Congressional Record: June 11, 2003 (House)
Page H5249-H5251
INFORMED CITIZENRY VERSUS NEED FOR SECRECY
The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the
gentleman from Michigan (Mr. Conyers) is recognized for 5 minutes.
Mr. CONYERS. Mr. Speaker, a critical problem that demands constant
oversight in a democracy is the tension between an informed Congress
and an informed citizenry because both are necessary for a democracy.
That tension is against the need for secrecy in some instances and in
the interest of national security. That is what I wish to draw Members'
attention to today.
From Watergate to Iran contra, to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution, we
have seen and experienced and learned from the peril of the executive
branch's use of secrecy in the name of national security to accomplish
unlawful deception and illegal acts.
We face this issue again now in regard to Iraq's weapons of mass
destruction and the flat assertions by the President of the United
States that Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction pose an
imminent threat to the United States. After all, it was these
assertions that led many of the Members of the legislature, both in the
House of Representatives and in the other body, to support the war, and
so did many Americans.
So it is a significant question whether the President's assurance was
warranted by the evidence, whether he had something to back up these
repeated assertions that the weapons of mass destruction held by the
former ruler of Iraq were indeed an imminent threat to the United
States.
So where are these weapons of mass destruction? One day the President
assured us that they will be found. The next day we are told that he
only meant to claim that Iraq had programs to develop weapons of mass
destruction, and that program was under way. But then the day after
that his spokesman said never mind, even if Saddam had no weapons
imminently threatening us, he was a bad and evil person who deserved to
be destroyed.
Now, these contradictions have begun to be noted by more and more
people, and I want to report that some in the public are changing their
view about this war and what brought us into it as American casualties
mount in Iraq, as violence and civilian strife grow worse there, and
disease and hunger spread in the aftermath of war.
Now, whatever the ultimate final assessment is that will be made
about Iraq, the fundamental problem that I bring to Members' attention
this evening is if the President deceives the Congress and the public
on an issue as sensitive as war or peace, it raises the greatest
constitutional issues about whether he is abusing his office, whether
he is violating his oath, and whether he is misleading the American
people.
{time} 1745
It is particularly critical because this President's doctrine of
preventive war, never before employed by any of the preceding
Presidents of this great country, suggests that he may or will be
trying to persuade America to support other preventive wars in the
future. Will that campaign be based on misrepresentation?
Missing Weapons of Mass Destruction: Is Lying About the Reason for War
an Impeachable Offense?
(By John W. Dean)
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
[[Page H5250]]
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
Iraq 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 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.''--
Untied 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 never 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 mejahideen''--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,
January 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 reason 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 Hose 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 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 there 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.
Under Secretary 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
1,400 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
[[Page H5251]]
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 the 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 decisionmaking 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 national
into a politically desirable war. Let us hope that is not the
case.
____________________
