Turns out that Edwards, like Hillary, didn't read the 2002 NIE after all

[jefferson_dem]

June 1, 2007
Aide Says Edwards Misspoke on Reading Classified Iraq Report
By PATRICK HEALY and MARC SANTORA

Former Senator John Edwards, a Democratic presidential candidate, told an interviewer on Wednesday that he had read the classified October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate before voting to authorize force in Iraq, but his campaign retracted the statement yesterday.

A spokesman for Mr. Edwards said the candidate had “simply misunderstood the question” and noted that Mr. Edwards had read only a declassified version of the intelligence report.

The issue of who had read the full report has bubbled up over the last week with reports that Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton, Democrat of New York, had not read it before voting to authorize force in Iraq, even though she and other senators had access to the document. The report was the government’s most comprehensive intelligence assessment of Iraq’s prewar capability for unconventional weapons.

The issue surfaced for Mr. Edwards at a forum sponsored by Google when the interviewer, Elliot Schrage, spoke with him about the war.

“There was this National Intelligence Estimate that was confidential that only — that you had to have security clearance, or members of the Senate could read,” Mr. Schrage said. “Did you have a chance to read that, and was that part of the—— ”

“I read it. I read it,” Mr. Edwards said. “But the idea that somehow we had so much more information — having the information turned out to be bad, not good.”

“I know this is intelligence information, but I think it’s a very unhealthy thing for the democracy to have — the notion that we’ve got people in Washington who are in the know, and we should just trust them to do the right thing without us knowing. Why does America not know?” Mr. Edwards continued.

The Edwards spokesman, Mark Kornblau, noted that Mr. Edwards had often said he read intelligence documents that were summarized in the classified report.

“He simply misunderstood the question,” Mr. Kornblau said. “As Senator Edwards has said many times before, he read the declassified version of the N.I.E.,” not the full report.

<SNIP>

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/06/01/us/politics/01rudy.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print

[Clark2008]

1. Please see this discussion here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x3293749

[jefferson_dem]

2. Thanks, Clark2008. Didn't realize this was a dupe.

Cheers!

[leveymg]

3. Both versions of the NIE were misleading about Iraq WMD

The classified and declassified versions of the 10/02 Iraq NIE was both profoundly flawed, downplaying the view of officers within the Agency's Counterproliferation Division (CIA-CPD) -- including Valerie Plame -- that there was no real evidence of a reconstituted Iraq nuclear weapons program. That dissenting view was relegated to an appendix that was little more than a footnote in the classified NIE. What Congress read was the product of extreme pressure Cheney and Libby had applied to senior managers at the Agency to falsify intelligence.

The NIE instead highlighted false intel about aluminum tubes stovepiped from corrupt CIA contractor MZM, which had bribed Duke Cunningham and Jerry Lewis, and a bunch of other GOP Congressmen on the Appropriations Committee.

While the public's attention has been diverted to Plame's husband, Ambassador Wilson's criticism of the Administration's false claim about Niger Yellowcake, in fact, within CIA nobody seriously believed the claim that Iraq had sought uranium from Niger. As Richard Grenier testified during the Libby trial, the aluminum tubes issue was the real focus of conflict between two groups of analysts. The NIE reflected the view pushed by Cheney and Libby that a batch of Chinese aluminum tubes intercepted on their way to Iraq were intended for use in building centrifuges. Valerie had actually flown to Jordan to inspect the tubes and talk to exile Iraqi nuclear scientists. She concluded the tubes weren't suitable or intended for Khan P-1 type centifuges.

Recall, Cheney claims to have summarily "declassified" the 10/02 NIE just before Scooter met with Judy on July 11, 2003. The relevant extract of that document, naming Valerie Wilson, ended up in the classified NIE Notes passed around AF-1 that same day. Two days later, Novak published his infamous column "outing" Valerie Plame as a covert CIA officer working on nuclear proliferation matters. Several days later, Novak published a second column, revealing Brewster-Jennings & Co. as her employer. That company had been set up by CIA-CPD to provide cover for Plame and some of her colleagues. By outing Plame and Brewster Jennings, the White House in effect destroyed the Iraq unit at CIA Counterproliferation Division.

The 10/02 NIE has an enormous importance in both these scandals, as well as in misleading Congress to approve the IWR.

[Adelante]

5. Incorrect

There were two versions:

1-The full NIE of October 1 ordered by the Intelligence Committee (with the raw intelligence included)

2-The summary for the use by Congress in public (without the raw intelligence included)

However, the locked room version was the first one, the October 1 NIE, and it was made available to Senators and Representatives at large who did not have the same clearance as the committees (Intelligence and Foreign Relations) if they went to the room, which most did not. This was how Senator Byrd was able to read it in full. Bob Graham discussed the two versions in his WaPo op-ed in 2005. If someone relied on the summary alone they would not have had a full picture, but it was the summary that misled the Congress, not the October 1 NIE, which did have all the intel.

[leveymg]

7. You miss the point - both versions misled.

Go back and read my post. Thanks for the correction.

[Adelante]

10. Not entirely true

The first version of October 1 misled but included the underlying intelligence which belied the conclusions of the NIE and those who read could see that. This was the whole reason Graham insisted on a declassified version, redacted for security clearance, which could be publicly discussed in the Senate.

The second version distributed October 4 outright misled. It was not a redacted version as Graham had ordered, but a completely rewritten document. Since it had no disputive intelligence attached, and made a stronger case for war, those who did not go to the locked room to view the October 1 document can say they were misled but negligent, imo.

[leveymg]

13. The classified Annex that references Plame

doesn't contain underlying (raw) intelligence. In fact, it revealed very little about how Plame and others came to dissent about the aluminum tubes issue.

To further confuse the issue, Condi made this comment to a press gaggle aboard AF-1 on July 11, 2003. Note her slip of the tongue about the "Iranian" WMD program (at the time of her outing, Val reportedly had been reassigned to Iran WMD. Corn reports that she was first assigned to Iraq WMD issues in 1997, and worked abroad. She was reassigned to CIA CPD in Langley beginning in January 2002, and worked with Grenier on the Iraq Issue Group (ISG) task force). Also, note Condi's reference below to her not wanting to selectively declassify the NIE (which was after Cheney claims he had selectively "declassified" that document with the President's approval so his Chief of Staff and other WHIG members could give it to reporters): http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2003/07/20030711-7.html

Q Dr. Rice, there are a lot of reports, apparently overnight, that CIA people had informed the NSC well before the State of the Union that they had trouble the reference in the speech. Can you tell us specifically what your office had heard, what you had passed along to the President on that?

DR. RICE: The CIA cleared the speech. We have a clearance process that sends speeches out to relevant agencies -- in our case, the NSC, it's usually State, Defense, the CIA, sometimes the Treasury. The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety.

Now, the sentence in question comes from the notion the Iraqis were seeking yellow cake. And, remember, it says, "seeking yellow cake in Africa" is there in the National Intelligence Estimate. The National Intelligence Estimate is the document the that Director of Central Intelligence publishes as the collective view of the intelligence agencies about the status of any particular issue.

That was relied on to, like many other things in the National Intelligence Estimate, relied on to write the President's speech. The CIA cleared on it. There was even some discussion on that specific sentence, so that it reflected better what the CIA thought. And the speech was cleared.

Now, I can tell you, if the CIA, the Director of Central Intelligence, had said, take this out of the speech, it would have been gone, without question. What we've said subsequently is, knowing what we now know, that some of the Niger documents were apparently forged, we wouldn't have put this in the President's speech -- but that's knowing what we know now.

The President of the United States, we have a higher standard for what we put in presidential speeches. The British continue to stand by their report. The CIA's NIE continues to talk about efforts to acquire yellow cake in various African countries. But we have a high standard for the President's speeches. We don't make the President his own fact witness, we have a high standard for them. That's why we send them out for clearance. And had we heard from the DCI or the Agency that they didn't want that sentence in the speech, it would not have been in the speech. The President was not going to get up and say something that the CIA --

Q Dr. Rice, it sounds as if you're blaming the CIA here.

DR. RICE: No, this is a clearance process. And a lot of things happen. We've said now we wouldn't have put it in the speech if we had known what we know now. This was a process that we've followed many, many times. But I can just assure you that if -- and I think -- maybe you want to ask this question of the DCI, but we've talked about it. If the DCI had said, there's a problem with this, we would have said it's out of the speech.

For whatever reason -- and I'm not blaming anybody. The State of the Union -- people are writing speeches, a lot is going on. But I can assure you that the President did not knowingly, before the American people, say something that we thought to be false. It's just outrageous that anybody would claim that. He did not knowingly say anything that we thought to be false. And, in fact, we still don't know the status of Saddam Hussein's efforts to acquire yellow cake. What we know is that one of the documents underlying that case was found to be a forgery.

Q Dr. Rice, given that, does the President -- given that the CIA cleared the speech, does the President remain confident in the CIA's Director?

DR. RICE: Absolutely. The CIA Director, George Tenet, has been a terrific DCI and he has served everybody very, very well. And we have a good relationship with the CIA. We wouldn't put anything knowingly in the speech that was false; I'm sure they wouldn't put anything knowingly in the speech that was false. In this case, this particular line shouldn't have gotten in because it was not of the quality that we would put into presidential speeches, despite the fact that it was in the NIE --

Q But, Condi, it's apparently the case that the CIA didn't even check the documents, didn't even discover the forgery until after the speech. And now there's a report that in September of '02 -- if I have this correct -- the Post is saying the CIA was encouraging the British to back off of that claim. So I'm trying to understand the sequencing here. Are you saying -- so my question is, in hindsight, would you say that the CIA did not properly vet this alleged sale?

DR. RICE: David, this was a complicated matter of a sale. There were other reports, as well, about Saddam Hussein trying to acquire yellow cake. It was not this Niger document alone. There are even other African countries that are cited in the NIE, not just Niger.

We also knew, let's remember, that this is the context of a nuclear program in which the seeking of yellow cake is only a small piece of the story. It includes training of nuclear scientists; it includes rebuilding certain infrastructure that had been associated with nuclear weapons; it includes a clandestine procurement network. Things that we're finding out now -- for instance, that the scientist buried uranium -- I'm sorry, centrifuge pieces in his front yard. So one thing that you have to do is to put this piece about seeking yellow cake in the broader context of what was known to be an active effort by the <i>Iranians</i> to try and reconstitute their program.

But let me just go to the point you made, David. The CIA -- I've read the reports that you've also read, that there were -- the British were told they shouldn't put this in the paper. I've read those reports. All that I can tell you is that if there were doubts about the underlying intelligence in the NIE, those doubts were not communicated to the President. The only thing that was there in the NIE was a kind of a standard INR footnote, which is kind of 59 pages away from the bulk of the NIE. That's the only thing that's there. And you have footnotes all the time in CIA -- I mean, in NIEs. So if there was a concern about the underlying intelligence there, the President was unaware of that concern and as was I.

Q You just said that the sentence, itself, was constructed reflecting some thoughts that the CIA had on the doubt. If I recall, the President said in his speech that, the British are reporting this -- about the transfer. Should we infer from that that there were some doubts within the Agency about the veracity of the claim, so that in the speech it was safer to defer to what was the British intelligence that they were confident in?

DR. RICE: The British document was an unclassified document, and so cite the unclassified document. The underlying intelligence to the British document is in the NIE, which is both talking about what a foreign service had said and talking about other attempts to acquire yellow cake. So the underlying documentation here is the NIE. The Agency cleared the speech and cleared it in its entirety.

SNIP

DR. RICE: No, no. That's not what we said. Let's go back over what it is we've said. We've said that given subsequent information abut the Niger documents, this -- and some of the apparent uncertainty that was out there -- it doesn't rise to the level that we would put in a presidential speech. We don't say it's false. And I heartily object to headlines that say it was false, because nobody has still said that this was false. There are still reports out there that they sought materials from the DROC, that they sought materials from Somalia. In fact, there is -- if you look at what has even come back on Niger, it says that the Niger government denies that they sold it. So I'm not standing here to say to you, we know that these claims about Africa are false.

What I'm saying to you is we have higher standards for the President's speech, and that's why we have a process that we send speeches to the Secretary of State, the Secretary of Defense, the Director of Central Intelligence Agency, and any other affected Cabinet officer.

Q What do we know about the source, or sources of the documents? Are they people -- again, without getting into anything that would compromise anybody or any operation -- are they people with a proven track record? Did that come up?

DR. RICE: There are a couple of bodies looking at this, including the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and I think they'll be able to answer those questions. We don't generally get into that kind of issue.

Q But in the back-and-forth, especially with the massaging the language to the satisfaction of the -- I mean, was there any, even casual discussion about --

DR. RICE: I'm going to be very clear, all right? The President's speech -- that sentence was changed, right? And with the change in that sentence, the speech was cleared. Now, again, if the Agency had wanted that sentence out, it would have been gone. And the Agency did not say that they wanted that speech out -- that sentence out of the speech. They cleared the speech.

Now, the State of the Union is a big speech, a lot of things happen. I'm really not blaming anybody for what happened. But there is a fact here, in the way that we clear speeches.

Q So a week later, Colin Powell goes to the U.N., and he decides, as he told us yesterday, not to put that sentence in at all. So what was the new development in those seven days that led him to take it out all together?

DR. RICE: Well, first of all --

Q The time line seems a bit curious.

DR. RICE:<b> He took out a lot of things. But I was with Secretary Powell when he was doing a lot of this. You will remember that it was the Secretary's own intelligence arm, the INR, that was the one that within the overall intelligence assessment had objected to that sentence, had said that they doubts about -- not to that sentence, had doubts about the uranium yellow cake story. So remember that it was the Secretary of State's own agency, the INR, that had in the consensus report, the NIE, taken a footnote to that.</b>

Q But isn't it slightly strange that you have different agencies with different reports and different sentences? I mean, not everyone is singing from the same song sheet here.

DR. RICE: But let me just go through the process, because it's not at all unusual. We have several intelligence agencies, not just one. We have the Central Intelligence Agency, a Defense Intelligence Agency, the State Department has its own intelligence agency. And there is a process which the Director of Central Intelligence, who is the coordinator for all of those agencies, runs which is called the National Intelligence Estimate. The National Intelligence Estimate is supposed to come to a conclusion that is the considered, joint opinion of all of those intelligence agencies. If at the end of that process, a particular agency still has a reservation, they take a footnote. And so the INR took a footnote in this case.

Q But it's in the Estimate?

DR. RICE: It's in the Estimate. It's, by the way, in another section, but it is in the Estimate. But the DCI is responsible for delivering a judgment, a consensus judgment of the intelligence community, which is called the National Intelligence Estimate. And that's what the President --

Q Is there a chance that that particular citation could be declassified, so we could see it?

DR. RICE: You know, we don't want to try to get into kind of selective declassification, but we're looking at what can be made available.

Q -- the kind of terminology of how footnotes -- if the CIA had taken a footnote, would that have meant that's the end of the sentence?

DR. RICE: No.

Q What are footnotes --

DR. RICE: I understand. The Americans --

Q Bear with us, bear with us.

DR. RICE: No, no, no.

[Adelante]

14. I have to leave the house

I appreciate the further information. Later today, if there is time, or tomorrow if not, I would like to continue the discussion with you. Thanks.

[leveymg]

15. OK. Continue here or PM me

Before we discuss further, please read this post by emptywheel at Last Hurrah, particularly the July 7 INR memo linked there:http://thenexthurrah.typepad.com/the_next_hurrah/2006/04/the_two_inr_mem.html

Thanks - Mark

[karynnj]

11. From both Graham and Durbin, there were more than 2 levels to the intelligence

available. Graham and Daschle as members of te group of 8 had far more information than was even given to the rest of the intelligence committee. The declassified summary was what was originally given to the rest of the Senate.

Graham suceeded in his demand that the rest of Senate have access to something more detailed and nuanced. The resulting classified documnent had more caveats than the summary - but still did not have all the information.

One difficulty was that it is impossible to prove a negative. Most Democrats, no matter how they voted, spoke of the potential danger in the combination a Saddam Hussein and WMD. The case made was for inspectors to be back in. Almost all Senators voted for either the IWR or the Levin alternative, which was better, but which allowed Bush to take us to war.

In late fall 2002 and that winter, the inspectors were in and there were diplomatic efforts. It actually looked for awhile that war could be averted and Saddam would have undergone rigid scrutiny. His government may or may not have survived - but that should never have been our decision.

The question is when we reached this point and Bush was making moves toward war, did people speak out. I have a hard time with anyone saying they voted just because of potential WMD and the need to get inspectors in, who then stayed silent when rigerous inspections were ended after Saddam destroyed missiles. It seems to me, that they should have been the angriest people because Bush's lies on what he would do betrayed them on a personal level. (I may have missed some - but I think of all the IWR voters only Kerry and Harkin spoke up either before or within a few months, when it was at 70% approval.

[JTFrog]

4. He was on the intelligence committee and had access

to the classified version. Why would he need to read the declassified version? Are they saying he never read either? :shrug:

[JPZenger]

6. Sen. Graham: Intelligence Committee Had Much More Info.

Former Senator Graham was the leading Dem of the Senate Intelligence Committee and voted against the authority to invade Iraq. He said members of the Intelligence Committee had much more access to the raw intelligence than most US Senators, who mainly saw processed "summarized" intelligence. Because of this access, he said he was able to see how weak the case really was for war.

[Adelante]

8. The declassified version supported the case for the IWR

The full NIE did not. (Although even some who read the full NIE, for various reasons, voted Yes.) Those who relied on the declassified summary can blame somebody else, but those who admit to reading the full NIE probably would have more difficulty explaining the position. Biden read the NIE and voted Yes, for example, so his explanation should be enlightening. Dodd didn't read the NIE and voted Yes. Clinton says she read the summary and voted Yes. Edwards, who co-sponsored the IWR, read only the summary, and by that can say he was as misled as was the rest of Congress. In some convoluted way, this could work out the better of two evils for Edwards.

[leveymg]

9. The dissenting view was relegated to a classified Appendix

If you didn't bother to read the footnotes -- which is how veteran analysts read those documents -- you'd get a highly biased view of the issue.

The classified version was extremely misleading, the product of Cheney and Libby's pressure on CIA managers.

[MadHound]

12. Gee, I guess that this means that the only one who was doing his job, and wasn't duped at the time

Was Kucinich! Gee, intelligent, on the right side of the issues, innovative, and the conscience of the party. Hmmm, perhaps he would make good presidential material after all.