For Immediate Release
Office of the Press Secretary
White House
September 16, 2003

White House Press Briefing by Scott McClellan

September 16, 2003

[excerpts on Iraqi WMD, David Kay report]

[...]

Q: Scott, from this podium, you and your predecessor, Ari Fleischer, have both said that the President is confident that weapons of mass destruction will be found in Iraq -- not programs, not dual capabilities, not a history of efforts to acquire them, but actual weapons of mass destruction. Is the President still confident of that and when can we expect to hear?

MR. McCLELLAN: David Kaye, who's leading the Iraq survey group, which is -- they're interviewing people, they're talking to Iraqis, they're gathering all the intelligence to pull together a complete picture of Iran -- of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program and their weapons of mass destruction. They will be presenting more information in the future about that picture. I think that there's an interim report that will be provided to the Director of Central Intelligence, Director Tenet. And so, that work continues. And, yes, we still stand by what we've previously said.

Q: That there will be actual weapons found --

MR. McCLELLAN: Weapons of mass destruction and weapons programs.

Q: There was a story over the weekend that this report will be shelved, that it will be not released because they haven't found anything.

MR. McCLELLAN: I haven't heard anything like that. David Kaye continues to do his work. He's been compiling massive amounts of documents about Iraq's history of weapons of mass destruction and weapons of mass destruction program.

[...]