Expert: 'Intelligence is not a science'

Tenet said Saddam could make weapons, but likely did not yet have them.
CHRISTIAN SCIENCE MONITOR
WASHINGTON -- News flash: Intelligence isn't magic.
In Washington's swirl of accusation and rebuttal over prewar assessments of Iraqi weapons, one point that gets clearer by the day is that intelligence estimates are just that: estimates. They aren't wonder books providing certainty about the rest of the world.
Even junior members of any administration know this. And as CIA Director George Tenet pointed out Thursday, the CIA's prewar judgments about Saddam Hussein's unconventional weapons programs were heavily laced with caveats.
Assessment of Saddam
The CIA also said that Saddam was a brutal dictator intent on defying U.S. interests. Experts say that an inquiry into the matter thus might best focus on how policy-makers at each level interpreted this information -- and not so much on what the CIA knew, and when it knew it.
"Intelligence is not a science. It's an art. ... It's rare that you get the clear and direct kind of evidence you want for going to war," says Judith Yaphe, an expert on Iraq at the National Defense University and former head of the CIA's Iraq desk.
Tenet echoed this assessment throughout his defense of the agency. But he did not discuss how the CIA's intelligence might have been used by higher officials. "Tenet is trying to defend his agency and he did a good job of it, but that throws the onus on the White House and the rest of the administration," says former CIA director Stansfield Turner.
Bush's assertion
President Bush used a campaign-style stop in Charleston, S.C., Thursday to vigorously defend going to war against Iraq, saying he would make the same decision again, good intelligence or bad.
"Knowing what I knew then and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq," Bush told a mostly military crowd at a pier at the Port of Charleston. "We had a choice: Either take the word of a madman or take action to defend the American people. Faced with that choice, I would defend America every time."
The president didn't mention Tenet's speech about U.S. intelligence on Iraq. White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan, in a briefing aboard Air Force One, said Tenet had not submitted his speech for review by the White House.
Bush termed the war decision part of his administration's proactive, post-Sept. 11, 2001, doctrine to pre-empt perceived threats to the United States. He said America no longer could wait "to confront the threats of the world" only after those threats arose.
"I will not stand by and hope for the best while dangers gather," he said. "I will protect and defend this country by taking the fight to the enemy. ... You're the commander-in-chief, you have to be willing to make the tough calls and to see your decisions through. America's safer when your commitments are clear, our word is good and our will is strong. And that is the only way I know how to lead."
Tenet noted Thursday that the CIA was basically considered irrelevant at the end of the cold war. He described efforts to enhance the capabilities of human spies, as well as technical collection and analysis.
"The men and women of American intelligence are performing courageously -- often brilliantly -- to support our military, to stop terrorism and to break up networks of proliferation," he told an audience at Georgetown University.
Clarification
He says he welcomes all the investigations into prewar intelligence -- the three that are going on within the community, as well as those of the congressional oversight committees and the president's new commission. But he went on to clarify the National Intelligence Estimate that was given to the president and other policy-makers in October.
"Let me be clear," he said. "Analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs. ... They never said there was an 'imminent' threat."
But he also said -- clearly in response to the many reports that say government officials pressured analysts to come up with the "right" evidence -- that "no one told us what to say or how to say it."
Tenet outlined both what the agency knew and surmised about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction [WMD] programs before the war, and what it knows now. He gave bottom-line assessments in the areas of nuclear, chemical, and biological programs, as well as delivery systems.
UOn nuclear weapons: "We made two judgments that get overlooked these days. We said Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon, and probably would not have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009." Tenet's provisional bottom line is that "Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon."
UOn biological weapons: "Iraq intended to develop biological weapons. Clearly research-and-development work was under way that would have permitted a rapid shift to agent production. ... But we do not yet know if production took place."
UOn chemical weapons: "Saddam had the intent and the capability to quickly convert civilian industry to chemical weapons production. However, we have not yet found the weapons we expected."
UOn missiles: "We were generally on target."
UOn unmanned aerial vehicles: "We detected the development of prohibited and undeclared UAVs. ... But the jury is still out on whether Iraq intended to use its newer, smaller UAVs to deliver biological weapons."
Tenet also vigorously defended the agency's human intelligence program. He said that when he came to the CIA in the mid-1990s, "our graduating class of case officers was unbelievably low." He said the years since have been spent rebuilding the clandestine service, but it will take five more to bring it up to speed.
Still, he said that pundits who make blanket statements about the CIA's lack of human intelligence are "simply wrong." He noted that a coalition of intelligence agencies -- not just Britain and Middle Eastern nations, but most European countries as well -- made the same determinations.
XKnight Ridder Tribune contributed to this report.