SENATOR CARL LEVIN, the Senate’s fiercest and most partisan critic of the Bush administration, released a “report” Thursday challenging the administration’s claim that Iraq had a relationship with al Qaeda. The report was produced by the Democratic staff of the Senate Armed Services Committee, with no input from the panel’s Republicans. Its release comes 13 days before the presidential election.
If those facts alone don’t suggest a transparently political maneuver, the contents of the report do. The 45-page Levin report is third-rate partisan hack-work. Its anonymous authors and its namesake should be deeply embarrassed. I say this not only because I disagree strongly with its inherently subjective conclusions.
Basic facts are wrong. Congressional testimony is misdated. Quotes are erroneously sourced. Context is nonexistent.
First, some background on Levin. No one in Congress has been as dogged in his efforts to downplay the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda. He has grilled witnesses in Congress, crafted numerous press releases, and sent dozens of letters to the executive branch. He even held a preemptive press conference to challenge the Senate Intelligence Committee’s review of pre-Iraq war intelligence. He did this despite the fact that he signed the unanimous, bipartisan report.
Shortly after the end of the Iraq war, Levin faulted the intelligence community for bowing to administration pressure and producing overheated intelligence products. This is how he put it in a June 16, 2003, interview on The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. “We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al Qaeda and Iraq.”
Eight months later, Levin reversed himself in an interview on Fox News on February 2, 2004. “The intel didn’t say that there is a direct connection between al Qaeda and Iraq. That was not the intel. That’s what this administration exaggerated to produce.”
How is it that the intelligence community could report to policymakers that “there was a very strong link between al Qaeda and Iraq” but not a “direct connection?” Did the intelligence community first report a “very strong link” and then reverse itself? We were left to wonder.
Sadly, the new report sows more confusion. Levin now claims that the intelligence community “was consistently dubious of such a connection.” Really? Then what did he mean when he said: “We were told by the intelligence community that there was a very strong link between al Qaeda and Iraq.”
Indeed, that admission by Levin undercuts virtually every claim in the new report. Did he misspeak?
There are other problems. The Levin report refers to “DCI Tenet’s testimony before the SSCI in February, 2002.” (SSCI refers to the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.) It quotes Tenet’s testimony: “[i]t would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of state sponsorship [of al Qaeda], whether Iranian or Iraqi and we’ll see where the evidence takes us.”
This section is incorrect and misleading for several reasons. And understood properly, it undermines a central claim of the Levin report.
The Tenet testimony in question actually came not before the Intelligence Committee, but the Senate Armed Services Committee. And it came not in “February, 2002,” but on March 19, 2002. Nitpicking? Perhaps. But much of the Levin report is not verifiable because the intelligence remains classified and if this sloppiness is representative of the work product, it does not inspire confidence. (The report elsewhere refers to “MSNBC’s Capital Report.” The show Capital Report airs on CNBC.)
In any case, here is the entire exchange from March 19, 2002:
MR. TENET: Well, as I note in my statement, there is no doubt that there have been contacts and linkages to the al Qaeda organization. As to where we are in September 11th, the jury’s out. And as I said carefully in my statement, it would be a mistake to dismiss the possibility of state sponsorship, whether Iranian or Iraqi, and we’ll see where the evidence takes us. But I want you to think about al Qaeda as a front company that mixes and matches its capabilities. The distinctions between Sunni and Shi’a that have traditionally divided terrorist groups are not distinctions you should make anymore, because there is a common interest against the United States and its allies in this region, and they will seek capability wherever they can get it.
The Levin report adds “of al Qaeda” as the referent for state sponsorship. As the context makes clear, Tenet was speaking of “September 11th.” This is no small distinction. Some seven months after the 9/11 attacks the CIA director said publicly that the “jury’s out” on potential Iraqi involvement in 9/11. How, then, can Levin criticize administration officials who came to the same conclusion or, more accurately, refused to come to a conclusion?
Moving on: In criticizing Pentagon civilians for exaggerating intelligence on the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship, Levin writes: “The IC did not agree that Iraq had cooperated with al Qaeda, only that al Qaeda may have sought cooperation on training.” [Emphasis in the original.]
Wrong. In his October 7, 2002, letter to Congress, CIA Director George Tenet wrote that the agency had “credible reporting” which “stated that Iraq has provided training to al Qaeda members in the areas of poisons and gases and making conventional bombs.”
The Levin report later allows that “most senior Administration officials did not explicitly claim that Iraq had been involved in the September 11 attacks, they failed to reflect the IC’s judgment that there was no evidence of collaboration.”
Most senior administration officials? Levin’s 45-page report, based on a 16-month inquiry, cannot cite even one instance in which an administration official explicitly claims Iraqi involvement in 9/11. And Levin conveniently fails to note that President Bush has, on two separate occasions, stated publicly that the administration could not prove Iraqi complicity in those attacks. On January 31, 2003, some six weeks before the war, reporters from Newsweek asked President Bush if Iraq was involved in the September 11 attacks. Bush was direct in his response: “I cannot make that claim.”
Who’s being dishonest here?
Levin’s argument-shifting continues in the report’s conclusion. In the months before and immediately after the Iraq war, Levin questioned whether there was any relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.
Here is what he said on Fox News Sunday, November 9, 2003: “The question is whether or not they exaggerated intelligence in order to carry out their purpose, which was to make the case for going to war. Did we know, for instance, with certainty that there was any relationship between the Iraqis and the terrorists that were in Afghanistan, bin Laden? The administration said that there’s a connection between those terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq. Was there a basis for that?” [Emphasis added.]
Of course there was. But Levin today uses a different standard. He writes that the intelligence community did not believe the Iraq-al Qaeda contacts amounted to a “significant relationship.” He notes that the Senate Intelligence Committee report determined that there was “no established formal relationship” and that the 9/11 Commission concluded that the evidence did not suggest a “collaborative operational relationship.”
Those findings are certainly subject to interpretation and dispute. And the language is inherently messy. Is the training in poisons and gases described in George Tenet’s October 7, 2002, letter “collaborative?” Was the standing offer of safe haven from Saddam Hussein to Osama bin Laden, as reported in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report, evidence of a “significant relationship?”
There are many, many additional gaps and inconsistencies in the Levin report. But I’ll end with one gaping hole. The Levin report, while citing the work of journalists who support its conclusions, makes no mention of a groundbreaking New York Times piece published on June 25, 2004. The article was based on an internal Iraqi Intelligence document that has been authenticated by several U.S. intelligence agencies. A joint intelligence task force concluded that the report “corroborates and expands on previous reporting” about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection. Among its findings: that Saddam Hussein agreed to a request from bin Laden to broadcast anti-Saudi propaganda on Iraqi state-run television; that Sudanese government officials served as intermediaries between bin Laden and Uday Hussein; and that bin Laden previously “had some reservations about being labeled an Iraqi operative,” a revelation pregnant with potential meaning. The document also states that bin Laden requested “joint operations against foreign forces” in Saudi Arabia–then home to thousands of U.S. troops. The memo did not indicate a response–favorable or unfavorable.
If Levin is reluctant to talk about the Iraq-al Qaeda connection as a “relationship,” the Iraqis were not. When bin Laden left Sudan, the document indicates that Iraqi Intelligence officers would pursue “other channels through which to handle the relationship, in light of his current location.”
And if Levin believes that the lack of an “established formal relationship” somehow precluded cooperation, the Iraqis did not. The document says that “cooperation between the two organizations should be allowed to develop freely through discussion and agreement.”
Levin seems certain that such cooperation never took place. I wish I could be so sure. What happened to “the relationship?” At this point, we don’t know. And we won’t know until thousands of pages of Iraqi Intelligence paperwork is authenticated and translated.
What we do know, however, is that Levin’s new report on the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship fails to mention this crucial piece of evidence. Thirteen days before the presidential election.
I wonder why . . .
Stephen F. Hayes is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard.
