Powell's Case, a Year Later: Gaps in Picture of Iraq Arms (WP)

[pinto]

By DOUGLAS JEHL and DAVID E. SANGER

Published: February 1, 2004


WASHINGTON, Jan. 31 — A year ago this weekend, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell holed up in a conference room next to George J. Tenet's office at Central Intelligence Agency headquarters, applying a critical eye to the satellite photos, communications intercepts and reports that would form the basis for the Bush administration's most comprehensive — and carefully worded — public case about the urgent threat Iraq posed to the world.

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Mr. Powell's testimony, delivered at a moment of high suspense as American forces gathered in the Persian Gulf region, was widely seen as the most powerful and persuasive presentation of the Bush administration's case that Iraq was bristling with horrific weapons. His reputation for caution and care gave it added credibility.

A year later, some of the statements made by Mr. Powell have been confirmed, but many of his gravest findings have been upended by David A. Kay, who until Jan. 23 was Washington's chief weapons inspector.

Doubts had surrounded much of the evidence ever since American inspectors arrived in Iraq. Yet in the days since Dr. Kay definitively declared that Iraq had no significant stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons when the invasion began in March, Washington has been seized by the question of how and why such an intelligence gap happened.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/01/international/middleeast/01WEAP.html?hp

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