Commission Members:
Charles S. Robb
Laurence H. Silberman
Co-Chairman
Richard C. Levin
John McCain
Henry S. Rowen
Walter B. Slocombe
William 0. Studeman
Patricia M. Wald
Charles M. Vest
Lloyd Cutler
(Of Counsel)
Excerpt from:
CHAPTER ONE: Iraq.Cause for the Intelligence Community’s Inaccurate Pre-War AssessmentsPoliticizationMany observers of the Intelligence Community have expressed concern
that Intelligence Community judgments concerning Iraq’s purported
WMD programs may have been warped by inappropriate political pressure.
829 To discuss whether those judgments were “politicized,” that term
must first be defined.
The Commission has found no evidence of “politicization” of the Intelligence
Community’s assessments concerning Iraq’s reported WMD programs. No
analytical judgments were changed in response to political pressure to reach a
particular conclusion.831 The Commission has investigated this issue closely,
querying in detail those analysts involved in formulating pre-war judgments
about Iraq’s WMD programs.
These analysts universally assert that in no instance did political pressure
cause them to change any of their analytical judgments. Indeed, these analysts
reiterated their strong belief in the validity and soundness of their prewar
judgments at the time they were made.832 As a former Assistant Secretary
of State for Intelligence and Research put it, “policymakers never once
applied any pressure on coming up with the ‘right’ answer on Iraq.”833
Moreover, the CIA’s Ombudsman for Politicization conducted a formal
inquiry in November 2003 into the possibility of “politicization” with
respect to assessments of Iraqi WMD. That inquiry involved the (perceived)
delay in CIA’s reassessment of its position on WMD in Iraq. The Ombudsman
also found no evidence, based on numerous confidential interviews
with the analysts involved, that political pressure had caused any analyst to
change any judgments.834
The Commission also found no evidence of “politicization” even under the
broader definition used by the CIA’s Ombudsman for Politicization, which
is not limited solely to the case in which a policymaker applies overt pressure
on an analyst to change an assessment. The definition adopted by the
CIA is broader, and includes any “unprofessional manipulation of information
and judgments” by intelligence officers to please what those officers
perceive to be policymakers’ preferences.835 But the definition retains the
idea that circumstantial pressure to produce analysis quickly is not politicization
—there must be some skewing of analytical judgments, either deliberately
or unintentionally.836 The Ombudsman noted that in his view, analysts
on Iraq worked under more “pressure” than any other analysts in CIA’s history,
in terms of their being required to produce so much, for so long, for
such senior decisionmakers. But that circumstantial pressure did not cause
analysts to alter or skew their judgments.837 We have found no evidence to
dispute that conclusion.
There is also the issue of interaction between policymakers and other customers
on the one hand and analysts on the other.838 According to some analysts,
senior decisionmakers continually probed to assess the strength of the Intelligence
Community’s analysis, but did not press for changes in the Intelligence
Community’s analytical judgments. We conclude that good-faith efforts by
intelligence consumers to understand the bases for analytic judgments, far
from constituting “politicization,” are entirely legitimate. This is the case even
if policymakers raise questions because they do not like the conclusions or are
seeking evidence to support policy preferences. Those who must use intelligence
are entitled to insist that they be fully informed as to both the evidence
and the analysis.
Nor is pressure to work more quickly than is ideal or normal “politicization.”
Iraq WMD analysts insisted to Commission staff that they faced tremendous
pressure to produce finished intelligence and to respond promptly to policymakers’
questions, but that such “pressure” was generated by time and analytical
resource limitations, not by efforts to alter the analysts’ judgments. And
according to the National Intelligence Officers responsible for drafting the
NIE on Iraq WMD in the fall of 2002, there was no communication with policymakers
about the Estimate’s conclusions beyond pressure to complete the
paper within a short three-week timeframe.839 Furthermore, all of the Iraqi
WMD analysts interviewed by the Commission staff stated that they reached
their conclusions about Iraq’s pursuit of WMD independently of policymaker
pressure, based on the evidence at hand.840 In fact, given the body of evidence
available, many analysts have said that they could not see how they could
have reached any other conclusions about Iraq’s WMD programs.841
However, there is no doubt that analysts operated in an environment shaped
by intense policymaker interest in Iraq. Moreover, that analysis was shaped—
and distorted—by the widely shared (and not unreasonable) assumption,
based on his past conduct and non-cooperation with the United Nations, that
Saddam retained WMD stockpiles and programs. This strongly-held assumption
contributed to a climate in which the Intelligence Community was too
willing to accept dubious information as providing confirmation of that
assumption. Neither analysts nor users were sufficiently open to being told
that affirmative, specific evidence to support the assumption was, at best,
uncertain in content or reliability.
Some analysts were affected by this “conventional wisdom” and the sense
that challenges to it—or even refusals to find its confirmation—would not
be welcome. For example, the National Intelligence Officer for Near East
and South Asia described a “zeitgeist” or general “climate” of policymaker
focus on Iraq’s WMD that permeated the analytical atmosphere.842 This
“climate” was formed in part, the NIO claimed, by the gathering conviction
among analysts that war with Iraq was inevitable by the time the NIE was
being prepared.843 But this “zeitgeist,” he maintained, did not dictate the
prevailing analytical view that Iraq had CW and BW and was reconstituting
its nuclear program—in fact, the NIO said he did not see how analysts could
have come up with a different conclusion about Iraq’s WMD based on the
intelligence available at the time.844 Similarly, the DOE analysts who participated
in the NIE coordination meeting stated that there was no political
pressure on DOE, direct or indirect, to agree with the NIE’s conclusion that
Iraq was “reconstituting” its nuclear program. At the same time, however,
he said that “DOE did not want to come out before the war and say
wasn’t reconstituting.”845
Even in the absence of politicization, distortion can creep into the analytical
product, not only through poor tradecraft, but through poor management and
reliance on conventional wisdom. The general assumption that Saddam
retained WMD and the backdrop of impending war, particularly in the wake
of September 11, affected the way analysts approached their task of predicting
the threat posed by Iraq’s WMD programs. For example, this atmosphere
contributed to analysts’ use of a worst-case-scenario or heightened-burden-ofproof
approach to analysis. This overall climate, we believe, contributed to
the too-ready willingness to accept dubious information as supporting the
conventional wisdom and to an unwillingness even to consider the possibility
that the conventional wisdom was wrong.
But while some of the poor analytical tradecraft in the pre-war assessments
was influenced by this climate of impending war, we have found no evidence
to dispute that it was, as the analysts assert, their own independent judg-
ments—flawed though they were—that led them to the conclusion that Iraq
had active WMD programs.
As described above, the pre-war assessments of Iraq’s WMD programs suffered
from numerous other analytical failures. Primary among those analytical
flaws was a failure to question assumptions or to keep an open mind about
the significance of new data. Such failures are more likely if management
within the Intelligence Community does not foster, or at least tolerate, dissenting
views. Yet one systemic problem within the Intelligence Community
works to frustrate expressions of dissent. As the former Assistant Secretary of
State for Intelligence and Research described the problem, the senior leadership
of the Intelligence Community is faced with an inevitable conundrum—
the head of the Intelligence Community must be close to the President in
order for the intelligence product to have relevance, but such closeness also
risks the loss of objectivity.846 When this balance tips too far toward the
desire for the Intelligence Community to be “part of the
team,” analysts may be dissuaded from offering dissenting opinions.847
The failure to pursue alternative views in forming the pre-war assessments of
Iraq’s WMD, however, was likely due less to the political climate than to poor
analytical tradecraft, a failure of management to actively foster opposition
views, and the natural bureaucratic inertia toward consensus. In the case of
pre-war assessments of Iraqi WMD, working-level WINPAC analysts
described an environment in which managers rewarded judgments that fit the
consensus view that Iraq had active WMD programs and discouraged those
that did not.848 To the degree that analysts judged—as we believe some of
them did—that “non-consensus” conclusions would not be welcomed, vigorous
debate in the analytic process was made much more difficult.
Yet these analysts insisted that they genuinely believed that consensus view,
based on the evidence at hand, and we have found no evidence that this was not
the case. Moreover, to the extent management at CIA or elsewhere in the government
created a climate of conformity, it was not unique to the Iraq situation.
For example, an employee survey in April 2004 revealed that 17 percent of
WINPAC analysts said they worked “in an atmosphere in which some managers
who hold strong views make it difficult to publish opposing points of
views.”849 In surveys of the CIA’s Directorate of Intelligence as a whole, however,
23 percent reported working in such an environment.850
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