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Bush and C.I.A. Won't Release Paper on Prewar
Intelligence
By DOUGLAS JEHL
Published: July 14, 2004
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/14/politics/14inte.html?th
WASHINGTON, July 13 - The White House and the Central Intelligence
Agency have refused to give the Senate Intelligence Committee a one-page
summary of prewar intelligence in Iraq prepared for President Bush that
contains few of the qualifiers and none of the dissents spelled out in
longer intelligence reviews, according to Congressional officials.
Senate Democrats claim that the document could help clear up exactly
what intelligence agencies told Mr. Bush about Iraq's illicit weapons.
The administration and the C.I.A. say the White House is protected by
executive privilege, and Republicans on the committee dismissed the
Democrats' argument that the summary was significant.
The review, prepared for President Bush in October 2002, summarized the
findings of a classified, 90-page National Intelligence Estimate about
Iraq's illicit weapons. Congressional officials said that notes taken by
Senate staffers who were permitted to review the document show that it
eliminated references to dissent within the government about the
National Intelligence Estimate's conclusions.
"In determining what the president was told about the contents of the
N.I.E. dealing with Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, qualifiers and
all, there is nothing clearer than this single page," Senator Richard J.
Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, said in a 10-page "additional view" that
was published as an addendum to the Senate Intelligence Committee's
report on Friday.
A separate white paper summarizing the National Intelligence Estimate
was made public in October 2002. The Senate report criticized the white
paper as having "misrepresented'' what the Senate committee described as
a "more carefully worded assessment" in the classified intelligence
estimate. For example, the white paper excluded information found in the
National Intelligence Estimate, like the names of intelligence agencies
that had dissented from some of the findings, most importantly on Iraq's
nuclear weapons program. That approach, the Senate committee said,
"provided readers with an incomplete picture of the nature and extent of
the debate within the intelligence community regarding these issues."
Among the specific dissents excluded from the public white paper on
Iraq's weapons was the view of the State Department's intelligence
branch, spelled out in the classified version of the document, that
Iraq's importation of aluminum tubes could not be conclusively tied to a
continuing nuclear weapons program, as other intelligence agencies
asserted. Also left out of the white paper was the view of Air Force
intelligence that pilotless aerial vehicles being built by Iraq, seen by
other intelligence agencies as designed to deliver chemical or
biological weapons, were not suited for that purpose.
The fact that there were significant differences between the white paper
and the classified versions of the intelligence estimate on Iraq's
weapons first became apparent last summer, when the Bush administration
made public more of the classified document.
The full National Intelligence Estimate asserted that Iraq possessed
chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear
program, but included some caveats and summarized dissents made by the
State Department's intelligence branch, among other agencies.
At a background briefing on Friday that coincided with the release of
the Senate report, a Senate Republican official noted that intelligence
agencies routinely prepared such abbreviated summaries of National
Intelligence Estimates for presidents, and that those summaries were
routinely covered by the doctrine of executive privilege.
Mr. Bush and his advisers had full access to the classified 90-page
intelligence estimate, "Iraq's Continuing Programs for Weapons of Mass
Destruction," which provided a more detailed and qualified account of
the intelligence agencies' views, the Senate Republican official noted.
The main body of the 511-page report that was approved unanimously by
the Senate Intelligence Committee made no mention of the summary sent to
Mr. Bush. In interviews, Democratic officials said that Republicans on
the panel, which meets in closed session, had blocked their efforts to
formally request the document from the White House. They also said that
Democrats on the panel had tried and failed to persuade Republicans to
include in the committee report a description of the one-page summary as
having been an inadequate reflection of the full intelligence estimate.
The document is still classified, according to Congressional officials,
who declined to discuss it in detail. But in his written "additional
view," included as an appendix to the Senate report, Senator Durbin said
there was "no reason" that the summary prepared for Mr. Bush "should not
be declassified in its entirety and publicly released."
Republican Congressional officials have said there is nothing unusual
about the preparation of the one-page summary for Mr. Bush. They say
they accept as legitimate the C.I.A.'s refusal to share the document
with the intelligence committee, on the ground that documents prepared
by the agency explicitly for a president should remain privileged.
Along with members of Congress and other top administration officials,
Mr. Bush and his advisers were also provided with the full, classified
version of the intelligence estimate, and Republican Congressional
officials say it would be misleading to focus on the abbreviated version
contained in the one-page summary.
John E. McLaughlin, the acting director of central intelligence, said
last week that he believed that the C.I.A. should have included more
caveats in the 2002 intelligence estimate, particularly in a section
that summarized its key judgments. On Tuesday, a senior intelligence
official said of the presidential summary: "We expect people to read
beyond one page.''
A one-page President's Summary is routinely prepared as part of any
National Intelligence Estimate, according to intelligence officials.
Like the National Intelligence Estimate, the summary is produced by the
staff of the National Intelligence Council, which reports to the
director of central intelligence.
A President's Summary is written explicitly for the president, and is
reviewed and endorsed by the chiefs of the 15 American intelligence
agencies, who form what is known as the National Foreign Intelligence
Board.
The one-page summary is not the only document that the White House
refused to share with the Senate Intelligence Committee, according to
Congressional officials. Copies of the President's Daily Brief that the
committee had sought were also denied to the panel, even though the
White House did allow another investigative body, the president's
commission on the Sept. 11 attacks, to review those highly classified
documents.
A White House official suggested Tuesday that Democrats, having joined
Republicans in issuing a unanimous report that did not address the
question of the one-page summary, were now, by focusing attention on it,
"seeking to rewrite the conclusions." The official said the White House
believed that the document should not be made public because it was
covered by the doctrine of executive privilege.
In his written statement, Senator Durbin said the C.I.A. had told the
intelligence committee that 80 copies of the one-page summary had been
distributed to the White House, a fact he called an indication that the
document had not been prepared exclusively for the president. He said
the summary "contains no intelligence beyond that contained" in the
broader intelligence estimate, which was provided to members of Congress
and to the committee, "and does not set forth policy advice that should
be considered privileged."
A Senate Democratic official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said
that three members of the intelligence committee staff were permitted by
the National Security Council to review the one-page Presidential
Summary and to take notes on its contents. But, the official said, the
staff members were not permitted to take possession of the document or
to publicly describe its contents in detail.
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