Missing Weapons Of Mass Destruction: Is Lying
About The Reason For War An Impeachable
Offense?
By John W. Dean
Friday 06 June 2003
http://writ.news.findlaw.com/dean/20030606.html
President George W. Bush has got a very
serious problem. Before asking Congress for a
Joint Resolution authorizing the use of
American military forces in Iraq, he made a
number of unequivocal statements about the
reason the United States needed to pursue the
most radical actions any nation can undertake -
acts of war against another nation.
Now it is clear that many of his statements
appear to be false. In the past, Bush's White
House has been very good at sweeping ugly
issues like this under the carpet, and out of
sight. But it is not clear that they will be
able to make the question of what happened to
Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction
(WMDs) go away - unless, perhaps, they start
another war.
That seems unlikely. Until the questions
surrounding the Iraqi war are answered,
Congress and the public may strongly resist
more of President Bush's warmaking.
Presidential statements, particularly on
matters of national security, are held to an
expectation of the highest standard of
truthfulness. A president cannot stretch, twist
or distort facts and get away with it.
President Lyndon Johnson's distortions of the
truth about Vietnam forced him to stand down
from reelection. President Richard Nixon's
false statements about Watergate forced his
resignation.
Frankly, I hope the WMDs are found, for it
will end the matter. Clearly, the story of the
missing WMDs is far from over. And it is too
early, of course, to draw conclusions. But it
is not too early to explore the relevant
issues.
President Bush's Statements On Iraq's Weapons
Of Mass Destruction:
Readers may not recall exactly what President
Bush said about weapons of mass destruction; I
certainly didn't. Thus, I have compiled these
statements below. In reviewing them, I saw that
he had, indeed, been as explicit and
declarative as I had recalled.
Bush's statements, in chronological order,
were:
"Right now, Iraq is expanding and improving
facilities that were used for the production
of biological weapons."
United Nations Address - September 12, 2002
"Iraq has stockpiled biological and chemical
weapons, and is rebuilding the facilities
used to make more of those weapons."
"We have sources that tell us that Saddam
Hussein recently authorized Iraqi field
commanders to use chemical weapons -- the
very weapons the dictator tells us he does
not have."
Radio Address - October 5, 2002
"The Iraqi regime . . . possesses and
produces chemical and biological weapons. It
is seeking nuclear weapons."
"We know that the regime has produced
thousands of tons of chemical agents,
including mustard gas, sarin nerve gas, VX
nerve gas."
"We've also discovered through intelligence
that Iraq has a growing fleet of manned and
unmanned aerial vehicles that could be used
to disperse chemical or biological weapons
across broad areas. We're concerned that Iraq
is exploring ways of using these UAVS for
missions targeting the United States."
"The evidence indicates that Iraq is
reconstituting its nuclear weapons program.
Saddam Hussein has held numerous meetings
with Iraqi nuclear scientists, a group he
calls his "nuclear mujahideen" - his nuclear
holy warriors. Satellite photographs reveal
that Iraq is rebuilding facilities at sites
that have been part of its nuclear program in
the past. Iraq has attempted to purchase
high-strength aluminum tubes and other
equipment needed for gas centrifuges, which
are used to enrich uranium for nuclear
weapons."
Cincinnati, Ohio Speech - October 7, 2002
"Our intelligence officials estimate that
Saddam Hussein had the materials to produce
as much as 500 tons of sarin, mustard and VX
nerve agent."
State of the Union Address - Jan 28, 2003
"Intelligence gathered by this and other
governments leaves no doubt that the Iraq
regime continues to possess and conceal some
of the most lethal weapons ever devised."
Address to the Nation - March 17, 2003
Should The President Get The Benefit Of The
Doubt?
When these statements were made, Bush's let-
me-mince-no-words posture was convincing to
many Americans. Yet much of the rest of the
world, and many other Americans, doubted them.
As Bush's veracity was being debated at the
United Nations, it was also being debated on
campuses - including those where I happened to
be lecturing at the time.
On several occasions, students asked me the
following question: Should they believe the
President of the United States? My answer was
that they should give the President the benefit
of the doubt, for several reasons deriving from
the usual procedures that have operated in
every modern White House and that, I assumed,
had to be operating in the Bush White House,
too.
First, I assured the students that these
statements had all been carefully considered
and crafted. Presidential statements are the
result of a process, not a moment's thought.
White House speechwriters process raw
information, and their statements are passed on
to senior aides who have both substantive
knowledge and political insights. And this all
occurs before the statement ever reaches the
President for his own review and possible
revision.
Second, I explained that - at least in every
White House and administration with which I was
familiar, from Truman to Clinton - statements
with national security implications were the
most carefully considered of all. The White
House is aware that, in making these
statements, the President is speaking not only
to the nation, but also to the world.
Third, I pointed out to the students, these
statements are typically corrected rapidly if
they are later found to be false. And in this
case, far from backpedaling from the
President's more extreme claims, Bush's press
secretary, Ari Fleischer had actually, at
times, been even more emphatic than the
President had. For example, on January 9, 2003,
Fleischer stated, during his press briefing,
"We know for a fact that there are weapons
there."
In addition, others in the Administration
were similarly quick to back the President up,
in some cases with even more unequivocal
statements. Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld repeatedly claimed that Saddam had
WMDs - and even went so far as to claim he knew
"where they are; they're in the area around
Tikrit and Baghdad."
Finally, I explained to the students that the
political risk was so great that, to me, it was
inconceivable that Bush would make these
statements if he didn't have damn solid
intelligence to back him up. Presidents do not
stick their necks out only to have them chopped
off by political opponents on an issue as
important as this, and if there was any doubt,
I suggested, Bush's political advisers would be
telling him to hedge. Rather than stating a
matter as fact, he would be say: "I have been
advised," or "Our intelligence reports strongly
suggest," or some such similar hedge. But Bush
had not done so.
So what are we now to conclude if Bush's
statements are found, indeed, to be as grossly
inaccurate as they currently appear to have
been?
After all, no weapons of mass destruction
have been found, and given Bush's statements,
they should not have been very hard to find -
for they existed in large quantities,
"thousands of tons" of chemical weapons alone.
Moreover, according to the statements, telltale
facilities, groups of scientists who could
testify, and production equipment also existed.
So where is all that? And how can we
reconcile the White House's unequivocal
statements with the fact that they may not
exist?
There are two main possibilities. One that
something is seriously wrong within the Bush
White House's national security operations.
That seems difficult to believe. The other is
that the President has deliberately misled the
nation, and the world.
A Desperate Search For WMDs Has So Far
Yielded Little, If Any, Fruit
Even before formally declaring war against
Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the President had
dispatched American military special forces
into Iraq to search for weapons of mass
destruction, which he knew would provide the
primary justification for Operation Freedom.
None were found.
Throughout Operation Freedom's penetration of
Iraq and drive toward Baghdad, the search for
WMDs continued. None were found.
As the coalition forces gained control of
Iraqi cities and countryside, special search
teams were dispatched to look for WMDs. None
were found.
During the past two and a half months,
according to reliable news reports, military
patrols have visited over 300 suspected WMD
sites throughout Iraq. None of the prohibited
weapons were found there.
British and American Press Reaction to the
Missing WMDs
British Prime Minister Tony Blair is also
under serious attack in England, which he
dragged into the war unwillingly, based on the
missing WMDs. In Britain, the missing WMDs are
being treated as scandalous; so far, the
reaction in the U.S. has been milder.
New York Times columnist, Paul Krugman, has
taken Bush sharply to task, asserting that it
is "long past time for this administration to
be held accountable." "The public was told that
Saddam posed an imminent threat," Krugman
argued. "If that claim was fraudulent," he
continued, "the selling of the war is arguably
the worst scandal in American political history
- worse than Watergate, worse than Iran-
contra." But most media outlets have reserved
judgment as the search for WMDs in Iraq
continues.
Still, signs do not look good. Last week, the
Pentagon announced it was shifting its search
from looking for WMD sites, to looking for
people who can provide leads as to where the
missing WMDs might be.
Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and
International Security John Bolton, while
offering no new evidence, assured Congress that
WMDs will indeed be found. And he advised that
a new unit called the Iraq Survey Group,
composed of some 1400 experts and technicians
from around the world, is being deployed to
assist in the searching.
But, as Time magazine reported, the leads are
running out. According to Time, the Marine
general in charge explained that "[w]e've been
to virtually every ammunition supply point
between the Kuwaiti border and Baghdad," and
remarked flatly, "They're simply not there."
Perhaps most troubling, the President has
failed to provide any explanation of how he
could have made his very specific statements,
yet now be unable to back them up with
supporting evidence. Was there an Iraqi
informant thought to be reliable, who turned
out not to be? Were satellite photos
innocently, if negligently misinterpreted? Or
was his evidence not as solid as he led the
world to believe?
The absence of any explanation for the gap
between the statements and reality only
increases the sense that the President's
misstatements may actually have been
intentional lies.
Investigating The Iraqi War Intelligence
Reports
Even now, while the jury is still out as to
whether intentional misconduct occurred, the
President has a serious credibility problem.
Newsweek magazine posed the key questions: "If
America has entered a new age of pre-emption --
when it must strike first because it cannot
afford to find out later if terrorists possess
nuclear or biological weapons--exact
intelligence is critical. How will the United
States take out a mad despot or a nuclear bomb
hidden in a cave if the CIA can't say for sure
where they are? And how will Bush be able to
maintain support at home and abroad?"
In an apparent attempt to bolster the
President's credibility, and his own, Secretary
Rumsfeld himself has now called for a Defense
Department investigation into what went wrong
with the pre-war intelligence. New York Times
columnist Maureen Dowd finds this effort about
on par with O. J.'s looking for his wife's
killer. But there may be a difference: Unless
the members of Administration can find someone
else to blame - informants, surveillance
technology, lower-level personnel, you name it
- they may not escape fault themselves.
Congressional committees are also looking
into the pre-war intelligence collection and
evaluation. Senator John Warner (R-VA),
chairman of the Senate Armed Services
Committee, said his committee and the Senate
Intelligence Committee would jointly
investigate the situation. And the House
Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence
plans an investigation.
These investigations are certainly
appropriate, for there is potent evidence of
either a colossal intelligence failure or
misconduct - and either would be a serious
problem. When the best case scenario seems to
be mere incompetence, investigations certainly
need to be made.
Senator Bob Graham - a former chairman of the
Senate Intelligence Committee - told CNN's
Aaron Brown, that while he still hopes they
find WMDs or at least evidence thereof, he has
also contemplated three other possible
alternative scenarios:
One is that [the WMDs] were spirited out of
Iraq, which maybe is the worst of all
possibilities, because now the very thing that
we were trying to avoid, proliferation of
weapons of mass destruction, could be in the
hands of dozens of groups. Second, that we had
bad intelligence. Or third, that the
intelligence was satisfactory but that it was
manipulated, so as just to present to the
American people and to the world those things
that made the case for the necessity of war
against Iraq.
Senator Graham seems to believe there is a
serious chance that it is the final scenario
that reflects reality. Indeed, Graham told CNN
"there's been a pattern of manipulation by this
administration."
Graham has good reason to complain. According
to the New York Times, he was one of the few
members of the Senate who saw the national
intelligence estimate that was the basis for
Bush's decisions. After reviewing it, Senator
Graham requested that the Bush Administration
declassify the information before the Senate
voted on the Administration's resolution
requesting use of the military in Iraq.
But rather than do so, CIA Director Tenet
merely sent Graham a letter discussing the
findings. Graham then complained that Tenet's
letter only addressed "findings that supported
the administration's position on Iraq," and
ignored information that raised questions about
intelligence. In short, Graham suggested that
the Administration, by cherrypicking only
evidence to its own liking, had manipulated the
information to support its conclusion.
Recent statements by one of the high-level
officials privy to the decision making process
that lead to the Iraqi war also strongly
suggests manipulation, if not misuse of the
intelligence agencies. Deputy Secretary of
Defense Paul Wolfowitz, during an interview
with Sam Tannenhaus of Vanity Fair magazine,
said: "The truth is that for reasons that have
a lot to do with the U.S. government
bureaucracy we settled on the one issue that
everyone could agree on which was weapons of
mass destruction as the core reason." More
recently, Wolfowitz added what most have
believed all along, that the reason we went
after Iraq is that "[t]he country swims on a
sea of oil."
Worse than Watergate? A Potential Huge
Scandal If WMDs Are Still Missing
Krugman is right to suggest a possible
comparison to Watergate. In the three decades
since Watergate, this is the first potential
scandal I have seen that could make Watergate
pale by comparison. If the Bush Administration
intentionally manipulated or misrepresented
intelligence to get Congress to authorize, and
the public to support, military action to take
control of Iraq, then that would be a monstrous
misdeed.
As I remarked in an earlier column, this
Administration may be due for a scandal. While
Bush narrowly escaped being dragged into Enron,
it was not, in any event, his doing. But the
war in Iraq is all Bush's doing, and it is
appropriate that he be held accountable.
To put it bluntly, if Bush has taken Congress
and the nation into war based on bogus
information, he is cooked. Manipulation or
deliberate misuse of national security
intelligence data, if proven, could be "a high
crime" under the Constitution's impeachment
clause. It would also be a violation of federal
criminal law, including the broad federal anti-
conspiracy statute, which renders it a felony
"to defraud the United States, or any agency
thereof in any manner or for any purpose."
It's important to recall that when Richard
Nixon resigned, he was about to be impeached by
the House of Representatives for misusing the
CIA and FBI. After Watergate, all presidents
are on notice that manipulating or misusing any
agency of the executive branch improperly is a
serious abuse of presidential power.
Nixon claimed that his misuses of the federal
agencies for his political purposes were in the
interest of national security. The same kind of
thinking might lead a President to manipulate
and misuse national security agencies or their
intelligence to create a phony reason to lead
the nation into a politically desirable war.
Let us hope that is not the case.
John Dean, a FindLaw columnist, is a former
Counsel to the President of the United States.
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