Jack Straw and his US counterpart, Colin Powell, privately expressed serious doubts about the quality of intelligence on Iraq's banned weapons program at the very time they were publicly trumpeting it to get UN support for a war on Iraq, the Guardian has learned.
Their deep concerns about the intelligence -- and about claims being made by their political bosses, British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W. Bush -- emerged at a private meeting between the two men shortly before a crucial UN security council session on Feb. 5.
The meeting took place at the Waldorf hotel in New York, where they discussed the growing diplomatic crisis. The exchange about the validity of their respective governments' intelligence reports on Iraq lasted less than 10 minutes, according to a diplomatic source who has read a transcript of the conversation.
The foreign secretary reportedly expressed concern that claims being made by Blair and Bush could not be proved. The problem, explained Straw, was the lack of corroborative evidence to back up the claims.
Much of the intelligence were assumptions and assessments not supported by hard facts or other sources. Powell shared the concern about intelligence assessments, especially those being presented by the Pentagon's office of special plans set up by the US Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz.
Powell said he had all but "moved in" with US intelligence to prepare his briefings for the UN security council, according to the transcripts.
But he told Straw he had come away from the meetings "apprehensive" about what he called, at best, circumstantial evidence highly tilted in favor of assessments drawn from them, rather than any actual raw intelligence.
Powell told the foreign secretary he hoped the facts, when they came out, would not "explode in their faces."
What are called the "Waldorf transcripts" are being circulated in NATO diplomatic circles. It is not being revealed how the transcripts came to be made; however, they appear to have been leaked by diplomats who supported the war against Iraq even when the evidence about Saddam Hussein's program of weapons of mass destruction was fuzzy, and who now believe they were lied to.
People circulating the transcripts call themselves "allied sources supportive of US war aims in Iraq at the time."
The transcripts will fuel the controversy in Britain and the US over claims that London and Washington distorted and exaggerated the intelligence assessments about Saddam's nuclear, chemical and biological weapons program.
An unnamed intelligence official told the BBC on Thursday that a key claim in the dossier on Iraq's weapons released by the British government last September -- that Iraq could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes of an order -- was inserted on the instructions of officials in 10 Downing Street.
Adam Ingram, the armed forces minister, admitted the claim was made by "a single source; it wasn't corroborated."
Speaking yesterday in Warsaw, the Polish capital, Blair said the evidence of weapons of mass destruction in the dossier was "evidence the truth of which I have absolutely no doubt about at all."
He said he had consulted the heads of the security and intelligence services before emphatically denying that Downing Street had leaned on them to strengthen their assessment of the WMD threat in Iraq. He insisted he had "absolutely no doubt" that proof of banned weapons would eventually be found in Iraq. Whitehall sources make it clear they do not share the prime minister's optimism.
Meanwhile, Powell on Friday fiercely defended the intelligence used by the Bush administration to justify war against Iraq, saying he spent several late nights poring over the CIA's reports because he knew the credibility of the country and the president were at stake.
The CIA's pre-war assessments have been sharply questioned by some intelligence officials and lawmakers in recent days, as US forces have uncovered limited evidence of unconventional weapons programs and Iraqi ties to terrorists.
Amid complaints from some intelligence officials that they felt pressured by Defense Department officials to produce reports that supported the administration's positions on Iraq, the CIA has started a review to determine whether its prewar assessments of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs were accurate.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has also asked the agency to provide a report on its Iraq intelligence, and is considering holding closed-door hearings on the issue, House officials said.
Powell used those assessments -- along with satellite photographs and intercepted conversations between Iraqi military officers -- in a dramatic presentation to the UN on Feb. 5, when he argued that Iraq's weapons programs and links to al-Qaeda made it an imminent threat to the world.
Asked on Friday whether he thought those assessments had been politicized to bolster the administration's call to arms, Powell said no, calling it "solid information" based on multiple sources that had been presented to him by unbiased analysts.
"I went out to the CIA, and I spent four days and four nights going over everything that they had," Powell told reporters traveling on Air Force One with Bush to Poland. For three consecutive nights, the chore kept him at the agency until midnight, he said.
"I knew that it was the credibility of the US that was going to be on the line on the Feb. 5," he said.
"The credibility of the president of the US and my credibility."
At the time, Powell was widely viewed as the most cautious member of Bush's national security team on Iraq, and his urgent presentation to the UN in February was intended to provided an extra layer of credibility to the administration's case for war.
Powell argued on Friday that the accuracy of the pre-war assessments was proven by the discovery of two Iraqi trailers that the CIA and Pentagon have concluded were designed to produce deadly germs. Powell presented drawings of suspected mobile biological labs to the UN in February.
"You should have seen the smile on my face when one day the intelligence community came in and gave me a photo, and said, `look,'" Powell said on Friday.
Also See Story:
Weapons reports wrong, top US general admits
EXPRESSING GRATITUDE: Without its Taiwanese partners which are ‘working around the clock,’ Nvidia could not meet AI demand, CEO Jensen Huang said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) and US-based artificial intelligence (AI) chip designer Nvidia Corp have partnered with each other on silicon photonics development, Nvidia founder and CEO Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) said. Speaking with reporters after he met with TSMC chairman C.C. Wei (魏哲家) in Taipei on Friday, Huang said his company was working with the world’s largest contract chipmaker on silicon photonics, but admitted it was unlikely for the cooperation to yield results any time soon, and both sides would need several years to achieve concrete outcomes. To have a stake in the silicon photonics supply chain, TSMC and
‘DETERRENT’: US national security adviser-designate Mike Waltz said that he wants to speed up deliveries of weapons purchased by Taiwan to deter threats from China US president-elect Donald Trump’s nominee for US secretary of defense, Pete Hegseth, affirmed his commitment to peace in the Taiwan Strait during his confirmation hearing in Washington on Tuesday. Hegseth called China “the most comprehensive and serious challenge to US national security” and said that he would aim to limit Beijing’s expansion in the Indo-Pacific region, Voice of America reported. He would also adhere to long-standing policies to prevent miscalculations, Hegseth added. The US Senate Armed Services Committee hearing was the first for a nominee of Trump’s incoming Cabinet, and questions mostly focused on whether he was fit for the
IDENTITY: Compared with other platforms, TikTok’s algorithm pushes a ‘disproportionately high ratio’ of pro-China content, a study has found Young Taiwanese are increasingly consuming Chinese content on TikTok, which is changing their views on identity and making them less resistant toward China, researchers and politicians were cited as saying by foreign media. Asked to suggest the best survival strategy for a small country facing a powerful neighbor, students at National Chia-Yi Girls’ Senior High School said “Taiwan must do everything to avoid provoking China into attacking it,” the Financial Times wrote on Friday. Young Taiwanese between the ages of 20 and 24 in the past were the group who most strongly espoused a Taiwanese identity, but that is no longer
A magnitude 6.4 earthquake and several aftershocks battered southern Taiwan early this morning, causing houses and roads to collapse and leaving dozens injured and 50 people isolated in their village. A total of 26 people were reported injured and sent to hospitals due to the earthquake as of late this morning, according to the latest Ministry of Health and Welfare figures. In Sising Village (西興) of Chiayi County's Dapu Township (大埔), the location of the quake's epicenter, severe damage was seen and roads entering the village were blocked, isolating about 50 villagers. Another eight people who were originally trapped inside buildings in Tainan
RSS