WASHINGTON TODAY: Getting a handle on enemy weapons no small challenge
WASHINGTON (AP) — When it comes to assessing enemy weapons threats, U.S. intelligence agencies have a hard time getting it right.
They overestimated Iraq’s programs a year ago and underestimated those of Iran and Libya.
It is unclear to the sleuths just how far along North Korea’s weapons program is.
Getting a handle on threats from abroad has been a problem for a long time. After World War II, American officials were surprised at how much of Japan’s stockpiles of weapons had gone undetected.
Obtaining accurate reads on enemy firepower is perhaps the most crucial challenge the nation is facing, says David Kay, the former head of the U.S. weapons inspection team in Iraq.
Kay’s message is clear: If the intelligence is correct, policy-makers have a better shot of doing the right thing. If it isn’t, the resulting policies are likely to be flawed.
Recently, U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan said that the damage caused by the apparent U.S. misperceptions about Saddam Hussein’s weapons will take time to heal.
“People are going to be very suspicious when one talks to them about intelligence,” he added. “And they are going to be very suspicious when we try to use intelligence to justify certain actions.”
But good information on an enemy’s intention may be more important than ever as terrorists clandestinely seek doomsday weapons for attacks on the United States. Many are happy to risk death to advance their causes.
The Bush administration’s National Security Strategy, set forth a year after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, made the case for preventive action against enemies — and stressed the need for good intelligence.
“America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed,” it says. “We cannot defend America and our friends by hoping for the best. So we must be prepared to defeat our enemies’ plans, using the best intelligence and proceeding with deliberation. … The only path to safety is the path of action.”
The war with Iraq began six months after the new doctrine was issued. And now, with no weapons stockpiles uncovered, there are many who share Annan’s concern about the reliability of intelligence as a basis for going to war.
It is unclear whether there is a connection, but the administration’s instincts toward unilateralism seem far more muted these days. President Bush is using multilateral approaches to deal with weapons programs in Iran and North Korea. Sabre-rattling has all but disappeared.
And the assignments handed to intelligence agencies seem ever-more demanding.
One can only imagine the challenge of tracking, say, chemical shells pilfered by terrorists from a warehouse in Russia. Former Sen. Sam Nunn, D-Ga., who chaired the Senate Armed Services Committee, says, “Once they leave the source, it’s like finding a needle in a haystack.”
Then there is the question of what policy-makers should do with the intelligence they receive. Vice President Dick Cheney once said before the Iraq war that Saddam Hussein had “reconstituted” his nuclear program.
CIA Director George Tenet does not share that stance. “We said Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon, and probably would not have been able to make one until 2007 to 2009,” the CIA chief said recently.
Tenet says intelligence analysts were “quite worried” about surprise attacks and what they didn’t know, given Saddam’s history of deception. Estimates also indicated he had biological and chemical weapons and other programs. “Whether it stands up or it doesn’t stand up over the course of time is something we’re going to look at quite carefully,” Tenet told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday.
Satellite photos can be a useful intelligence tool, but they can’t detect what’s happening in an underground tunnel or read the minds of enemy decision-makers.
Human intelligence can provide some answers. However, reliability is often a problem. Kay believes that part of the difficulty the United States had in Iraq was bad information from on-the-ground sources.
“The secrecy and corruption in Iraqi society meant that accurate intelligence from reliable sources was very hard to get,” Kay says.
Tenet acknowledges that the U.S. record in Iraq concerning human intelligence “was mixed.”
He also says intelligence successes should not be overlooked, pointing out that, among other breakthroughs, covert officers helped expose the nuclear smuggling activities of Pakistani scientist Abdul Qadeer Khan and his supply network, as well as the capture of Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, reputed mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks.
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EDITOR’S NOTE — George Gedda has covered foreign affairs for The Associated Press since 1968.