Senate Intelligence Committee Criticizes CIA; World Court Rules West Bank Barrier Is in Violation of International Law
AARON BROWN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening again, everyone. There are a lot of things we could still argue about where going to war with Iraq is concerned. The one thing we can't argue about any more is whether there were stockpiles of WMD in the country. The Senate Intelligence Committee report issued today pulls few punches in its criticism of the intelligence community's work where Iraq was concerned. The unanswered question -- or at least the debatable question -- is why they got it so wrong. And it is no small question. The death toll of coalition soldiers in Iraq crossed the 1,000 mark today. We don't know how many more thousands of Iraqis have died, or how many of them were innocent victims that wars so often claim. The cost of the war has been enormous, and it is part of the reason we in this country live with record deficits. Was the intelligence manipulated? Were analysts pressured to deliver the answer their bosses wanted? Were we all mislead? The report doesn't answer those questions. We wish it did. So, no doubt, do the families of the more than 800 Americans who have already died in Iraq. "The Whip" begins with the black and white on the page. CNN's David Ensor reported this today. David, a headline tonight.</s>DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Aaron, a 511- page broadside by the Senate Intelligence Committee against the intelligence community. It got it wrong on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The report has broad political implications -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: It certainly does, David, thank you. Baghdad next, and a complication to building a new society out of the pieces of an old one. CNN's Jane Arraf with the watch. Jane, a headline.</s>JANE ARRAF, CNN BAGHDAD BUREAU CHIEF: Aaron, as the insurgency in Iraq continues, a year after American occupation, authorities vowed to destroy the Baath Party forever, a new sovereign Iraqi government is inviting Baathist to come in from the cold.</s>BROWN: Jane, thank you. And finally, to the question of the wall, or the fence, or just the thing standing between the Israelis and the Palestinians, and what an international court said about it today. CNN's John Vause with the watch in Jerusalem, so John a headline from you.</s>JOHN VAUSE, CNN CORRESPONDENT: A legal slam-dunk for the Palestinians -- everything they could have hoped for and probably then some. The World Court says Israel's barrier through the West Bank is a violation of international law and must be torn down. The Palestinians say this is an historic day. Israelis say they'll ignore it -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: John, thank you. We get back to you and the rest shortly. Also coming up on this Friday night, Nader and Dean, as one former and one current presidential hopeful debate the reasons for staying in the race. And from California tonight, one of those "what was he thinking" stories. The education secretary and the 6-year-old, in what could be called, "politicians say the darndest things." And it's my favorite night of the week, not just because it's Friday, but because we have a tabloid or two to throw in the "Morning Papers." All that and more in the hour ahead. We begin tonight with the Senate Intelligence Committee's report. It reads like an indictment of the ways and means of gathering intelligence used to make the case for war. An indictment and, sadly, almost literally a post-mortem. Also a report card, but in one respect, an incomplete one. Nothing about how the administration used the intelligence it received. That's expected to come after the election. Within its scope, however, few punches pulled today. Here's CNN's David Ensor.</s>ENSOR (voice-over): The Senate panel's report says the justification for the war, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, was just plain wrong, and that the U.S. intelligence community is to blame.</s>SEN. PAT ROBERTS (R), CHAIRMAN, INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Today we know these assessments were wrong. And as our inquiry will show, they were also unreasonable and largely unsupported by the available -- the available intelligence.</s>ENSOR: The report complains of "group think" in U.S. intelligence, leading the community to interpret ambiguous evidence as conclusively indicative of a WMD program.</s>SEN. JOHN ROCKEFELLER (D) INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: We in Congress would not have authorized that war -- we would not have authorized that war with 75 votes, if we knew what we know now.</s>ENSOR: At the CIA, the deputy director took the unusual step of holding a news conference to respond, saying steps have already been taken to make sure such mistakes are never made again.</s>JOHN MCLAUGHLIN, DEPUTY DIRECTOR, CIA: So my first message to you is a very simple one. We get it.</s>ROBERTS: Most, if not all, of these problems stem from a broken corporate culture and poor management.</s>MCLAUGHLIN: No, I don't think we have a broken corporate culture at all.</s>ENSOR: The report says before the Iraq war, the CIA did not have a single officer in that country working on finding weapons of mass destruction. Committee staffers call the agency risk adverse.</s>MCLAUGHLIN: I mean, if its intended to convey a timidity on the part of our officers in terms of working in dangerous environments, I would just reject that totally out of hand. I mean, we put stars on the wall out here this year. We put stars on the wall out here this year.</s>ENSOR: The stars in the CIA's front hall represent officers killed in the line of duty. Though McLaughlin insisted CIA analysts were not pressured excessively by administration officials to come up with conclusions that the White House wanted on Iraq, the committee's top Democrat is not so sure.</s>ROCKEFELLER: A veteran of many years there said that the hammering on analysts was greater than he had seen in his 32 years of service to the Central Intelligence Agency, and he was referring to pressure.</s>ENSOR: With the 9/11 Commission report yet to come, the U.S. intelligence community is in for a summer of criticism and debate, followed possibly in 2005 by some important changes in the way it's organized and led -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: David, we'll get into this a bit in a moment with the two committee chairmen. But let me ask you as well what's next here? This is not the end of the road as far as the Senate Intelligence Committee report is concerned?</s>ENSOR: No, that's right. There's a sort of second phase where they're going to look into how the intelligence was used, or some believe misused. Into issues like what did Ahmed Chalabi's group of Iraqi dissidents supply -- people who lied about weapons of mass destruction. Was that information funneled straight through Douglas Feith's office at the Pentagon to the White House? Those kinds of questions. It will be quite -- quite a hot topic.</s>BROWN: But that comes after the election?</s>ENSOR: Probably, yes.</s>BROWN: David, thank you. David Ensor in Washington tonight. We have done our best these months to keep up with the committee as it went about its work, and in that regard Senators Rockefeller and Roberts have helped immensely. We spoke with them today at the end of a long and trying process.</s>BROWN (voice-over): Senator Roberts, let me start with you, if I may. You said today that this was a failure by the intelligence community managers to adequately encourage analysts to challenge assumptions. That sounds like it is at least possible that what they're -- what the bosses were doing -- was saying to the people who work for them, give us the answer we want.</s>ROBERTS: I don't think that's the case so much as it -- I've said in the statement and actually both Jay and I have said it -- that the failure was more of something like a group think or a layering effect where you -- you kept getting intelligence, but you ignored the assumption that really wasn't based on solid -- on solid -- on solid research or a solid product. And so you ended up as sort of an assumption train. And at some point, some manager has to step in and say now wait a minute, is this objective, are we truly sure of this product? Senator Rockefeller has made the point in many of these interviews that what they really lacked was a "red teaming" policy, i.e., something that they use in the military where you have a red team and they're contrary and this team comes in and double-checks -- they sort of have a contrary view and say are you sure about this product. And that's what was missing.</s>BROWN: Senator Rockefeller, it sounds like in the intelligence business, at least as much as in the military business, that sort of operation is essential.</s>ROCKEFELLER: It is. And, you know, I think Pat Roberts and I both agree that -- that the intelligence business has changed completely since 9/11. It's probably changed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, but we just didn't understand that until the 9/11 tragedy. Now we are no longer -- with the exception of our war with Iraq -- we're probably no longer going to be fighting countries, states, people in uniforms. They're going to be people; you know, down in the subway somewhere or up the street. They're going to look like us, or not look like us, but we're not going to be able to know where they're coming from. So intelligence is all of a sudden gotten about 500 percent more difficult. And therefore the need for human intelligence, which both Chairman Roberts and I have fought for, hard, to have more people on the ground, around the world -- and I really mean that -- around the world in 100 more countries -- who can give us information that we need to know about what others have in mind.</s>BROWN: Senator Roberts, was there pressure from anyone within the intelligence community, within the Pentagon, within the White House -- anywhere that you can find, for them to come up with this specific answer, that the Iraqis had these stockpiles?</s>ROBERTS: Well, I think we have a difference of opinion on the committee as to what really constitutes pressure. And so I would expect my distinguished colleague to offer a different point of view, but in 516 pages and in many, many comments that I made in public and in committee asking if anybody had been coerced, intimidated or manipulated, had there been any pressure, not one person came forward. What Senator Rockefeller will point out is that there is concern that repetitive questioning where the whole environment in regards to post-9/11 and going to war did constitute pressure. My response to that is that I hope to heck there's pressure by the policymakers and also by those of us in the Congress in terms of the witnesses that we -- you know, where we ask questions. After 9/11, everybody is urged not to be risk adverse, but to lean forward and on the repetitive questioning issue, it appears now that on the WMD section, we had very little repetitive questioning. And so that was the section where we find most flaws in the intelligence product. However, on the terrorist section, there was repetitive questioning and that section is much more reasonable and much more accurate.</s>BROWN: Senator Rockefeller, do you believe that if the truth had been known that the country would have gone to war with Iraq?</s>ROCKEFELLER: Well, that decision would not have been up to either Pat Roberts or myself; that would have been up to the president.</s>BROWN: Would the Congress have authorized war?</s>ROCKEFELLER: No, I don't think the Congress would have. I voted for the -- authorizing legislation and have said for months now that now that I know what I do know about the fact that all of the reasons given to us by the president in his state -- second state of the union message, which really propelled -- which really wasn't spoken to us so much as it was to you know the 50-85 million American people that we would not have voted for that resolution. We would not have given them the option of going to the U.N. and -- and not being able to get other people but basically not giving him the free choice to go to war. Because the intelligence undermined every -- virtually every reason that he gave us that night.</s>BROWN: And Senator Roberts, you're the chairman and you get the last word here. Is this it? Is this everything? Or after the election will there be more?</s>ROBERTS: Oh, there's going to be more. We're -- you know this is an ongoing effort. You know we hear a lot of talk about what about the use of intelligence, what about the intelligence in reference to pre-war intelligence on post-war Iraq. We know the difficulties are very severe over there now. Why didn't we know more than we do now. And then also the involvement of the Department of Defense so-called planning cell under -- under the Undersecretary Douglas Feith and the INC, the International -- or, pardon me, the Iraqi National Congress. You know, what effect that had. We had to get this first report out. We will go to phase two and we also have a reform agenda that both Senator Rockefeller and I will have at least three hearings of wise men and women to tell us what they think is the best approach. We're going to do it very carefully, very deliberately, but this country is under a threat on a possible attack some time between now and the election and so we have to be very expeditious as well.</s>BROWN: Gentlemen, thank you for your time and particularly thank you for your good work on this. We appreciate it very much.</s>ROBERTS: OK, thank you Aaron.</s>ROCKEFELLER: Thank you, Aaron.</s>BROWN: Talked to the two senators late this afternoon and that's why there was some redundancy in both David's report and that interview and we apologize for that. As we mentioned at the top, the long-awaited report arrived at a grim milestone in Iraq. The overall death toll among coalition forces now exceeds 1,000 -- 1,0002. U.S. forces, of course, have sustained the largest number of losses -- 882 American troops have died since the fighting began. The military makes it relatively easy to keep track of these sad milestones. It is a whole lot harder to measure the losses among Iraqis, civilians and otherwise. As the death toll has climbed over the months, the fortunes of one particular group in Iraq have come pretty close to full circle. When Baghdad fell, so did Saddam Hussein's Baathist Party. It's members were labeled the enemy and banned from a role in the new Iraq, a strategy that to say the least did not produce the dividends hoped for as the insurgency grew, as Fallujah exploded, the members of Saddam's former regime got a second wind. Which brings us to the new sovereign Iraq where everything old has a way of seeming new again. From Baghdad, here's CNN's Jane Arraf.</s>ARRAF (voice-over): This new sovereign Iraq is just a week old, but already asserting its independence. The government is promising an amnesty for low-level insurgents and militia members. And it's bringing the Arab Baath Socialist Party, disbanded and discredited under Paul Bremer's Iraq, in from the cold. The shift was signaled in Washington itself by the new Iraqi ambassador to the United States.</s>REND RAHIM FRANCKE, IRAQI AMBASSADOR TO U.S.: This is a new departure with a democratic, pluralistic system that respects the right of all the citizens, that gives everybody in Iraq an opportunity to participate in decision making, in making their voices heard.</s>ARRAF: Rend Rahim said the new Iraq would try to engage not just former Baathist's but current ones. Saddam Hussein headed the Baath Party, but he didn't invent it. Many Iraqis say he and his regime hijacked a party that had made Iraq one of the best-educated countries in the region. It's a far cry from May of last year when the chief U.S. administrator hailed the destruction of the 57-year-old Baath Party as one of the coalition's main achievements.</s>PAUL BREMER, FORMER CPA ADMINISTRATOR: Those who were on high before, in particular the Baathists, who used their power to repress the Iraqi people, will be removed from office.</s>ARRAF: But the move banned from public employment hundreds of thousands of badly needed teachers, engineers and other professionals; dissolving the Iraqi army through just as many officers out of work, creating hundreds of thousands of enemies, making clear they would have no role in the new Iraq. Iraqis say in teahouses and living rooms in Baghdad and other cities a new Baath Party is forming. One that will appeal partly to Sunni Muslims who believe they've been ignored and stripped of Saddam Hussein one that will be able to compete in the political process. Some of the most senior U.S. military officials believe even people funding the insurgency can be convinced that their fight is futile and can be rehabilitated.</s>LT. GENERAL THOMAS METZ, U.S. ARMY: My logic tells me that that's a better way to go than to feed an insurgency with your money, and maybe we can work to get those -- have a few converts.</s>ARRAF: Many American officials say the United States has learned a lot in the past year. One of the things its learned the hard way is that building a new country takes more than tearing down a regime. Jane Arraf, CNN, Baghdad.</s>BROWN: The missing Marine's odyssey now finds him in Germany. Corporal Wassef Hassoun arrived today for evaluation and debriefing at the Army Medical Center in Landstuhl. They'll be -- I mean, he'll be undergoing tests -- medical tests, mostly, but he'll also be answering lots of questions, we are told, about his disappearance in Iraq and his sudden reappearance in Lebanon. Speaking to reporters back home in Utah the corporal's brother today denied allegations that the kidnapping was part of a hoax. On now to the line of concrete dividing Israel from parts of the Palestinian West Bank. The Israelis call it a security fence, the Palestinians a barrier wall and worse. For both sides this is more than a semantic question. Israelis believe it prevents suicide attacks. Palestinians believe it is choking what's left of a potential state to death. Today a court in The Netherlands issued a ruling, which means little in and of itself, but could set the stage for more. Reporting tonight for us, CNN's John Vause.</s>VAUSE (voice-over): The moment of victory for Palestinians. The International Court of Justice could not have been more resolute. This is a wall, it said, not just a security fence, built illegally on occupied Palestinian land. Construction must stop, said the court, what has been built, torn down, and Israel must pay compensation to thousands of Palestinians for damaged property.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It's a total slam for the Israeli policy. None of the Israeli considerations was accepted, none -- they just did not get anything. Total loss.</s>VAUSE: One hundred miles of the barrier has already been built and Israel says construction of the remaining 300 or so miles will not stop.</s>BENJAMIN NETANYAHU, ISRAELI FINANCE MINISTER: For God's sake, all Israel is doing to defend itself against the most unprecedented wave of terror in history is to put up a fence.</s>VAUSE: But the Court of Justice ruled Israel is doing much more: violating international law though the risk is there of de facto annexation of Palestinian land and it held grave concerns about the devastating impact on the lives of the Palestinian civilian population, and the prospects for solving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict.</s>SAEB ERAKAT, CHIEF PALESTINIAN NEGOTIATOR: This is suffocating the lives of 343,000 Palestinians -- killing them. They cannot tell me I'm going to live and I live to die. The concept here is live and let live. So we want to build a wall, let them build it on their own borders.</s>VAUSE: Israel argues the barrier is only to self-defense, that attacks have fallen by 90 percent, a point made by Israeli protesters carrying photos of victims of Palestinian suicide bombers, all killed before construction began. Arnold Roff's (ph) daughter was one of them.</s>UNIDENTIFIED MALE, FATHER OF TERROR VICTIM: I can't say that my daughter's life would have been spared -- I don't know. But 90 percent is a very compelling number for a father.</s>VAUSE: And one very important point in all of this, the World Court ruling is an advisory, non-binding opinion only. Israel always expected this to go badly. It has every intention to ignore it -- Aaron.</s>BROWN: So when all is said and done, after all the arguing in the court and all the reporting today, when all is said and done, nothing is going to change?</s>VAUSE: Nothing is going to change tomorrow but there is hope for the Palestinians that this will go to the U.N. Security Council. All 26 previous advisory opinions issued by the World Court have been acted on in some way. The Palestinians take heart from that. The Israelis, though take heart from the fact that the U.S. is in the Security Council and will likely torpedo any move against Israel.</s>BROWN: John, thank you. John Vause in Jerusalem. Ahead on NEWSNIGHT tonight, two men who may never be president debate the reasons to be one. And they couldn't be prouder. What else would you expect from the parents of a vice presidential candidate? A talk with the parents of John Edwards. We'll take a break first from New York on the edge of Columbus Circle, and this is NEWSNIGHT.