Intelligence

(U) Committee staff also had an extensive discussion with the CIA's Deputy Director for Intelligence (DDI) about whether CIA analysts had been pressured. She told Committee staff that,

There clearly was hard questioning on a lot of what we did. There was regular interaction with policymakers coming back to certain points or issues repeatedly, which I think, if an analyst wanted to view that, might be able to say or might think of that as some sort of if not pressure then some sort of a reluctance to accept the answer they were given. On the other hand, it can also be new developments and oftentimes what these repeated going back to the same subject matters would be is, a new report would come in on something and the policymaker would then say what do you make of this. And I think that's kind of what you expect in an environment where you've got the kind of relevancy that the intelligence community has with this Administration.

(U) The DDI added that no analysts had ever said that they did take this kind of questioning as pressure, nor did she believe that analysts ever changed their assessments as a result of this questioning. She told Committee staff that the examples of repeated questioning were related to terrorism issues, and not about Iraq's WMD capabilities.

(U) Committee staff also interviewed Richard Kerr - who had been tasked by the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI) in February 2003 to review national intelligence on Iraq - and two members of Kerr's team. Kerr's team did not conduct any interviews during the review, but told Committee staff that some individuals did approach them informally to say they believed extensive questioning was a form of pressure on analysts. Kerr's team also reviewed questions from policymakers that had been posed to intelligence analysts. Based on his review of these questions, Mr. Kerr an the team believed that there were "a lot" of questions regarding both Iraq's WMD capabilities and connections to terrorists and in some instances were repetitive. He said some individuals complained to the team members informally that this was a form of pressure on analysts, but he was unable to tell Committee staff specifically whether analysts or managers of Iraq WMD capabilities had complained of this type of pressure. One of the team members said that no one complained to her regarding this type of questioning on WMD. None of the team members said they believed extensive or repeated questioning was improper. Mr. Kerr told Committee staff he believed the questioning was not unusual and said, "it is not at all unusual for analysts to feel they are being pushed by one group or another." Mr. Kerr and the team concluded that even if the repeated questioning was an attempt to pressure analysts, "there was never anybody who changed a judgment as a result of that." None of the team members would provide to the Committee the names of the individuals who had approached them.

(U) Committee staff asked some CIA analysts covering Iraq's WMD programs specifically about visits from the Vice President to question analysts. These analysts said they believed the visits were intended to gather information, not to pressure analysts to come to particular judgments. For example, the Deputy Director of Analysis at the DCFs Weapons Intelligence, Nonproliferation and Arms Control Center (WINPAC) told Committee staff that he was involved in several of the meetings and said,

I think I've mentioned before, with the Vice President and I think that there's no question they had a point of view, but there was no attempt to get us to hew to a particular point of view ourselves or to come to a certain conclusion. It was trying to figure out why do we come to this conclusion, what was the evidence, a lot of questions asked, probing questions, but no pressure to get us to come to a particular point of view.

(U) The DDI told Committee staff that the Vice President had visited CIA about five to eight times total between September 2001 and February 2003 and that she had participated in most, if not all, of the sessions. She said usually a group of analysts and their collection counterparts would brief the Vice President on key findings on a particular issue. She said "he was usually in receive mode during the presentation and then asked questions afterwards." She said "they were really good exchanges. I think the analysts felt that he was listening. Like I said, he was in a receive mode during their presentations. It wasn't interrupting from the start with let me give a different point of view or don't you think this or anything along those lines."

(U) One of the CIA delivery analysts told Committee staff that he thought the purpose of the visits was "factfinding." He said,

They wanted to know what our analysis was. They listened and that was it. There was no pressure back on us to change it or to manipulate it in any way. They just wanted to know what our analysis was, and we told them and that was it.

(U) A CIA nuclear analyst said he had been in a meeting with the Vice President about Iraq-Libya issues and said that the Vice President asks a lot of questions, but said he never had the feeling that the Vice President was trying to lead any of the analysts down a certain path. The analyst said he believed the Vice President was interested in learning what the analysts knew and what they did not know.

(U) Committee staff also asked the former Assistant Secretary of State for INR about concerns that State Department leadership did not listen to INR analysis or had used CIA's analysis in speeches, rather than INR's analysis. The assistant secretary told Committee staff that,

Clearly, as I tell analysts, if [Secretary Powell] doesn't buy what we've told him, it's our fault, not his. We didn't do it well enough. We didn't provide him enough evidence. We weren't persuasive enough. So there's a certain responsibility we have to convince the policymaker to believe us, not somebody else.

The assistant secretary added,

That he doesn't always accept what we say I think is to his credit. If he believed everything that the Intelligence Community told him, including what INR tells him, he'd be a fool. You should know better than anybody that a lot of the stuff [the IC turns] out is crap, and that a policymaker who sticks to that intelligence I don't want to even be in the same room with. They've got to know that the stuff isn't that good. So the notion that they sometimes disagree with us I find fine.