Iraq destroyed some weapons in 1990s, Kay reports

By Walter Pincus and Dana Milbank
The Washington Post

	David Kay
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The discovery means that inspectors have not only failed to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq but have found exculpatory information — contemporaneous documents and confirmations from interviews with Iraqis — demonstrating that Saddam did make efforts to disarm well before President Bush began making the case for war.

The fact that Iraq disarmed at least partially before 1998 but did not turn over records to United Nations inspectors even when threatened with war has led Kay to conclude that Saddam was bluffing about his weapons capability to maintain an aura of power.

Kay, who will testify today before the Senate Armed Services committee, said inspectors recovered only partial records detailing the destruction of some forbidden weapons. But he said that while the full truth may not be known for years, if ever, that ambiguity should not be used to delay an examination of why the allegations about weapons were wrong.

"If the weapons programs existed on the scale we anticipated," Kay said, "we would have found something that leads to that conclusion. Instead, we found other evidence that points to something else." Kay reiterated his view that 85 percent of the Iraq Survey Group's job has been completed and that "the major pieces of the puzzle" have been covered.

Kay's revelation that Iraq had documented the destruction of weapons is the most recent of several disclosures he has made since his resignation Friday as special adviser to CIA Director George Tenet that have put the White House on the defensive.

Kay's statements have also enlivened the Democratic presidential race and caused a wave of recriminations from the CIA and on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are demanding an investigation to see whether the blame lies with the intelligence services or the administration for what turned out to be false accusations about Iraq's weapons programs.

Bush, fielding questions based on Kay's earlier claim that there were no weapons stockpiles in Iraq, said yesterday that it was premature to form judgments. "I think it's very important for us to let the Iraq Survey Group do its work so we can find out the facts and compare the facts to what was thought."

Though he did not repeat his earlier claims that forbidden weapons may yet be found in Iraq, Bush said: "I said in the run-up that Saddam was a grave and gathering danger — that's what I said. And I believed it then, and I know it was true now. And as Mr. Kay said, that Iraq was a dangerous place."

In a private meeting between Bush and congressional leaders, Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle, D-S.D., told Bush it was important to determine what went wrong that produced the flawed pre-war weapons charges. Democratic sources said that produced a testy exchange between Bush and Daschle.

Kay put the blame for the flawed weapons charges on the intelligence community, not the Bush administration. Both the CIA and the opposition Democrats — in Congress and on the campaign trail — took issue with that position.

Kay said yesterday that the Iraq Survey Group had found some "contemporary documents" that proved Iraq destroyed weapons before 1998 — steps that were not reported to United Nations inspectors. Senior Iraqi scientists interviewed by Kay admitted hiding their chemical- and biological-weapons programs in the early 1990s. In 1995, however, Saddam's son-in-law Hussein Kamal, who directed the illegal weapons programs, defected. At about that time the scientists said they tried unsuccessfully to convince U.N. inspectors that they had destroyed weapons and agents. They tried to "come clean, but we wouldn't believe them," Kay said.

Kay said the Iraqi scientists didn't have complete records to back up their claims because the destruction had taken place under pressure to keep it secret from U.N. inspectors. In addition to documents, Kay said, they interviewed people who confirmed some destruction, but far from all of it. "That will be impossible and there will always be some doubts," Kay said.

Kay said he believes Saddam may have been pursuing a course of "constructive ambiguity" before the war, bluffing about having weapons to provide the illusion of power and serve as a deterrent. "Saddam wanted to enjoy the benefits of having chemical and biological weapons without having to pay the costs," Kay said.

In response to the Kay revelations, both White House officials and British Foreign Minister Jack Straw said that they had never claimed that Saddam represented an "imminent" threat.

Though Bush did not use the word "imminent," he said in a speech in October, 2002 that delaying as confrontation with Saddam was "the riskiest of all options." The U.S., he said, "must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud ... we have every reason to assume the worst, and we have an urgent duty to prevent the worst from occurring."

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