CIA Declassifies Most of Senate Iraq WMD Report

[Henk Elegeert]

REPLY TO: D66 at nic.surfnet.nl

http://reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=topNews&storyID=5419518
Top News Article | Reuters.com

"
CIA Declassifies Most of Senate Iraq WMD Report
Mon Jun 14, 2004 07:12 PM ET

By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The CIA has nearly finished
declassifying a highly critical report about prewar
intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and
returned most of it to Congress on Monday with parts it
believes should be kept secret marked in brackets,
government sources said.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report examines one of the
main reasons used by the United States for going to war
against Iraq -- intelligence that said Baghdad had weapons
of mass destruction. No large stockpiles of chemical or
biological weapons have been found.

The committee will meet on Tuesday behind closed doors to
discuss the report including its conclusions and the CIA's
redactions. The panel was expected to vote on whether to
approve the roughly 400-page report.

Sen. Pat Roberts, the Kansas Republican chairman of the
committee, has been adamant about making public as much of
the report as possible.

The panel's options include negotiating with the CIA over
passages that the intelligence agency determines would be
harmful to national security if they were publicly released.

The committee could rewrite those portions or it could
override the CIA and issue the report in its full original
form -- but that option was considered unlikely.

The CIA was still working to declassify two remaining
sections of the report and was expected to complete that in
the next day or two, an intelligence official said.

It was unknown whether the committee would ask CIA Director
George Tenet, who earlier this month said he would leave his
position for personal reasons in July, to respond to the
report before it is released.

Speculation circulated at the time of Tenet's resignation
that it might have been due to the Senate Intelligence
Committee report and the 9/11 Commission report that is due
at the end of July. Both are expected to criticize the
performance of U.S. intelligence agencies.

The Senate Intelligence Committee report will detail
problems in prewar U.S. intelligence gathering and analysis
on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, but be less critical
of the intelligence on terrorism, government sources said.
It was expected to specifically criticize Tenet in some
instances.

The Senate Intelligence Committee plans to hold hearings
which will be followed by recommendations for changes to the
U.S. intelligence community.
"

Henk Elegeert

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