The Other Intelligence Assessments on Iraq by Paul Pillar

Editor’s note: The following is a preview of a longer article that will appear in a forthcoming issue of The National Interest.

What comes to mind when someone mentions intelligence and the Iraq War? Why, of course, the intelligence estimate on Iraqi unconventional weapons programs that was excoriated in a 500-page report that the Senate Intelligence Committee issued with much fanfare in July 2004, was further torn apart in another 500-page report by a presidentially appointed commission, and has been the object of scorn and vilification ever since.

But the weapons estimate was one of only three classified, community-coordinated assessments about Iraq that the intelligence community produced in the months prior to the war. Don’t feel bad if you missed the other two, which addressed the principal challenges that Iraq likely would present during the first several years after Saddam’s removal, as well as likely repercussions in the surrounding region. After being kept under wraps (except for a few leaks) for over four years, the Senate committee quietly released redacted versions of those assessments on its website May 25, as Americans were beginning their Memorial Day holiday weekend.

I initiated those latter two assessments and supervised their drafting and coordination. My responsibilities at the time as the National Intelligence Officer for the Near East and South Asia concerned analysis on political, economic and social issues in the region. A duty of any intelligence officer is not only to respond to policymakers’ requests but also to anticipate their future needs. With the administration’s determination to go to war having become painfully clear during 2002, I undertook these assessments to help policymakers, and those charged with executing their policies, make sense of what they would be getting into after Saddam was gone. Following a common practice of the National Intelligence Council with many self-initiated projects, we got a policy office—in this case the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff—to provide cover of sorts by agreeing to be listed as the customer of record.

The tremendous notoriety the estimate on weapons programs achieved has been all out of proportion to any role it played, or should have played, in the decision to launch the war. The administration never requested it (Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee did), its public line about Iraqi weapons programs was well-established before it was written, and as the White House later admitted, the president (and the then national security adviser) did not even read it—nor did most members of Congress. Opposition to the war among many at home and abroad who shared the misperceptions about Iraqi weapons programs demonstrated that those perceptions did not, contrary to the administration’s enormous selling effort, imply that a war was necessary.