Tenet Warned Congress in February 2001 About al-Qaeda
    By Jason Leopold
    t r u t h o u t | Report

    Monday 02 October 2006

    In February 2001, seven months before 9/11, George Tenet, then the director of the CIA, testified before Congress and told lawmakers that the single greatest threat to the United States was Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, according to a little known copy of Tenet's Congressional testimony.

    During his report to Congress, Tenet eerily described a scenario that seven months later would become a grim reality.

    "Terrorists are also becoming more operationally adept and more technically sophisticated in order to defeat counter-terrorism measures. For example, as we have increased security around government and military facilities, terrorists are seeking out "softer" targets that provide opportunities for mass casualties," Tenet said, according to a transcript of his testimony. "Employing increasingly advanced devices and using strategies such as simultaneous attacks, the number of people killed ... Usama bin Ladin and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat. Since 1998, Bin Ladin has declared all U.S. citizens legitimate targets of attack. As shown by the bombing of our embassies in Africa in 1998 and his Millennium plots last year, he is capable of planning multiple attacks with little or no warning."

    But instead of heeding the CIA's warnings about al-Qaeda, the Bush administration brushed it off, and instead turned its attention toward Iraq, claiming Saddam Hussein was stockpiling a cache of weapons of mass destruction that threatened the security of the United States and Iraq's neighbors in the Middle East, and urged Tenet's CIA to find the evidence to support the administration's agenda.

    With Monday's publication of Bob Woodward's book "State of Denial," questions about what the Bush administration knew about the 9/11 threats and when they knew it have once again resurfaced.

    In February 2001, while Tenet was building a case against bin Laden and al-Qaeda, Colin Powell, then secretary of state, was trying to steer the White House away from taking action against Iraq, which administration officials immediately began to focus on just one month after Bush was sworn into office.

    Behind the scenes that month, hardliners in the Bush administration were privately discussing ways to remove Saddam Hussein from power, virtually ignoring credible intelligence about the pending threat posed by al-Qaeda.

    Privately, Powell disagreed with the administration's stance on Iraq. In interviews, Powell said that the US had successfully "contained" Iraq in the years since the first Gulf War and that, because of economic sanctions placed on the country, Iraq was unable to obtain WMD.

    "We have been able to keep weapons from going into Iraq," Powell said during a February 11, 2001, interview with "Face the Nation." "We have been able to keep the sanctions in place to the extent that items that might support weapons of mass destruction development have had some controls on them ... it's been quite a success for ten years ..."

    Moreover, during a meeting with Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, in February 2001 - the same month Tenet testified before Congress about bin Laden and al-Qaeda - Powell said the UN, the US and its allies "have succeeded in containing Saddam Hussein and his ambitions."

    Saddam's "forces are about one-third their original size. They don't really possess the capability to attack their neighbors the way they did ten years ago," Powell said during the meeting with Fischer, a transcript of which can be found here.

    "Containment has been a successful policy, and I think we should make sure that we continue it until such time as Saddam Hussein comes into compliance with the agreements he made at the end of the (Gulf) war."

    Powell, who a year later would publicly support the administration's case for war, added that Iraq is "not threatening America."

    Indeed, a day after Powell's "Face the Nation" interview, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld said in an interview with Fox News that "Iraq is probably not a nuclear threat at the present time," according to a copy of the transcript of Rumsfeld's February 12, 2001, interview with the cable news channel.

    By mid-February 2001, the sudden shift in policy toward Iraq was apparent. Bush administration officials went from describing Iraq as being a threat only to its own people to now posing an imminent threat to the world. By focusing heavily on regime change in Iraq, the White House ignored documented warnings about the al-Qaeda terrorist organization from career intelligence officers.

    Even after 9/11, the administration still could not shake off its obsession with launching a war against Iraq. Immediately following the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, CIA intelligence reports on Iraq radically changed from previous months, which said Iraq posed no immediate threat to the US, to suddenly showing that Iraq was stockpiling chemical and biological weapons and was in hot pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The Bush administration, linking Iraq to 9/11, seized upon the reports to build public support for the war and used the information to eventually justify a pre-emptive strike against the country in March 2003.

    Intelligence reports released by the CIA in 2001 and 2002 and more than 100 interviews with top officials in the Bush administration, including Powell, Rumsfeld and Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, given to various Senate and Congressional committees and media outlets prior to 9/11 show that the US had never believed Saddam Hussein to be an imminent threat other than to his own people. Moreover, the CIA reported in February 2001 that Iraq was "probably" pursuing chemical and biological weapons programs, but that it had no direct evidence that Iraq had actually obtained such weapons.

    "We do not have any direct evidence that Iraq has used the period since [Operation] Desert Fox to reconstitute its WMD programs, although given its past behavior, this type of activity must be regarded as likely," CIA director Tenet said in an agency report to Congress on February 7, 2001.

    "We assess that since the suspension of [United Nations] inspections in December of 1998, Baghdad has had the capability to reinitiate both its [chemical and biological weapons] programs ... without an inspection monitoring program, however, it is more difficult to determine if Iraq has done so," Tenet added. "Moreover, the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN at known and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating, according to the 2001 CIA report. Having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the UN or the US to accurately assess the current state of Iraq's WMD programs."

    In October 2002, when the CIA issued another report, it told a dramatically different story, that this time included details of Iraq's alleged vast chemical and biological weapons.

    The October 2002 CIA report into Iraq's WMD identifies sarin, mustard gas, VX and numerous other chemical weapons that the CIA claimed Iraq had been stockpiling over the years, in stark contrast to earlier reports by Tenet that said the agency had no evidence to support such claims. And unlike testimony Tenet gave a year earlier, in which he said the CIA had no direct evidence of Iraq's WMD programs, the intelligence information in the 2002 report, Tenet said, was rock solid.

    "This information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence," Tenet said during a CIA briefing in February, a transcript of which can be found here.

    "It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources," Tenet said, in statements and intelligence that would later be proven false.

    Rumsfeld's attitude toward Iraq also changed. Rumsfeld testified before the House Armed Services Committee on September 18, 2002 - 19 months after he said Iraq was not a nuclear threat - that Iraq was close to acquiring the materials needed to build a nuclear bomb.

    "Some have argued that the nuclear threat from Iraq is not imminent - that Saddam is at least 5-7 years away from having nuclear weapons," Rumsfeld testified before the committee.

    "I would not be so certain," Rumsfeld said. "He has, at this moment, stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons, and is pursuing nuclear weapons."

    Rumsfeld never offered any evidence to support his claims, but his dire warning of a looming nuclear catastrophe was enough to convince most lawmakers, both Democrat and Republican, to take swift action against Iraq. Shortly after his remarks before the House Armed Services Committee, Congress passed a resolution authorizing President Bush to use "all appropriate means" to remove Saddam from power.