Bob Woodward

by State of Denial (lit)

  Inside the Green Zone, the heavily fortified roughly six-square-mile area where the CPA was headquartered, a group of consultants tried to figure out what kind of television programs Iraqis would like to watch. They talked about capturing the Iraqi stay-at-home mom market segment with some kind of Iraqi version of Oprah Winfrey's show.

  You know, we could go to Hollywood, Bush said later to Rice. I know people in Hollywood. We can go to Disney. We can get people involved who can do this kind of thing.

  Oh, we've got it, Mr. President, Rice replied. We've got it.

  He kept after her: Do something.

  By summer 2003, Bush realized they were failing at communications. He told Tony Blair, We're doing a lousy job here. If I haven't solved this by December, I'm going to just give this to the U.K. He probably wasn't serious, but it gave voice to his frustration.

  The controversy over the president's reference to the discredited Iraq-Niger uranium deal was gaining steam, and was fast becoming a symbol of both the failure to find WMD, and the suspicion that the president had cherry-picked intelligence to make the case for war.

  On Saturday, July 5, Tenet talked to the chief NSC spokesperson, Anna Perez. As best she could tell, the fact that the 16 words about the uranium had made it into the State of the Union address was the result of failures in both the NSC staff and the CIA. We're both going to have to eat some of this, Perez said. Something should be done to correct the record on what the president had said in his speech.

  Tenet had gotten the accusation pulled out of Bush's speech in Cincinnati the previous October, but Hadley, who had reviewed the final State of the Union address, had apparently forgotten the earlier warning. Tenet had not reviewed the final State of the Union draft as he was supposed to do.

  Tenet agreed with Perez that all would share the blame. The plan was to work on a joint statement over the weekend that would be put out on Monday. Rice and Tenet spoke next and agreed that they had to put the issue to bed. Rice was with the president traveling in Africa. Hadley and some NSC staffers worked on a draft but they couldn't reach an agreement.

  Tenet said he would put out a statement. On Tuesday, July 8, however, after Ambassador Joseph Wilson's New York Times op-ed piece cast doubt on the claim, the White House released a statement saying, Knowing all we know now, the reference to Iraq's attempt to acquire uranium from Africa should not have been included in the State of the Union speech.

  Democrats began calling for an investigation.

  What else don't we know? asked Florida Senator Bob Graham, the former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, in a public comment.

  On Friday, July 11, Bush and Rice were in the fourth day of the Africa trip. At the back of Air Force One, Rice engaged reporters in a discussion for nearly an hour about the matter. I can tell you, if the CIA, the director of central intelligence, had said, 'Take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone without question, she said. If there was a concern about the underlying intelligence there, the president was unaware of that concern, as was I. She later laid it out more starkly, putting the blame four-square on Tenet's CIA. The agency cleared the speech and cleared it in its entirety, she said.

  Bush adopted Rice's line. I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services, he said.

  Condi shoved it right up my ass, Tenet told a colleague. They had an agreement and had been working on a joint statement for two days. Now Rice had dropped a dime on him, blaming only the CIA. The problem was a classic. Two views of the Niger-uranium issue had existed inside his CIA. At the lower level, they believed a connection was possible. But Tenet had access to the highest-level, most sensitive intelligence from a foreign intelligence service that had an agent inside Saddam's government who discounted the Niger-uranium story.

  Tenet decided to fall on his sword. The statement was retooled so he would take full responsibility. He released it that night to avoid a second-day story.

  His long statement said in part, First, the CIA approved the President’s State of the Union address before it was delivered. Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. And third, the President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president.

  The next morning the front-page headline in The Washington Post read, Bush, Rice Blame CIA for Iraq Error; Tenet Accepts Responsibility for Clearing Statement on Nuclear Aims in Jan. Speech.

  It was 100 percent public grovel, and Tenet was privately furious. He had the CIA search all its records to see what had been passed in writing to the White House. The CIA found two memos sent to the White House just before the October 2002 Cincinnati speech voicing doubts about the intelligence that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

  Instead of taking the memos to Rice or Hadley, Tenet took them to Andy Card, effectively dropping his own dime on the president's national security adviser and her deputy. Card heard Tenet out.

  I was not told the truth, Card said ominously. He directed that the White House investigate.

  Full war was now on between the CIA and the White House.

  Eleven days after Tenet's public mea culpa, Hadley went before the press to take his turn.

  I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue.

  It was painful for the meticulous, careful Hadley. He was visibly shaken. I am the senior-most official within the NSC staff, directly responsible for the substantive review and clearance of presidential speeches, he said. I failed in that responsibility in connection with the inclusion of these 16 words.

  At a long, grueling press briefing, he and Dan Bartlett, the president's communications director, nonetheless said that though the uranium claim did not rise to the high standard for a presidential speech, it was accurate because the statement in the president's speech had been attributed to the British.

  The real failing, Hadley said, is that we've had a national discussion on 16 words, and it's taken away from the fact that the intelligence case supporting concerns about WMD in Iraq was overwhelming ... as strong a case as you get in these matters.

  It was his own slam dunk.

  These 16 words affect not one whit the decision he made which was based on the intelligence case, Hadley said.

  Armitage was pretty sure that Hadley had taken a figurative bullet not for the president so much as for the vice president. It was Cheney who was the strongest advocate that Saddam had been reconstituting his nuclear program.

  In private, Tenet told Armitage he believed that Hadley was a Cheney-Rumsfeld sleeper agent —an intelligence term for an undercover agent who lurks dormant without a mission for years, but who can be awakened to do the bidding of his handlers. It was a hyperbolic statement, but it reflected the growing animus between the CIA and the NSC.

  First Tenet, and now Hadley, had taken the hit for the president. The public blowup opened up old wounds, such as the Tenet-Rice hostility and charges of basic incompetence at the CIA.

  In July 2003 Bremer approved a 25-member Iraqi interim Governing Council, which met for days trying to determine who would be its leader. It was an expanded version of Garner's group. Reflecting the intense divisions of Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds, the council finally reached an agreement: The presidency of the group would rotate among nine people, each of whom would be president for a month. Moreover, all but one of the nine had been exiles who had returned to Iraq after the U.S.-led invasion.

  When word reached the White House, even the very controlled Hadley was disbelieving.

  Iraq was an abused child for 30 years, he said. Saddam Hussein had killed many of the elites, and most of those who weren't killed left the country and lived in exile. Now the exiles were back, but the country was so divided no one could agree on much of anything. At one meeting Hadley said sarcastically, We say, 'Pick your president,' and they say, 'The first month it'll be this gu
y's president. The second month it'll be this guy's president. The third month it'll be this guy's president. The fourth month it'll be this guy's president.' And at that point you say, 'This is not ready for prime time. Who's going to lead this country?' That is what the president wants to know, 'Who is going to step up and lead this country?'

  For the moment it was Bremer.

  David Kay was in almost daily contact with Tenet on video teleconferences, but officials from other intelligence agencies and the Pentagon—including Cambone, who was against the very idea of Kay's involvement—were always in on the discussions. So Kay e-mailed Tenet and McLaughlin directly once a week or so with his most important, secret, early conclusions.

  On chemical and biological weapons, Kay wrote in a secure, private CIA e-mail, it was beginning to look very much like the Iraqis had adopted something like what the Soviets called surge capacity. It meant they would maintain some ability to make chemical and biological weapons, but they wouldn't actually produce and stockpile the weapons until they needed them. You've got to start to understand that the puzzle may fit together that way, Kay wrote.

  Don't tell anyone this, McLaughlin wrote back, as Kay recalled. This could be upsetting. Be very careful. We can't let this out until we're sure.

  Around 3 a.m. one morning, Kay was asleep in his shipping container when someone from his communications shop banged on his door. The vice president's office. He's on the phone.

  Kay hustled over to the secure phone, where it turned out that it wasn't Cheney, but a staffer in his office. The vice president wants to know if you've seen this communication intercept, said the staffer, going on to describe information that the NSA had picked up from Syria alleging a location of some chemical weapons. It was a highly classified Executive Signals Intercept that would be circulated only among the most senior officials, and that wouldn't normally be shared with the field in its raw form.

  Honestly, no, I haven't, Kay said, but I will look at it.

  Kay located his team's NSA representative, who dug out the intercept. It was innocuous—particularly innocuous at 3 a.m., Kay thought— and inconclusive. He was surprised that Cheney or his people were getting down to such detail. Kay didn't think intercepts were going to lead them to WMD because the intercepted conversations were almost always vague. It was rarely clear who was talking, or what the it might be they were discussing.

  In late July, Bremer flew back to Washington. He met with George Tenet, and mentioned an issue that he'd raised in a cable he'd sent the Pentagon to be forwarded to the other NSC principals. Tenet had no idea what Bremer was talking about. He said he'd never seen the cable. Bremer worked it backward. He'd been sending all his reports back to Rumsfeld through military channels, and counting on Rumsfeld or the Pentagon to disseminate them to the others on the NSC. But it was now evident that Rumsfeld just hadn't done it, and was keeping the reports for himself. Rumsfeld was so wearing. Questions galore, always demanding answers, and here he wasn't even keeping the others informed.

  Rumsfeld's impossible to deal with, Bremer told a colleague. He was really steamed. It was total bullshit. Rumsfeld was throwing his weight around, and the rest of the NSC was just too weak to do anything about it. The whole interagency process was broken down. Where was Rice? Bremer went on the warpath, demanding the kind of diplomatic cable system ambassadors normally used to send messages back to Washington. Get it set up, he told McManaway.

  A few days later on his way back to Baghdad, Bremer called his spokesman and close aide, Dan Senor, a tall, young, former Republican congressional staffer who had worked briefly for the White House. Bremer rattled off a to-do list covering some 48 items that had to be taken care of immediately on his return, including issues on medics, the economy, his political team, banks, mobile phones, polling, interrogations, corruption, mercenaries, the museums, an orphanage visit, new laws and various budgets—an overwhelming amount of detail.

  Kay flew back to Washington, arriving on July 26. He was already coming to the conclusion that they might not find stockpiles of WMD anywhere in Iraq, and he wanted Tenet to get the CIA stations in the region to see if Saddam might have smuggled WMD out of Iraq before the war. Spider Marks and his team had seen trucks heading toward the Syrian border but they still couldn't improve on Marks's statement that the trucks might, for all they knew, contain Toys 'R' Us bicycles.

  Look, things may have gone across borders, but you're going to have to energize the intelligence community to find out what's in those countries because we can't, Kay told Tenet. His group couldn't operate outside Iraq. All we can report is evidence of movement toward borders.

  I want you to come with me to the White House tomorrow morning, for the President's Daily Brief, Tenet said. Come in early and you can get a ride down with the PDB briefer. The President's Daily Brief was the highly classified report of the most sensitive and supposedly important intelligence that went only to Bush, Cheney, Powell, Rumsfeld, Rice and a few others.

  The next morning, Kay arrived at CIA headquarters at 5:30. The woman in charge of the PDB told him, We're glad you're briefing this morning, because it means we can reuse this material. We're getting sort of thin, and we can reuse it.

  Kay was surprised to hear that PDB intelligence was not so urgent or relevant that it had to be used immediately. He was more surprised about his presumed role that morning.

  I'm briefing? Kay asked.

  Yes, she said.

  Tenet was waiting at the White House, along with Rumsfeld and Andy Card. Kay and the PDB briefer went into the Oval Office, where Bush and Cheney were waiting. She went through her sections of the presentation, and then Kay was asked to report.

  The biggest mistake we made was to let looting and lawlessness break out, Kay said. Iraq was a mess and that made his job vastly more difficult. Some of this evidence is beginning to shape up as if they had a just-in-time policy, he said, explaining the Soviet surge capability theory. They might have had the equipment, the facilities and the material to make WMD on short notice but they might not have actually produced any.

  We have not found large stockpiles, Kay said. You can't rule them out. We haven't come to the conclusion that they're not there, but they're sure not any place obvious. We've got a lot more to search for and to look at.

  Keep at it, Bush said. You understand you're to find out the truth about the program. David, what do you need that we can do for you?

  Sir, the only thing we need right now is time and patience, Kay said.

  You have the time, Bush said. I have the patience.

  Kay left the meeting almost shocked at Bush's lack of inquisitiveness. Kay had a Ph.D. and had taught at high levels, and he was used to being asked challenging, aggressive questions. A lot of the trauma in getting a graduate degree was surviving the environment of doubt, skepticism and challenge.

  He trusted me more than I trusted me, Kay later recalled. If the positions had been reversed, and this is primarily personality, I think, I would have probed. I would have asked. I would have said, 'What have you done? What haven't you done? Why haven't you done it?' You know, Are you getting the support out of DOD?' The soft spots. Didn't do it.

  Cheney had been quiet in the meeting, but on the way out he and Scooter Libby pulled Kay aside. Cheney was now as probing as Bush hadbeen passive. He was particularly concerned about the possible Syrian connection to WMD. What did Kay think? Cheney asked. Was there evidence? Could the weapons have gone to Syria?

  If things went across the border, Kay replied, we can't go across the borders. He had alerted Tenet to the problem, he added.

  Cheney inquired about the possibility that WMD could have been smuggled out and taken to the Bekaa Valley in Lebanon, an area dominated by the Iranian-backed Hezbollah, which had deep terrorist connections.

  Again, Kay said, any meaningful assessment or action would have to involve the CIA stations.

  Cheney pressed. He seemed to have a conviction that something had gone to Lebanon's Bekaa Valley. />
  Lebanon? Kay thought to himself. The Israelis and their intelligence services knew the most about the Bekaa. He thought of saying, Don't ask me, ask the Israelis. But he let it pass.

  Libby had a small sheaf of intelligence reports, including some sensitive, raw NSA communications intercepts. Kay hadn't seen them, because like the intercept he'd been called about at 3 a.m. in Baghdad, they were Executive Signals Intercepts or involved individual conversations or snippets. The CIA had analysts whose job it was to take dozens of such intercepts and reports, sift through them and distill them into usable conclusions. As with many intercepts, they were maddeningly vague. They had interesting little tidbits, and sometimes even specific locations were mentioned, but it was as clear as smoke.

  Kay was astounded that the vice president of the United States was using such raw intelligence. Here Cheney and Libby were acting like a couple of junior analysts, poring over fragments as if they were trying to decipher the Da Vinci Code. If only the world could be understood that way.

  Kay said later, Cheney had a stock of interpretations and facts that he thought proved a case and he wanted to be sure that you examined them. It was very sort of in the weeds, detailed, evidentiary questions, and not about what I had said, but about what he knew, that he wanted to know a little more. It was almost a doctoral exam. You're worried about someone trying to trip you up. 'Have you read this source?'

  Afterward, Kay had a call from Colin Powell asking him to come to the State Department. He'd known Powell in 1991 and 1992, when he was the U.N. nuclear inspections chief in Iraq and Powell was JCS chairman. Powell had not been included in the White House briefing, and he wanted to hear what Kay was finding. As the public face of the American declaration before the United Nations that Saddam had WMD, Powell had almost as much at stake as Bush.

  Kay gave Powell basically the same briefing that he had given to Bush—inconclusive but basically a neutral to negative report.