WP: Pincus: U.S.-British Differences Show Iraq Intelligence Gap

[kskiska]

By Walter Pincus

In the buildup to the Iraq war last fall, the intelligence agencies of Britain and the United States raised questions about each other's most dramatic claims concerning Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction, according to newly released British documents and recent interviews with U.S. congressional and administration officials.

Documents published by British government investigators show that in September 2002, British intelligence played down as not conclusive evidence that Iraq's attempted purchases of specialized aluminum tubes signaled an intention to use them to produce nuclear weapons. In a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) released the following month, the CIA strongly contended that the attempted purchases did reflect such an intent.

In turn, U.S. intelligence officials in September 2002 questioned the reliability of intelligence on Iraq's alleged effort to purchase uranium in Africa and Hussein's capability to deploy chemical weapons within 45 minutes. The British emphasized those two points in an intelligence dossier published Sept. 24, 2002, and President Bush repeated them as he made his case for attacking Iraq.

With U.S. and British forces having found no evidence of weapons of mass destruction in the four months since major combat operations ended in Iraq, the disagreements between the allies' intelligence agencies highlight how little they actually knew about Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs before the war.

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http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19302-2003Sep29.html