Inspector wants Iraq weapons fears explained

By Scott Lindlaw
The Associated Press

	David Kay
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WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence agencies need to explain why their research indicated Iraq possessed banned weapons before the American-led invasion, says the outgoing top U.S. weapons inspector, who now believes Saddam Hussein had no such arms.

"I don't think they exist," David Kay reiterated yesterday on National Public Radio. "The fact that we found so far the weapons do not exist — we've got to deal with that difference and understand why."

Kay also said that in the chaos after the war, it has been difficult to prove whether or not such weapons existed. He said he believed Saddam had weapons programs but was not producing weapons.

Kay told The New York Times in an interview posted for today's editions that U.S. intelligence agencies did not realize Iraqi scientists presented Saddam with fanciful plans for weapons programs and then used the money for other purposes.

"The whole thing shifted from directed programs to a corrupted process," he told The Times. "The regime was no longer in control; it was like a death spiral. Saddam was self-directing projects that were not vetted by anyone else. The scientists were able to fake programs."

Kay's remarks on NPR reignited criticism from Democrat president candidates, including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who won the Iowa caucuses last week and is leading in the polls going into tomorrow's New Hampshire primary.

In October 2002, President Bush said Iraq had "a massive stockpile of biological weapons that has never been accounted for and is capable of killing millions." In his television address two days before launching the invasion, Bush said U.S. troops would enter Iraq "to eliminate weapons of mass destruction."

Vice President Dick Cheney warned in March 2003, three days before the invasion: "We believe he (Saddam) has, in fact, reconstituted nuclear weapons."

Asked whether President Bush owed the nation an explanation for the gap between his warnings and Kay's findings, Kay said: "It's an issue of the capabilities of one's intelligence service to collect valid, truthful information. I actually think the intelligence community owes the president, rather than the president owing the American people."

The CIA would not comment yesterday on Kay's remarks, although one intelligence official pointed out that Kay had predicted last year that his search would turn up banned weapons.

Kay said his predictions were not "coming back to haunt me in the sense that I am embarrassed. They are coming back to haunt me in the sense of 'Why could we all be so wrong?' "

Speaking on "Fox News Sunday," Kerry lambasted the Bush administration's claims leading up the March invasion of Iraq.

"We were misled not only in the intelligence but misled in the way that the president took us to war," Kerry said. "The president cut off that process (United Nations inspections). He chose the date to start this war. He said the time for diplomacy is over."

But Kerry also served notice he would focus on Cheney's role in describing the threat from Saddam during the run-up to the war. He said Cheney, who took the public lead in describing the threat from Iraq beginning in August 2002, "exaggerated clearly" on several issues.

Bush was at fault "without adequate evidence," Kerry said, adding, "I know the vice president either misspoke or misled the American people.

"The question is still unanswered as to what Dick Cheney was doing over at the CIA personally in those weeks leading up to the war," referring to several visits the vice president made to directly question the intelligence analysts who wrote reports on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs. Cheney has said he was trying to get the facts directly and not trying to pressure analysts to change their views.

Other candidates for the Democratic nomination also were critical.

Retired Gen. Wesley Clark, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," picked up Kerry's theme. "I think what this administration has done is play politics with intelligence and really lean on the intelligence community to come up with the answers they've sought." The result, Clark said, is "we've damaged our national credibility on this issue of weapons of mass destruction."

Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina called for an independent commission to investigate the weapons issue. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, who supported the war, said that since apparently no stockpiles existed, "We ought to ask for a full-scale investigation of exactly why our intelligence community said otherwise."

Meanwhile, Hans Blix, the former chief U.N. inspector whose work was heavily criticized by Kay and ended when the United States invaded, said yesterday the United States should have known the intelligence was flawed last year when leads followed up by U.N. inspectors didn't produce any results.

"I was beginning to wonder what was going on," he said. "Weren't they wondering, too? If you find yourself on a train that's going in the wrong direction, it's best to get off at the next stop."

Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said yesterday he was surprised Kay "did not find some semblance of WMD" in Iraq. Roberts said a report on Iraq intelligence, to be delivered to his panel Wednesday, should help clarify the CIA's prewar performance.

"It appears now that that intelligence — there's a lot of questions about it," Roberts said on CNN's "Late Edition."

White House Press said yesterday that it was important for the search to continue "so that we find out the truth."

"Saddam Hussein's regime was a gathering threat, and in a post-Sept. 11 world, we must confront gathering threats before it is too late," White House press secretary Scott McClellan added.

Material from The Washington Post, The Associated Press, the Los Angeles Times is included in this report.

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