Senator Levin Critiques Secretary Rice's Iraq Claims

January 27, 2005

We reproduced below an extended excerpt from Senator Carl Levin's speech to the Senate, January 25, 2005. Senator Levin provides a compelling analysis of Secretary Rice's statements on Iraq's weapons capabilities before the Iraq war began.

Here are a few of those exaggerations and distortions.

One of the most well known was the allegation that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Africa, which was cited to demonstrate that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. But our Intelligence Community did not believe it was true, and took numerous actions to make its concerns known, even urging the British not to publish the allegation in September 2002.

So how did it happen that President Bush, in his January 28, 2003 State of the Union speech, said that "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."?

When the CIA saw a draft of the President’s Cincinnati speech for October 7, 2002, it asked the White House to delete the allegation that Iraq had been seeking uranium from Africa, and the White House did remove the reference entirely. On October 5, 2002, the CIA sent a memo explaining its views to Stephen Hadley, Dr. Rice’s Deputy. It sent another memo on October 6 to Dr. Rice and to Mr. Hadley, again expressing doubts about the reports of Iraq’s attempts to get uranium from Africa. And finally, George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence himself, personally called Mr. Hadley to urge that the uranium allegation be removed from the speech, which it was.

This was not just some routine staff action, or a low-level CIA analyst who called the NSC. It was a memo from the CIA to Dr. Rice, and the Director of Central Intelligence who called Dr. Rice’s deputy to make clear his concerns and request the removal of the allegation.

Yet just three and a half months later, the White House put the African uranium allegation back into a draft of the State of the Union speech.

…What was the role of Dr. Rice in all of this? I asked her in my questions for the record whether she was aware that Intelligence Community had doubts about the credibility of the reports, and if not, how she could not know, given all the activity prior to the President’s October 7 Cincinnati speech, including the memo to her.

In response, Dr. Rice said "I do not recall reading or receiving the CIA memo," and "I do not recall Intelligence Community concerns about the credibility of reports about Iraq’s attempts to obtain uranium from Africa either at the time of the Cincinnati speech or the State of the Union speech."

Frankly, I am surprised and disappointed that the National Security Adviser would not remember an issue of this magnitude.

However, it was not only the President who made that allegation. Dr. Rice made it herself in an op-ed in the New York Times on January 23, 2003 – five days before the State of the Union speech and three and a half months after the same allegation had been removed from the Cincinnati speech at the CIA’s request. She wrote that Iraq’s declaration to the UN "fails to account for or explain Iraq’s efforts to get uranium from abroad."

…In Dr. Rice’s answers to my question, while she failed to remember all the direct interventions by the CIA to have the uranium allegation removed from the President’s Cincinnati speech, including a CIA memo to her, she instead relied on a single sentence from the October 1, 2002 National Intelligence Estimate asserting that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" from Africa.

There are four problems with her answers. First, after that National Intelligence Estimate was produced, the CIA made its multiple interventions with the National Security Council, including two memos and the call from DCI Tenet to Dr. Rice’s Deputy, to have the uranium allegation removed from the draft October 7 Cincinnati speech because of doubts about the credibility of the reports. It was then removed. So the CIA’s doubts about the reporting, and the White House’s removal of that allegation from the Cincinnati speech, came after the hastily assembled National Intelligence Estimate.

Second, according to George Tenet, the Director of Central Intelligence, the CIA’s concerns were with the credibility of the reports, not with sources and methods. In a statement issued in July 2003, he said that the CIA received portions of the draft speech shortly before it was given, and that CIA officials "raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues." In that statement, he made no fewer than five references to CIA doubts about the reliability of the intelligence. He did not mention any concerns about protecting sources and methods.

Third, in relying on one erroneous sentence in the NIE, she did not mention the opposing sentence in that same NIE written by the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR), which stated "the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR’s assessment, highly dubious." So the NIE which she referred to also contained an explicit dissenting view on the issue of African uranium, but she ignored that portion of the NIE.

Finally, and most significantly, if the State of the Union speech was relying upon that one sentence in the NIE, it would have presented the allegation about Iraq seeking African uranium as something the U.S. believed, rather than something the "British have learned."

That is where Dr. Rice’s answers unravel. If the NIE’s erroneous statement that "Iraq also began vigorously trying to procure uranium ore and yellowcake" from Africa was the basis for the State of the Union speech representation, that speech would not have relied on the British view. It would have been stated as our own view. The problem is that it wasn’t our view! The statement about the British learning of Iraq‘s efforts to obtain uranium in Africa was a conscious effort to create an impression that we believed something we actually did not believe.

There are other examples in which Dr. Rice exaggerated the intelligence or overstated the case to help persuade the public of the need to go to war against Iraq. Let me cite just a few.

On September 8, 2002, Dr. Rice said on CNN that "We do know that there have been shipments going into…Iraq, for instance, of … high quality aluminum tubes that are only really suited for nuclear weapons, centrifuge programs." And on July 30, 2003, she said that "the consensus view of the American intelligence agency"[sic] was that the aluminum tubes "were most likely for this use," meaning for centrifuges to make nuclear weapons.

However, contrary to her claim, there was no certainty and no "consensus view" within the Intelligence Community about the use of the aluminum tubes. In fact, there was a fundamental disagreement, and the Department of Energy, which has the Nations’ foremost centrifuge experts, and the State Department did not believe the tubes were intended for centrifuges. They believed the tubes were intended for conventional artillery rockets. Their disagreeing views were explicitly included in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate.

In my questions for the record, I asked Dr. Rice why she had said there was a consensus when there was none. Her answer did not respond to my question. The question remains: why did she say there was a consensus when there was not, and why did she say they were "only really suited for nuclear weapons" when they were, in fact, not only suitable for other purposes, but indeed had been used for other purposes by Iraq – namely conventional artillery rockets?

In summary, Dr. Rice made the public case against Iraq as having reconstituted its nuclear weapons program far stronger than was supported by the classified intelligence. She exaggerated and distorted the facts and the intelligence provided to her to help convince the American public of the need to go to war.

She has also not been forthcoming on the question of "when she knew" of the differences within the Intelligence Community relative to the intended use of the aluminum tubes. Senator Biden asked Dr. Rice in a written question before the confirmation hearings whether she knew of the long-standing debate within the Intelligence Community at the time of her September 8, 2002 statement that the aluminum tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs," and when President Bush said four days later that "Iraq has made several attempts to buy high-strength aluminum tubes used to enrich uranium for a nuclear weapon."

She simply ducked the issue, and quoted a passage from the October 2002 NIE about a number of alleged Iraqi uranium enrichment activities – including the aluminum tubes – noting that the Department of Energy believed the tubes "probably are not part of" the nuclear program. She never answered the question directly as to whether she was aware of the debate when she and President Bush made their erroneous statements.

…Voting to confirm Dr. Rice as Secretary of State would be a stamp of approval for her participation in the distortions and exaggerations of intelligence that the Administration used to initiate the war Iraq, and the hubris which led to their inexcusable failure to plan and prepare for the aftermath of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein with tragic ongoing consequences."