Kay: Iraq Intel Inquiry Needed

The man who led the CIA's search for banned weapons in Iraq entered the politically charged debate over President Bush's decision to go to war and provided fresh ammunition for Republicans and Democrats alike.

Under questioning by Senate Democrats, David Kay acknowledged Wednesday that he found no evidence that Iraq had chemical or biological stockpiles — even small ones. He offered doubts about Bush administration claims that trailers and aluminum tubes were intended for weapons of mass destruction. He said U.N. inspections, belittled by the administration, "achieved quite a bit."

But Kay agreed with Republican senators that there is no doubt deposed Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein had ambitions to use such weapons — that in fact he had used such weapons in the past. Kay said Saddam had secret weapons development programs that violated U.N. resolutions, and that the world is much safer without his government in place.

"I have said I actually think this may be one of those cases where it was even more dangerous than we thought," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Kay, a former chief U.N. nuclear weapons inspector in Iraq, resigned Friday from his position as the CIA's special adviser for the weapons search, citing a decision to reduce resources for the search.

At the hearing and in recent interviews, Kay said he found no evidence that Saddam possessed the banned weapons in recent years. Bush's public rationale for going to war was based mostly on claims that Iraq's stockpile of weapons posed a clear threat to the United States and others.

Questioned by Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., Kay said he believed an outside inquiry would be important to see why intelligence failed and how it could be improved.

The White House opposes such an investigation, noting the CIA is conducting its own intelligence review and the weapons hunt has not ended.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice reiterated that opposition Thursday, saying on national television that existing efforts to learn the extent of Saddam's weapons arsenal are sufficient. Rice also played down the discrepancy between prewar intelligence and what has (or hasn't) been found in Iraq.

"I think that what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground. That's not surprising. " National security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on CBS News' Early Show. "In a country that was as closed and secretive as Iraq, a country that was doing everything that it could to deceive the United Nations, to deceive the world. I would remind people that in Libya and Iran, we have found we probably significantly underestimated the significance of those weapons of mass destruction programs. So in part, this is a problem of dealing with very closed societies that are doing everything that they can to hide the extent and nature of their programs."

Asked on NBC's "Today" show if she thought the American people have a legitimate concern about whether intelligence was manipulated to justify the decision to go to war, Rice replied, "The president's judgment to go to the war was based on the fact that Saddam Hussein for 12 years had defied U.N. resolutions" regarding his stock of weapons.

The administration also went to war, she said, "because this was a dangerous man in the world's most dangerous region. He had been considered a danger for a long time and it was time to take care of that danger."

Rice told Early Show co-anchor Hannah storm America wasn't alone in believing Saddam had such weapons.

"It was the judgment of our intelligence community, the judgment of intelligence communities around the world," she said. "It was the judgment of many intelligence officials in countries that didn't even support the war that he had weapons of mass destruction. ... Everybody thought that he did."

The Senate Intelligence Committee is also examining prewar intelligence. The chairman, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., told Kay, "I personally take some umbrage at people who for one reason or another think we need to have an outside investigation before our inquiry is even complete."

That inquiry is nearing completion. But the committee's top Democrat, Sen. Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said in a statement that Kay's testimony shows a need to expand that review. Rockefeller said the inquiry should examine whether the administration manipulated intelligence.

At the hearing, Kay said he does not think analysts were pressured to shape evidence to make the case for war. "I deeply think that is the wrong explanation," Kay said.

"You know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that," he said.

Kay described a broad intelligence failure on Iraq. "We were almost all wrong, and I certainly include myself here," he said.

He blamed a lack of human spying inside Iraq and inadequate money for U.S. intelligence agencies. He also said he believes analysts have been asked to read too much into limited data and depended too much on data provided by U.N. inspectors.

Kay said his team wrestled with the question of why Saddam did not try to save himself by proving he no longer had stockpiles of banned weapons. Kay said Saddam likely did not want to appear to be caving in to the United States and the United Nations. He also wanted to use the threat of chemical weapons as leverage against his domestic enemies.

Questioned by Sen. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., Kay said the fear of U.N. weapons inspectors had contributed to Iraqi decisions to stop making banned weapons. But when Clinton suggested that inspections should have been given more time, Kay said Iraqis have been more forthcoming now than under Saddam.

"I think we have learned things that no U.N. inspector would have ever learned given the terror regime of Saddam and the tremendous personal consequences that scientists had to run by speaking the truth," he said.

Kay agreed with the committee chairman, Sen. John Warner, R-Va., that because Iraq is so large, there's a "theoretical possibility" that banned weapons could still turn up somewhere. But he expressed reservations when Warner said, "Maybe we'd better not pronounce, `We're all wrong,' yet."

"I believe that the effort that has been directed to this point has been sufficiently intense that it is highly unlikely that there were large stockpiles of deployed militarized chemical and biological weapons there," he said.