Remarks as prepared
for delivery by Director of Central
Intelligence George J. Tenet at Georgetown
University
5
February, 2004
Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction
I have come here today to talk to you—and to the American people—about
something important to our nation and central to our future: how the
United States intelligence community evaluated Iraq’s weapons of mass
destruction programs over the past decade, leading to a National
Intelligence Estimate in October of 2002.
I want to tell you about our information and how we reached our
judgments.
I will tell you what I think—honestly and directly.
There are several reasons to do this. Because the American people
deserve to know. Because intelligence has never been more important
to the security of our country.
As a nation, we have over the past seven years been rebuilding our
intelligence—with powerful capabilities—that many thought we would no
longer need after the end of the Cold War. We have been rebuilding
our Clandestine Service, our satellite and other technical collection, our
analytic depth and expertise.
Both here and around the world, the men and women of American
intelligence are performing courageously—often brilliantly—to support our
military, to stop terrorism, and to break up networks of
proliferation.
The risks are always high. Success and perfect outcomes never
guaranteed. But there is one unassailable fact—we will always call
it as we see it. Our professional ethic demands no less.
To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and
care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful— or
thoughtful—discussion of intelligence these days.
But these times demand it. Because the alternative—politicized,
haphazard evaluation, without the benefit of time and facts—may well
result in an intelligence community that is damaged, and a country that is
more at risk.
The Nature of the Business
Before talking about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction, I want to set
the stage with a few words about intelligence collection and analysis—how
they actually happen in the real world. This context is completely
missing from the current public debate.
- By definition, intelligence deals with the unclear, the unknown, the
deliberately hidden. What the enemies of the United States hope to
deny, we work to reveal.
- The question being asked about Iraq in the starkest of terms is:
were we “right” or were we “wrong.”
- In the intelligence business, you are almost never completely wrong
or completely right.
That applies in full to the question of Saddam’s weapons of mass
destruction. And, like many of the toughest intelligence challenges,
when the facts on Iraq are all in, we will be neither completely right nor
completely wrong.
As intelligence professionals, we go where the information takes
us. We fear no fact or finding, whether it bears us out or
not. Because we work for high goals—the protection of the American
people—we must be judged by high standards.
Let’s turn to Iraq.
Reviewing the Record on Iraq
The History
Much of the current controversy centers on our prewar intelligence on
Iraq, summarized in the National Intelligence Estimate of October
2002. National Estimates are publications where the intelligence
community as a whole seeks to sum up what we know about a subject, what we
do not know, what we suspect may be happening, and where we differ on key
issues.
This Estimate asked if Iraq had chemical, biological, and nuclear
weapons and the means to deliver them. We concluded that in some of
these categories, Iraq had weapons. And that in others—where it did
not have them—it was trying to develop them.
Let me be clear: analysts differed on several important aspects of
these programs and those debates were spelled out in the Estimate.
They never said there was an “imminent” threat. Rather, they
painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal dictator
who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might
constantly surprise us and threaten our interests.
No one told us what to say or how to say it.
How did we reach our conclusions? We had three streams of
information—none perfect, but each
important.
- First: Iraq’s history. Everyone knew that Iraq had
chemical and biological weapons in the 1980s and 1990s. Saddam
Hussein used chemical weapons against Iran and his own people on at
least 10 different occasions. He launched missiles against Iran,
Saudi Arabia, and Israel. And we couldn’t forget that in the early
1990s, we saw that Iraq was just a few years way from a nuclear
weapon—this was no theoretical program. It turned out that we and the
other intelligence services of the world had significantly
underestimated his progress. And, finally, we could not
forget that Iraq lied repeatedly about its unconventional weapons.
- So, to conclude before the war that Saddam had no interest in
rebuilding his WMD programs, we would have had to ignore his long and
brutal history of using them.
- Our second stream of information was that the United
Nations could not—and Saddam would not—account for all the weapons the
Iraqis had: tons of chemical weapons precursors, hundreds of artillery
shells and bombs filled with chemical or biological agents.
- We did not take this data at face value. We did take it
seriously. We worked with the inspectors, giving them leads,
helping them fight Saddam’s deception strategy of “cheat and
retreat.”
- Over eight years of inspections, Saddam’s deceptions—and the
increasingly restrictive rules of engagement UN inspectors were forced
to negotiate with the regime—undermined efforts to disarm him.
- To conclude before the war that Saddam had destroyed his existing
weapons, we would have had to ignore what the United Nations and allied
intelligence said they could not verify.
- The third stream of information came after the UN inspectors left
Iraq in 1998. We gathered intelligence through human agents,
satellite photos, and communications intercepts.
- Other foreign intelligence services were clearly focused on Iraq and
assisted in the effort. In intercepts of conversations and other
transactions, we heard Iraqis seeking to hide prohibited items, worrying
about their cover stories, and trying to procure items Iraq was not
permitted to have.
- Satellite photos showed a pattern of activity designed to
conceal movement of material from places where chemical weapons had been
stored in the past.
- We also saw reconstruction of dual purpose facilities previously
used to make biological agents or chemical precursors.
- And human sources told us of efforts to acquire and hide materials
used in the production of such weapons.
- And to come to conclusions before the war other than those we
reached, we would have had to ignore all the intelligence gathered from
multiple sources after 1998.
Did these strands of information weave into a perfect picture—could
they answer every question? No—far from it. But, taken
together, this information provided a solid basis on which to
estimate whether Iraq did or did not have weapons of mass
destruction and the means to deliver them. It is important to
underline the word estimate. Because not everything we
analyze can be known to a standard of absolute proof.
The Estimate
Now, what exactly was in the October Estimate? Why did we say
it? And what does the postwar evidence thus far show?
Before we start, let me be direct about an important fact—as we meet
here today—the Iraq Survey Group is continuing its important search for
weapons, people, and data.
And despite some public statements, we are nowhere near 85%
finished. The men and women who work in that dangerous environment
are adamant about that fact.
Any call I make today is necessarily provisional.
Why? Because we need more time and we need more data.
So, what did our estimate say?
Let’s start with missile and other delivery systems for WMD. Our
community said with high confidence that Saddam was continuing and
expanding his missile programs contrary to UN resolutions. He had
missiles and other systems with ranges in excess of UN restrictions and
was seeking missiles with even longer ranges.
What do we know today?
- Since the war, we have found an aggressive Iraqi missile program
concealed from the international community.
- In fact David Kay said just
last fall that the Iraq Survey Group “discovered sufficient evidence to
date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery system
improvements that would have, if [Operation Iraqi Freedom] had not
occurred, dramatically breached UN restrictions placed on Iraq after the
1991 Gulf war.”
- We have also found that Iraq had plans and advanced design work for
liquid propellant missiles with ranges up to 1000 km – activity that
Iraq did not report to the UN and which could have placed large portions
of the Middle East in jeopardy.
- We have confirmed that Iraq had new work underway on prohibited
solid propellant missiles that were also concealed from the UN.
- Significantly, the Iraq Survey Group has also confirmed prewar
intelligence that Iraq was in secret negotiations with North Korea to
obtain some of its most dangerous missile technology.
- My provisional bottom line today: On missiles, we were
generally on target.
Let me turn to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. The Estimate said that
Iraq had been developing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, probably intended to
deliver biological warfare agents. Baghdad’s existing Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles could threaten its neighbors, US forces in the Persian
Gulf, and—if a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle was brought close to our
shores -- the United States itself.
What do we know today?
The Iraq Survey Group found that two separate groups in Iraq were
working on a number of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle designs that were hidden
from the UN until Iraq’s Declaration of December 2002. Now we know
that important design elements were never fully declared.
The question of intent—especially regarding the smaller Unmanned Aerial
Vehicles—is still out there. But we should remember that the Iraqis
flight-tested an aerial Biological Weapon spray system intended for a
large Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.
A senior Iraqi official has now admitted that their
two large Unmanned Aerial Vehicles—one developed in the early 90s and the
other under development in late 2000—were intended for delivery of
biological weapons.
My provisional bottom line today: We detected the development of
prohibited and undeclared Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. But the jury is
still out on whether Iraq intended to use its newer, smaller Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles to deliver biological weapons.
Let me turn to the nuclear issue. In the
Estimate, all agencies agreed that Saddam wanted nuclear weapons.
Most were convinced that he still had a program and if he obtained fissile
material he could have a weapon within a year. But we detected no
such acquisition.
- We made two judgments that get overlooked these days—We said Saddam
did not have a nuclear weapon and, probably would have been
unable to make one until 2007 to 2009.
- Most agencies believed that Saddam had begun to
reconstitute his nuclear program, but they disagreed on a number of
issues such as which procurement activities were designed to support his
nuclear program. But let me be clear, where there were differences, the
Estimate laid out the disputes clearly.
So what do we know today?
- David Kay told us last fall that “…the testimony we have obtained
from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should clear up
any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear
weapons.”
- Keep in mind that no intelligence agency thought that Iraq’s efforts
had progressed to the point of building an enrichment facility or making
fissile material. We said that such activities were a few years
away. Therefore it is not surprising that the Iraq Survey
Group has not yet found evidence of uranium enrichment activities
- Regarding prohibited aluminum tubes – a debate laid out extensively
in the Estimate and one that experts still argue over -- were they for
uranium enrichment or conventional weapons? We have additional
data to collect and more sources to question.
- Moreover, none of the tubes found in Iraq so far match the high
specification tubes Baghdad sought and may have never received in the
amounts needed. Our aggressive interdiction efforts may have prevented
Iraq from receiving all but a few of these prohibited items.
- My provisional bottom line today: Saddam did not have a
nuclear weapon. He still wanted one and Iraq intended to reconstitute a
nuclear program at some point. But we have not yet found clear
evidence that the dual-use items Iraq sought were for nuclear
reconstitution. We do not know if any reconstitution efforts had
begun but we may have overestimated the progress Saddam was making.
Let me turn to biological weapons. The Estimate said that
Baghdad had them, and that all key aspects of an offensive
program—Research and Development, production, and weaponization—were still
active, and most elements were larger, and more advanced than before the
first Gulf war.
We believed that Iraq had lethal Biological Weapon
agents, including anthrax, which it could quickly produce and weaponize
for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives.
But we said we had no specific information on the types or quantities of
weapons, agent, or stockpiles at Baghdad’s disposal.
What do we know today?
- Last fall, the Iraq Survey Group uncovered (quote) “significant
information—including research and development of Biological Weapons
-applicable organisms, the involvement of the Iraqi Intelligence Service
(IIS) in possible Biological Weapons activities, and deliberate
concealment activities. All of this suggests Iraq after 1996
further compartmentalized its program and focused on maintaining
smaller, covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge
the production of Biological Weapon agents.” (unquote)
- The Iraq Survey Group found a network of
laboratories and safehouses controlled by Iraqi intelligence and
security services that contained equipment for chemical and biological
research and a prison laboratory complex possibly used in human testing
for Biological Weapon agents, that were not declared to the UN.
- It
also appears that Iraq had the infrastructure and talent to resume
production—but we have yet to find that it actually did so, nor have we
found weapons. Until we get to the bottom of the role played by
the Iraqi security services—which were operating covert labs—we will not
know the full extent of the program.
- Let me also talk about the trailers discovered in Iraq last
summer. We initially concluded that they resembled trailers
described by a human source for mobile biological warfare agent
production today. There is no consensus within our community over
whether the trailers were for that use or if they were used for the
production of hydrogen. Everyone agrees they are not ideally
configured for either process, but could be made to work in either mode.
- To give you some idea of the contrasting evidence we wrestle with,
some of the Iraqis involved in making the trailers were told they were
intended to produce hydrogen for artillery units.
- But an Iraqi artillery officer says they never used these types of
systems and that the hydrogen for artillery units came in canisters from
a fixed production facility. We are trying to get to the bottom of
this story.
- And I must tell you that we are finding discrepancies in some claims
made by human sources about mobile Biological Weapons production before
the war. Because we lack direct access to the most important
sources on this question, we have as yet been unable to resolve the
differences.
- My provisional bottom line today: Iraq intended to develop
Biological Weapons. Clearly, research and development work was
underway that would have permitted a rapid shift to agent production if
seed stocks were available. But we do not know if production took place
– and just as clearly—we have not yet found biological weapons.
Before I leave the Biological Weapons story, an important fact you must
remember. For years the UN searched unsuccessfully for Saddam’s
Biological Weapons program. His son-in-law, Husayn Kamil, who
controlled the hidden program defected, and only then was the world able
to confirm that Iraq indeed had an active and dangerous biological weapons
program. Indeed, history matters in dealing with these complicated
problems. While many of us want instant answers, this search for
Biological Weapons in Iraq will take time and patience.
Let me now turn to Chemical Weapons. We said in the
Estimate with high confidence that Iraq had them. We also believed,
though with less certainty, that Saddam had stocked at least 100 metric
tons of agent. That may sound like a lot, but it would fit in a few
dorm rooms on this campus.
Initially, the community was skeptical about whether Iraq had restarted
Chemical Weapons agent production. Sources had reported that Iraq
had begun renewed production, and imagery and intercepts gave us
additional concerns.
But only when analysts saw what they believed to be satellite photos of
shipments of materials from ammunition sites did they believe that Iraq
was again producing Chemical Weapon agents.
What do we know now?
- The work done so far shows a story similar to that of his biological
weapons program. Saddam had rebuilt a dual-use industry.
David Kay reported that Saddam and his son Uday wanted to know how long
it would take for Iraq to produce chemical weapons. However, while
sources indicate Iraq may have conducted some experiments related to
developing chemical weapons, no physical evidence has yet been
uncovered. We need more time.
- My provisional bottom line today: Saddam had the intent and the
capability to quickly convert civilian industry to chemical weapons
production. However, we have not yet found the weapons we expected.
I’ve now given you my provisional bottom lines. But it is important to
remember that Estimates are not written in a vacuum. Let me tell you
some of what was going on in the fall of 2002. Several sensitive
reports crossed my desk from two sources characterized by our foreign
partners as “established and reliable.”
The first, from a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner
circle said:
- Iraq was not in possession of a nuclear weapon.
However, Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing such a
weapon. Saddam had recently called together his Nuclear Weapons
Committee irate that Iraq did not yet have a weapon because money was no
object and they possessed the scientific know how.
- The Committee members assured Saddam that once the fissile material
was in hand, a bomb could be ready in just 18-24 months. The return of
UN inspectors would cause minimal disruption because, according to the
source, Iraq was expert at denial and deception.
- The same source said Iraq was
stockpiling chemical weapons and that equipment to produce insecticides,
under the oil-for-food program, had been diverted to covert chemical
weapons production.
- The source said that
- Iraq’s weapons of “last resort” were "mobile launchers armed with
chemical weapons which would be fired at enemy forces and Israel."
- Iraqi scientists were “dabbling” with biological weapons, with
limited success,
- But the quantities were not sufficient to constitute a real
weapons program.
A stream of reporting from a different sensitive source with access to
senior Iraqi officials said he believed:
- production of chemical and biological weapons was taking place,
- that biological agents were easy to produce and to hide, and
- prohibited chemicals were also being produced at dual-use
facilities.
This source stated that a senior Iraqi official in Saddam's inner
circle believed, as a result of the UN inspections, Iraq knew the
inspectors’ weak points and how to take advantage of them. The
source said there was an elaborate plan to deceive inspectors and ensure
prohibited items would never be found.
Now, did this information make a difference in my thinking? You
bet it did. As this and other information came across my desk, it
solidified and reinforced the judgments we had reached and my own view of
the danger posed by Saddam Hussein and I conveyed this view to our
nation's leaders.
Could I have ignored or dismissed such reports at the time?
Absolutely not.
Continuing the Search
Now, I am sure you are asking: Why haven’t we found the weapons?
I have told you the search must continue and it will be difficult.
As David Kay reminded us, the Iraqis systematically destroyed and
looted forensic evidence before, during and after the war. We have
been faced with the organized destruction of documentary and computer
evidence in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected
of WMD work. The pattern of these efforts is one of deliberate
rather than random acts. Iraqis who have volunteered information to us are
still being intimidated and attacked.
Remember finding things in Iraq is very tough. After the first
Gulf War, the U.S. Army blew up chemical weapons without knowing it.
They were mixed in with conventional weapons in Iraqi ammo dumps.
My new Special Advisor, Charles Duelfer, will soon be in Iraq to join
Major General Keith Dayton – commander of the Iraq Survey Group – to
continue our effort to learn the truth. And, when the truth emerges,
we will report it to the American public – no matter what.
REVIEWING OUR WORK
As Director of Central Intelligence, I have an important
responsibility. I have a responsibility to evaluate our performance
-- both our operational work and our analytical tradecraft.
So what do I think about all of this?
Based on an assessment of the data we collected over the past 10 years,
it would have been difficult for analysts to come to any different
conclusions than the ones reached in October of 2002.
However, in our business that is not good enough.
We must constantly review the quality of our work. For example, the
National Intelligence Council is reviewing the Estimate line-by-line.
Six months ago we also commissioned an internal review to examine the
tradecraft of our work on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction. And,
through this effort we are finding ways to improve our processes.
For example, we recently discovered that relevant analysts in the
community missed a notice that identified a source we had cited as
providing information that, in some cases was unreliable, and in other
cases was fabricated. We have acknowledged this mistake.
In addition to these internal reviews, I asked Dick Kerr, a former
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, and a team of retired senior
analysts to evaluate the Estimate.
Among the questions that we as a Community must ultimately reflect on
are:
- Did the history of our work, Saddam's deception and denial, his lack
of compliance with the international community, and all that we know
about this regime cause us to minimize, or ignore, alternative
scenarios?
- Did the fact that we missed how close Saddam came to acquiring a
nuclear weapon in the early 1990s cause us to over-estimate his nuclear
or other programs in 2002?
- Did we carefully consider the absence of information flowing from a
repressive and intimidating regime, and would it have made any
difference in our bottom line judgments?
- Did we clearly tell policy makers what we knew, what we didn’t know,
what was not clear, and identify the gaps in our knowledge?
We are in the process of evaluating just such questions - and while
others will express views on the questions sooner, we ourselves must come
to our own bottom lines.
I will say that our judgments were not single threaded. UN
inspections served as a baseline and we had multiple strands of reporting
from signals, imagery, and human intelligence.
After the UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, we made an aggressive effort
to penetrate Iraq. Our record was mixed.
While we had voluminous reporting, the major judgments reached were
based on a narrower band of data. This is not unusual.
There was, by necessity, a strong reliance on technical data, which to
be sure was very valuable, particularly in the imagery of military and key
dual use facilities, on missile and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
developments--and in particular on the efforts of Iraqi front companies to
falsify and deny us the ultimate destination and use of dual use
equipment.
We did not have enough of our own human intelligence.
We did not ourselves penetrate the inner sanctum - our agents were on
the periphery of WMD activities, providing some useful information.
We had access to émigrés and defectors with more direct access to WMD
programs and we had a steady stream of reporting with access to the Iraqi
leadership come to us from a trusted foreign partner. Other partners
provided important information.
What we did not collect ourselves, we evaluated as carefully as we
could. Still, the lack of direct access to some of these sources
created some risk – such is the nature of our business.
To be sure, we had difficulty penetrating the Iraqi regime with human
sources, but a blanket indictment of our human intelligence around the
world is simply wrong.
We have spent the last seven years rebuilding our clandestine service.
As Director of Central Intelligence, this has been my highest
priority.
When I came to the CIA in the mid-90s our graduating class of case
officers was unbelievably low. Now, after years of rebuilding our
training programs and putting our best efforts to recruit the most
talented men and women, we are graduating more clandestine officers than
at any time in CIA’s history.
It will take an additional five years to finish the job of rebuilding
our clandestine service, but the results so far have been obvious:
- A CIA spy led us to Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the mastermind of Al
Qa'ida’s September 11th attacks.
- Al Qa'ida’s operational chief in the Persian Gulf, Nashiri the man
who planned an executed the bombing of the USS COLE – was located and
arrested based on our human reporting.
- Human sources were critical to the capture of Hambali, the chief
terrorist in South Asia. His organization killed hundreds of
people when they bombed a nightclub in Bali.
So when you hear pundits say that we have no human intelligence
capability … they don’t know what they are talking about.
Beyond Iraq: The Larger Role of US Intelligence
It’s important that I address these misstatements because the American
people must know just how reliable American intelligence is on the threats
that confront our nation.
Let’s talk about Libya where a sitting regime has volunteered to
dismantle its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs.
This was an intelligence success.
Why? Because American and British intelligence officers
understood the Libyan programs.
- Only through intelligence did we know each of the major programs
Libya had going.
- Only through intelligence did we know when Libya started its first
nuclear weapon program, and then put it on the backburner for years.
- Only through intelligence did we know when the nuclear program took
off again. We knew because we had penetrated Libya’s foreign
supplier network.
- And through intelligence last fall when Libya was to receive a
supply of centrifuge parts—we worked with foreign partners to locate and
stop the shipment.
- Intelligence also knew that Libya was working with North Korea to
get longer-range ballistic missiles.
- And we learned all of this through the powerful combination of
technical intelligence, careful and painstaking analytic work,
operational daring, and, yes, the classic kind of human intelligence
that people have led you to believe that we no longer have.
- This was critical when the Libyans approached British and US
intelligence about dismantling their chemical, biological and nuclear
weapons programs. They came to the British and American
intelligence because they knew we could keep the negotiations
secret.
- And in repeated talks, when CIA officers were the only official
Americans in Libya, we and our British colleagues made clear just how
much insight we had into their WMD and missile programs.
- When they said they would show us their SCUD-B’s, we said fine but
we want to examine your longer range SCUD-Cs.
- It was only when we convinced them we knew Libya’s nuclear program
was a weapons program, that they showed us their weapon design.
- As should be clear to you, Intelligence was the key that opened the
door to Libya’s clandestine programs.
Let me briefly mention Iran. I cannot go into detail. I want to
assure you that recent Iranian admissions about their nuclear programs
validate our intelligence assessments. It is flat wrong to say that
we were “surprised” by reports from the Iranian opposition last
year.
And on North Korea, it was patient analysis of difficult-to-obtain
information that allowed our diplomats to confront the North Korean regime
about their pursuit of a different route to a nuclear weapon that violated
international agreements.
One final spy story:
Last year in my annual World Wide Threat testimony before Congress in
open session, I talked about the emerging threat from private
proliferators, especially nuclear brokers.
- I was cryptic about this in public, but I can tell you now that I
was talking about A.Q. Khan. His network was shaving years off the
nuclear weapons development timelines of several states including Libya.
Now, as you know from the news coming out of Pakistan, Khan and his
network have been dealt a crushing blow, with several of his senior
officers in custody. Malaysian authorities have shut down one of the
network’s largest plants. His network is now answering to the world
for years of nuclear profiteering.
What did intelligence have to do with this?
First, we discovered the extent of Khan’s hidden
network. We tagged the proliferators. We detected the
network stretching from Pakistan to Europe to the Middle East to Asia
offering its wares to countries like North Korea and Iran.
Working with our British colleagues we pieced together the
picture of the network, revealing its subsidiaries, scientists,
front companies, agents, finances, and manufacturing plants on three
continents.
Our spies penetrated the network through a series of daring
operations over several years. Through this unrelenting effort we
confirmed the network was delivering such things as illicit uranium
enrichment centrifuges.
And as you heard me say on the Libya case, we stopped
deliveries of prohibited material.
I welcome the President’s Commission looking into proliferation.
We have a record and a story to tell and we want to tell it to those
willing to listen.
CONCLUSION
I came here today to discuss our prewar estimate on Iraq and how we
have followed Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction programs
for well over ten years. It is absolutely essential to do so openly
and honestly.
I have argued for patience as we continue to learn the truth. We are no
where near the end of our work in Iraq, we need more time. I have
told you where we are and where our performance can be improved.
Our analysts at the end of the day have a duty to inform and
warn. They did so honestly and with integrity when making judgments
about the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
Simply assessing stacks of reports does not speak to the wisdom
experienced analysts brought to bear on a difficult and deceptive
subject.
But as all these reviews are underway, we must take care. We
cannot afford an environment to develop where analysts are afraid to make
a call. Where judgments are held back because analysts fear they
will be wrong. Their work and these judgments make vital contributions to
our nation’s security.
I came here today also to tell the American people that they must know
that they are served by dedicated, courageous professionals.
It is evident on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is evident by their work against proliferators.
And it is evident by the fact that well over two thirds of al-Qa'ida's
leaders can no longer hurt the American people.
We are a community that some thought would not be needed at the end of
the Cold War.
We have systematically been rebuilding all of our disciplines with a
focused strategy and care.
Our strategy for the future is based on achieving capabilities that
will provide the kind of intelligence the country deserves. The
President has ensured that this will be the case.
We constantly learn and improve.
And at no time, will we allow our integrity or our willingness to make
the tough calls be compromised.
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