State Dept. calls the CIA a liar

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

NY Times, June 26, 2003
INTELLIGENCE
Agency Disputes C.I.A. View of Trailers as Iraqi Weapons Labs
By DOUGLAS JEHL

WASHINGTON, June 25 — The State Department's intelligence division is 
disputing the Central Intelligence Agency's conclusion that mysterious 
trailers found in Iraq were for making biological weapons, United States 
government officials said today.

In a classified June 2 memorandum, the officials said, the department's 
Bureau of Intelligence and Research said it was premature to conclude 
that the trailers were evidence of an Iraqi biological weapons program, 
as President Bush has done. The disclosure of the memorandum is the 
clearest sign yet of disagreement between intelligence agencies over the 
assertion, which was produced jointly by the C.I.A. and the Defense 
Intelligence Agency and made public on May 28 on the C.I.A. Web site. 
Officials said the C.I.A. and D.I.A. did not consult with other 
intelligence agencies before issuing the report.

The report on the trailers was initially prepared for the White House, 
and Mr. Bush has cited it as proof that Iraq indeed had a biological 
weapons program, as the United States has repeatedly alleged, although 
it has yet to produce any other conclusive evidence.

In an interview with Polish television on May 30, Mr. Bush cited the 
trailers as evidence that the United States had "found the weapons of 
mass destruction" it was looking for. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell 
echoed that assessment in a public statement the next day, saying that 
the accuracy of prewar assessments linking Iraqi trailers to a 
biological weapons program had been borne out by the discovery.

Some intelligence analysts had previously disputed the C.I.A. report, 
but it had not been known that the C.I.A. report did not reflect an 
interagency consensus or that any intelligence agency had later objected 
to its finding.

The State Department bureau raised its objections in a memorandum to Mr. 
Powell, according to Congressional officials. They said the memorandum 
was cast as a dissent to the C.I.A. report, and that it said that the 
evidence found to date did not justify the conclusion that the trailers 
could have had no other purpose than for use as mobile weapons laboratories.



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