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C. Collection and Analytical Approaches

1. Information Sources

(                )According to comments from IC analysts who spoke to Committee staff, a large part of the information available to the IC concerning human rights abuses was DELETED from refugees, defectors and opposition groups.                      SENTENCE DELETED                     . The IC also depended on the Foreign Broadcast Information Service (FBIS). In all cases, verification of the reporting on human rights abuses was difficult.

(                )                                                              PARAGRAPH DELETED                                                             

(                )                                                              PARAGRAPH DELETED                                                              Unfortunately, the immigrant/refugee reporting usually could not be verified on the ground in Iraq.

(                )                                                              PARAGRAPH DELETED                                                             

2. Collection Issues

(                )                                                              PARAGRAPH DELETED                                                             

(                )                                                              PARAGRAPH DELETED                                                              By early 2003, the IC was satisfied it had adequate intelligence to assess the overall human rights situation inside Iraq.

3. Analysis Processes

(U) Several analysts at the CIA and the DIA had expertise in assessing both military affairs and human rights violations, and they have tended to move from one regional crisis to another beginning in the 1990s. When assessing the human rights situation inside Iraq, they addressed a wide range of factors, and the kind of analysis they produced eventually came to be known as "atrocities intelligence." The CIA, for example, had expanded the definition of human rights violations in the mid-1990s to include a broader range of Iraqi actions, e.g. torture, political imprisonment, rape as a tool of coercion, use of human shields, use of chemical and biological agents on civilians and prisoners, use of national treasure to build palaces and VIP residences at the expense of basic services and intentional ecological damage.

(U) By the mid-1990s, analysts had developed a set of indicators they called a "mosaic" of indicators, and which served as an alarm system about human rights atrocities - either imminent or having already occurred. Experience with atrocities in Bosnia was the basis for the mosaic approach and was the model for tracking and analyzing events in Iraq.