PROGRESS REPORT ON SEARCH FOR
IRAQ WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION

Press Stakeout with David Kay,
Chief Weapons Inspector, Iraq Survey Group,
Sen. Pat Roberts (R-KS),
Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV) &
Rep. Porter Goss (R-FL)

U.S. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

October 2, 2003

SEN. ROBERTS: Dr. Kay has just concluded a full day of hearings, both in the House and the Senate. The House Intelligence Committee and the Senate -- and the Senate committee. He's been very forthright. He's received a lot of bipartisan praise for his candor and for his expertise, and more especially, for his commitment.

Dr. Kay will be making a statement. I will follow with a statement, along with Senator Rockefeller. And we have invited Chairman Goss from the House side to make a statement. And that we embargoed this until 5:00 -- or, there was an embargo on Dr. Kay's statement until 5:00.

With that, let me introduce Dr. Kay.

MR. KAY: Thank you very much, Senator Roberts and Senator Rockefeller. I have only a few short comments to make.

As you know, I'm here today to deliver the interim progress report of the Iraq Survey Group. It's interim. It's a snapshot in time. It's an ongoing investigation. We've been at work only three months. There's a lot more to do.

At this point, we have found substantial evidence of an intent of senior-level Iraqi officials, including Saddam, to continue production at some future point in time of weapons of mass destruction. We have not found yet -- and I'm sure you know this, otherwise you would know it earlier -- we have not found at this point actual weapons. It does not mean we've concluded there are no actual weapons. It means at this point in time, and it's a huge country with a lot to do, that we have not yet found weapons.

If I can speak of what we have found in addition to intent, we have found a large body of continuing activities and equipment that were not declared to the U.N. inspectors when they returned in November of last year. This includes substantial equipment and activities in the chemical and biological area; a much more substantial activity in the missile area. The Iraqis were engaged in a very full-scale program that would have extended their delivery systems out beyond 1,000 kilometers; that is enough to reach Ankara, Cairo, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh. And these were both ballistic missiles and Land Attack Cruise Missiles, a refit the Chinese Silkworm. The report lays out for the committee, and for others, considerable detail about what this is.

And I will just conclude by saying believe me, we're working as hard as we can. We know the importance that is attached to this work. But we have a lot more work to do before we can conclude that we're at the end of the road as opposed to still at the beginning.

Q How much more time will you devote to that?

MR. KAY: My guess is -- and everyone asked this question. I keep saying, I know it's a question my mother would have told me not to answer because I'm going to have to live with it. But the answer is, I believe in six to nine months we will be at the stage where we can draw a line and say there probably will be more to find. Believe me, if I wanted to go into business, I would go into the metal detection business in Iraq. I think for 100 years they will be digging up the relics of Saddam's empire that is buried over the country. We won't have found everything. We will know the program and able to report: This is what they had; this was their intention.

Q But in six to nine months, you think you can draw a line that says we should stop the search now, we should scale it down? Or what?

MR. KAY: I think we can say: At this point in time, we know most of what we're going to know about the program. There still will be things to discover. I'm not sure -- we could go on for 25 years, and I think we'd still discover some stuff.

Q Dr. Kay, why is the amount of money this job is going to cost, why is that secret, when earlier budget requests have put in the open the amount of money that was --

MR. KAY: Beats me. You're talking to a guy who lives in the field, and I don't do budgets or windows.

Q But is there something sensitive about what you and your people are doing in the field that needs to be kept secret with respect to cost?

MR. KAY: There is a lot that's sensitive about what we're doing. I just -- I'm the wrong person to ask budget questions.

Q Why is this twice as large as the original amount?

MR. KAY: Well, you must know what the number is. I -- (chuckles) -- okay.

Q Dr. Kay, for those senators who voted for war under the assumption that a threat was imminent, does your report suggest that there was not an imminent threat?

Or what does it -- what does it say in general --

MR. KAY: I suggest you ask the senators about that. Imminence is a political policy decision. We are reporting what we find. What that meant in those terms is something that, in fact, senators are better able to address than I am.

Q Well, does your report then show that there were weapons there -- or weapons programs, that would mean that an attack could be launched with chemical or biological or nuclear weapons soon or immediately?

MR. KAY: We're still in the early phases of sketching out and understanding the full implications of their program. I -- simply, people are going to have to have time and patience. We have found a great deal, we have reported a great deal, and much of which was never declared to the U.N. and was unknown. We are not at the bottom line yet.

Q Dr. Kay, the last time you were here you said don't be surprised by surprises, you hinted that something imminent might happen. Your tone this time seems much more measured --

Q No. My -- no, my advice to everyone is still don't be surprised by surprises in Iraq. A regime that hid so much, that buried so much, whose population is still fearful of talking and collaborating with the coalition, I'm convinced that at some time, at some point -- and we've already found things that, if you'd asked me the week before, I wouldn't have had a clue that they existed.

So no, I'm not in any sense less optimistic about surprises. Surprises do happen when you're engaged in a large effort like this. I think there will still be surprises.

Q Can you say a little more about the rocket program?

MR. KAY: I can say a lot more about the rocket program. I'm not sure how much more I can say at a unclassified level. It was a program -- multiple programs, liquid and solid fuel, as well as land attack missiles. It involved foreign assistance, as well, that would have put in their hands, in a time period we're still trying to be absolutely certain we understand, missiles that would have reached a thousand kilometers, with a significant payload.

Q And the payload you were expecting would be what?

MR. KAY: We're still working to find out what -- the payload the Iraqis expected.

Q Are you convinced that that the two mobile labs were weapons labs?

MR. KAY: The mobile lab program, as you'll see when you look at the unclassified summary of the statement, is still something that's very much being examined. It was equally unsuitable for biological weapons, hydrogen, as well as rocket fuel regeneration. That is, it could have done either of those three; it would have done all of them almost equally unsuitable. We simply are continuing our investigation.

We're not yet at a point where we can say what they were for.

Q Can you talk about the working theories that we've heard about to explain why weapons haven't been found: They were secreted out of the country, possibly; the possible break-out programs; Saddam Hussein maybe was himself sort of duped into thinking he had them.

MR. KAY: Look, I look to the Washington Post and the New York Times to tell me what my working hypotheses are. I'm not sort of equally surprised when I read them there.

There is a range of hypotheses. This is the nature of an inspection regime. Literally, once a week we go through a formal review and we say, "What hypothesis best fits what we've discovered to this date?" We have five or six of those that we're working. Those I've seen in the press are, indeed, among the five or six. I would not say any of them I've read are the leading one; they're certainly not the only one; I'm not even sure -- in fact, I'm unsure that they'll be the ones that we'll finally lock into. It's just the process of exploration. It's -- believe it or not, it's what you do when you're trying to figure out what unknowns mean; you try to fit them into patterns. That's what journalists do every day.

SEN. ROBERTS: Dr. Kay has a commitment, so we'll allow one more question, please, from somebody who hasn't asked one.

Q Have you found any evidence of a nuclear program at all?

MR. KAY: The evidence we have found in the nuclear program, at most right now would suggest a very tentatively -- a restart on the program at the very most rudimentary level. It is the program right now that we probably know the least about it and have the least confidence in saying what it meant. But it clearly does not look like a massive resurgent program, based on what we've discovered now, but we are still actively -- as I would say about the other programs -- probing to see what we have not found.

Three months -- and, you know, you have to remember this was a program that took 20 years, billions of dollars and thousands of people engaged in it, and they tried to hide it. They hid it for very good reasons. The Israelis attacked one of the reactors in 1981, on June 8th, 1981, as I recall the date -- June 6th, actually, I think it was. You know, it's not going to be obvious. Just walking in the country is not going to reveal the truth. You have to work at it and you have to work at it hard, and that's what we're trying to do.

SEN. ROBERTS: Okay, thank you very much, Dr. Kay.

MR. KAY: Thank you.

SEN. ROBERTS: Senator Rockefeller?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: I don't think there were any surprises -- any new surprises. And I don't really believe there are any impending surprises. There was talk about facilities that might, there was talk about intent right here by Dr. Kay, but there was no talk about weapons of mass destruction and their potential use. Back at the time that the Congress voted to give the president the authority to go to war -- and you cannot -- you cannot -- here we are months later, and Dr. Kay is essentially saying I need a lot more time. And from my own point of view, I would judge that he's probably talking about six to nine more months in order to find out whether he can find any evidence of weapons of mass destruction. Well, ladies and gentlemen, that's the reason we went to war, and that's the reason that some of us voted on that authorization bill.

And to be where we are today, without any evidence, talking about intent, talking about facilities, but nothing we can point to, and then asking for another six to nine months and a good deal of money, leads me to believe that we need to do some serious thinking about the doctrine of preemption, that we need to do some serious thinking about where did our intelligence allow us to get so that we could make these kinds of conclusions, that we would decide to go to war, did we misread it, or did they mislead us, or did they simply get it wrong? Whatever the answer is, it's not a good answer.

And so, you know, I think, from my point of view, we have to wait until Dr. Kay has a final report. I think he's encouraged us to do that. And I don't think we can be inaccurate in this. But I must say that I am distressed at the need for so much more time and so little found and no surprises.

SEN. ROBERTS: I have a prepared statement. I'd like to say that, obviously, the committee has just completed a hearing with Dr. Kay. I'd like to emphasize that this as an interim report -- and it's a very difficult undertaking, and I am sure you are aware of that in regards to the questions that you posed to Dr. Kay and his statement.

It is not by any measure a final reckoning. It's a snapshot in time, and we expect to hear from Dr. Kay in another three months. He's going to have an interim report in another three months back to both committees.

That said, I'm not pleased by what I heard today, but we should be willing to adopt a wait-and-see attitude. That's the only alternative we really have.

There's much more work to be done. My hope is that we will have more -- a more definitive kind of conclusion in the next few months.

I am concerned, like my colleague, in regard to the lack of results, but before anybody makes any real hasty predictions about what we might or might not find, we all need to be mindful of a number of factors. First, as long as Saddam Hussein is alive, there remains a palpable fear among the people of Iraq. This fear, according to Dr. Kay and those in Iraq, is a significant obstacle to obtaining the full cooperation of individuals involved in the weapons program.

Second, Dr. Kay's public statement, which you all have now, makes clear that there is much more work to be done in the area of dual-use equipment. Many items that can be used for some activities can also be used to manufacture unconventional weapons.

Third, it appears that Saddam's efforts to deny and deceive were extensively compartmented and sophisticated and, quite frankly, more robust than the intelligence community ever predicted.

Finally, Dr. Kay is stating publicly that there are an estimated 600,000 tons of ordnance that have yet to be tested for chemical agents. We know from the first Gulf War that the Iraqi military did not segregate nor distinguish any conventional munitions from the unconventional. Doing so will require an additional enormous effort.

Our experiences with Saddam in the '90s tell us that Dr. Kay should and must press on, and he is doing just that. As we await the interim report and the final report, why the committee will continue its review of the prewar intelligence. My hope is that we will be able to complete our review of the intelligence and the analysis within the next few weeks. The vice chairman and I will continue to discuss that timetable, as best we can, with events of the day. We will decide how to proceed. I do anticipate holding open hearings -- I cannot tell you when that will be -- and issuing a report in some form later this year.

We'll be happy to respond to any questions you might have.

Q Senator, when you said, "I'm not pleased by what I heard," what exactly were you not pleased about?

SEN. ROBERTS: Well, I think every American, I think everybody involved in this effort, I think everybody in the military, certainly in the intelligence community, and certainly the members of the Iraq Survey Group would have hoped by now there would have been a breakthrough. There has not been a breakthrough. There has been, I think, a determination exactly what Dr. Kay said, that this was a program that is very difficult to determine exactly the extent of it and what would pose a very serious threat.

And so, I am not pleased that that has happened, but that's not -- you know, that is really not your -- that is really not Dr. Kay's fault.

Q Senator, given that, did the administration --

Q So Senator Roberts, you said --

SEN. ROBERTS: Yeah, wait just a minute. Let's go here, then let's come over here. Yeah, come in here.

Q Senator, given that, did the administration oversell the threat in advance of the war?

SEN. ROBERTS: I think the administration made the best estimate that it could get -- that they could, given the intelligence that was provided at that particular time.

Q So the intelligence was bad?

Q So -- but --

SEN. ROBERTS: I think we're still in review with that, and I think I'd rather wait until that review is over to make any definitive comment.

Yeah.

Q Senator, Senator Rockefeller suggested you were either misled or the intelligence was wrong. Do you see those as two of the possibilities here?

SEN. ROBERTS: Well, anything's possible, but I am not sure it's probable. I think the intelligence business obviously is a very subjective business. And at the time, I think they made the best estimate with the capability they had, they did about as good as they could under the circumstances. As it turns out, that has not been the case in -- or, that has not been what we had hoped for in regards to the discovery of WMD. In terms of any senator that thinks that he is or she is misled because of the vote in regards to the war, each senator will have to make that -- you know, each senator will have to make that decision.

Q Senator Roberts, do you --

Q You're saying at this point that the intelligence was inaccurate, the pre-war intelligence?

SEN. ROBERTS: I'm not sure that that's the word I would use, but I would think that --

Q Lacking?

SEN. ROBERTS: Let's just say that it did not provide the kind of complete intelligence that we now with, you know, hindsight 20-20 would have hoped for.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Can I make a comment?

SEN. ROBERTS: Go ahead.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: I just think it's extraordinary that a decision was made to go to war, and that we were told by our highest policymakers that there was, you know, imminent threat, dangers, the national security was at stake as well as regional security, and intelligence had been taken; and now we find that nothing is available: no weapons of mass destruction, the biological, the chemical, the nuclear perhaps least of all. I think we've all known that for a long time. And so we have 1,400 people out in the field doing searches, at a large amount of money, turning up so far really nothing, and the request for six to nine more months with, from my point of view, the probability of not really turning up very much more.

And I think that raises real questions about something called the Doctrine of Preemption, the way we make decisions at the highest level. I'm not just -- there's plenty of blame to share on everybody, but you just don't make decisions like we do and put our nation's youth at risk based upon something that appears not to have existed.

Q Senator Roberts, in regard to the --

(Cross-talk.)

SEN. ROBERTS: Let's try it one at a time; that usually works best.

Q A quick question for both of the senators. In regard to the money that has been reported that is in a supplemental to spend an additional millions of dollars to continue searching for weapons of mass destruction, do each of you support that? Do you think that other nations should be involved in that? What's's your stance?

SEN. ROBERTS: I'm not sure other nations will be involved in a supplemental, certainly dealing with matters of intelligence, but yes, I support what is necessary to finish the job.

It seems to me we have to finish the job. What happens in regards to the 600,000 -- or 600-whatever-it-was in terms of tons of ordnance, if all of a sudden -- and, you know, those are unmarked -- if all of a sudden we discover they contain, you know, biological components, a lot of the arguments and a lot of the statements we're hearing today would not be relevant.

Q Senator Roberts, before the war, you had access to all the --

Q Senator Rockefeller, could you answer that question?

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: I guess my answer -- and you asked us both -- would be yes, I would support the money. I'm surprised that it's a lot. It may be a lot more than we're spending on intelligence in all of Homeland Security; I don't know for sure. If it's true, that's something, again, the nation needs to think about, have introspection about: Where are we putting our priorities here?

With respect to the ordnance, I suppose it is possible one could find things in it that are biological or chemical, but I think it's also just as likely that they may simply be explosive materials which are routine. And again, I don't -- I can't speak for him, but I really don't think that Dr. Kay expects to find in those things, which have been photographed and spread across the country in newspapers, biological or chemical weapons. So, I just don't expect it.

SEN. ROBERTS: Okay. You had one more question. Yes?

Q Senator, before the war, there were many intelligence reports, pieces of which were made public -- statements by the DCI in public, mostly saying that there were uncertainties about chemical and biological weapons, that there were things that were unaccounted for from --

SEN. ROBERTS: Yes.

Q -- previous wars, et cetera.

And yet there are many examples of administration officials making unequivocal statements that there definitely were chemical and biological weapons. So my question to you is, why are you saying the issue is bad intelligence and not, you know, exaggeration?

SEN. ROBERTS: Oh, I'm not saying it was bad intelligence. They made the best estimate they could under the circumstances that they had and what they had -- you know, what they had to work with. And I think that's an area of the review that I certainly want to concentrate on in regards to what we need to do in the intelligence community. Both Senator Rockefeller and I are interested in regards to what went wrong, but we want to find out what went wrong so that we can fix it and make it right. So from that standpoint, you look at the investment in certain sections of the country; you look at what we spend in regards to the intelligence community for our collection assets and analysts and, more especially, human intelligence, and, you know, what happened to that budget? Where did we go wrong, if in fact we went wrong? So we'll make that determination. As I said, our review -- I say 85 percent; maybe, you know, Jay thinks it's 80 -- but I think we'll make those statements at that particular time.

Q But having seen the supporting raw intelligence data, do you feel that it matches some of the statements the administration made in making the case for war?

SEN. ROBERTS: No.

Q Does that raw data support the statements?

SEN. ROBERTS: Some do not, and some do. It's mixed reporting, and in some cases, as I've indicated before with the Niger incident, it's sloppy.

Q Senator Roberts, given what you know -- given what you know now, would you have voted for the resolution?

SEN. ROBERTS: Oh, that's conjecture. I don't know.

Q And what about your view on the preemption process, given -- (off mike)?

SEN. ROBERTS: Well, we used to have a policy of detection, as best as we could do that, in the intelligence community and then a policy of deterrence -- that is, stop the threat, and then if we did not do that, we got into consequence management. I think what the president has tried to outline is that in the global war on terrorism, that that does not apply or at least does not -- that that's somewhat outdated.

We hope that we have the intelligence capability, and we're going to work very hard to improve that, to modernize it, to detect but then to preempt, in the deterrence fold, and then to prevent the consequence management. So if you do learn of something -- it doesn't have to be an exclusive example with Iraq, but if you learn about something that is going to happen, it's far better to preempt that situation and take care of it, as opposed to simply letting it happen.

Q Is this evidence, then, sufficient for preemption -- what you've seen today?

SEN. ROBERTS: I wouldn't want to put this on a one-to-one basis on the policy. I share some of Senator Rockefeller's concerns in this regard, however. I think he's made a point.

Q Did the administration exaggerate their statements, then? You were just talking about the intelligence --

SEN. ROBERTS: No, they dealt with the intelligence -- you know, if you're handed this deck --

Q Did they oversell it?

SEN. ROBERTS: If you're handed this deck, and you look at the deck, and that's the deck that you have, and you make, you know, some presumption, I suppose, with every conflict we've ever had, that you can look back on it in hindsight and say, "Well, we made a wrong estimate in that regard." I think they did the best they could with what they had.

Q Senator Rockefeller --

Q But --

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Can I just respond to that?

SEN. ROBERTS: Yeah. Now I'm talking about the intelligence community, not the administration. Right.

Q Yeah, but I'm talking the intelligence versus what actually is being found.

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: Yeah.

SEN. ROBERTS: Correct.

Q There were exaggerated statements. I thought you just said --

SEN. ROCKEFELLER: What I thought was an earlier question was the whole question of manipulation or use of for the purpose of shaping views. And the last time we all met out here, I raised that question. I've raised it a number of times since, and I raise it once again.

If you -- if you're going to go to war and you're going to take the American nation to war and thus endanger lives of citizens, American and others, all over the world because of something called "the war on terrorism," then you need to be fairly certain about certain dangers. And either the chemical weapons had to be there, the nuclear weapons had to be there, or the biological weapons had to be there, and it appears to me that none of them were there. And so, a decision -- I can't say that with finality, obviously, but I don't think, you know, six months from now I'm going to be making a very different statement to you. And I think that bears relatively substantially consequences on the possibility of management and interpretation of what was going on over there.

SEN. ROBERTS: Let me say that, you know, this is all, you know, 20-20 hindsight from not only the vote, but the war. And I am a little concerned about this business of the intelligence community getting, you know, beaten severely about the head and shoulders every day in the press, or for that matter, the administration or anybody else.

Prior to 9/11, if you were to connect the dots on any kind of a threat warning, there was some concern about being risk-averse; that if you connected two of the five dots that you would have to in order to get a complete picture, you were being risk-averse and you wouldn't report that and it wouldn't go to the policymaker and there wouldn't be any action, regardless of that threat. After 9/11, obviously, if you had one or two dots to connect, that's what you do.

You push the product. Now the intelligence community is getting criticized, indicating, Well, you need -- you know, we're back to stage one, we're back to the four or five dots. You can't have it both ways, it seems to me, especially when you're in the business of fighting a global war on terrorism. So I think it's a little unfair to really characterize the intelligence as just simply bad. It's simply we are in a different time, in a different period where, if you get any information, you'd better push it to the policy makers, and they'd best -- they make the best judgment that they possibly can. If they're in error, they're in error. But what happens the other way around? If you're going to err, you'd better err in behalf of the national security interests of the country.

I think that pretty well does it.

Q Thank you.

Q Thank you, Senator.

(Pause.)

Q Representative Goss?

SEN. ROBERTS: Chairman Goss is here, and he was -- he was present at the hearings as of this morning.

Chairman Goss, would you like to make a comment?

REP. GOSS: Yeah. Actually, I have a printed comment so I don't have to say much. (Laughter.)

SEN. ROBERTS: All right.

Okay, thank you.

REP. GOSS: You know, a funny thing: there is some use to the media, after all. I was actually watching television and I heard you say you were having this press conference and I was invited. So I came over. So I want to thank you, and I want to thank whichever station I was watching for the news bulletin.

We had a great meeting with Dr. Kay this morning -- and I'm sure Ms. Harman would be here, incidentally. Apparently she wasn't watching the right station when you made your announcement.

SEN. ROBERTS: Right.

REP. GOSS: We had a very good meeting this morning. And we've had some exchanges, I think everybody in the world knows by now, with the intelligence community on where we're going and how we're proceeding. And basically I think that the news is extremely good. I've not had much to say about it, because frankly I'm still reading this 13-page report, which is what we're allowed to say. And we heard a whole lot of other stuff this morning in an extensive briefing, which I'm sure you heard this afternoon, which for very legitimate reasons we are not allowed to say.

These are -- when I say "legitimate reasons," you all know what the situations are in Baghdad; it's a tough place. And I don't think anybody here in the comfort of this building in the nation's capital wants to say anything that would in any way put anybody at risk. So we're going to be abundantly careful on that.

I would urge you to read the report. It's extremely good. The conclusions I have -- and basically I am going to probably startle some people with this. We've given a lot of thought and put a lot of work in it. And if I could say that, I'm going to read this statement.

"The information provided by Dr. Kay underscores more forcefully two very important points. First, that the policy of the United States since 1998 to seek regime change in Iraq was the right policy. And second, that President Bush's decision to enforce that decision and actually remove Saddam from power was even more correct. From the information uncovered to date" -- and that would include new information this morning from Dr. Kay -- "it is clear that the threat Saddam presented to the region and to the world was real, growing and grave. Further, the briefing highlights the fact that the intelligence regarding Iraq's WMD was properly used" -- I heard a lot of questions on that -- "and is being properly used today." That would be my judgment after giving this a lot of study.

I would say this categorically. There continues to be no indication that anyone was misled by the intelligence analysis. Now, there would be some disagreement, perhaps, of other members who see the glass half-full or half-empty. I can tell you I can make that statement very clearly and look anybody straightly in the eye. I am proud of the men and women of our intelligence community. They were working with, as Senator Roberts said, not quite enough material.

There was nothing wrong with the way they did their job. They just didn't have enough. So the question is, how do we get enough? And that is the positive, leaning-forward effort that is being made by both the legislative branch and the executive branch, certainly the judicial as well where their role comes in, on behalf of the people of this country, because we're interested in national security and making it better. And that's what this is about. This is not about "gotcha" politics. And to the shame of the media, sometimes the press falls for the opportunity to play "gotcha" politics, and I realize you're incentivized by others who have different agendas.

One question was asked about, do we have enough to go to war? Let me tell you something, we didn't make the decision about going to war. The terrorists made the decision about going to war. And if anybody doesn't understand that fact now and that we are at and we are trying to do our best to win that war as safely as we can for all Americans, then you better read this report again, because what this guy, Saddam Hussein, was up to was pretty bad stuff, and it got right to our doorstep.

We don't want another Pearl Harbor. When you think about it, the Trade Towers were actually hit two times. We were a little slow on the uptake. We don't want to be slow on the uptake again.

Be happy to answer any questions. I actually have some comments too, if anybody wants them.

Q Do you have any concerns -- having taken a look at the raw intelligence data and given your background in intelligence, do you have any concern that there's a difference between the raw intelligence data and the October National Intelligence Estimate?

REP. GOSS: No.

Q Do other members?

REP. GOSS: No, I don't. And I'll tell you why I don't, because I believe that the analysis was properly caveated. There are some people who don't.

I think the analysts did the best they could with the job -- what they had. I think they had a hugely hard job. The raw information is identified as raw information. You have to go to the credibility, the reliability, the accuracy of that information. Those template tests are put on that kind of information, as they are in your business.

And I would suggest to you that it is very, very important that you understand that sometimes, you get information that is not properly caveated, not because the intelligence community didn't caveat it, but the people who are talking to you didn't caveat it. I found some instances of that recently just in today's press, as a matter of fact.

Q Did Defense Secretary Rumsfeld properly caveat things when he said repeatedly that we know for certain that they have weapons of mass destruction and we will find them? Was that properly caveated when he made those repeated statements from the podium at the Pentagon?

REP. GOSS: Excuse me?

Q Was that properly caveated when he made those statements --

REP. GOSS: I suspect in the context that he made them, yes. I suspect they were.

You see, part of the problem here is weapons of mass destruction -- if you read this, you're going to find out -- I was asked a question earlier today: Where are the weapons of mass destruction? We're already passed that point. We know they had weapons of mass destruction. Does anybody deny those photographs of the pictures of those women and children who were gassed in northern Iraq? Does anybody deny that those pictures are real? They're real pictures! Those are dead people! Those are victims of his regime. They died a horrible, cruel death. That was not made up. This is not something we're going to conveniently forget. This is not a plot by the Israelis and the Americans to conspire against Islam. This is real fact. It happened. So, you can't deny it.

So, the secretary's absolutely right. Those weapons are there. The question is what degree of weapons capacity does Saddam have now, and what happened to the capacity that we thought he had if we can't find it? And that's what we're trying to do, and that's what Dr. Kay is doing. Instead of picking at Dr. Kay, we ought to be encouraging him. It's hard work. And he needs the gratitude and the prayers and the respect of the people in this country, and those people working with him do, too.

And that's the attitude we ought to be taking here.

Sorry for being a little upset about it. I just don't think you folks understand how hard the intelligence community is working on this.

Q I guess the question that we're trying to ask is, is the issue the intelligence community exaggerating or the administration exaggerating information that was properly caveated by the intelligence community?

REP. GOSS: The answer is neither. They are both doing the best they could on speculative information, incomplete. The word that is so often used is was this "sufficient"? And the answer is no, they didn't have sufficient information. But unfortunately, war has been declared on us. We probably didn't have sufficient information to go into World War II, but war had happened to us. And we are doing the best we can with what they have.

I repeat the statement: I see no evidence whatsoever that anybody misled anybody, on the basis of this.

My frustration, which is so real, as Senator Roberts has said, is that we simply have not had all the close-in access on the plans and intentions of the targeted troublemakers. We've generally known who a lot of them are, but we haven't been able to get that access. And it's that information, that specificity would have allowed a lot of these questions that you're asking to become moot. We just haven't had it. It's a question of sufficiency.

Q To make sure that we understand, you're saying that 9/11, while the president says it's not connected to Iraq, you're saying that 9/11 makes, as you pointed out, the gassing of the Kurds in 1988 a different threat.

You know, that's 15 years ago.

REP. GOSS: What I am saying is that Saddam Hussein is a chapter in the war on terrorism, and you cannot close the war on terrorism without closing that chapter.

And I -- what short memories we seem to have. I happened to, after this weekend's events, do a side-by-side on remarks by President Clinton on his justification for going to war on Iraq. It's amazing. I suspect his comments were a lot more aggressive than President Bush's, with a lot less information. I think we have more information, and President Bush had more information. I didn't hear anybody questioning President Clinton's judgment at that time. His war lasted just a short period of time.

The current war -- we have the commitment to finish the war and take out the threat -- the threat that President Clinton warned us about and the threat that President Bush understands and is going to do something about. That's where we are. It's a difference. It's hard work, and it's not popular.

SEN. ROBERTS: Okay. Thank you very much.

REP. GOSS: Thank y'all.

SEN. ROBERTS: And welcome to the Senate.

REP. GOSS: I can talk long as you can.