Bush To Declassify Iraq Report
President Bush on Tuesday said it is naive and a mistake to think that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism, disputing a national intelligence assessment by his own administration. He said he was declassifying part of the report.
"Some people have guessed what's in the report and concluded that going in to Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree," Mr. Bush said.
Mr. Bush announced that he was ordering parts of the report declassified during a White House news conference with Afghan President Hamid Karzai.
The president charges that portions of the national intelligence estimate were leaked for political purposes just weeks before the midterm elections, CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller reports. Portions of the document that have been leaked suggest that the threat of terrorism has grown worse since the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the war in Afghanistan, due in part to the war in Iraq.
Earlier Tuesday, White House spokesman Dana Perino raised the possibility that the administration would declassify the terror assessment.
Democrats have used the report to bolster their criticism of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy. The administration has claimed only part of the report was leaked and does not tell the full story.
Both the chairman and the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee have urged the White House to release the material.
Read the declassified parts of the National Intelligence Estimates report here (.pdf)
Using a portion of the report to attack his Iraq policy and suggest it has fanned more terrorism is "naive," Mr. Bush said.
"I think it's a mistake for people to believe that going on the offense against people that want to do harm to the American people makes us less safe," he said.
"There will not be an end to terrorism unless we remove the sources of hatred in madrassas and the training grounds," Karzai said before meeting with Mr. Bush.
President Bush told Karzai that his people need not wonder if America has the will to help them succeed. Mr. Bush told him "we have got that will," to which Karzai said "wonderful."
Acknowledging that the Taliban has tried to regain control in Afghanistan, Mr. Bush says the U.S. and NATO have adjusted tactics and are on the offensive. He says the fight in Afghanistan is part of what he calls "a global struggle."
The president also called on Congress to pass his plan for interrogating suspected terrorists.
Democrats failed to push the House into an unusual secret session to discuss a classified intelligence analysis on global terrorism that says the Iraq war is nourishing a new generation of extremist operatives.
The proposal from House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., was denied by a vote of 171-217. Such a session hasn't happened in the House since July 1983, when the chamber went into a closed session to discuss the United States' support for paramilitary operations in Nicaragua.
Pelosi said the secret session was needed to allow members to better understand the intelligence community's most recent assessment on global terrorism, some of which leaked to the news media over the weekend.
Mr. Bush said he had directed National Intelligence Director John Negroponte to declassify those parts of the report that don't compromise national security. The National Intelligence Estimate was written in April.
"You read it for yourself. Stop all this speculation," Mr. Bush said.
He complained that "somebody leaked classified information for political purposes," critizing both the news media and people in government who talked to them about classified material.
Negroponte had acknowledged that the jihad in Iraq is shaping a new generation of terrorist operatives, but rejected characterizations stemming from a leaked intelligence estimate that the United States is at a greater risk of attack than it was in September 2001.
Rather, he said, the high-level assessment from the nation's top analysts doesn't "really talk about" an increased threat inside the U.S. border.
"We are certainly more vigilant. We are better prepared," said Negroponte. "We are safer. The threat to the homeland itself has — if anything — been reduced since 9/11."
Negroponte's words came at a dinner at Washington's Woodrow Wilson Center after the disclosure of a National Intelligence Estimate this weekend, which gave new fervor to an election-year debate about how the Iraq war has affected national security threats.
The report, Negroponte said, broadly addressed the global terrorist threat, not just the impact of Iraq. Yet Negroponte acknowledged that U.S. analysts believe "the Iraq jihad is shaping a new generation of terrorist leaders and operatives."
The report distills the thinking of senior U.S. intelligence analysts working throughout the nation's 16 spy agencies. Its conclusions are considered to be the voice of the U.S. intelligence community.
The New York Times first reported Saturday that the highly classified assessment finds that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has helped fuel a new generation of extremists and that the overall terror threat has grown since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 — a conclusion at odds with President Bush's assertions that the nation is safer.
The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the Bush administration Monday to declassify the intelligence assessment.
Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the American people should be able to see a public version of the report and draw their own conclusions about its contents. So far, he said, the public discussion has given the "false impression" that the National Intelligence Estimate focuses exclusively on Iraq and terrorism.
"That is not true," Roberts said, noting that the committee has had the report since April. "This NIE examines global terrorism in its totality."
In a letter to Negroponte, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the committee's top Democrat, said declassifying the report's conclusions would provide a complete picture of the report and "contribute greatly to the public debate" on counterterrorism policies.
Negroponte said he would consider the proposal in the next several days, given the serious interest in the document.
Generally characterizing U.S. intelligence assessments, Negroponte said counterterrorism efforts have seriously damaged the leadership of al Qaeda, but the group continues to pose the most significant threat to U.S. interests.