Joint Statement of the Co-Chairmen of the Commission on the
Intelligence Capabilities of the United States
Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction

July 15, 2004

Today the Commission completed two days of meetings in its offices in Arlington, Virginia. Yesterday’s session was devoted to the United States’ signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection capabilities. During that session, we received a series of briefings from the National Security Agency (NSA), the Intelligence Community’s collector of communications intercepts. These presentations focused on the United States’ current capabilities to collect intelligence both against countries that pose WMD proliferation threats and against transnational terrorist networks. Yesterday’s meeting also included a panel discussion with senior analysts from throughout the Intelligence Community, which allowed the Commission to hear analysts’ views on the NSA’s current collection capabilities and information-sharing practices. This session with the NSA was the second in a series of Commission meetings devoted to the Intelligence Community’s collection capabilities. The Commission’s June meetings focused on human intelligence collection.

Today’s meetings included a briefing on the role of covert action in the Intelligence Community. The Commission also met today with representatives of the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research, in the latest in a series of sessions the Commission has held with agencies within the Intelligence Community. Finally, the Commission has received the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s complete classified Report on the Intelligence Community’s Prewar Intelligence Assessment on Iraq, and the Commission has begun a careful review of the report’s analysis and conclusions—as it will review and consider the Butler Review’s report on British intelligence, and other future reports that are germane to its mission.

The highly classified information discussed during these sessions required that they be closed to the public. The Commission nonetheless will continue to keep the public informed of its work through periodic statements and through its website, available at www.wmd.gov.

Commission Co-Chairs:

The Honorable Charles S. Robb
The Honorable Laurence H. Silberman