Panel slams intelligence over assessment of Iraq WMDs

The intelligence establishment's determinations regarding Saddam Hussein's nonconventional capabilities and the existence of ground-to-ground missiles in Iraq was based largely on speculation rather than reliable information, a Knesset panel said in a report yesterday.

The panel, set up to investigate the functioning of the intelligence agencies in the lead up to the Iraq war and during the invasion, found that the intelligence community also failed to make an accurate assessment of Libya's chemical and nuclear programs.

Despite the harsh criticism, the report does not recommend action against any individuals.

"The lessons of the war in Iraq are a warning light that the intelligence estimates could be turned from a working instrument into a useless one," Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee chairman MK Yuval Steinitz, who headed the panel, told reporters at a press conference yesterday.

The 80-page report stressed, however, that the intelligence agencies did not deliberately mislead Israeli officials or try to push the United States into war against Iraq. "We did not take the decision to go to war. We were not telling the Americans or the British, `Do this,' or `Don't do that,'" said Labor MK Haim Ramon, a member of the panel.

After months of work and after hearing 70 testimonies, including those of the prime minister, the defense minister, the chief of staff, and the heads of military intelligence, the Mossad and the Shin Bet, the panel found that military intelligence was "floundering in the dark," in an attempt to determine the number of missiles Saddam had. What's more, this was done on a process of elimination that later turned out to be baseless.

The report quoted Military Intelligence chief Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash) as telling the Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, at the height of the war in Iraq, that his estimation was that there was a "high probability" that Iraq possessed nonconventional weapons.

As for Libya, the report said the intelligence agencies failed to discover that its nuclear program was in an advanced stage. It called this lapse a "serious intelligence failure that must lead to housecleaning and reorganization."

Yet, despite the bleak picture painted by the report, most members of the panel - except Ramon - concluded that the mistaken appraisals were not beyond the bounds of what is "professionally acceptable." The panel, therefore, did not hold anyone responsible for the failures, which ultimately did not result in any loss of life but did incur a huge monetary cost in the form of gas masks opened by the public on orders from the defense establishment, the procurement of vaccinations against smallpox for the entire public, and the call-up of thousands of reservists.

Asked about the gap between the panel's harsh findings and its decision not to hold anyone personally responsible, Steinitz said, "the report contains harsh, constructive criticism and we did not think there was place to draw personal conclusions. Even the best people can make mistakes."

The report includes almost no criticism of the political leadership - except in the area of providing the public with information - which decided to order the public to open its gas masks and to purchase the smallpox vaccine for the entire population.

Only Ramon, who rendered a minority opinion, blamed the government. "The government's decisions with regard to the deployment for the defense of the civilian rear were disproportionate to the extent of the threat," in light of the intelligence assessment that an attack on Israel was "unlikely to highly unlikely," Ramon wrote. The Labor MK also accused the government of adopting a policy of "excessive caution" in its decision to order citizens to open their gas masks.

Other members of the committee included Likud MKs Ehud Yatom and David Levy, Shas MK Eli Yishai, Shinui MK Ilan Leibowitz, and former Mossad chief Shabtai Shavit, who served as an adviser.