Who Lost the WMD?
As the weapons hunt intensifies, so does the
finger pointing. A preview of the coming battle
By MASSIMO CALABRESI AND TIMOTHY J. BURGER
Meeting last month at a sweltering U.S. base
outside Doha, Qatar, with his top Iraq
commanders, President Bush skipped quickly past
the niceties and went straight to his chief
political obsession: Where are the weapons of
mass destruction? Turning to his Baghdad
proconsul, Paul Bremer, Bush asked, "Are you in
charge of finding WMD?" Bremer said no, he was
not. Bush then put the same question to his
military commander, General Tommy Franks. But
Franks said it wasn't his job either. A little
exasperated, Bush asked, So who is in charge of
finding WMD? After aides conferred for a moment,
someone volunteered the name of Stephen Cambone,
a little-known deputy to Donald Rumsfeld, back
in Washington. Pause. "Who?" Bush asked.
It seems as if just about everyone has questions
these days about the missing WMD. Did U.S.
intelligence officials-or their civilian bosses-
overstate the evidence of weapons before the
war? And if some intelligence officials
expressed skepticism about WMD, who ignored
them? For the past several weeks, the usually
lockstep Bush Administration has done its best
to maintain a unified front in the face of these
queries. Whenever asked, Administration
officials have replied that the weapons will
turn up eventually. But as the search drags on
through its third largely futile month, the
blame game in Washington has gone into high
gear. And as Bush's allies and enemies alike on
Capitol Hill begin to pick apart some 19 volumes
of prewar intelligence and examine them one
document at a time, the cohesive Bush team is
starting to come apart. "This is a cloud hanging
over their credibility, their word," Republican
Senate Intelligence Committee member Chuck Hagel
told abc News. Here are key questions Congress
wants answered:
What Was Cheney's Role?
Lawmakers who once saluted every Bush claim and
command are beginning to express doubts. Two
congressional panels are opening new rounds of
investigations into the Administration's prewar
claims about WMD. One of their immediate
inquiries, sources tell Time, involves Vice
President Dick Cheney's role in reviewing the
intelligence before the bombing started. Cheney
made repeated visits to the CIA in the prelude
to the war, going over intelligence assessments
with the analysts who produced them. Some
Democrats say Cheney's visits may have amounted
to pressure on the normally cautious agency.
Cheney's defenders insist that his visits merely
showed the importance of the issue and that an
honest analyst wouldn't feel pressure to twist
intelligence. The House intelligence committee
(and possibly its Senate counterpart, sources
say) plans to question the CIA analysts who
briefed Cheney, and that could lead to calling
Cheney's hard-line aides and perhaps the Veep
himself to testify.
Is Powell Trying To Have It Both Ways?
Secretary of State Colin Powell, who staked his
reputation on his February declaration at the
U.N. about Saddam Hussein's arms program, is
also feeling the heat. Powell's aides fanned out
after that performance to say the Secretary had
gone to the CIA and scrubbed every piece of
intelligence to make certain it was solid. But
since then, little of Powell's presentation has
been proved by evidence on the ground, and last
week his aides were on the defensive over a memo
from the State Department's intelligence bureau
that questioned whether two Iraqi trailers
discovered in April were mobile bioweapons labs,
as Powell has asserted. Questionable
intelligence that made it into Powell's February
speech leaves him particularly vulnerable.
Expect a push by Democrats, and perhaps some
Republicans, to seek Powell's testimony too.
Will Tenet Be Left Holding the Bag?
CIA Director George Tenet is faring a bit
better. The House committee's top Democrat, Jane
Harman, noted last week that "caveats and
qualifiers" Tenet raised in prewar intelligence
about Iraq's weapons were "rarely included" in
Administration arguments for war. After the
awkward Q&A in Doha, Bush put Tenet in charge of
the WMD hunt. Tenet in turn hired a former U.N.
weapons inspector, David Kay, to run the search,
but Tenet and Kay have a lot of ground to make
up fast. Tenet, sources say, recently conceded
to the House panel that the CIA should have done
more to warn that finding WMD could be a drawn-
out process. Tenet got a reprieve last week when
an Iraqi scientist who had hidden parts and
documents for nuclear-weapons production in his
backyard for 12 years came forward. Tenet's
usually behind-the-scenes CIA suddenly became
very public in trumpeting the importance of the
discovery, if only to remind people how hard
illicit weapons would be to find. But Tenet's
hot zone isn't Baghdad; it's Capitol Hill. He
canceled testimony before the Senate committee
last week, citing a schedule conflict. If he
doesn't find any weapons, he needs to find a way
not to be blamed.
Bush officials believe that time and history are
on their side. They argue that now that Saddam
is gone, Americans don't care very much about
finding WMD. They also say it is only a matter
of time before more evidence of weapons
materials and programs emerges. And when that
occurs, they contend, all their opponents will
look as silly as they did when they argued that
the war was going badly in its second week. "The
Dems are looking for an issue, but I think
they're making a mistake," says a senior
Administration official.
Democrats do sense a possibly potent campaign
theme, but they run the risk of appearing to
politicize a sensitive national-security issue
as they try to prove the Administration has a
credibility gap. But Democrats are not alone in
feeling as though they may have been sandbagged
on the evidence before the war began. Sources
say g.o.p. Senate Intelligence Committee members
Olympia Snowe and Hagel have privately
questioned the Administration's handling of
prewar intelligence. The Republican-held House
voted last week to order the CIA to report back
on "lessons learned" from the buildup to war in
Iraq. The House and Senate intelligence-
committee leaders have agreed to coordinate
their probes loosely to avoid unnecessary
duplication of effort. In a rare move, the House
panel quietly voted on June 12 to grant all 435
Representatives access to the Iraq intelligence,
although a Capitol Hill source said fewer than
10 members outside the committee had reviewed
the material.
Administration officials have a further concern
about where all these questions are leading.
They fear that any problem with the prewar
intelligence could undermine Bush's ability to
continue his muscular campaign against terrorism
overseas. The Administration has argued that to
counter new kinds of threats posed by
terrorists, rogue states and WMD, it has to be
able to act pre-emptively. But pre-emption
requires excellent intelligence, and the whole
doctrine is undermined if the intelligence is
wrong-or confected. "Intelligence takes on an
even more important role than in the past
because you can't wait until you see an enemy
army massing anymore," says former Clinton
Deputy National Security Adviser James
Steinberg. But if WMD don't turn up and the
Administration wants to act elsewhere, it may
find that the enemy massing against it is public
opinion at home.
From the Jul. 07, 2003 issue of TIME magazine