Report: U.S. Ignored WMD Doubts

Paper: Bush Admin. Pressed Tube Theory Despite Experts' Qualms

(CBS/AP)  A published report says the Bush administration ignored substantial evidence to the contrary when it claimed before the war that Iraq had imported material for a nuclear weapons program.

The New York Times reported in Sunday editions that the White House claim that thousands of aluminum tubes were intended for use in centrifuges for enriching uranium was made despite warnings from the Energy Department and the State Department.

The tubes were only one part of the administration's case for war, in which officials alleged Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was pursuing nuclear weapons. But they were a key part, The Times reports, because they represented a rare piece of physical evidence that Iraq might have been reconstituting its weapons programs.

No substantial stockpiles of chemical or biological weapons have been found and there is no evidence of any active programs to produce large quantities of illegal weapons, although the U.S. still suspects Saddam Hussein wanted such weapons. Iraq's missile program does appear to have sought rockets that flew farther than U.N. limits allowed.

But the nuclear threat was always the gravest one attributed to Iraq. In an October 2002 case outlining the case against Saddam, President Bush warned, "We cannot wait for the final proof — the smoking gun — that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud."

Uranium is a key ingredient for nuclear weapons: when an A-bomb explodes, it is uranium molecules that are split, releasing incredible power. But there are different kinds of uranium molecules, and only one type is appropriate for nuclear fission.

Few of those types of molecules are found in natural uranium. To make a nuclear bomb work, scientists must increase the concentration of these molecules in the uranium they use. This process is called enrichment.

In one form of enrichment, uranium is converted into gas and piped into a tube, then spun very rapidly. This separates different uranium molecules by weight, allowing scientists to isolate the molecules they want and produce a finished uranium product containing more of the molecules that work in nuclear fission.

Iraq's nuclear ambitions had long been cause for concern. Fearing that Saddam was on the verge of acquiring a weapon, Israel in 1981 bombed Iraq's Osirik nuclear reactor. Iraq resumed experiments, and after the 1991 Gulf War inspectors learned that Iraq had come far closer to creating an A-bomb than they had estimated.

A Senate Intelligence Committee report in July blamed the failure to find weapons on the CIA, citing faulty analysis. Democrats have alleged that while the intelligence may have had flaws, the Bush administration misled the country by overstating the evidence.

The questions over the aluminum tubes point not only to CIA mistakes, but also to Bush administration officials failing to acknowledge doubts about the weapons evidence despite warnings from their own experts.

The tubes in question were some 60,000 aluminum tubes that Iraq was found in 2001 to be seeking.

When Secretary of State Colin Powell made the administration's case for war at the U.N. on February 5, 2003, he said there was little doubt the tubes could have been used for anything else, reports CBS News White House Correspondent Bill Plante.

"I am no expert on centrifuge tubes, but it strikes me as quite odd that these tubes are manufactured to a tolerance that far exceeds U.S. requirements for comparable rockets," Powell said. "All the experts agree that have analyzed the tubes in our observation, says they can be adapted for centrifuge use."

But in fact, conflicting opinions were coming from senior officials at the Department of Energy. They warned that the tubes were too long, too thick and too shiny for use in the centrifuge process, and were being purchased openly by Iraq, not secretly. Energy Department experts believed the tubes were most likely for use in small artillery rockets.

The Times also reported that the State Department, British intelligence and International Atomic Energy Agency raised similar doubts.

Administration officials rarely addressed those doubts in public. The Times says that in March 2002, Vice President Dick Cheney said Saddam "actively pursuing nuclear weapons at this time," despite the fact that the CIA had not concluded that was true.

In August of that year, Cheney said, "We now know that Saddam has resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons." He cited a defector who had, in fact, said that the program was discontinued, and who had been assassinated in 1996.

On Sept. 8, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said the tubes "are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs."

On Sunday, Rice admitted she knew the experts weren't certain, but continued to defended the war.

"We were all unhappy that the intelligence was not as good as we had thought that it was, but the essential judgment was absolutely right," she said.

With the war in Iraq a key issue in the presidential campaign, Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry said on Sunday that the report raises serious questions about the truth and honesty of the administration's position going into the war.