Iraq Pre-War Intelligence

IRAQ PRE-WAR INTELLIGENCE

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Mr. GRASSLEY. Mr. President, I spend most of my time with the work of the Judiciary Committee and the work of the Finance Committee. I do not get into intelligence and Armed Services issues very often. But I listened to Senator Kennedy's criticism of President Bush and Vice President Cheney that they deceived the American people.

I saw some things on television last night of which Senator Kennedy ought to be reminded. If he watched television last night, he might have a little different view.

I heard him say that President Bush maybe had more information than Congress had, and so it was wrong for the President today to say that Congress is rewriting history in any way because he maybe had more information than we had. I believe that is what Senator Kennedy said.

I do not know for sure if the President has more information than we have because when I go upstairs to S-407, to our secure briefing room, I am assuming I am getting the same information as the President is getting. Perhaps not as often, but getting the same information. So I think it is ludicrous to say that Members of the Senate cannot be up to speed on what the threats are to our Nation. But, for sure, if he had watched television last night, he would have heard a speech by President Clinton in 1998. The speech was on the threat of Saddam Hussein to our country at that time. Surely, Senator Kennedy cannot deny that President Clinton had exactly the same information President Bush would have had from our intelligence community. I very clearly heard President Clinton, when he was President, speak of the terrible threat that Saddam Hussein was to the world and to America, and that he was going down a road to do something about it.

Now, obviously, that did not happen. But we did pass a resolution called the Iraqi Liberation Act, where Congress, in a unanimous vote took a position at that period of time that we considered Saddam Hussein a threat and that he ought to be removed from office, from the leadership of his country.

If President Clinton, while he was in office, using that intelligence, saw Saddam Hussein as a threat, the same way President Bush did, I do not see how any Democrat can be on the floor of the Senate and say the President of the United States is deceiving the American people.

Also, last night I happened to hear a 2- or 3-minute speech by Senator Clinton, made in 2002, how horrible Saddam Hussein was and how he was somebody to fear and a threat and the inclination of doing something about it.

It is intellectually dishonest for any Democrat to come to the floor and accuse our President of misleading the American people. They ought to be ashamed of themselves. Have they no shame?

I have something I want to refer to because we have had people outside the Congress, outside the administration, look at some of these very issues. We had the Robb-Silberman commission report. Senator Robb is a former Democratic Member of this body. Judge Silberman is a Republican, served on the DC Circuit. They gave a report about Presidential daily briefings versus what is in the National Intelligence Estimate. There is no significant difference between the two reports, the Presidential daily briefing and the National Intelligence Estimate. Quoting from the report:

It was not that the intelligence was markedly different. Rather, it was that the PDBs and the SEIBs, with their attention-grabbing headlines and drumbeat of repetition, left an impression of many corroborating reports where in fact there were very few sources. And in other instances, intelligence suggesting the existence of weapons programs was conveyed to senior policymakers, but later information casting doubt upon the validity of that intelligence was not.

That is shortcomings of our intelligence community, the same shortcomings that President Clinton probably experienced during his time in office, when he was making estimates of the threat of Saddam Hussein, the same way that President Bush was making those estimates.

The Robb-Silberman commission found Presidential daily briefings to contain similar intelligence in ``more alarmist'' and ``less nuanced'' language. Continuing to quote:

As problematic as the October 2002 [National Intelligence Estimate] was, it was not the Community's biggest analytic failure on Iraq. Even more misleading was the river of intelligence that flowed from the CIA to top policymakers over long periods of time--in the President's Daily Brief and in its more widely distributed companion, the Senior Executive Intelligence Brief. These daily reports were, if anything, more alarmist and less nuanced than the [National Intelligence Estimate].

That is what one former Democratic Senator and a Republican judge, appointed to a commission to look into this, have reported. When you take all of these things into consideration, plus the quotes of Senator Clinton that I referred to in the year 2002 that I saw on television last night, or the statements by President Clinton in 1998 when he was President that I saw on television last night, it seems to me it is absolutely wrong and misleading to come up here and say the President of the United States and the Vice President were deceiving the American people, particularly when Senators can have briefings if they want them.

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