The Senate Intelligence Committee has drafted a new report on one of the key remaining questions in the run up to the Iraq war: What did the CIA predict would happen after the fall of Saddam Hussein?
Two U.S. intelligence sources said the CIA did not produce a comprehensive report that predicted in detail the ongoing insurgency of thousands of Iraqis and al–Qaida. Instead, the agency wrote several documents that contained general warnings of potential guerrilla warfare, mixed in with various other possibilities.
“The CIA never addressed the question,” said one of the sources who reviewed the reports. “They did work on a couple of products. The consensus was all over the map leading up to the war. There were predictions of catastrophes, refugees, flooding the plains down south, insurgent activity. Everything. All over the map. Sort of like, everything is possible. What are you supposed to do with that?”
The CIA is on record as contending its pre-invasion reports to the Pentagon did, in fact, predict the insurgency. In 2004, a U.S. intelligence official read snippets of those predictions to reporters, but did not release the documents.
A senior Pentagon official said he reviewed two CIA reports on post-Saddam Iraq. Neither, he said, predicted with any specificity the type of insurgency and lawlessness that sprung up after the invasion.
One source said this lack of specifics was noted in the report’s initial drafts. When Democrats took control of the Senate in January, the document was transferred to the new majority staff.
A Republican source said Democrats may attempt to add language that holds accountable President Bush, former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his policy–makers and his generals. There is wide agreement on both sides of the isle that the Bush national security team did a poor job of planning for post-Saddam Iraq by failing anticipate the ongoing insurgency.
A spokesman for Sen. Jay Rockefeller, D–W.Va., and intelligence committee chairman, said staff is now “tweaking” the report, which may be released in an unclassified form in early spring.
The committee previously released reports on the CIA and the Sept. 11 plot; the CIA’s pre-war assessments of Iraq weapons; and Iraq’s ties to al–Qaida. The committee investigations have been marked by open partisanship. At one point, Republicans shut down the committee in 2004 after a leaked Democratic memo outlined a game plan to make political gain.
