Libi was likely
misleading his debriefers.

The CIA’s January 2003 version of Jragi Support for Terrorism described
al-Libi’s reporting of chemical and biological weapons ties as “credible,” but
stated that al-Libi was not in a position to know if the training had taken place.

The Committee’s investigation concluded that the DIA’s assessment that al-
Libi was likely misleading debriefers was correct. In January 2004, al-Libi
recanted his allegations about chemical and biological weapons training and many
of his other claims about Iraq’s links to al-Qaida. He told debriefers that, to the
best of his knowledge, al-Qa’ida never sent any individuals into Iraq for any kind
of support in chemical or biological weapons. Al-Libi told debriefers that he
fabricated information while in U.S. custody to receive better treatment and in
response to threats of being transferred to a foreign intelligence service which he
believed would torture him. He said that “once he began to fabricate information,
he experienced no further physical pressure by NN” He also said
that later, while he was |MBof the foreign government, he fabricated
more information in response to physical abuse and threats of torture. The foreign
government service denies using any pressure during al-Libi’s interrogation. In
February 2004, the CIA reissued the debriefing reports from al-Libi to note that he
had recanted information. No postwar information has been found indicating that
Iraq provided any weapons training to al-Qa’ida.

a  —-—_—e

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ee

MINORITY VIEWS OF SENATORS BOND, LOTT, AND CHAMBLISS

(U) Any investigation that the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence
(Committee or SSCI) undertakes should ultimately improve the Intelligence
Community (IC) and enhance our national security. Unlike independent
commissions, panels, and boards, the oversight committees of Congress have the
power to effect change. The fifteen members of this Committee along with our
counterparts in the House of Representatives and our Committee staffs comprise
the only oversight bodies outside of the Executive Branch with the authority to
execute difficult, and much needed, intelligence transformation. This first report
in a series of reports coming from a second round investigation into Iraq prewar
intelligence comes at a critical juncture. Yet, rather than attempt to improve our
efforts to combat terrorism and make our country safer, the results of this
investigation were calculated to promote a partisan agenda. Thus, sadly, the
Committee’s two-year-long, second investigation of Iraq pre-war intelligence has
failed to heed a higher call.

(U) Immediately following September 11 as well as after our invasion into
Iraq, a number of outstanding investigations were conducted that produced
actionable findings and recommendations in seminal documents such as: the Final
Report of the National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States,
reports by the U.S. Commission on National Security/21st Century known as the
Hart-Rudman Commission, the Report of the Commission on the Intelligence
Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction known
as the Robb-Silberman Report, the British Review of Intelligence on Weapons of
Mass Destruction known as the Bulter Report, the Report of the Joint Inquiry into
Intelligence Community Activities before and after the Terrorist Attacks of
September 11, 2001 by the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, the Report
of the Select Committee on Intelligence on the U.S. Intelligence Community’s
Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

SE

Page 203


CIA intelligence assessments and the October 2002 NIE, as corroborating other
source reporting about a mobile biological weapons program.

® One of the assessments, published in October 2002, WMD Association
at Presidential Sites Unlikely to be Revealed by Inspections, did not cite Source
Two by name or note an INC-affiliation. The information from Source Two said,
“mobile BW laboratories, managed by key BW figure Rihab Taha, in 1998 were
stored in the Republican Palace garage when not in use, according to a former
Iraqi (MMM fficer.”""

(HD) The other four assessments: Iraq: Expanding BW Capabilities in
July 2002; Irag: Expanding WMD Capabilities Pose Growing Threat in August
2002; Iraq’s BW Capabilities in October 2002; and Lessons Learned From Iraq’s
Past Efforts to Mask Its BW Program in November 2002, and the NIE, used
almost identical descriptions of Source Two’s information. The language in the
papers said that in mid-1996 Iraq decided to establish mobile laboratories for BW
agent research to evade UNSCOM inspections, according to [EN

Source Two, an Iraqi defector associated with the Iraqi National

Congress.’ The two papers described Source Two by name.

(U) Source Two was also one of the four HUMINT sources specifically
referred to in the part of Secretary Powell’s February 2003 speech before the UN
Security Council that discussed the mobile BW production units. Although a DIA
Division Chief, who was aware of the fabrication notice, attended two of the

181¢14, WMD Association at Presidential Sites Unlikely to be Revealed by Inspections, October 11, 2002.

182 National Intelligence Estimate, Iraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, October
2002, p. 43. (SSCI# 2002-4188); CIA IA, Lessons Learned From Iraq’s Past Efforts to Mask Its BW Program,
November 11, 2002, p. 6.; CIA IA, /rag: Expanding WMD Capabilities Pose Growing Threat, August 1, 2002, p. 6;
and CIA, Jrag: Expanding BW Capabilities, July 15, 2002; and CIA, WMD Association at Presidential Sites
Unlikely to be Revealed by Inspections, October 11, 2002.

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a —

U.S. government through which he could articulate his or Iraqi government
: 255
views.

(B On February 17, 2003,
he same Iraqi asked for Source

Four’s assessment of American views of war with Iraq and asserted that “Iraq was
providing true and accurate information to the UN inspectors and noted that Iraq
was ready for war.””° A CIA domestic station requested a response from CIA
headquarters regarding continued interest in gauging the Iraqi intelligence
officer’s interest in meeting with U.S. government officials.

@ CIA Headquarters Responded that given

several concerns referenced in a separate cable, including Source Four’s past
exposure in the media and his employment with the INC, “we do not have any
operational interest in further pursuing [the suspected Iraqi intelligence officer] at
this time.”?*”

a. Postwar Information on Salman Pak

(U) A November 2003 assessment from DIA noted that postwar exploitation
of the facility found it “devoid of valuable intelligence.” The assessment added
that CIA exploitation “found nothing of intelligence value remained and assessed
the Iraqi Intelligence Service (IIS) cleaned it out.” The DJA assessment concluded
that “we do not know whether the ex-regime trained terrorists on the aircraft at
Salman Pak. Intelligence of the Salman Pak facility in late April 2003 indicated

255

256 CIA operational cable, February 003.
357 CIA operational cable, February 003.
CIA operational cables, ‘ebruary (2003 and I cbruary 2003.

a

Page 87


(U) The CIA also assessed that CURVE BALL’s defection did not fit the pattern
of the typical INC-influenced defection in that the INC did not broker his
introduction to the Intelligence Community and did not put him in front of the
media. In addition, three INC officials have told the Committee that the INC had
no involvement with CURVE BALL, does not know who CURVE BALL is, and
has never attempted to bring sources to the intelligence community, or anyone
else, without openly acknowledging the INC’s role. However, the CIA told the
Committee it never formally collected on the INC itself, and, therefore, has no
information on the INC’s processes and procedures for disseminating information,
a key element to assess potential deception programs or tactics.

(U) Given the fact that the Intelligence Community does not understand why
CURVEBALL provided false information and only has a superficial
understanding of CURVEBALL’s contacts with his close relative and other INC
officials, the Committee believes the question of whether he was provided his
information at the behest of the INC remains open.

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a

only does this conclusion blur the critical distinction between policy
determinations and the role of intelligence, but this conclusion appears to suggest
that counterintelligence threats must be dealt with only defensively, enforcing a
serious misconception about a useful tool in intelligence activities.

(U) The Committee report reveals, from our interviews, the original CIA
concerns about “controlling” the INC, as well as the clear view of INC leadership
that the organization did not see itself as an asset of U.S. intelligence. This is a
historic tension in Intelligence Community relations with emigre groups. While
fully controlling a group may have some advantages in short-term perspective, it is
not hard to recognize that a group’s effectiveness — in reputation and reach — could
also be hampered in such an oversimplified relationship. The history of
intelligence operations certainly bears this out. It would be tragic if this
Committee communicated to the broader Intelligence Community that we looked
askance at such future opportunities to aid carefully selected emigre groups that
we could not control or that did not necessarily share all our policies, even if they
would serve to critically advance specific foreign policy goals we share.

Page 196


ADDITIONAL VIEWS OF CHAIRMAN ROBERTS

In a separate set of additional views, in which J was joined by Senators
Hatch, DeWine, Chambliss, and Warner, I laid out my strong objections to the
amended conclusions for this report which were ultimately adopted by the
Committee. As I made clear in those views, I believe the adopted conclusions are
not supported by the facts and contain numerous errors and omissions.

Despite my reservations about the adopted conclusions, I believe that the
report’s factual findings regarding the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and the
information it provided to the U.S. Intelligence Community should be declassified
to the greatest extent possible and reported out by the Committee to the full Senate
and the American public. This transparent process allows the public to have
access to the report’s findings of fact, conclusions, and additional views and
permits individual Americans to form their own judgments. It is for this reason
that I voted to approve the INC Report.

Despite my concerns over the conclusions in the INC Report, I credit the
Committee’s investigative staff for their patience and reasonableness during the
negotiations over this report. Staff began negotiating the factual findings of the
INC report when the first draft was distributed in January 2006. Negotiations over
the conclusions to the INC report began in May 2006. In the course of those
negotiations, members — particularly my Democrat colleagues — made well over a
hundred requests for changes to both the factual findings and conclusions of the
INC report. Negotiating in good faith, the investigative staff was able to
accommodate the overwhelming majority of these requests.

Some of the requests for changes, however, could not be accommodated.

With respect to the negotiations over the conclusions, one of the challenges the
Committee faced was a flawed notion that we should be able to reach a

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Page 125


a a

The Iraqi National Congress will continue to provide access to Iraqi
citizens who have fled Iraq and are believed to have pertinent
knowledge. This is a continuation of a program under which the
Department of Defense, specifically the Defense Intelligence Agency,
has already debriefed certain individuals. The program is of special
Congressional interest.”

(U) The CIA told the Committee that beginning in August 2002 when the
DIA coordinated with the CIA on the ICP, and continuing until early 2004, the
CIA “voiced concerns to DIA counterparts about both counterintelligence issues
and the overall reliability of the INC in a series of written and oral
communications.”” DIA officials told Committee staff that CIA operations
officers did raise verbal concerns that the INC was penetrated by Iranian, and
possibly other, intelligence services and that the INC had its own agenda during
DIA briefings about its intentions for the program, but provided no concerns in
writing. One DIA officer noted that CIA’s comments had a general tone of “better
you than us” and “you’ve got a real bucket full of worms with the INC and we
hope you’re taking the appropriate steps.”TM

(U) The CIA provided the Committee with one cable sent to DIA in
December 2002, in response to a DIA request for information about a senior INC
official. The cable said that one source, of undetermined reliability, said the senior
official was suspected of being an Iraqi intelligence officer and one source, also of
undetermined reliability, said the official was a known Iranian intelligence service
agent and was suspected of having ties to Iraqi intelligence. The CIA provided no

92
Id.
ory responses to Questions for the Record from the March 4, 2004 Hearing on Iraq Prewar Intelligence,
February 25, 2005.
Interview with DIA Officials, November 16, 2005.

— —--— sameeren

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$$

implementation of reform and on current and future threats, the Intelligence
Committee continues to expend resources looking backwards at statements and
actions that occurred over four years ago. It is our hope that the Committee will
soon extricate itself from this time-consuming exercise and initiate forward
looking oversight.

PAT ROBERTS,
ORRIN G. HATCH,
MIKE DEWINE,
TRENT LOTT,
SAXBY CHAMBLISS,
JOHN WARNER.

=

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terrorists would be an effective way of doing so.” — Secretary Rumsfeld, September 19,
2002

“We have what we consider to be credible evidence that al-Qa’ida leaders have sought
contacts in Iraq who could help them acquire weapon of — weapons of mass destruction
capabilities.” — Secretary Rumsfeld, September 26, 2002

“After September the 11", we’ve entered into a new era and a new war. This is a man
that we know has had connection with al-Qa’ida. This is a man who, in my judgment,
would like to use al-Qa’ida as a forward army.” — President Bush, October 14, 2002

“And as the President has said, ‘Iraq could decide in any given day to provide biological
or chemical weapons to a terrorist group or to individual terrorists’ — which is why the
war on terror will not be won till Iraq is completely and verifiably deprived of weapons of
mass destruction.” — Vice President Cheney December 2, 2002

“Traq’s weapons of mass terror and the terror networks to which the Iraqi regime are
linked are not two separate themes — not two separate threats. They are part of the same
threat.” — Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz, January 23, 2003

“The more we wait, the more chance there is for this dictator with clear ties to terrorist
groups, including al-Qa’ida, more time for him to pass a weapon, share a technology, or
use these weapons again.” — Secretary Powell, January 26, 2003

“His [Saddam] regime aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaida. He
could decide secretly to provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorists for use against
us. And as the President said on Tuesday night, it would take just one vial, one canister,
one crate to bring a day of horror to our nation unlike any we have ever known.” — Vice
President Cheney, January 30, 2003

“One of the great dangers we face is that weapons of mass destruction might be passed to
terrorists, who would not hesitate to use these weapons. Saddam Hussein has
longstanding, direct and continuing ties to terrorist networks.” — President Bush, February
6, 2003

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ee

(U) In October 1994 the INC provided a steady stream of low-ranking walk-
ins from various Iraqi army and Republican Guard units who generally had
interesting information.? CIA officers described Chalabi’s propaganda operations
noting that:

parts of the operation were very impressive given the isolation of [ the
location] and the power problems. ... Less than impressive was the TV
programming [deleted text]. The facilities are not plush, but expenses are
high because of the high cost of spare parts, power and items imported
through tenuous supply lines. The conditions at the protective force
compound are especially spartan. The INC, however, could easily rent
down to a less ostentatious HQS building. It is rarely used and not worth
whatever the cost is.’°

(U) Former CIA officials also described problems with Chalabi as the
result, in part, of squabbles within the CIA about which Iraqi opposition members
to support. Several current and former CIA officers told Committee staff that
there was a degree of “clientism” within the agency in which operations officers
with primacy in dealing with specific opposition members tended to side with, and
at times adopt the views of, those individuals.'' CIA reports indicate that Iraqi
opposition members constantly complained about each other and about their
perception that CIA gave more time, attention and funding to some opposition
members over others.

(U) Nonetheless, according to a 1997 CIA report on Chalabi, “Chalabi was
9 IA Operational cable, December 1995.

ens Operational cable, December 1995.

Ic taff interview with CIA officers.

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Page 8


a

information into finished intelligence publications for decision makers. However,
it is also an analyst’s responsibility to continue the validation process by
continuously reviewing information against new intelligence and comparing, for
example, source descriptions and any cautionary warnings. The asset validation
process must be a continuous vetting tool used throughout the life of an operation
to describe, evaluate, and utilize human sources more effectively. The process
makes better use of limited resources, reduces uncertainty, and provides decision-
makers the confidence that the Intelligence Community has exercised due
diligence in assessing the reliability of its information. Therefore, the Director of
National Intelligence must establish common asset validation standards and
descriptions across the Intelligence Community and ensure that intelligence
reporting used in the most important intelligence documents affecting
policymaking at the highest levels of the U.S. Government be subjected to a
thorough validation process.

(U) We joined the Senate Intelligence Committee to conduct oversight, not
to perform witch hunts; we serve on the Senate Intelligence Committee to make
our intelligence community better, not to use it for partisan politics; we travel
overseas to speak with our operators on the ground in order to gain insights in how
to support them and make them successful. We have written this additional view
because we believe it is important to unmask the partisan nature of this report’s
much negotiated “conclusions.” We understand the decision of some of our
colleagues to vote for this report in an effort to finish this interminable
investigation, and for the sake of putting this investigation to rest that has kept us
from exercising meaningful oversight of the Intelligence Community. We too,
have endeavored to accommodate as many concerns as possible in order to vote
out these second-round investigation reports. In cases such as in this report,
however, where the conclusions are obviously inaccurate, misleading and
incomplete, we cannot in good conscience vote in favor.

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Reality: Intelligence Community officers acknowledge that press accounts
were exaggerated versions of what these defectors told the
Intelligence Community, but they do not know whether the
defectors exaggerated their accounts themselves, whether
translators exaggerated the accounts, or whether reporters did
not accurately report what the defectors said.

Amended Conclusion 2 cites a CIA operations cable which said information
from one of the defectors who reported about Salman Pak “is inaccurate and
appears aimed at influencing U.S. (and probably Western) policy.” According to
CIA officials, however, this comment related to the source’s appearances in the
press and not to the information he provided during his debriefings with the
Intelligence Community. In addition, these officers acknowledged that they do
not know whether the defector exaggerated his account to the press, whether a
translator exaggerated the story, or whether the reporters did not accurately report
what the defector said. The CIA officers only know that the press story was an
exaggerated verison of what the defector told his Intelligence Community
debriefers. A CIA assessment following the defector’s press appearances stated
that the “the information [the defector] provided to debriefers was less sensational,
more detailed, and more credible than depicted in [the media.]”

Amended Conclusion 2 also argues that a second source who reported on
Salman Pak training claimed that his press accounts had been distorted by an INC
translator who participated in the press interview. The alleged “distortions”
related to press claims that the defector had been a terrorist trainer at Salman Pak
for eight years. In reality, the defector told the Intelligence Community that he
commanded a Fedayeen Saddam unit which trained at Salman Pak for almost a
year, but was not a terrorist trainer himself. The amended conclusion omits that
the CIA case officer who debriefed the source told the Committee that the source
did not say that he knew his remarks had been distorted. In fact, the source only

a

Page 140


group and, accordingly, increased its counterintelligence efforts against the group.
The DIA included the assumptions in briefings to Congress — including briefings
to the staff of this Committee — but did not characterize the assumptions as
cautionary.

The CIA told the Committee that it had notified the Clinton Administration
that it terminated its relationship with the INC because the INC had lost its ability
to serve as a unifying force in northern Iraq and that it had limited effectiveness as
an umbrella opposition organization. The CIA also said that between 1997 and
July 2002 it had “several exchanges of views on the subject of the end of the
CIA’s relationship with Chalabi and the INC,” but the CIA did not say specifically
what views it expressed and to whom the CIA expressed those views. The CIA
did not describe its views as “warnings.” The CIA said it expressed “concerns” to
the Department of Defense in December 2002, but this was six months after the
Deputies Committee decision.

In September 2002, Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz informed this
Committee and other Congressional committees about the program, noting that it
would “debrief Iraqi citizens presented by the Iraqi National Congress” as having
information on key military and intelligence questions. The letter added:

The Iraqi National Congress will continue to provide access to Iraqi
citizens who have fled Iraq and are believed to have pertinent
knowledge. This is a continuation of a program under which the
Department of Defense, specifically the Defense Intelligence Agency,
has already debriefed certain individuals. The program is of special
Congressional interest.

If the supporters of this amended conclusion, many of whom were members
of this Committee at the time of this notification, believed the Deputies Committee

a ———_—_  _—_—

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CURVE BALL had any information on secret or sensitive projects in
Iraq. The CIA says this account is consistent with phone records they
have been able to locate. According to the relative, CURVE BALL
said he had no information to provide. The CIA did not ask CURVE
BALL himself about this conversation or whether he had been
coached or directed by the INC, believing that CURVE BALL would
terminate contact if the CIA questioned him about his family. While
the Committee believes the CIA should have asked him, in the end,
an admission or denial in this regard would not have been dispositive.

The CIA also assessed that CURVE BALL did not fit the pattern of
the typical INC-influenced defection in that the INC did not broker
his introduction to the Intelligence Community and did not put him in
front of the media. Throughout its history with the Intelligence
Community, until October 2002 when the INC agreed to refrain
media exposure for its defectors, the INC actively and persistently
courted the media with its defector information. Almost immediately
upon locating a defector with information deemed pertinent, the INC
brought the defector to the media to tell his or her story and ensure
that the INC’s role in finding the defector was acknowledged. The
INC was even more adamant about maintaining an intermediary role
when it brought defectors to the Intelligence Community. CURVE
BALL’s case, in which a foreign intelligence service approached him
based on their review of his asylum paperwork which indicated that
he had been an Iraqi civil engineer, does not fit this pattern. In
addition, three INC officials have told the Committee that the INC
had no involvement with CURVE BALL, does not know who
CURVE BALL is, and has never attempted to bring sources to the
Intelligence Community, or anyone else, without openly
acknowledging the INC’s role.

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Page 154


. Four of the lead engineers for the project reportedly were associated with
the Iraqi Atomic Energy Commission.

. The source indicated that he had seen cylinders at [the facility] in 2000 that
were similar to sketches of large uranium hexafluoride cylinders.

. Several buildings reportedly were guarded by Amn AI] Khas (the Special
Security Organization, SSO) and Manthuma Al Amn security personnel.

The text box also noted that:

The overall description of the site and the timelines of its construction
as described by the source were reasonably consistent with details
detected through [intelligence]. The site consists of several small
buildings of the shape and layout described by the defector, who
participated in [the facility’s] construction. The site was constructed
rapidly during the summer of 1998, although the defector claimed
construction had occurred in 1999. We judge that the defector may
have been confused about the year.

(U) The NIE concluded that “additional intelligence reporting is necessary
before we can confirm a nuclear association for [the facility].” Source One’s
reporting was not mentioned elsewhere in the NIE, was not included amongst the
four pages discussing facilities of concern, was not included in the key judgments,
and was not one of the six key elements underpinning the key judgment in the NIE
that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program."

136
2002, p. 20.

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Page 47

National Intelligence Estimate, Jraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, October


difficult and some said that Chalabi did not provide useful intelligence and did not
deliver on assurances that disaffected Iraqi military officers wanted to defect to the
opposition.’ Several officers also believed that the INC’s radio stations and other
media outlets were not as productive as they should have been.” Some CIA
officers complained about Chalabi’s efforts to lobby Members of Congress, while
other officers said that Chalabi’s security force was too large, too much like a
private army of Iraqi dissidents.®

(U) Chalabi told Committee staff that he was the leader of a political
process and not a US intelligence asset. He did not believe he had an obligation to
act under CIA control. Chalabi told Committee staff that his strategy from the
beginning was to get support for the INC from Congress. He acknowledged that
this strategy caused “friction” with CIA officers who were uncomfortable with
him talking to Congress. Chalabi also told Committee staff that he was not tasked
to collect intelligence until October 1994. Chalabi said that before that time, the
INC did collect information, including from Iraqi military walk-ins, but that the
information was used by the INC for their own media operations.’

(U) The Chief of the Iraq Operations Group at the CIA told Committee staff
that Chalabi was a “very controversial character” and “came with some baggage,”
but said that of all of the opposition, Chalabi “was always the one who really got
things done.”*

“Staff interviews with CLA officers.
>Staff interviews with CIA officers.
staff interviews with CIA officers.

"Saft interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006.
Staff interview with CIA officer.

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a

(GD) A team of analysts from several intelligence agencies worked with
DIA collectors to help vet and debrief Source One. The team’s preliminary
assessment of Source One was relayed to CIA headquarters on January 4, 2002. It
said that while Source One “does not have access to specific programs at various
facilities, his knowledge of [facility] details, individual engineers, and
personalities could permit subject matter experts to analyze the data and
extrapolate broader program information.”!?" DIA administered a polygraph of
Source One in early 2002, which he passed.

There were no other Intelligence
Community polygraphs of Source One prior to the DIA administered polygraph.’

(HD) On January 10, 2002, the CIA reported that based on senior-level
discussions between the CIA and the DIA, “we are now considering this a joint
case.”'” The DIA produced and disseminated over 250 intelligence information
reports from Source One’s debriefings. CIA operations officers and analysts
participated in Source One’s debriefings and each report was sent to the CIA for

review and coordination before dissemination.'* The source description described

Source One as “(I vith direct access who worked as a

that he did. He said it was also possible that he had received information on three sources, but could only remember
receiving information on two. Mr. Woolsey said that in all cases he passed the information on to the Department of
Defense. He did not pass any information on to the CIA because he said the CIA tends to not talk to volunteers. He
said the CIA “likes to talk to people it can recruit and control, or liaison services, and neither of these seemed to be
under that category.” Staff interview, December 6, 2005.
CIA operational cable HE, J 2nvaryf, 2002.
Press stories alleging that Source One failed a CIA polygraph in December 2001 are inaccurate.

nee CIA operational cable january 002.
CIA operational cable |, September 002 and Staff interview with DIA officials.

~~ —_

Page 41


a ee

ry Conclusion 8: There is insufficient basis to determine whether or not
CURVE BALL, the Intelligence Community's primary source of intelligence
about Iraq's alleged biological weapons program, provided his information at
the behest of the Iraqi National Congress (INC). Beginning in 2000, CURVE
BALL provided information to a foreign liaison intelligence service alleging that
Iraq had a mobile biological weapons program. CURVE BALL was the key
source that led the Intelligence Community to judge in the October 2002 National
Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s WMD capabilities that “Baghdad has mobile
facilities for producing bacterial and toxin BW agents.” The Iraq Survey Group’s
(ISG) investigation of CURVE BALL’s information in the summer and fall of
2003 revealed that CURVE BALL provided false information to the Intelligence
Community prior to the war. The ISG also discovered that CURVE BALL had a
close relative who had worked for the INC since 1992, for at least some period as
a high-ranking officia ie, which led
to initial suspicion in the Central Intelligence Agency that CURVE BALL may
have provided false information at the INC’s behest.

(GD The CIA has since concluded that CURVE BALL’s close relative’s
connection to the INC was coincidental. The CIA based its conclusion, in part, on
the fact that CURVE BALL’s close relative said he maintained minimal contact
with CURVE BALL but that he did call CURVE BALL in 2001 on behalf of the
INC to ascertain whether CURVE BALL had any information on secret or
sensitive projects in Iraq. The CIA says this account is consistent with i”
records they have been able to locate. According to the close relative, CURVE
BALL said he had no information to provide. The CIA did not ask CURVE
BALL himself about this conversation or whether he had been coached or directed
by the INC, believing that CURVE BALL would terminate contact if the CIA
questioned him about his family. While the Committee believes the CIA should
have asked him, in the end, an admission or denial in this regard would not have
been dispositive.

ee —  —_

Page 121


 ———_ _—_—

(U) The intelligence report disseminated on March 2, 1995 that explained
the coup plan never made it to the White House, according to the Iraq Operations
Group chief. He told Committee staff that he knew the National Security Council
was surprised by the plan because after the uprising “numerous offices were torn
apart trying to find this report, and eventually I believe it was found in the office
of the DDO and that it didn’t go to the White House.”

(U) Animosity toward Chalabi from some groups within the CIA grew,
particularly from those officers who had prior problems with Chalabi. For
example, a cable from a European Station referring to the opposition operation as
“the recent unpleasantness” recommended removing Chalabi from northern Iraq.
The cable stated, “we hold Chalabi responsible for the debacle in the north” while
recognizing that “he accomplished much for us before going off the rails. We
would not be as far along as we are in the total effort against Saddam if we had not
been able to stand on Chalabi’s shoulders.”“* A response from CIA headquarters
stated:

We are unsure of what station holds [Chalabi] responsible for, per [Station
cable’s] debacle reference. If this applies to the infighting, that is the
Kurdish “fact of life,” which the INC has always attempted to prevent. If
this refers to [Chalabi’s] ill-advised association with [former official who
planed the operation] and the Iranians, we concede his poor judgment. That
said, the low-level series of attacks by opposition elements on the Iraqi
military’s northern positions have had the salutary effect of further lowering
Iraqi army morale and placing increased pressure on the Iraqi government.”

4 Staff interview with CIA officer, March 14, 2006.
CIA Operational cable, March 1995.

SoA Operational cable, March 1995.

Page 20


independence and unity of Iraq are preserved, and the Iraqi borders are not
changed.

(U) The same foreign government information provided additional details
about a meeting between Chalabi and SCIRI representatives the day prior to his
meeting with Iranian intelligence. When the SCIRI representatives questioned
Chalabi about the seriousness of the uprising, Chalabi exited the meeting and
returned with the previously identified American. The Iranians believed the
American to be a member of the National Security Council. It was reported that
the American told the SCIRI representatives that he wanted to kill Saddam and
that he was serious.

(U) The CIA representative told Committee staff that he did not tell the
SCIRI representatives that he wanted to kill or assassinate Saddam Hussein but he
did say that we, meaning the U.S., wants to “get rid of him.”

(U) Further intelligence about the same meeting indicated that Chalabi told
the SCIRI representatives that America has promised to prevent any action by the
Iraqi army and to target them; to impede Iraqi army tank movements in the cities,
not in the marshes, via aerial bombardment; and to prevent Saddam’s army from
suppressing this initiative, through exploitation of resolutions 688 and 949.

(U) Several CIA officers told Committee staff that there was a firestorm in
the National Security Council after receiving this information, with urgent phone
calls to the CIA to find out what was happening in Iraq and why a CIA agent was
posing as a member of the National Security Council and allegedly planning an

i —

Page 15


reviewing the history of this interaction, the Committee found significant
differences of opinion regarding what led to the termination of the relationship,
with each side blaming the other for its failure. The report describes the history of
that relationship to provide context to the Intelligence Community’s later
interaction with the INC, but does not attempt to resolve lingering questions
regarding what led to the CIA’s and INC’s mutual disaffection.

(U) Finally, the report does not provide a review of the INC’s collection
efforts or methods, the INC’s analysis of its own information, or information the
INC may have provided to parties other than the U.S. Intelligence Community.
The Committee understands that the INC made an effort to widely disseminate its
information and brought its information to the attention of U.S. and foreign
government officials, think tanks, the international media, foreign intelligence
services, and others, all of which are outside the scope of the terms of reference
agreed to by Committee Members. The report describes INC defector referrals to
U.S. government and former government officials, the media, and foreign
intelligence services, only when those referrals pertain to the Intelligence
Community’s use of the information.

(U) The report describes the general history of the Intelligence
Community’s use of INC information and the genesis of how the handling of INC
information transitioned from the CIA to the Department of State and, eventually,
to the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). The report focuses on information
provided to the Intelligence Community by the INC, in particular, whether and
how the Intelligence Community used that information, the inclusion of that
information in Intelligence Community analysis, and whether the information
played a role in the Intelligence Community’s judgments about Iraq’s weapons of
mass destruction capabilities and links to terrorism.

lc

Page 4


ee

biological weapons capability. According to a CIA review of this issue, “even
without [that source’s] reporting, the bottom-line judgment at the time on Iraq’s
overall mobile BW program would have remained the same.” The Intelligence
Community used information from only one other INC-affiliated defector in the
NIE in a separate text box which described a possible suspect nuclear facility. The
information about the possible suspect facility was not included anywhere in the
text or key judgments of the NIE and played no role in the NIE judgment that Iraq
was reconstituting its nuclear program.

Intelligence Community agencies attached even less significance to INC-
affiliated sources in their terrorism assessments. The CIA included intelligence
reporting from only two INC-affiliated sources in its key terrorism assessment,
Iraqi Support for Terrorism. The information was used in only one paragraph of
the 32-page document. Furthermore, the paragraph described one defector’s
information as “exaggerated,” and the other’s as not first-hand.

In addition to the key products described above, Intelligence Community
agencies used INC-affiliated reporting in Jess than 20 other products about Iraq’s
WMD programs and links to terrorism. By comparison, the Committee’s request
for CIA’s assessments on Iraq’s WMD programs and Iraq’s links to terrorism from
1997 to March 2003 yielded over 40,000 finished intelligence products. In other
words, when compared to more than 40,000 finished CIA intelligence products,
INC information was included in about 20 Intelligence Community reports — a
minuscule 0.05% of CIA’s intelligence products on these issues and an even
smaller amount of community products.

Two conclusions drafted by the Committee’s investigative staff more
accurately reflect the extent to which the Intelligence Community used INC
information in key assessments. The conclusions accurately detail the lack of
impact that this information had on prewar intelligence assessments.

a

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a a

(td Following the debriefings, a separate foreign intelligence service

letained and interviewed him. The foreign intelligence
service told the CIA that while in the Middle East |, prior to his arrival in their
country, he met with four members of various Iraqi opposition groups who he
thought could help him. He said that he also called Ahmed Chalabi, who told him
to travel to their country [MJ and to walk in to the U.S. Embassy. Source
Nineteen told the foreign government [MM he was nervous about the large
security presence at the U.S. Embassy and decided to walk in to the third country
embassy Minstead. The CIA ceased contact with Source
Nineteen after his interaction with the foreign intelligence service.

cy Source Nineteen’s information was included in one intelligence
report disseminated to analysts. The report described the Iraqi Intelligence
Service’s skill at exploiting potential refugees by recruiting them in
countries when they applied for refugee status. The report provided an example of
an individual Source Nineteen claimed was working for the IIS in the third

(U) The July 2002 NIC Memorandum, The Iraqi National Congress
Defector Program, included Source Nineteen as one of five defectors referred by
the INC, although there is no indication that his interaction with the CIA was
facilitated by the INC other than his assertion to the foreign government service
that he contacted Chalabi and that Chalabi told him to walk in to the U.S.
Embassy. There is no other indication that Source Nineteen had any other contact
with Chalabi or any member of the INC. Committee staff was unable to
specifically ask Chalabi about Source Nineteen’s allegation because of

340 CLA intelligence report 2002,

a _——_

Page 111


information or suggest topics to discuss with any U.S. authorities. Source Three
also told the debriefers that he had the impression his INC handler “cared more for
the U.S. than for his own INC.” 7

(U) In mid-October 2001, following these debriefings, the DIA
disseminated an additional three reports based directly on Source Three’s
reporting. The reports described him as a “high-ranking Iraqi public official with
direct access to reported information. First time reporter who appeared reliable.”
None of the reports discussed Iraq’s suspected WMD programs.”

(U) The first report said that Kuwaiti prisoners were being held in two
separate locations in Iraq and identified Iraqi intelligence personnel responsible
for the prisoners.” The second report discussed a special 520 member unit of the
Fedayeen Saddam, al-Qarai’a Force, which received specialized training in
commando skills, including airborne operations, underwater demolition, hand-to-
hand combat, explosives and sabotage. The report included the names of the top
30 members of the unit who were given UAE passports and were to deploy to the
UAE under the supervision of Iraqi intelligence. The report noted that the source
had no information on the mission or ultimate location of the unit members and
that as of October 2000 they had not deployed.””” The third report described
Fedayeen Saddam training at the IIS training facility Salman Pak and said Source
Three observed individuals he believed to be non-Iraqi Arabs training in an
abandoned aircraft shell. He believed they were either Egyptians, Gulf Arabs, or a
mixture of the two, based solely on their dialect and appearance. The report
provided additional information on the Qaria’a force, stating that the recruits

204 CIA operational cable, SNE, Octoberf2001.

205 DIA intelligence reports 2002.

206 DIA intelligence report 2002, J
207 DIA intelligence report 2002, .

Page 70


re ——-——oemeeee

(U) The easiest way for Congress to give the impression that it is
conducting oversight without doing so is to conduct another investigation.
Investigations are important, yet it is only when steps are taken to act on valid
issues that surface during an investigation that Congress performs the job that the
American people elected members to do; namely, oversight. This is why we
joined the Committee several years ago, to conduct effective oversight. It is our
sincere desire that the Committee will return its full effort to such oversight sooner
than later. As the foiled terrorist plot in Britain in August 2006 reminded us, the
terrorists won’t wait; neither should we.

CHRISTOPHER S. BOND,

TRENT LOTT,
SAXBY CHAMBLISS.

ee

Page 208


ora

(U) Former DCI George Tenet told the Committee in July 2006 that “there
was a breakdown in trust and we never wanted to have anything to do with him

anymore.”

(U) Chalabi told Committee staff that he was unable to keep the Kurdish
factions from fighting because the U.S. did not provide the funding promised to
help the INC establish a mediation force.* In February 1997, the CIA terminated
its relationship with Chalabi and the INC.

(U) In 1998, Congress passed the Iraq Liberation Act, which authorized
U.S. assistance to support a transition to democracy in Iraq and required that the
President designate one or more Iraqi opposition organizations as eligible to
receive federal assistance. In 1999, after President Clinton designated the INC as
one of seven eligible organizations, the INC established the Iraqi National
Congress Support Foundation (INCSF) as a tax-exempt corporation organized in
the United States.“ Beginning in March 2000, the Department of State entered
into a series of cooperative agreements with the INCSF which included funding of
almost $33 million for several programs, including a weekly newspaper
publication, radio and satellite television broadcasts into Iraq, a public information
campaign, and the collection of information on the Saddam regime’s war crimes
and crimes against humanity.

82 Committee interview with former DCI George Tenet, July 26, 2006.
§ staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006.

6 Funding for the INCSF came from appropriations made to carry out the Economic Support Fund
provisions of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961, and was subject to all statutory conditions applicable to the
obligation, and expenditure of those appropriations.

GAO Report to Congressional Requesters, State Department, Issues Affecting Funding of Iraqi National
Congress Support Foundation (GAO-04-559), April 2004 and responses to questions from Committee staff, April
24, 2004 (SSCI# 2004-3535). While the first grant including funding for Information Collection activities was
signed in September 2000, activities and expenditures were not ultimately authorized under that program heading

a

Page 25


— i| i _——

broad effort against the Saddam regime, “really did believe what they were saying
about WMD.”

Amended Conclusion 2 highlights a memorandum that claimed “the INC
did attempt to convince US policymakers that Iraq posed a WMD threat,” but the
conclusion tells only half the story. The author of the memorandum told
Committee staff, “[A]s an attempt to influence government policy, my judgment is
that most of the people involved in that did believe in what they were saying on
WMD.” He continued,

[W]e found no evidence that they found some person and said you’re
going to make up this story and you’re going to go to the public and
you’re going to tell them about this, even though you had no
connection to it. There’s no evidence of that. It was, hey, we heard
of a guy who says he knows where something is; let’s make sure we
get him out into the public right away.

Another CIA officer said,

[If the answer is we’re trying to find out whether the INC provided
reporting that was fallacious that we then put out to influence the U.S.
Government, there was very little INC reporting or INC-affiliated
reporting on the WMD issue. It was mostly political and regime
change.

That officer further noted, “[I]f you’re trying to say that the INC is the one that
pushed us to go to war because of the WMD reporting, that’s wrong.”

Amended Conclusion 2’s assertion — that the INC provided false
information through defectors directed at convincing the United States that Iraq

a

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lc

the U.N./U.S. to declare a no-fly zone, noting that the movement does not need air
support, just a warning for the Iraqi air force not to fly.'”

(U) In early February 1995, the CIA learned about continuing tensions
between the Kurdish opposition groups. One Kurdish leader said unless an INC
peace-keeping force was immediately deployed to the confrontation lines, he could
not show continued restraint.'®

(U) In mid-February 1995, the U.S. learned that a cease-fire was agreed to
only because of strong U.S. support, including for an INC mediation force. A CIA
report stated:

While an uneasy truce has generally held since the cease-fire proposal
was agreed to on 22 January, it will not last unless [fighting Kurdish]
forces soon are separated by an INC force. Should the U.S. not fund
the INC peace-keeping force and another round of fighting occurs,
any attempt for the U.S. to mediate a second cease fire would be
unlikely to succeed.”

(U) In mid-February 1995, the CIA received information that the official
was continuing to contact his network and was prepared to implement his plan as
early as February 22, 1995. The CIA explained that the U.S. is not a participant in
the coup and is not funding the coup. The CIA told the former official the U.S.
believes Iraq would be better served with a different government and that “the

4 CIA operational cable, February 1995.
CIA operational cable, February 1995.

ora operational cable, February 1995.

ee

Page 11


eee

efforts, prohibited procurement, the Fedayeen Saddam, military order of battle,
Iraqi intelligence, the movement of prohibited weapons, and the locations of
suspect WMD facilities. None of these defectors is mentioned in the amended
conclusion.

According to the DIA, its experience with INC-affiliated sources was
typical of its experience with all HUMINT. Some INC-affiliated sources provided
verified and useful information that directly supported contingency planning and
operations for Operation Iraqi Freedom. In other instances, the information was
vague, incorrect, or unverifiable. INC-affiliated reporting was “highly useful,”
according to the DIA, in identifying important medical facilities. INC-affiliated
reporting confirmed facility locations, identified new facilities, and provided a
means for deconflicting previously erroneous geographic coordinates provided by
other sources. Most of the information was used for “no-strike” targeting to avoid
civilian casualties.

Reporting from several INC-affiliated sources on Iraq’s internal security
apparatus was corroborated by either open or other classified sources of
information and contributed to the Intelligence Community’s baseline
understanding of this issue. According to the DIA, information on internal
security was largely accurate.

In addition, DIA postwar memoranda from June through September 2003
noted that INC sources provided real-time intelligence that identified sensitive site
locations used by CENTCOM for coalition strikes. The INC also provided sources
with information on forged travel documents of known terrorists and on UN
sanctions violations. The INC also identified, and supplied a picture of a senior
member of al-Qa’ida who was previously unknown to the Intelligence
Community.

en ae

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a  —___—-_ _—_—

It has been widely reported that the President and his advisors had placed
Iraq in the cross-hairs for military invasion in the days and weeks following the
September 11" attacks. Many participants involved with the preparation of prewar
intelligence felt at the time that the decision had been made to go to war by
Administration early on, many months before Congress was asked to authorize the
use of force. According to the July 23, 2002 Downing Street memo, the British
assessed that President Bush had made up his mind to take military action against
Iraq, even if the timing had not been decided. Former National Intelligence
Officer Pillar stated that he and analysts he worked with felt the decision to go to
war had been made by April 2002. Pillar stated that the Administration’s
aggressive use of intelligence to build support for war presented a major problem:
“The textbook model of intelligence - policy relations was turned upside side
down. Instead of intelligence being used to inform policy decisions, it was used
primarily to justify a decision already made. The Administration’s public case
sometimes included the use of raw reporting, without reference to and, in some
cases, in contradiction with intelligence community judgments about the
reporting.” It is notable that in his July 2006 testimony, former DCI Tenet told the
Committee he believed the decision to go to war had been reached by the
Administration later in the fall of 2002. These compelling accounts fly in the face
of repeated statements by the President and his senior advisors that the decision to
go to war was not made until March 2003.

The Committee investigation revealed evidence that this prewar pressure to
conform to Administration’s policy demands may have led to the co-option of the
intelligence community. On October 7, 2002, the CIA declassified a question and
answer exchange between Senator Carl Levin and Deputy DCI John McLaughlin
from a closed hearing of the Committee five days earlier on the just-received Iraq
weapons of mass destruction NIE. The letter declassified the CIA’s assessment
that it would be an “extreme step” for Saddam Hussein to assist Islamist terrorists
in conducting a weapons of mass destruction attack against the United States. The

a ————  —

Page 185


ee eee

staff members access to ICP materials.*! NEA also believed it was unable to
determine, without a professional assessment by the Intelligence Community, the
value of the information the ICP did share.** NEA believed, therefore, that the
program should be managed by other agencies more experienced in managing
intelligence collection.” These factors, in conjunction with the concerns about
INCSF’s accountability of funds and operational costs, prompted State to
discontinue funding of the INCSF.TM

(U) In May 2002, the Department of State notified the INCSF that it had
decided to cease all funding for the ICP. The National Security Council
Deputies Committee decided that the program should be continued and, on July
25, 2002, directed that the program be moved to the Department of Defense. The
Department of Defense assigned DIA to administer the ICP. DIA told the
Committee it did not have advance knowledge of the Deputies Committee decision
to move the ICP to the Department of Defense. CIA told the Committee that it
provided memos to the NSC in December 1996 advising of the termination of
CIA’s relationship with the INC and that between January 1997 and July 2002
“there were several exchanges of views on the subject of the end of the CIA’s
relationship with Chalabi and the INC.”*’ The Department of State retroactively
approved a grant agreement to cover ICP costs incurred in June and July 2002 and
ceased all funding of the INCSF on September 30, 2002.

3B Department of State responses to questions from Committee staff, March 31, 2006, Q3.

83
84
85

Department of State responses to questions from Committee staff, August 24, 2004, #4b.
Department of State responses to questions from Committee staff, August 24, 2004.
Id.
if DIA response to Questions for the Record, March 23, 2004, p.1.
88 CIA response to question from Committee staff.
Department of State responses to questions from Committee staff, August 24, 2004.

Page 30


the conclusion that Iraq had a mobile biological weapons program was largely
based on the report of a single source, codenamed “Curveball.”

During his February 5, 2003, speech, Secretary of State Colin Powell
assured the United Nations (UN) Security Council — and the world at large — that
“every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are
not assertions. What we are giving you are fact and conclusion based on solid
intelligence.” The Curveball reporting in the UN speech did not meet that
standard, despite several days of extensive discussions between Secretary Powell
and the intelligence community during the preparation of the speech. In fact, by
the time President Bush, Secretary Powell and other senior Administration
officials began touting publicly Curveball’s claims about Iraq possessing mobile
biological weapons labs, repeated warnings had already been raised within the
intelligence community about the source’s reliability and credibility.

The Committee investigation found that in March 2002 the foreign
intelligence service handling Curveball had informed the CIA that Curveball had
changed some of his stories. In April 2002, another foreign service conveyed to
the CIA doubts about Curveball’s reliability, saying it was “inclined to believe a
significant part of his reporting is true. Even so, we are not at this point convinced
that he is a wholly reliable source.” The foreign service noted inconsistencies in
his reporting and that his behavior seemed “typical of individuals who we would
normally assess to be fabricators.” On December 20, 2002, the chief of the
relevant CIA station cabled CIA headquarters regarding a discussion with the head
of the foreign intelligence service handling Curveball and provided a summary of
a letter to DCI Tenet from that service head. The cable noted that, according to the
head of the foreign intelligence service, Curveball’s reporting on mobile facilities
“has not been verified.” The CIA station sent the actual letter from the head of the
foreign service to CIA headquarters in February 2003. In January 2003, the same
chief of station cautioned CIA headquarters in another cable to “take the most

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Page 167


INC that circumvented the intelligence community and went to directly to White
House and Pentagon policy officials in the lead-up to the war. According to a
June 26, 2002, memorandum from the Director of the INC’s Washington office to
the Senate Appropriations Committee:

“Defectors, reports, and raw intelligence are cultivated and analyzed and the
results are reported through the INC newspaper (Al Mutamar), the arabic
and western media and to appropriate governmental, non-governmental and
international agencies. US Governmental recipients include the Department
of Defense, Office of the Secretary of Defense, (Deputy Assistant Secretary
William Luti....principal point of contact) and the Office of the Vice
President (Special Assistant for National Security John Hannah...principal
point of contact).”

Requests to interview Mr. Luti, Mr. Hannah and others who may have
received the INC intelligence were also denied. These decisions inhibited the
Committee’s ability to pursue legitimate lines of inquiry. Our request to interview
Secretary Powell and his Chief of Staff Colonel Wilkerson (Ret.) so as to better
understand how the February 2003 UN speech was prepared was rejected.
Colonel Wilkerson has stated that the initial 48 page draft for the UN speech came
from the White House and that he believed much of what was in the document
came from officials in the Office of the Vice President and the Office of the
Undersecretary of Defense for Policy. Attempts to obtain this initial draft were
denied. Similarly, the Committee has been denied access to the intelligence
assessments on Iraq contained in prewar President’s Daily Briefs (PDBs), though
PDBs have been shared with private citizens serving on the both the 9/11
Commission and the Silberman-Robb Commission.

ee

Page 187


(HD Source Nine

Qa’ ida travel patterns

, reported almost exclusively about al-

, but none of the reported activities involved Iraq. The
reports included a number of enclosures wit . All of the
reports from Source Nine described him as a member of the Iraqi opposition.”

_! The DIA disseminated two prewar reports from Source Ten | |

. Both reports described him
as a member of the Iraqi opposition, in one case, a senior member. The first
report, dated November 2002 reported on Iraqi purchasing agents in Jordan
acquiring dual-use materials for Iraq. The report said Iraq had also successfully
obtained refurbished T-72 tank engines, anti-tank missiles, helicopter engines and
night vision goggles.” The second report, dated January 2003, was from a
subsource who allegedly worked on two Iraqi nuclear facilities described in the
report, Tuwaitha and Ameriyah. The report said unspecified nuclear activity was
rumored to have been occurring at the facility for two years, but was “definitely
operating” between April and June 2002 when radiation levels were above
acceptable safety standards.*°

(HD The DIA disseminated one report from Source 11,
Hproviding the alleged daily routine of Uday Hussein. The report specified
that the source was “connected with the Iraqi opposition and was aware that
his/her comments would reach the U.S. government. He/she may have intended
the comments to influence as well as inform.”3”!

segDIA intelligence report, [EEEEENo vember 2002.

to DIA intelligence report| lovemberfi-2002.
301 DIA intelligence report, January 2003.
DIA intelligence report, jovember 2002.

Page 99


a i ——

believed his remarks had been distorted because, after the source’s short responses
to questions, the INC translator would speak in English for long periods.

Amended Conclusion 2 also fails to reflect that Committee staff reviewed a
tape recording of the press interview with the source in which INC officials
participated and an INC member translated. A U.S. government contract translator
reviewed the tape recording and told Committee staff that the source was not
mistranslated. In a few cases, the translator added “definitely” to the source’s
responses and, in one instance, added “all over the world” to the source’s comment
that the terrorist training was intended to target American interests and the
American military. Neither the source, nor the translator, ever claimed that the
source provided terrorist training himself. Instead, the defector only indicated that
he was at the camp where such training was provided and that he was there for
only a year. In several instances the translator responded to the reporter’s
questions without actually asking the source, most often because the defector had
already responded to the question previously. Much of the interview involved the
INC officials providing information about another INC-affiliated individual.

Myth: Intelligence Community agencies debriefed only five
INC-affiliated defectors prior to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

Reality: | The Defense Intelligence Agency debriefed 14 additional
INC-affiliated sources. Some of the information from these
defectors was wrong, but much proved to be correct and some
was valuable during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

In addition to the five defectors referenced in amended Conclusion 2, the
DIA debriefed 14 other defectors prior to the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom.

The sources reported on a variety of topics, including regime biographic and
personality information, Saddam’s palaces, tribal loyalties, Iraqi concealment

Page 141


“differ from [media accounts] in terms of time, place, and number of meetings.
The [DIA] team says [Source Five’s] body language in this part of the debriefing
suggested [the source] was uneasy with the topic; team members assessed [the
source] might have reconsidered the statements to the press and prepared a careful
story for the [DIA] interview.”?”

6. The Would-Be Defector

(GD In July 2001, Ahmed Chalabi told an individual in the Department
of Defense?” he had information from an intermediary that a senior Iraqi diplomat
in Europe
HE wanted to defect to the United States. DIA officers met with Chalabi to
discuss the diplomat’s possible defection. Chalabi informed the DIA that the
diplomat had been directed by the Iraqi government to return to Baghdad with his
family in the next few weeks or possibly days because of an ongoing dispute with
the IIS station chief who was displeased with the diplomat’s refusal to do “nasty
things,” and because the Iraqi government was displeased with the diplomat’s job
performance' 273

(U) The CIA Iraq Operations Group informed the DIA that it had no interest
in supporting resettlement of the diplomat because his academic background and
limited government experience indicated that he would be of no value to the
Intelligence Community. The Assistant Secretary of Defense for Command,
Control, Communications, and Intelligence and the DIA concurred that the
diplomat was not likely to have secrets that were of high intelligence value. The

2 © tobcofl] 2002, p. 2.

* DIA records do not indicate which office or who specifically at DOD made this referral.
NIC Memorandum, The Iraqi National Congress Defector Program, July 10, 2002, p.4 and DIA
response to questions from Committee staff, December 14, 2005.

a i

Page 92


was deemed to be a fabricator by DIA in May, 2002, after DIA had identified
problems with the source, and following warnings from CIA. While fabrication
notices were sent in internal message handling systems, these notices were not
attached to all reports including this source’s information, resulting in the failure
to inform Secretary Powell of the weakness in the intelligence supporting this
aspect of his public charges in his February 5, 2003 speech before the United
Nations.

(U) These were failures in analytic processes of our Intelligence
Community, not failures whose responsibility ought to be ascribed to the INC.

(U) Counterintelligence: For INC culpability, we would have to discover
attempts by that organization to deliberately deceive, separate from the
Intelligence Community’s counterintelligence capabilities to detect and neutralize
this deception. What is apparent from the beginning of the U.S. Intelligence
Community’s relationship with the INC is that the organization had an agenda and
was seeking to use its resources to advance that agenda by influencing target
audiences around the world. The INC should be seen in this context, and
numerous examples of source reporting properly include the caveat that, when
dealing with INC-affiliated sources, some sources may be seeking to influence.

(U) However, the Committee, in its comprehensive review of documents
and in all its interviews, was not able to conclude that the INC actively sought to
deceive the Intelligence Community. The Committee could find no evidence that
the INC intentionally provided false information to the Intelligence Community.
An amended conclusion implying that the INC did so is unsubstantiated by the
underlying report.

® The report provides some information on the question of the INC’s
relationship to Iran, and whether this in fact created counterintelligence

Page 194


USS. will itself not remove Saddam, but rely on the Iraqi people to do so,” the
same message that had been passed to other prominent opposition officials.”

(U) In mid-February 1995, CIA Iraq elements inquired about support for the
INC peace-keeping force. Chalabi had informed them he only had funds to pay
his security force until February 15, at which time he would have to start letting
personnel go. Chalabi had been informed by the State Department that U.S.
support would be available before mid-February. CIA elements were seeking to
expedite the payment.”!

(U) On February 17, 1995, CIA Iraq elements were informed that
policymakers wished to pursue the proposal as an overt U.S. diplomatic initiative
with Department of State leading the effort’s funding and administration.
Department of State lawyers tentatively concluded that State had the legal
authority to fund the initiative and were seeking to verify whether there were “any
actual funds available.” Chalabi still owed the Department of State a budget for
the INC effort, and CIA headquarters commented that Chalabi’s “own
administrative weaknesses are not serving his case well.””? An immediate
response from the CIA Iraq elements attached a budget that Chalabi had
previously passed to CIA which they believed had previously been given to the
Department of State.”

(U) On February 17, 1995, headquarters received a field report describing
the status of opposition politics in northern Iraq. The cable noted that Chalabi was
focusing on the plan to detain Saddam in Ujah, but Chalabi did not believe

201A operational cable, February 1995.
aca Operational cable, February 1995.
‘CIA Operational cable, February 1995.
CIA operational cable, February 1995.

a

Page 12


event of U.S. hostilities with Iraq. A November 2002 report, also from a
subsource, said that Qusay Hussein, Saddam’s son, had assumed control of Iraq’s
strategic rocket forces from the Iraqi army. The subsource believed Saddam made
this change because he did not trust the army to follow his orders and fire on
designated targets in neighboring countries in the event of an attack on Iraq. The
comment section of the report stated that the “source is unvetted. He is a member
of an Iraqi opposition group, and admittedly part of a faction that favors finding a
surgical means to remove Saddam Hussein and purge his close followers, instead
of achieving regime change through a large-scale attack. He therefore may have
intended his information to persuade that a military attack on Iraq could be too
risky.”

iW The DIA disseminated eight reports, all in late October and early
November 2002, from Source lich ii. logistics specialist for
the Iraqi military production agency. All of the reports described Source Eight as
a member of the Iraqi opposition. Source Eight reported almost exclusively on
Iraqi conventional weapons production facilities and told debriefers that he had no
knowledge of chemical, biological, or missile-related production, storage or hide
sites.> He reported that a business associate told him Iraq was smuggling
“sanctioned” materials to Syria, which the individuals driving the materials
believed to be chemical and biological weapons.” Another report from Source
Eight, attributed to a subsource, said that Iraqi intelligence officers provided
“bearded fundamentalist terrorists” in Kuwait with small arms and explosives in

the summer of 2002 to be used against U.S. forces in Kuwait.”

2p, etigane repo DIA intelligence report, lovember fg2002.

296 DIA intelligence report, ictober 002.

297 DIA intelligence repot lovember (2002.
DIA intelligence report, jovembergggy2002.

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Finally, the Committee’s inquiry has been hampered by the decision to deal
with the five Phase II tasks as separate inquiries and complete the reports on a
piecemeal basis rather than a unified whole.

The Chairman’s unilateral decision in November 2005 to relegate the
Committee’s inquiry into the prewar intelligence activities of Pentagon policy
officials to the Department of the Defense Inspector General (IG) was a mistake
and has prevented the Committee from completing its work. The IG’s
investigation is not a substitute for the Committee authorized inquiry and should
be undertaken concurrent with the Committee’s investigation. The Chairman
suspended the Committee investigation into the Pentagon policy office over two
years ago, despite evidence, presented in the Committee’s Phase I report, that the
office attempted to shape the CIA’s terrorism analysis and, when it failed,
prepared an alternative intelligence analysis for policy officials designed to
denigrate the CIA’s analysis for not embracing a link between Iraq and al-Qa’ida
and the 9/11 terrorist attacks. In the view of former National Intelligence Officer
Pillar, “...the driving force here, quite clear, was an attempt — not by the military,
but in this case an arm of the Office of the Secretary of Defense — at the policy
level to link the whole Iraq war to the idea of terrorism and the mood of the public
after 9/11.”

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 —___—_ _—

that the leader of the a Kurdish tribe in northern Iraq was willing to support U.S.
efforts to topple Saddam Hussein in return for weapons and money. The report
provided background information and a description of the tribe leader, including
photographs.*"°

(HD) The DIA disseminated one report from Source Seventeen [I
HR US. green card holder and member of the Free Iraq Force
(FIF). The report was attributed to a subsource who claimed that members of the
Special Republican Guard were prepared to fight to the death alongside Saddam
Hussein. The report said Saddam had some units which were dressed as U.S. and
British troops and were prepared to “execute chemical-biological warfare” on Iraqi
citizens so the world would blame President Bush.*!”

1. CIA Debrief of INC-walk in (Source Eighteen)

ry While the DIA was officially managing the ICP program, the CIA
facilitated the debriefing of one INC-affiliated source
DIA officer was detailed to
the [team and participated in the debrief."

(QR) [nearly February 2003, an INC representative brought
Source Eighteen to a CIA base [MM for a short meeting with CIA and
DIA staff that was to be followed later with a more extensive debriefing
ez 2rding his
reported access to Iraq’s nuclear program. While meeting with the INC
representative and Source Eighteen, the CIA case officer received a phone call

316

317 DIA intelligence report, larch Hik003.
31g DIA intelligence report, larch ff2003.

Interview with DIA officers.

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Final Remarks

This report and its conclusions represent to me a missed opportunity for the
Committee. There are some important and useful judgments in this report that
hopefully will be of value to our intelligence agencies, but I believe that the
Committee could have better used this effort to frame the issues that our
intelligence agencies are facing now, such as establishing clearer guidance
regarding how they should handle information obtained from problematical groups
like the Iraqi National Congress, and highlighting the need for the Director of
National Intelligence to even more aggressively address the process and
technological problems revealed in the Committee’s report. In the long run, I
doubt the Committee’s report has advanced very much the cause of Congressional
oversight, of better performance by our intelligence agencies, or in the final result,
our national security.

MIKE DEWINE.

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ee

(U) The Committee report reveals failures by the Community in establishing
consistent source descriptions identifying sources as INC-affiliated. Further, on
the critical question of Iraq’s ties to terrorism, CIA analytical assessments that
“defectors claimed that al-Qaida and other non-Iraqis” trained at Salman Pak
appears to have been the result of extrapolation by CIA analysts of defectors’
reports, not false reporting by INC-affiliated sources. The underlying reporting,
however, that non-Iraqi Arabs trained at Salman Pak, was reiterated by the post-
war reporting of the Iraqi Survey Group.

(U) A sense of proportion need not deny failures in assessing INC-affiliated
sources for inclusion in the specific cases where they contributed to finished
analysis. The Committee report details these failures in substantial detail. The
report’s findings reveal the role of two INC-affiliated defectors’ reporting in the
critical October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, Jraq ’s Continuing Programs
for Weapons of Mass Destruction. In one case, the reporting was used as
corroboration on the question of mobile biological weapons production
capabilities, and in the other, on reporting regarding ongoing questions regarding
a potential nuclear facility. In the latter case, subsequent reviews by the
Committee of a CIA memorandum of the source’s reporting revealed, according to
the Committee report, “that the source did not provide claims on Iraqi WMD
programs, but did provide reporting on military-industrial facilities.” The CIA
memorandum itself states that the source “never claimed any knowledge of nuclear
weapons program-related work at [a suspected nuclear facility].” The CIA admits
itself to having made assessment errors based on “extrapolations” by its analysts
and officers.

(U) The most significant error, however, regards the other INC source,
whose information was used to corroborate reporting of biological weapons
production from another source. (Our report reveals that the INC source provided
reporting on biological facilities — not weapons production facilities.) This source

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effectiveness due to the INC’s refusal to grant State Department officials access to
ICP materials. Based on these concerns, the Department of State ceased funding
the program in May 2002. On July 25, 2002, the National Security Council
directed that funding of the program should be continued under the Department of
Defense, and on October 25, 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency assumed
formal responsibility for funding and managing the INC’s collection effort.
Funding of the ICP was continued in October 2002 despite warnings from both the
CIA, which terminated its relationship with the INC in December 1996, and the
DIA that the INC was penetrated by hostile intelligence services, including the
Iranians, and that the INC would use the relationship with the Intelligence
Community to promote its own agenda.

(U) Conclusion 7: The Defense Intelligence Agency and the Central
Intelligence Agency were inconsistent in identifying their reporting from
INC-affiliated defectors and INC members as opposition-affiliated reporting.
DIA collectors, who disseminated reporting on most of the INC-affiliated
defectors, told the Committee that they used the “opposition group disclaimer”

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Freedom, the Intelligence Community has been trying, unsuccessfully, to locate
Source Two to seek further clarification of his reporting.'”

3. Source Three

iy On September 27, 2001, former DCI James Woolsey contacted the
Director of the DIA to advise him that the INC had information about a possible
former Iraqi (MMMBofficer who had served as a liaison between Iraqi
intelligence and the Fedayeen Saddam from 1998 to 2000 and had information on
terrorist training in Iraq.'° At the same time a Washington representative of the
INC contacted the CIA to alert them about the source and the source’s claim that
he had information on another individual from the training camp who was now
living in the United States.

= On September 28, 2001, DIA officers met with the INC’s
Washington representative; Haydr al Bandar, an INC employee who had spoken to
the defector on the telephone; and Dr. Chalabi.'”! According to both DIA officials
and Dr. Chalabi, at the meeting, Bandar provided DIA with the details about the
source, (MES ource Three, based on his phone call. Bandar said that
Source Three was a former IraqifEEMMiewtenant colonel who conducted
training of 70 non-Iraqi Arab terrorists at a special Iraqi training facility at Salman
Pak. Bandar said that Source Three observed the trainees receiving training on
aircraft hijackings. Bandar also reported that Source Three observed frogmen
training to blow up mock-ups of U.S. Navy vessels using underwater explosives
and booby traps at a separate facility. Following this training, 34 terrorists
departed Iraq for the UAE. These 34 terrorists were not identified by Bandar as

189) etter to SSCI Chairman Roberts from DIA and CIA, January 27, 2004.

io DIA operational cabl Septemberffi-2001.
DIA operational cab} |, September 2001.

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(S) On December 6, 2001, a foreign intelligence service told the CIA that
their Iraqi contacts in I said that the CIA was working with Source Three.
The foreign service noted that they had previously obtained intelligence from him
which had been shared with the CIA.?” In a written response to questions from
Committee staff about this reporting, the CIA said the foreign service usually does
not provide the name of their sources. The CIA was able to find four reports from
the service dated from March through October 2001 that are sourced to a Fedayeen
Saddam officer who left Iraq in late 2000 and whose reporting was similar to
Source Three’s. All three reports were disseminated by the CIA as intelligence
reports.

21)

a CIA operational cable, — a

Page 72


a

primary source. The mobile lab assessment rested in large part on CURVE BALL
reporting and the Committee’s own conclusion on CURVE BALL admits that
there is an insufficient basis to determine if CURVE BALL had an Iraqi National
Congress affiliation.

The Source 1 and Source 2 information, of course, did have an impact on
policy. The October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq and the Powell
Speech were meant to demonstrate that we had a solid basis for our concerns about
Iraq and its WMD programs. Information from neither Source | nor Source 2,
however, was critical to the National Intelligence Estimate or the Powell UN
Speech. The Source 2 story is even more revealing of process failures in our
Intelligence Community, which are not really addressed by the conclusions to the
Committee’s report.

I agree that it was a serious mistake that Source 2’s information about
alleged mobile biological labs in Iraq was used in Powell’s February 2003 UN
Speech. DIA, afterall, had issued a fabrication notice in May 2002 about Source 2
and his information. What the Committee’s report misses in its conclusion on this
issue, though, is that, despite the fabrication determination, DIA did not recall its
reporting from Source 2. Additionally, the fabrication notices were not
electronically attached to the actual reports so that when the reports were called up
from the databases, analysts would also get the fabrication notices. This was a
serious breakdown in how the Intelligence Community processed and
disseminated information. I understand that the Director of National Intelligence
has recognized how important this problem is and is trying to address these issues.
Unfortunately, apart from urging the DNI to do more, the Committee did not really
address these underlying technology and process problems that continue to haunt
us. It is beholden on the Committee to ensure that these new procedures be
quickly implemented across the Community.

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B) We believe there is a high risk of failure. Any decision to proceed will
be entirely on your own.

(U) A third point, to be delivered only to Chalabi, said:

C) To eliminate any possible ambiguity, the U.S. government has not sought
through you or any other channel to pass a message to the government of
Iran on this matter

(U) When Chalabi was given the NSC message, the CIA representative told
him that the message left it up to Chalabi whether to proceed with the plan.”
Chalabi, believing it was too late to turn back, went ahead with the planned
operation. Chalabi reportedly called another opposition figure and told him that
the “U.S. no longer supported the plan.”** The former Iraqi official leading the
operation believed that it was too late to stop the internal networks from carrying
out their assigned tasks.** Chalabi told Committee staff that one opposition leader
whom he phoned agreed to go ahead with the operation as planned, a third
opposition leader had left even before the message had been passed and would
provide limited symbolic support to the operation, only because attacks were
highly popular with the Kurds.**

(U) In response to the U.S. message, Chalabi and the former official leading
the operation indicated they “have never claimed U.S. military support” for the

3A Operational cable, March 1995.
Staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006, and staff interview with CIA officer, February 17,
2006.

34 CLA Operational cable, March 1995.
35 CLA Operational cable, March 1995.
36 CIA Operational cable, March 1995.

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Page 17


a

° “But we now have irrefutable evidence that he has once again set up and reconstituted his
program, to take uranium, to enrich it to sufficiently high grade, so that it will function as
the base material as a nuclear weapon.” — Vice President Cheney, September 20, 2002

. “Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun —
that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.” — President Bush, October 7, 2002

° “Saddam Hussein was close to having a nuclear weapon. We don’t know whether or not
he has a nuclear weapon.” —~ President Bush, December 31, 2002

. “__the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant
quantities of uranium from Africa.” — President Bush, January 28, 2003

. «., Iraq must be disarmed of all nuclear, chemical, and biological weapons, weapons
productions capabilities, and the means to deliver these weapons.” Deputy National
Security Advisor Stephen Hadley, February 12, 2003

° “And we believe [Saddam] has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons.” Vice President
Cheney, March 16, 2003

These prewar statements were misleading given the underlying intelligence
community assessments at the time about Iraq’s nuclear weapons program. The
intelligence community assessed that Iraq did not possess a nuclear weapon and
that it would most likely take five to seven years, with foreign assistance, for Iraq
to produce enough weapons-grade fissile material for a nuclear weapon. No
intelligence reporting asserted that Iraq had made attempts to acquire nuclear
weapons from another country.

On September 8, 2002, Vice President Cheney referred to Iraqi attempts to
purchase aluminum tubes and stated that “we do know, with absolute certainty,
that (Saddam Hussein) is using his procurement system to acquire the equipment
he needs in order to enrich uranium to build a nuclear weapon.” That same day,

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= The DIA disseminated twenty-eight prewar intelligence reports
from Source Twelve , an INC handler. All
of the reports identified Source Twelve as a member of the Iraqi opposition.”
Sixteen of the reports provided information from 1998 regarding Hussein family
residences, security at the residences, and the activities of the Hussein family at
the residences. One report identified the exact location where Saddam parked his
car within the Republican Palace, while visiting Uday.* Another report identified
a security signature inside the Republican Palace that indicated when Saddam was
in the general area.*TM The DIA told the Committee these reports were verified
through MMM other intelligence reporting prior to the war”

(U) Source Twelve also provided twelve reports from the translation of a
100 page Arabic document providing extensive order of battle information and
Iraqi government structure information including on Iraqi border forces,
Republican Guard Corps, the Special Security Organization, the General Security
Directorate, and Military Intelligence Directorate. These reports also described
the source as a member of the Iraqi opposition.>°

(HD The DIA disseminated approximately 50 prewar reports from
Source Thirteen ho conducted

business with Uday Hussein and other senior Iraqi officials
HE About half of the reports, escribe

the source as a member of the Iraqi opposition. The reports largely focused on the
Saddam family, in particular Uday Hussein’s lifestyle and habits, and Hussein

302 DIA, response to Committee staff request, reports from Source Twelve.

aoa DIA intelligence a 003.
305 DIA intelligence report, . january 003.
306 DIA response to questions from Committee staff.
DIA, response to Committee staff request, reports from Source Twelve.

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Committee staff, however, that he knew Chalabi intended to seek Iranian support
for the operation and knew that his presence outside the meeting was intended to
signal U.S. support for the plan.**

(U) Chalabi told Committee staff that he did seek Iranian support for the
operation, but never fabricated a written communication from the White House or
any part of the U.S. government.”

(U) A Committee staff review of intelligence on the Iranian view of the
meeting with Chalabi determined it was imprecise in its characterization. It did
not indicate that Chalabi handed the Iranian intelligence officer a message, rather
that Chalabi said the White House had sent the message that America welcomed
Iranian involvement in the uprising.

(UV) Chalabi also told Committee staff that he had long worked openly with
the Iranians as part of his efforts to establish and maintain the INC, given that
much of the Iraqi opposition was living in Iran and much of the opposition that
traveled to northern Iraq had to transit through Iran. CIA officers told
Committee staff that they were aware at the time of Chalabi’s frequent contact
with the Iranians and travel to Iran.*’ One CIA officer told Committee staff that
“we always knew he was close with the Iranians” and added, “I did not want the
[field elements] to be dealing with the Iranians. So sort of in absentia the only
way you could know what the Iranians were doing would be through what Chalabi

“8 svaff interview with CIA officers.

° Staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006.
Staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006.
Staff interview with CIA officers.

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51


related work. The ISG also visited several other sites identified by Source One
and was able to confirm Source One’s information pertaining to those facilities.'*

(GD) In early February 2004, in order to resolve FP

credibility issues with Source One, Intelligence Community elements brought
Source One to Iraq. When taken to the location Source One had described as the
suspect facility, he was unable to identify it. According to one intelligence
assessment, the “subject appeared stunned upon hearing that he was standing on
the spot that he reported as the location of the facility, insisted that he had never
been to that spot, and wanted to check a map.” Source One maintained that the
facility was in the area, and repeatedly pointed to the location on the map where he
said it was located. Intelligence Community officers confirmed that they were
standing on the location he was identifying.'*°

= During the same visit, when taken to a second facility Source One
had identified before the war, he was able to quickly identify a specific room
where he said he had worked. The Intelligence Community was able to

independently verify his work at that facility. a
146

(U) A CIA nuclear analyst told Committee staff that when he visited the site
it was very much as Source One described it. He said he did not know how to
explain why Source One did not recognize the facility. He, and other officials

44 DIA Information Paper on Suspect Nuclear Site, Iraq, Oct 27, 2005, and Committee staff interviews
with CIA, and DIA.
CIA Counterintelligence review of NFN800761, July 12, 2004, section JI.B.1.

146 CIA Memorandum,

d Committee staff interviews with CIA and DIA.

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(U) Information provided by INC-affiliated sources was used to identify key
leadership residences, office locations, and clubs frequented by Saddam and his
sons. The information also helped analysts establish behavior patterns, in
particular, for the two sons. Reporting from several sources on Iraq’s internal
security apparatus was corroborated by either open or classified sources of
information and contributed to the Intelligence Community’s baseline
understanding of this issue. According to the DIA, information on internal
security was largely accurate.”

(HEED) Source Six EM, an Iragi-bomn businessman, provided

twenty-three reports, almost exclusively on regime biographies and personalities.
One such report, in December 2002, identified an individual said to be in charge
of Iraq’s chemical, biological, and nuclear programs. It provided no other WMD
related information.” Another report, in February 2003, discussed Saddam
Hussein’s confidence in Faruq Hijazi for intelligence assessments. A source
comment noted that if Saddam wanted to build a relationship with bin Ladin, “he
would have picked Hijazi as his representative.” The report did not indicate that
Saddam did want to build a relationship with bin Ladin.”

(U) The only report from Source Six that did not discuss regime
personalities, dated February 2003, said that some of the Iraqi population is
excited about the idea of removing Saddam Hussein from power and replacing him
with improved leadership. Source Six said the Iraqi people expect a U.S.
operation to take about four weeks, and understand that a short U.S. presence after
that will be necessary. He said if the U.S. stays too long it may be viewed as an
occupation and said the U.S. should work closely with local officials to avoid that

289, DIA response to Committee staff questions, February 2004.
2 og DIA intelligence report, December jj 2002.
DIA intelligence report, ebrui 003.

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——- =

with access to overt sources for debriefings, and after the start of Operation Iraqi
Freedom, Iraqi regime documents.” In the fall of 2003, approximately six months
after the start of Operation Iraqi Freedom, the DIA began making plans to
terminate its relationship with the INC to coincide with the establishment of a new
Iraqi government in July 2004. A draft DIA memorandum drafted in January 2004
indicated that the DIA assumed the INC would become a full-fledged political
party following the establishment of a new Iraqi government and that the ICP
would become an intelligence-gathering arm of the party.” DIA officials told
Committee staff that the DIA believed continued funding of such an organization
would be inappropriate.’

=! On May 12, 2004, the DIA notified the Committee that an Iraqi
Criminal Court judge had issued an arrest warrant for a senior INC official J

. The judge was reportedly investigating allegations
of fraud and other offenses in connection with members of the INC, charges
having nothing to do with the ICP.’ DIA officials told Committee staff that its
recommendation to the Department of Defense to terminate the relationship with
the INC had nothing to do with these charges.'” On May 14, 2004 the Department
of Defense notified the Committee that it had decided to terminate its relationship
with the ICP.’ According to the Department of Defense, the decision was part of
the process of transferring sovereignty to the Iraqi people in light of the impending
standup of the Interim Iraqi Government on 1 July 2004. In addition there were

o DIA response to Questions for the Record, March 23, 2004, p.2.

DIA response to questions from Committee staff, Draft Termination of the Relationship Between the
DIA and ths INC’s ICP.
Interview with DIA officials, February 10, 2006.

tol Congressional Notification, May 12, 2004.
2 Interview with DIA officials, February 10, 2006.

103 1 etter to SSCI Chairman Roberts from Deputy Secretary of Defense Wolfowitz, May 14, 2004.

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a ~~

A July 2002 National Intelligence Council Memorandum also outlined the
intelligence community’s concerns about information from INC Source #2, and
noted that a foreign government intelligence service believed his information was
unreliable.

Despite these repeated warnings, the INC Source #2 reporting was cited
specifically in three subsequent CIA intelligence assessments issued from July
2002 to November 2002 and the intelligence community’s October 2002 NIE, as
corroborating other source reporting about Iraq’s mobile biological weapons
program. INC Source #2 also was one of the four human intelligence sources
specifically referred to in the part of Secretary of State Powell’s February 2003
speech before the UN that claimed Iraq had mobile biological weapons
laboratories weapons that had produced biological agents.

The Committee concluded that the intelligence community’s use in
assessments of information provided by INC Source #2 was a serious error. The
Committee also concluded that postwar findings do not support the assessment
that Iraq possessed, or ever developed, mobile facilities for producing biological
warfare agents. This is another example of an INC defector providing false
information to the intelligence community.

3. Iraqi links to the 9/11 plot and support of al-Qa’ida

MR. RUSSERT: The Washington Post asked the American people about Saddam Hussein,
and this is what they said: 69 percent said he was involved in the
September 11 attacks. Are you surprised by that?

VICE PRESIDENT CHENEY: No. I think it’s not surprising that people make that connection.
— Meet the Press, September 14, 2003

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Accordingly, we would have concluded the following with respect to the
use of INC information concerning Iraq’s WMD programs:

Conclusion: Information from the INC and INC-affiliated
defectors was not widely used in Intelligence Community
products and played little role in the Intelligence Community’s
judgments about Iraq’s WMD programs.

The Intelligence Community used information from two INC-
affiliated defectors in the NIE, but the information was not used as
the primary basis for any of the key judgments about Iraq’s WMD
capabilities. In one case, analysts assessed reporting from an INC-
affiliated defector as corroboration of other primary source reporting
about Iraq’s mobile biological weapons production capabilities. In
the other case, a defector’s information formed the basis for
Intelligence Community concerns that an Iraqi facility may have had
a nuclear association. Of the thousands of reports sent to the
Committee as supporting documentation for the October 2002 NIE,
only five were from these two sources.

With respect to the use of INC-related information concerning Iraq’s links
to terrorism, we would have concluded:

Conclusion: The Intelligence Community made little use of INC-
affiliated defector information in its assessments about Iraq’s
links to terrorism. Some of these assessments mischaracterized
the content and the credibility of the reporting. The CIA and the
DIA used intelligence reporting from two INC-affiliated defectors in
intelligence assessments discussing alleged special operations
training of non-Iraqi Arabs at Iraq’s Salman Pak Unconventional
Military Training Facility. Most of the assessments describe the

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a

plan. One added that he “had never claimed or will claim the U.S. has promised
military, financial, or material support for the March plan.”*” After the start of the
action, the former official said that, because phone lines were cut off within Iraq,
he was unable to communicate with Iraqi officers inside Iraq and requested that
the U.S. fly a single airplane over Sammara to reassure the people and warn Iraqi
helicopters not to fly. In response to this request, the Iraqi Operations Group sent
instructions to the CIA representative that “if asked, and only if asked, about a
response to [the former official leading the operation’s] request for a flight over
Sammara, you should state ‘there is no response.’ "8

(U) Both CIA officials and Chalabi told Committee staff that the initial
stages of the plan had worked to some extent. Exchanges of light infantry
weapons and artillery fire were observed. Iraqi military equipment and several
hundred Iraqi soldiers had been captured. While one group of opposition forces
were occupied fighting Saddam’s military, another opposition group used the
opportunity to attack the other from the rear, which effectively ended the
operation.” Nonetheless, there was never confirmation that Iraqi military units
had followed the plan and the Iraqi people did not rise up against the regime.

(U) Afterwards, CIA headquarters sent word to the opposition members.
The points for Chalabi were:

A) In the wake of this weekend’s events, we need to clarify the basis on
which we can work together in the future.

37 CIA Operational cable, March 1995.

* CIA Operational cable, March 1995,
CIA Operational cable, March 1995, Staff interview with Ahmed Chalabi, January 31, 2006, and Staff
interview with CIA officer.

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the Iraqi National Congress (INC) prior to his meeting with western intelligence
services.”!”? DIA disseminated the fabrication notice to the all of the analytic
agencies that received the original intelligence reports on Source Two, including
CIA, DIA, and State INR, and cited the source identification numbers, reference
numbers, and titles of both original intelligence reports.’

(U) The DIA did not recall the original intelligence reports or reissue them
with a warning that Source Two was believed to be a fabricator. The DIA told
Committee staff, “we sent out a fabricator notice, not to necessarily recall the
information but to warn the intelligence community that some of his information
was suspect, that he may have been coached, and, . . . what his modus operandi
was.”!79

(U) A July 2002 NIC Memorandum on the INC defector program also
outlined the Intelligence Community’s concerns about information from Source
Two, noting that DIA and the foreign intelligence service believed his information
was unreliable. The paper said that “although intelligence reporting on the mobile
labs was favorably received, this information is now considered suspect.”!®

(U) Despite the warning from the Directorate of Operations in March 2002,
the April 2002 CIA assessments, the May 2002 DIA fabrication notice, the July
2002 NIC Memorandum all suggesting Source Two may have fabricated
information, and the fact that Source Two’s intelligence report never actually said
the labs were for biological weapons, Source Two was cited specifically in five

ve DIA fabrication a_i
179 DIA fabrication notice 002.
180 Staff interview with DIA officers, February 20, 2004.
NIC Memorandum, The Iraqi National Congress Defector Program, July 10, 2002, p.3-4.

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Reality: INC information was not widely used by the Intelligence
Community and played little role in the Intelligence
Community’s judgments about Iraq’s WMD programs and
links to terrorism.

The Intelligence Community agencies told the Committee that INC-
affiliated reporting had a minimal impact on prewar judgments about Iraq.
Despite evidence to the contrary, amended Conclusion | suggests that INC
information played a significant role in the Intelligence Community’s judgments
about Iraq, particularly in judgments about Iraq’s WMD capabilities and links to
terrorism.

The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) told the Committee that INC
sources and collected material were not instrumental in shaping DIA assessments
of the former Iraqi regime’s terrorist connections or the terrorist threat the regime
presented. The DIA said it “considered this information — as well as other
information of uncertain quality — as background information which had the
potential of earning more credibility as additional data was collected, though it
played no direct role in forming our assessments.”

The State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) told the
Committee that it viewed all reporting on Iraq from HUMINT sources with
skepticism. The INR said “this reporting was seldom, if ever, used as the basis for
judgments unless corroborated by other sources that INR deemed credible.” With
regard to the two INC-affiliated defectors whose information was included in the
WMD NIE, the INR said their reports “did not influence any INR assessments
relating to prohibited weapons programs.” Regarding terrorism, INR said it “did
not make much use of INC reporting on terrorism issues related to Iraq in the years
before Operation Iraqi Freedom.” (Emphasis in original).

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a

hijackings. In December 2001, a CIA intelligence report stated that Source Three
“is under the influence/control of the Iraqi National Congress (INC) and is not
considered to be very credible.” In February 2002, the CIA’s Iraq Operations
Group concluded that: “Although we can verify a few elements of his story, we
have determined that much of his information is inaccurate and appears aimed at
influencing U.S. (and probably western) policy on Iraq.”

(GD During his debriefings in October 2001, Source Three referred Source
Four, an Iraqi  seputy to the HR - ommander of an
Iraqi training camp, to the Intelligence Community as someone who could confirm
Source Three’s story about the training of non-Iraqi Arabs at the facility in 1994-
1995, Later that month, Source Four was debriefed by Intelligence Community
officials and said Iraqi intelligence trained Iraqis soldiers and 70-75 non-Iraqi
Arabs in highjacking techniques at the HE raining facility. In October
2001, the CIA reported that Source Four complained that his earlier accounts to
the press about terrorist training had been distorted and mistranslated by the INC
translator involved in the interviews. The CIA’s Iraqi Operations Group lost
operational interest in Source Four, citing, in a February 2003 cable, Source
Four’s past exposure in the media and his employment with the INC.

(iy) During debriefings with the DIA during September and October 2002,
INC-affiliated defector Source Five claimed that
Ho being smuggled out of Iraq by the INC. Source Five claimed to
have seen Saddam Hussein meet with Osama bin Ladin in the early 1990's and that
Saddam Hussein’s son, Uday, told Source Five that bin Ladin was in Iraq to
discuss training some of his people in Iraq. The DIA’s preliminary examination of
Source Five’s travel documents appeared to support the basic facts of how the
source left Iraq, but neither confirmed nor denied the source’s claim of long-term
close [EJ access to Saddam Hussein and his inner circle. Initial reports from
the DIA warned that the source’s reliability had not yet been determined and that

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Page 115


standard Intelligence Community-wide system in place to notify intelligence
personnel of incomplete, misleading, or false information contained in intelligence
reporting. The DIA’s decision to issue a fabrication notice, rather than recall the
reporting, left the original Source Two reporting available for analysts to search
and locate in the message handling system. Some analysts, who missed the
fabrication notice but were aware of the underlying concerns about Source Two,
believed that it was acceptable to continue to use the information as long as the
concerns were noted in their assessments and as long as the reporting had not been
recalled. The Committee believes that once a source has been identified to have
fabricated information, continued use of the source’s reporting is risky.
Furthermore, in this case, even if analysts believed that they could use the
information, the concerns about the reporting were not included in their
assessments, which included the NIE and the information provided to Secretary
Powell.

(U) The Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) has initiated an
effort to provide guidance on standardization of terms and procedures and
improved use of information technology to ensure that information from sources
judged to be fabricators is not used in intelligence assessments in the future. The
Committee encourages the ODNI to ensure that this reform is completed and fully
instituted across the Community.

Page 117


(U) For clarity, the report makes a distinction between information provided
to the Intelligence Community by members of the INC and information provided
by sources who were referred to the Intelligence Community by the INC. Because
those sources were not members of the INC, the report refers to them as INC-
affiliated sources.

(U) The Committee notes that the Intelligence Community may have
received information from additional INC-affiliated source information from
foreign intelligence services that has not been identified as INC-related. The CIA
told the Committee “we believe it is likely that some reporting from INC sources
may have been fed to the US Intelligence Community via liaison services.” CIA
said this belief reflected its lack of visibility into liaison sources and anecdotal
information that the INC was bringing sources or allegations about Iraq WMD to
other intelligence services, including key liaison partners.

II. BACKGROUND ON IC RELATIONSHIPS WITH THE INC!

(U) In the Spring of 1991, President George H. W. Bush approved efforts
aimed at influencing those in the Iraqi government and military to undertake
action to change the Iraqi leadership. This authorization included encouraging
individuals or groups, both inside and outside Iraq, who wished to remove Saddam
from power and supporting those efforts in a material fashion. It was not the
objective or intent of the U.S. Government that Saddam Hussein, or members of
his regime, be physically harmed, but this authorization took note that there was a
strong possibility that violence of some degree would occur.

' This section of the report has been redrafted substantially from the classified version to accommodate
classification restrictions.

a ———

Page 5


(U) Three of the four reports sourced to the INC organization identified the
reporting as from “a member of the Iraqi opposition who was aware his
information would reach the U.S. government and who may have intended the
comments to influence as well as inform.”*” One of the reports did not include
this warning, but did indicate that the source had “indirect access whose reliability
has yet to be determined.” This report, disseminated in November 2002, provided
information about the establishment of a “crisis management committee” in Iraq
which was responsible for preserving the life of Saddam and his family, protecting
Baghdad and other vital locations, and the “use of weapons of mass destruction.”
The report stated that Iraq possessed several thousand chemical weapons shells
filled with VX and mustard, as well as 320 biological shells filled with ebola and
anthrax.”*° According to the DIA, the reference to the chemical weapons stockpile
was considered credible by DIA analysts and was included in threat briefings as an
example of reporting on the existence of a CW stockpile in Iraq. It was not cited
in any written assessments.”®!

(U) Two of the three reports which did note the source’s opposition
affiliation, both disseminated in December 2001, provided a database and
handwritten charts depicting Saddam Hussein’s genealogy and a document
describing key personnel in Iraq’s intelligence and security services.” The last
report, which also noted the source’s opposition affiliation, was attributed to a
subsource of undetermined reliability. The report said that Saddam Hussein had
told his closest friends and family members to stockpile water because he was
preparing to poison the water supply in Baghdad and Kurdish-controlled northern

*” DIA intelligence reports, 2003 iii, DA,

response $gCommittee staff request.
DIA intelligence report, EEN ovember [2002, DIA, response to Committee staff

DIA response to questions from Committee staff.

*® DIA intelligence reports, 2003 iis

ee

Page 94

request.
4 281


regarding secrecy. In one instance, the INC’s publicizing of the defector’s story
put his life in danger.”!'* According to the DIA, only one defector spoke to the
media after DIA asked him to refrain from doing so. Contact with that defector
was terminated, in part, as a result of the violation.'"> Details of that case, and any
other cases in which press articles are pertinent to the Intelligence Community’s
use of INC information or knowledge of the source’s INC affiliation, are described
below in further detail.

(U) The Intelligence Community used reporting from two of the INC-
affiliated sources in the October 2002 NIE on Jraq’s Continuing Programs for
Weapons of Mass Destruction. The two sources were not used as the primary
basis for any of the key judgments about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction
capabilities. In one case, reporting from an INC-affiliated defector was assessed
by analysts as corroborating other primary reporting about Iraq’s mobile biological
weapons production capabilities. In the other case, information from the defector
drove Intelligence Community concerns that an Iraqi facility may have had a
nuclear association."

(U) The CIA and the DIA used intelligence reporting from two INC-
affiliated sources in intelligence assessments that discussed alleged special
operations training of non-Iraqi Arabs at Iraq’s Salman Pak Unconventional
Military Training facility. Most of the assessments describe the sources as not
having direct access to the information and in some cases as “questionable” and
“exaggerated.” The CIA also included INC-supplied information in a 2003
assessment that the Saddam Hussein regime assassinated dissidents. This INC

114
11S
116

2002, p. 20.

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Page 39

NIC Memorandum, The Iraqi National Congress Defector Program, July 10, 2002, p.1.
Staff interview with DIA officers, February 10, 2006, p. 14-16.
National Intelligence Estimate, Jraq’s Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction, October


 ——____—_—_—

Administration view on alleged Iraqi links to al-Qa’ida and the 9/11 plot were
ignored and denigrated by senior policymakers. Most disturbingly, the
Administration, in its zeal to promote public opinion in the United States for
toppling Saddam Hussein, pursued a deceptive strategy prior to the war of using
intelligence reporting that the U.S. intelligence community warned was
uncorroborated, unreliable, and, in critical instances, fabricated.

Some of the false information used to support the invasion of Iraq was
provided by the Iraqi National Congress (INC), an organization which our
intelligence agencies had cautioned was penetrated by hostile intelligence
services and would use its relationship with the U.S. government to promote its

_own agenda to overthrow Saddam Hussein. During its investigation, the
Committee received a July 2006 report from the Department of Defense Inspector
General entitled “Review of the U.S. Government’s Relationship with the Iraqi
National Congress: Phase One — Compromises of Information, Sources, and
Methods.” The Committee’s investigation concluded that the INC attempted to
influence United States policy on Iraq by providing false information through Iraqi
defectors directed at convincing the United States that Iraq possessed weapons of
mass destruction and had links to terrorists. The Committee majority refused to
request from the Administration documents and information provided through
separate channels established by the INC that circumvented the intelligence
community’s vetting process altogether and provided purported “raw intelligence”
on Iraq directly to the Office of the Vice President and the Office of the Secretary
of Defense prior to the war. When asked by the press in February 2004 about
charges that the INC had deliberately misled the intelligence community, Ahmad
Chalabi, leader of the INC, replied “We are heroes in error. As far as we’re
concerned we’ve been entirely successful. That tyrant Saddam is gone and the
Americans are in Baghdad. What was said before is not important.”

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Page 159


compromise on each conclusion. Certainly, in most negotiations there are areas
for compromise. Sometimes, however, views can be so diametrically opposed that
efforts at compromise are futile. In such cases, members must agree to disagree
and move on. With respect to the INC conclusions, we were faced with just this
scenario, and votes ensued to resolve the disagreements. That is the democratic
process.

Of concern, however, is the notion that there is room for compromise when
it comes to the facts. Diametrically opposed conclusions are one thing, but there is
no room for compromise on the facts — they are accurate or they are not.
Paraphrasing the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, everyone is entitled to their own
opitfion, but not their own set of facts. I agree wholeheartedly. As Chairman, I
encourage good faith negotiation and compromise when it is appropriate.
However, I will continue to draw the line when it comes to amending conclusions
in a way that mischaracterizes or ignores the underlying facts. I may lose some
votes, but I will continue to hold to my premise that facts are stubborn things, and
when it comes to the facts, there can and should be no compromise.

PAT ROBERTS.

Page 126


ss

family security, weapons procurement, and oil for food program kickbacks.*” The
source also reported on the Iraqi regime’s practice of using

ertain facilities as a contingency in the event of major coalition strikes.**
According to the DIA, this information was corroborated, but, the use off

Some of the facilities identified by these sources and corroborated
with other reporting were struck by Coalition forces. Others were exploited by
special operations forces or other intelligence agencies following major ground
operations.*?

Vy In January 2003, the DIA disseminated one report from Source
Fourteen ME, 2 former Iraqi soldier. The report was
attributed to a subsource, living in Samawa, Iraq, who had direct and indirect
access to the information. The report noted that neither the source nor subsource
had a prior reporting history and the reliability of the information was
undetermined. The report said Source Fourteen spoke to the subsource in January
2003. The subsource said that earlier in January 2003 the Iraqi Republican Guard
was in the process of moving chemical and biological weapons by truck into
Samawa. The subsource also said that the citizens of Samawa were being forced
to hide sealed boxes in their homes, which the source believed contained chemical
or biological weapons. The report did not indicate that the source was affiliated
with the Iraqi opposition.*"°

307 DIA, response to Committee staff request, reports from Source Thirteen.

os DIA intelligence report, A anuary §}2003.

30° DIA response to questions from Committee staff.

310 DTA intelligence report, [ih anuary (003.

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Page 101


contractor at several Iraqi WMD sites,
9 124

Source One reported extensively on
the facilities in which he worked, personalities and organizations involved in these
facilities, the Iraqi Special Security Organization (SSO), and a variety of related
topics. The majority of reports disseminating from Source One’s debriefs focused
on facilities on which he had worked. The reporting described him as having
direct access to several Iraqi WMD sites.

(U) Two reports from this defector discussed suspect terrorist training sites
in Iraq. The first, dated January 2002, said that from 1997-1998, Afghan,
Pakistani, and Palestinian nationals were trained by the Fedayeen Saddam at an
Iraqi special forces training facility in Salman Pak, Iraq. The report said the camp
is “rumored to provide al-Qa’ida terrorist teams with training” and added, “many
Iraqis believe that Saddam Hussein had made an agreement with Usama bin Ladin
in order to support his terrorist movement against the U.S.!> The second report,
dated March 2002, provided the general locations of suspected Iraqi terrorist
training camps, including one at Salman Pak. The trainees were described as
members of various Iraqi groups including the Fedayeen Saddam and Iraqi Special
Security Forces. The comment section of the second report provided more detail
about how the defector obtained the information for the first report, noting that the
information about foreigners training at Salman Pak was from his personal

12:

DIA intelligence repo | January 002.

es —— ___—__—

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