How drone went from solid proof to a red herring

WASHINGTON -- The information was so startling that CIA director George Tenet, accompanied by Vice President Dick Cheney, trooped up to Capitol Hill to brief the four top Senate and House leaders the day after Labor Day 2002. The administration was gearing up to present its case against Iraq at the United Nations, and lawmakers were eager for any evidence that would prove Saddam Hussein was a grave threat.

In the briefing, Tenet and Cheney presented what one participant described as a "smoking gun": New intelligence showed that Iraq had developed unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, that could deliver chemical or biological agents. In addition, Iraq had sought software that would allow it to produce sophisticated mapping of the eastern US cities. President Bush hinted at the evidence in a speech on Oct. 7, 2002.

And one year ago, when Secretary of State Colin L. Powell made a lengthy presentation before the United Nations Security Council, he echoed the concern: "Iraq could use these small UAVs, which have a wingspan of only a few meters, to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or, if transported, to other countries, including the United States."

Since Powell's speech, however, investigations by US weapons inspectors have determined that the UAVs, or drones, were not designed to spread deadly toxins but to fly unarmed reconnaissance missions.

The story of the UAVs is emblematic of how US intelligence on Iraq often was wrong, even when officials made efforts to cull the strongest material from a torrent of information.

In preparing for his UN speech on Feb. 5, Powell had prided himself on spending long hours at the CIA, quizzing analysts who had developed the material and making certain the information had not just one source but was developed from a combination of human, signal, and satellite intelligence. He even refused to include a reference to the mapping software that had spurred the congressional meeting, believing that it was not credible.

But in the end, much of that effort appeared to be for naught. David Kay, the chief inspector who recently resigned, has spent the last week telling reporters and Congress that there appear to be no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Only fragments of Powell's presentation have been confirmed despite months of searching.

"It looks terrible," said Joseph Cirincione, director of the nonproliferation project at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. "None of his core assertions about Saddam's growing arsenal of weapons of mass destruction turned out to be true."

State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said such conclusions are premature. "Certainly some of the elements we know are subject to debate, disagreement," he said. "But until we know what the real, full extent of the program was, it's hard. You don't have anything to compare what the intelligence was at the time to what the final answers are."

But many specialists say the UAV question has long been settled. The drone aircraft uncovered in Iraq has glass viewing ports, with a bracket for mounting some type of camera. As first reported by the Associated Press last August, there was little room to carry the chemical and biological spraying devices described by Powell when he sat in the hushed chamber of the Security Council. A year ago, the CIA analysts thought they had the evidence. Powell had issued clear guidance to his aides before they spent several days, often past midnight, sitting around the large wooden, oval table in Tenet's conference room: He wanted 10 to 15 "absolutely solid" pieces of evidence, "not a hundred pieces," Powell said, according to aides. "I want it airtight, or I'm not going to use it."The CIA originally drafted a speech for a UN presentation, which then went to the White House. But what ultimately emerged, after Cheney's office had been asked to assemble the material for the speech, was much different from the CIA draft. I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, deputy national security adviser Stephen J. Hadley, and other National Security Council staffers had produced draft language for Powell: 45 pages on weapons of mass destruction, 38 pages on alleged links to terrorism, and 16 pages on Iraq's human rights abuses.

But when Powell's staff and intelligence analysts gathered at CIA headquarters review the material, controversy immediately erupted over some of the charges, officials said. Because the White House had changed so much from the CIA draft, they had to go over it "page by page," one official said.

The UAVs were a major source of controversy, officials said. Many senior officials saw this as some of the best evidence they had. "The UAV program, to me, that was more serious because that was a direct threat to our military," a high-ranking national security official said later. "Those UAVs could get up and spread chemical or, worse, biological weapons."

Indeed, the proposed narrative for Powell went something like this, according to an official involved in the preparation for Powell's speech: Saddam had his procurement agents, who are virtually all over the world, attempt to acquire software that would give him very sophisticated mapping of the eastern United States, allowing him to program a missile with a high degree of accuracy.

But the whole scenario "fell apart like a toothpick house" once Powell and his aides asked for the sourcing on the information, the official said. Upon closer inspection, several officials said, it turned out that Iraq had not sought the software, but that an Australian firm had offered it. The software, meanwhile, apparently produced maps not much better than those sold at gas stations.

Within one day, officials said, Powell's task force had largely abandoned the 45-page document produced by Cheney's office and the NSC, using instead a classified National Intelligence Estimate assembled by the CIA in October. The NIE, according to declassified portions made public last year, firmly stated that "Baghdad's UAV could threaten Iraq's neighbors, US forces in the Persian Gulf, and, if brought close to or into the United States, the US homeland."

But the NIE included a dissent to this conclusion that, after the war, would be considered correct: The Air Force intelligence arm, the specialist on UAVs in the US government, strongly argued that the primary role of these aircraft was reconnaissance, "although CBW delivery is an inherent capability."

Air Force officials have said the last phrase was added during negotiations in crafting the NIE, though they viewed the possibility as highly unlikely.

Powell and his team stuck with the consensus position of the other intelligence agencies -- some of which were relying on information from Iraqi expatriates and defectors to bolster their case on the drones -- because a decision had been made that his speech should reflect the best judgment of the intelligence community.