State Department's intelligence bureau disputes that Iraqi trailers used for Bio-weap

http://www.iht.com/articles/100873.html

The New York Times State Department's intelligence experts dispute key finding

WASHINGTON The State Department's intelligence bureau is disputing the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion that mysterious truck-trailers found in Iraq were intended for making biological weapons, according to government officials.

In a classified June 2 memorandum, the officials said, the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, often referred to as I&R, said it was premature to conclude that the trailers were evidence of a biological weapons program, as President George W. Bush has done publicly.

The disclosure of the memorandum is the clearest sign yet of disagreement between intelligence agencies over the assertion, which was produced jointly by the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency and made public on May 28 on the CIA's Internet site.

Officials said the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency did not consult with other intelligence agencies before issuing their conclusion.

The report on the trailers was initially prepared for the White House, and Bush has cited it as proof that Iraq indeed had a biological weapons program, as the United States has repeatedly alleged, although it has yet to produce any other conclusive evidence.

In an interview with Polish television on May 30, Bush cited the two trailers as evidence that the United States had "found the weapons of mass destruction" it was looking for.

Secretary of State Colin Powell echoed that assessment in a public statement the next day, saying the accuracy of prewar assessments linking Iraqi trailers to a biological weapons program had been borne out by the discovery.

Some intelligence analysts had previously disputed the CIA report, but it was not known that the CIA report did not reflect an interagency consensus or that any intelligence agency had later objected to its finding.

The State Department's intelligence bureau raised its objections in a memorandum to Powell, according to congressional sources. They said the memorandum was cast as a dissent to the CIA report, and that it said the evidence found to date did not justify the conclusion that the trailers could have had no purpose other than for use as mobile weapons laboratories.

The State Department spokesman, Richard Boucher, said Wednesday night: "I'm not in a position to comment on reports of classified memorandum from our intelligence folks."

But a State Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity said: "We do rely on I&R for their best judgment on things, but when you weigh in all the factors, the CIA and DIA folks are the ones who have been out there, and their conclusion was that these trailers were mobile labs."

An administration official sympathetic to Powell said the memorandum had put him in an uncomfortable position, but he would not characterize Powell's view of its findings. He said Powell had issued instructions that it not be circulated widely.

"It's the definition of a good soldier who does not want to embarrass the president," the official said.

The precise reasons cited in the State Department bureau's memorandum to justify its dissent could not be learned. But in interviews this month in Washington and the Middle East, American and British analysts with direct access to the evidence also disputed the CIA's conclusion, saying that the mobile units were more likely intended for other purposes than for the production of biological weapons and that the evaluation process had been damaged by a rush to judgment.

Administration officials said one argument made in the State Department report was that each of the two trailers and one laboratory discovered by the United States in Iraq so far could constitute only part of what the CIA report said it believed had been two-trailer or three-trailer systems necessary for the manufacture of the illicit weapons. Other trailers have not been found.

Among the alternative purposes for the trailers that the State Department report described as plausible were that they had been intended for the refueling of Iraqi missiles, one administration official said.

The fact that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency did not consult with other agencies in producing the so-called white paper reflects a rare but not unknown approach, officials from the intelligence agencies and Congress said. The government's intelligence apparatus spans more than a dozen agencies, and officials usually try to reach consensus before making their findings public.

The exclusion of the State Department's intelligence bureau and other agencies seemed unusual, several government officials said, because of the high-profile subject.

Administration officials said the State Department agency was given no warning that the CIA report was being produced, or being made public.

A CIA official defended the process by which the agency reached its conclusion, saying that the CIA and the Defense Intelligence Agency were most intimately familiar with the physical evidence and human intelligence related to the trailers, and were thus most qualified to issue public findings. But a Defense Department official acknowledged Wednesday that some analysts in the Defense Intelligence Agency on duty in Iraq had also objected to the conclusions in the joint report.

The CIA has said publicly that its initial information about the use of mobile trailers as biological weapons laboratories came from a former Iraqi scientist, and that the discovery of the trailers after the war appeared to have confirmed intelligence details that he had provided.

"We didn't shop that paper around to a lot of different places because we were the ones who were most knowledgeable about it," the CIA official said. "We were the ones who knew from a former Iraqi scientist what to expect, and we didn't have to ask a handful of people in small agencies."

But administration officials sympathetic to the State Department said that the department's intelligence bureau felt it had been deliberately shut out.

[Krash]

Originally posted by WarLord
Does anyone else get the sense that the State Department and the Defense Department are about to go to war?

Stay tuned.

I'd love to see powel go up against rumsfeld.

My money is on the man in black.