C. Former INR Office Director
(U) Committee staff contacted a retired Office Director in INR who had made comments in the press suggesting that analysts may have been pressured to change their analysis. At a press conference at the Arms Control Association on July 9, 2003 he said, "this administration has had a faith-based intelligence attitude, its top-down use of intelligence: 'we know the answers; give us the intelligence to support those answers.'" The Office Director had retired from INR in September, prior to publication of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), and said he had not been present in the office for two months prior to his departure. He had no direct knowledge of the drafting or coordination of the October 2002 NIE on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs.
(U) The Office Director said that during his tenure at INR he did not feel pressure from the Secretary, Deputy Secretary, or Director of INR on Iraq WMD issues. He said that INR felt protected from politics and was allowed to "call it like they saw it." He told Committee staff that there had been an incident with an INR analyst and the Under Secretary regarding a Cuba BW issue, but said that the Under Secretary's office was not a problem in the case of Iraq. He also mentioned that the Arms Control and International Security Bureau did not like INR and preferred to work with the CIA directly. The Office Director did not present any information suggesting that analysts had been pressured or influenced to alter their assessments or views on Iraq, or that the Administration was only interested in receiving intelligence information which supported pre-conceived ideas.
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