(Briefing on the Iraq
Survey Group. Participating were
Stephen A. Cambone, under secretary of
defense for intelligence, and Army Maj. Gen.
Keith W. Dayton, director for operations,
Defense Intelligence Agency.)
Cambone: Good
afternoon, everyone. The first sunny
day of the month, as far as I can tell, and a
Friday, and you're all here.
I'm here because
when last I was here, I made you a promise
that when we were getting prepared to stand
up the -- formally stand up -- the Iraq
Survey Group, that we would come down and
tell you what we were going to do and how we
were going to do it and who was going to do
it.
And so, I have with me
today Major General Keith Dayton.
General Dayton is going to head the Iraq
Survey Group. He is currently the
director of the Defense HUMINT [Human
Intelligence] Service within the Defense
Intelligence Agency. Prior to that, he
served as a pol-mil officer down in
J-5. And prior to that, he was the
Defense attaché in Moscow, and in the
early 1990s, spent some time -- in the
mid-1990s, rather -- spent some time in the
Council on Foreign Relations. He is by
training an artilleryman, and had the
division artillery in the early '90s for the
3rd ID [Infantry Division].
So, what I'd like to
do is introduce General Dayton, have him tell
you what it is he is going to be doing and
have him answer some of your questions.
I am unfortunately scheduled to leave here at
2:30; I've got to go off to a -- to
Warrenton, of all places.
So, General Dayton
--
Dayton: Thank
you, Dr. Cambone.
Let me address a few
aspects of the ISG so that you all better
understand what it is and what it intends to
accomplish. As you all know right now,
the current hunt for the weapons of mass
destruction is being carried out by the 75th
Exploitation Task Force. Now to date,
they have visited over 300 sensitive sites,
many off the master site list that they've
been working from, and many based on
intelligence tips received in the
field. At the same time, there are
operations taking place throughout Iraq in
the areas of document exploitation and
collection, captured materiel exploitation,
and interrogations and debriefings.
Now, the Iraq Survey
Group [ISG] represents a significant
expansion of effort in the hunt for weapons
of mass destruction, as we build on the
efforts that are ongoing. The ISG will
mean more people applied to the task, to be
sure. But this is not the most
important point. Rather, the ISG will
consolidate the efforts of the various
intelligence collection operations currently
in Iraq under one national-level
headquarters. Moreover, the ISG will
have a powerful intelligence analytical
element forward-deployed in the region, with
virtual connectivity to an interagency
intelligence community fusion center here in
the D.C. area. The ISG also has a
pretty potent WMD [weapons of mass
destruction] disablement and elimination
capability assigned.
So, what's the ISG
going to do? Well, the first priority,
of course, is the search for and elimination
of weapons of mass destruction. But in
addition to WMD, the ISG will collect and
exploit documents and media related to
terrorism, war crimes, POW [prisoner of war]
and MIA [missing in action] issues, and other
things relating to the former Iraqi
regime. It will interrogate and debrief
individuals, both hostile and friendly, and
it will exploit captured materiel. The
goal is to put all the pieces together in
what is appearing to be a very complex jigsaw
puzzle.
Now, how are we
going to do this? The ISG, as currently
planned, will be manned by between 1,300 and
1,400 people from the United States
government interagency, from the United
Kingdom and Australia. The main effort
is going to be in Iraq, with the headquarters
in Baghdad. This collection operation
will include a joint interrogation debriefing
center, a joint materiel exploitation center,
chemical and biological intelligence support
teams and the ISG operation center. The
main analytic effort will be co-located with
CENTCOM forward, as will the combined media
processing center. Furthermore, the ISG
is going to have liaison elements with CJTF-7
in Kuwait and with other U.S. government
agencies inside Iraq. And finally, the
intelligence fusion center will be here in
Washington, D.C. And all are going to
be linked electronically.
As we speak, the
analytic center in Qatar is up and
running. And various collection
elements are operating in Iraq, as I said
before. Significant work has been done
already in planning and developing a workable
infrastructure for the Baghdad headquarters
for the ISG, and we will begin a planned,
two-week transformation -- transition with
the 75th Exploitation Task Force in Baghdad,
beginning no later than 7 June. During
the transition period, the ISG operations
group, which is really my command post, will
gather under its control the various
intelligence collection operations that are
currently underway and begin to refocus
collection efforts to analytically-driven
requirements. The fusion center in
Washington is also operational presently, and
will transition from what it currently does,
which is consolidating and reporting
information, to a new mission of guiding ISG
collection efforts.
And I'm not done
here. One final comment, and this comes
from the heart. The 75th Exploitation
Task Force, as far as I'm concerned, and
their associated elements, have done a truly
magnificent job in the two months they've
been operating in very difficult conditions
in Iraq. I think we all owe them a debt
of gratitude.
The ISG represents a
major change in the search for WMD in Iraq.
It builds on the work already done by the
75th, but with its robust analytical
capability forward, and consolidation of the
various intelligence disciplines operating
now under one national-level headquarters
forward in Iraq, the ISG is well-positioned
to achieve some real synergy here as we
continue the hunt for weapons of mass
destruction and delve into other areas of
national interest.
This will be a
deliberate process and it will be a long-term
effort. We will be using all sources to put
together pieces of an incredibly complex
jigsaw puzzle. Some people have likened
it to detective work. I'm optimistic we will
have success. And I'm leaving Monday to
stay.
That's what I
have. Are there any questions?
Sir?
Q: General,
you said 1,300 to 1,400 people. Will
virtually all of those be in Iraq?
Dayton:
No. It's a split operation. The
analytic center, which is about 120 people,
about, and the media processing center, which
is about another 250 people, will be
operating out of Qatar. The reason for that
is that Qatar just a well-developed theater
of operations. It has all of the
communications that I need to get up and
running quickly, and it has excellent
connectivity back to the United States and
throughout the region.
The Baghdad site
that I will be occupying with the rest of the
folks, which I would call the collection
aspect of what the ISG is doing, requires a
bit more work to become as fully developed as
that. It will be operational fairly quickly,
but to get the level of sophistication in the
communications networks that are required for
digitally transmitting large volumes of
information, that's already in place in
Qatar, and it didn't make any sense to us to
try to recreate that and lose a month in
Iraq.
Q: So how many
people are you going to have in Iraq?
And how does that compare to the current
number of people searching?
Dayton:
There's about 200-and-some that are searching
now, maybe a little bit fewer. As far
as searchers are concerned -- and again, I
want to make the distinction, the important
point about the ISG is not numbers of
searchers, it's the process by which the
searching will take place. And we'll
have probably between 200 and 300 searchers,
so it's a small increase in numbers of
searchers. But what it is, again, the
synergy of getting all of these intelligence
disciplines together with the analytic-based
collection requirements.
Right now what the
ISG has been doing -- or not the ISG, the
Exploitation Task Force, because of how it
developed and what its mission has been is
it's been operating basically off a
fixed-site list. It's done a very good
job of going out to those locations. There
will be a decreased emphasis in fixed sites
and a greater emphasis in going to places
where the intelligence community's analytic
powers tell us that there is a much more
probable likelihood of finding something or
finding people who know something about what
was there.
Q:
General?
Dayton:
Sir.
Q: U.S.
military commanders, having been given
intelligence that they were likely to face
chemical or biological weapons on the
battlefield, are continuing to express
surprise -- it happened again today, just
happened earlier today -- that they neither
encountered them on the battlefield nor have
any been found in the two months or so since
then. What do you think is the
explanation for that?
Dayton: I
honestly don't know.
Steve, do you want
to take a shot at that?
Cambone: We
can come back to that. Let's -- why
don't we stay on topic?
Dayton: Yeah,
let's try to -- if we can, sir, on ISG
issues, and then I'll -- any kind of policy
or interpretation issues, I'll pass off.
Sir?
Q: Well,
General, you say you're optimistic.
Judging by what you've seen so far, the
interviews you've looked at as well, what are
your expectations going in? Is it
possible that you may not find hard chemicals
or biological weapons, and may just piece
together, as you say, the complex jigsaw
puzzle?
Dayton: My
personal opinion -- okay? -- going into this
is that there is a lot of information out
there that simply hasn't been gathered yet,
partly because Iraqis are reluctant to come
forward in some areas, partly because we are
still in the process of putting together the
necessary pieces and the necessary targeting
of individuals so that we can find out.
You know, it may be more important to find
out who the guard was and what he knows at a
particular site than maybe a high-value
target guy who may not want to tell us
anything, or a truck driver who may have
transported stuff from one place to another;
that's what we're looking at, that sort of
level of detail, instead of just going to --
again, to fixed sites that may or may not
have anything.
Do I think we're
going to find something? Yeah, I kind
of do, because I think there's a lot of
information out there, and that's why I tell
you, this is going to be a deliberate
process, but it will be a long-term process
as well. This is not necessarily going
to be quick and easy, but it will be very
thorough.
Yes, ma'am?
Q: When you
say you're decreasing the emphasis on these
fixed sites that may or may not have
something, why do you have less confidence in
those sites now? These were the sites
that I assume were on this master list to
begin with, and some sites added since
then.
Dayton: Oh, I
think we've learned something in the past
couple of months. The fact that we've
gone to a lot of these sites and haven't
found anything that is of value tells us
that, okay, we took the top priority sites,
didn't find them, so now, before we go to
other sites, we're going to want to get a bit
more analytic assessment of the site done
before we go back and try it again, because
things have changed in the last two
months. They may well have been
excellent targets back in February or March,
but, you know, we just want to know more
about it before we take resources and send
them out there.
Q: But
excellent targets in February and March and
they're not now, why? Because of
looting? Because people have been in
there?
Dayton: I
really don't know. Could be all the
above. And that's what I'm going to try
to find out.
Q: And on that
same topic, one of the things Dr. Cambone
talked about last time was the chain of
custody of samples and at some of these
sites. Are the sites that have not yet
been checked secured by anyone at this
point?
Dayton: I
don't know the answer to that. I
haven't been over there. I'm not --
(Off mike.).
Sir?
Q:
General?
Q: To follow
up what Martha was talking about, does it
indicate that the original intelligence on
those primary sites was faulty and that now
you're going to have to start from scratch
and develop a whole new intelligence
database?
Dayton: I
don't think so. What it tells to me,
and again speaking just from my experience on
this, is that things may have changed in the
interim time from when we first developed
these sites as a location. Things could
have been either taken and buried, they could
have been transported, or they could have
been destroyed. It doesn't mean they
weren't there when we thought they were
there. That's my personal opinion on
this. And that's the assumption I'm
going in on.
Yes, ma'am?
Q: General,
what would you say to people who would say,
well, you're increasing -- you're minimally
increasing the staff by small numbers, and
yet you're greatly expanding its mission, to
not only the weapons of mass destruction, but
war crimes, MIA? I mean, I can hear
people say that that may be difficult.
Dayton:
They're all interrelated. And what I
would say that we bring to the equation now
is that we are connecting various pieces that
really the operational commanders have not
had the ability to connect. And they're
all interrelated. And so when I talk
about interrogating people on war crimes,
there's no reason not to suspect that
interrogations will reveal information that
will be useful coming back to weapons of mass
destruction and things like that. They
simply haven't been staffed and they haven't
had the national-level focus to enable them
to do that.
I have an
interagency team that's going out with me
from all areas of the U.S. government, a lot
of tremendous expertise. We have some
former UNSCOM [United Nations Special
Commission] inspectors who are going out with
us. This is a pretty thoroughbred
team. And I would tell you that -- you
know, I wouldn't focus on the number of
collectors, but rather on where the
collectors are guided and by what
process. I think that's the important
thing here.
Q: General,
who does the interrogations? Who's
going to be doing the interrogations?
Dayton: Well,
I'm not sure I understand your question.
Q: Well, you
have 200 people who are going to sites.
Who actually does --
Dayton: Those
are -- let's say, for example, I'm going to
go to a village where I know that there are
several truck drivers who happened to have
worked at a particular WMD facility.
Those people, I have a separate team of
interrogators and debriefers, we call them.
Okay? These are usually Army or
civilian people who have been trained to do
this. They will go with that
team. They are not the people who are
currently involved in another aspect of
interrogation and debriefing which is
happening with the high-value targets.
There are other assets that I will have
available to me that go do that.
Q:
General?
Dayton:
Ma'am?
Q: Two
questions. Is there any role for U.N.
arms inspectors in this to join in the
search?
Dayton: That's
a policy issue. That goes to him, not
me.
Q
And then the second question is, on the
prisoners issue and the war crimes issue,
yesterday Central Command said that they
ended up releasing someone that they believe
may have killed between 10 and 15 thousand
Shi'as 10 years ago. What is it that
you-all are going to bring to this that will
prevent that from happening? And what
more can you tell us about that incident?
Dayton: You
know, I can't answer that question, because I
read the report that you did. I don't
know what -- how he got released, why he got
released, whether it was somebody made a
mistake or whether it was -- I just don't
know.
Q: (Off mike.)
-- tell them that he was a war criminal.
Dayton: Well,
I don't know. I just can't answer that
one.
Sir?
Q: Can I go
back to the question of expectations?
Dayton:
Yeah.
Q: Can you
tell the American people with some certainly
you expect to find artillery shells, rocket
shells, bulk agent, these thousands of liters
we were led to believe existed by the
president and Mr. Rumsfeld? What,
realistically, should the public be prepared
for you to find?
Dayton: I
can't answer that question either, because I
just don't know. I'm going out there
to, as I said before, to put all the pieces
together to find what I can. It could
be that stuff has been moved somewhere else
and we'll find it where it's been moved
to. It could be some stuff has been
destroyed. There are ways to determine
that to, I think, everyone's satisfaction,
but it will take time and it will take
putting a lot of pieces together.
Q: You're not
going to go there blindly. You've had
the -- especially in your position as the
director of HUMINT, you've seen the
intelligence on this from the human
perspective, the spy perspective and vector
perspective, Don't you have a feel for,
now, in terms of how credible that early
intelligence was and realistically what
you're going to find?
Dayton: Well,
I'm one of those that thought that
intelligence was pretty credible.
Okay? I thought it was credible. I
still do. And I think that we may get
lucky. We may not. We may find
out three months from now that there was a
very elaborate deception program going on
that resulted in destruction of stuff.
I have no idea. That's what I'm going
out there to find out.
Q: On the
HUMINT issue, there's been a lot of talk, of
course, about maybe having relied too much on
defectors and exiles who perhaps had their
own agendas. When you say you feel
pretty good about that intelligence, are you
saying you felt pretty good about the HUMINT
that you were getting from defectors and
exiles?
Dayton: I'm
not saying anything like that. I'm just
saying I felt good about what I understood to
be the intelligence that was collected
through all means of intelligence
collection.
Q: Can you
comment on the HUMINT issue?
Dayton: Not
really, no, I can't.
Q
General?
Dayton:
(Inaudible.) -- sir.
Q
Two questions. First, just to be clear,
the answers from the podium so far on this
issue have been that the search was going to
go systematically through the 900 sites or
600 sites which were WMD-related and we
should be patient. You seem to be
announcing that that search is going to be
phased out. I just wanted to be clear
about that. You're not going to plod
through the 600 sites on your list?
Dayton: What
I'm going to do, if the intelligence
community analytic base -- which is pretty
darn powerful when we combined yours and ours
together -- if they tell me that this site
that hasn't been looked at yet is a good
target, then I'll go take a look at it.
Okay? But if they say that site No. 353,
based on everything we know now, and based on
our interviews with people, and based on, you
know, other kinds of intelligence, that it's
not a good place to go, then I'm not going to
go to there just because it's on a
list. Okay?
So, in that sense,
we're not going to mechanically go down the
list and check off locations. We're
going to try to gather a lot more information
on stuff before we go do that.
Q: (Off mike.)
-- but you say that the basis of these
searches would be analytically based.
But, of course, the basis of the drawing up
of the original list was analytically based;
it was based upon the analyses of the
information available to the intelligence
community at the time. Given the
failure to find materials, even at the sites
which were all first priority in the list,
which was said to be the sites you should go
to first in the triage operation, have you
gone back and looked at -- done a second look
at the analysis and the information that led
to those sites being on that
list? And what conclusions do you
draw, if you have gone back?
Dayton: No, I
haven't done that. But I will tell you
that we know a lot more now than we did back
in February or January, when these lists were
originally developed, and that we are in much
better shape now, based on interviews of a
lot of people that we had never had the
opportunity to talk to, to refine what we
think we're going to find and where we think
we're going to find it.
Q: But the
information reaching our people out in the
theater is that the interviews, so far, have
produced nothing by way of solid information
from people who say, "Yes, we have ongoing
weapons programs; this is what we were
doing." So far, they've said no --
Dayton: I
can't comment on that. I'm not privy to
that.
Q: You said
you know a lot more now. Do you mean by
that you know a lot more of what you don't
know?
Dayton: No, we
know a lot more --
Q: If you know
a lot more, you would have found these
things; is that right?
Dayton:
Remember, my mission is not only WMD, but
it's all kinds of things. And we know
more about what people think they saw, we
know more about where people were, we know
more about -- again, it's a beginning
process. We've put a lot of pieces
together on this. And so, yes, of course we
know more. We've interviewed a lot of
people. Hasn't always been
successful? Of course, hasn't been
successful in many cases, but that's not the
issue here.
Steve, I'm going to
turn it over to you.
Cambone: I got
time for about two questions, if you got 'em.
Who's got --
(Cross talk.)
Q: Actually,
Jamie first, and then I have another
question. (Laughter.)
Q: Wow!
That's very good.
Q: Jamie asked
the one earlier that you had --
Q: My question
was answered, actually, within this whole
discussion.
Cambone:
Okay. There you go.
Q: Oh, then I
have -- I actually have one that's more of a
general question, on the reason that the U.S.
went to war. And I raise it because of
the remarks by Deputy Defense Secretary Paul
Wolfowitz, who was quoted as saying, "For
bureaucratic reasons, we settled on one issue
-- weapons of mass destruction -- because it
was the one reason everyone could agree
on." And he lists other reasons. And he
said one that was almost unnoticed, but huge,
was the war allowed the U.S. to withdraw
forces from Saudi Arabia.
And as a close
associate of the Defense secretary, I
wondered what your thoughts are; why did the
U.S. go to war?
Cambone: I'm
not here to talk about that today. And
if you're going to want to follow up with
that, you'll have to find an occasion through
the Public Affairs Office to talk to the
deputy secretary.
Q: Would you
answer the question about whether or not the
remaining six sites have been secured?
Cambone: I
think what we have is a situation where there
is, as Keith said -- and I didn't bring my
numbers with me, and I meant to do that for
you -- there were some 900-some-odd
sites. They have been through 200 and
something. It is my expectation that
over a period of time, all of those sites
will be gone through. I mean, the
question was asked, are we abandoning that
sort of thing --
Q: But right
now they're not secure?
Cambone: Hang
on. So, what happens is, they go into
them, and in some places, you will find that
there are things of interest, in which case,
they are either secured and moved, if they
have the transport, or people are left until
such time -- to secure them -- until such
time as the team can get packed, finish
whatever it is they need to do in the
facility, and then once they're finished with
a facility, and they no longer believe there
is any value to sustaining its security, they
will move the teams on to another
place.
So, there are still
some places on that list that they have been
through which have security at them.
There are other sites which they have
completed their review of and no longer
believe they need to be secured, and
therefore, are not secured.
Q: But it
would seem obvious, then, that from the
beginning, when Baghdad fell, that you didn't
immediately go out and --
Cambone: To
all 900 and something sites --
Q:
(Inaudible.)
Cambone: Given
the number of sites there were, and let's not
forget what we're still engaged in, all
right? We've got, you know, five people
killed this week alone. So, they're
still engaged in operations to stabilize the
country, even as they are doing the kind of
work that we've described to you here.
So, there is a balance that the command is
trying to strike, and what we're trying to do
with the work that General Dayton is
undertaking is give a little more precision
to this exercise. So, it's not a
question of giving them up. It's a
question of: All right, we've been
through some of them, we know that there are
more; we also know that there are other
opportunities to gain this information and
knowledge. Let's start to combine all
of that and see if, with the resources we
have available, we can be more efficient in
the way we've gone through this.
Q: And when,
specifically, was it decided to form the Iraq
Survey Group?
Cambone: I
recall having this conversation with people
in -- just after the beginning of
hostilities, as we were thinking through what
happens when we get from what the military
calls phase three into its phase four
operations, and we go from -- and remember
what we have over there.
We have a combat
support group in the 75th, whose job it was
to support the combat forces. And so,
their job was to be able to give information
to the combat forces about things to either
avoid, precautions to be taken, events that
they may have to prepare for. They weren't
prepared, organized and equipped to do the
kind of wide- scale analytic work that
General Dayton's group is designed to do.
And so, therefore,
once you go from a state where hostilities
are the norm, to one where you have a more
secure environment, you can take the kind of
approach that's being discussed here.
(Cross talk.)
Cambone: I got
two more.
Q: U.N. arms
inspectors, why not bring them in to help --
(Off mike.) --
Cambone: I
don't know -- you asked me that the last
time, and I know people are talking about
that. As you know, there's an IAEA
[International Atomic Energy Agency] team
that will go in next week sometime. And
so the people in -- who work that problem are
working that problem, and I'm not quite sure
when they're going to --
Q: That
doesn't fall under you?
Cambone:
No. We're -- we're in the "let's get
the job and the execution done." The
question of who participates, and so forth,
is done elsewhere.
Charlie, last
one.
Q: Seems the
secretary and other senior administration
officials have for months been saying that
they were confident that chemical and
biological weapons would be found in the
country. This week, in a speech in New
York, the secretary suggested perhaps Iraq
had destroyed its chemical weapons. Is
the administration beginning to back away
from its long and firmly held stand that
there were chemical and biological weapons in
Iraq when this war started? Are you
still convinced of that?
Cambone: I do
not believe the administration is backing
away from that position, Charlie. I
think -- no. I don't think that at
all.
Q: So you're
still convinced that there were chemical and
biological weapons --
Cambone:
Nothing that has happened over the last month
--
Q: -- in that
country when the war began?
Cambone: --
has changed my view or, as far as I know, the
view of others on the subject. So --
last one.
Q: To whom
will this group report? I mean, will
they be under the command of General
Franks? Will they report back here to
Washington? Who has op com and to who
do they report?
Cambone: It
will belong to CJTF-7, or the Joint Task
Force Iraq, or whatever the name is going to
be, reporting up through that chain to
General Franks and into the secretary of
Defense. The DCI [Director, Central
Intelligence], as the head of national
intelligence, will have an interest in seeing
that the product, that the work of the group,
in terms of their reports and finished
reports, are done to meet the standards that
are imposed by the protocols, if you will,
for this kind of work. So there will be
-- both of them will have a very keen
interest in making sure that the work of the
group gets done properly.
Okay, I've really
got to go. I thank you for being here
this afternoon. And as this unfolds
over the course of time, we'll continue to
keep you apprised. Okay?
Thanks.
Q: Thank
you.
