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Bond Clarifies Phase II Report on Prewar Intelligence

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May 25, 2007

Bond Clarifies Committee's Release of the Phase II Report on Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Postwar Iraq

Vice Chairman of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, U.S. Senator Kit Bond, today criticized the Committee's faulty Phase II Report on Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Postwar Iraq.

"The Committee's unanimous July 2004 Phase I Iraq report, which explained how the prewar Iraq WMD intelligence was so deeply flawed, was a major accomplishment. It came at a time of increasingly divisive partisan rancor about the Iraq war and intelligence related to Iraq, yet it managed to draw unanimous support and provide meaningful oversight. Unfortunately, the report released today does not meet that standard, and I was unable to vote in favor of the report," said Bond.

Bond had many concerns about this report, some of the most significant of which were:

• The report's conclusions highlight only issues from the intelligence assessments that seem to be important now, which distorts the picture of what was actually presented to policymakers in 2003.
• The Committee refused to include a conclusion that said the Intelligence Community did not highlight an insurgency as a potential challenge in postwar Iraq.
• The report also includes 81 pages of named individuals to whom the two intelligence assessments were distributed, a troubling departure from past Committee practice. In past reports, the Committee wisely chose to leave out names of individuals who were not department heads or cabinet level officials.
• None of the sections, not even the "conclusions", offer any investigative insights, rather they merely restate select portions of intelligence assessments.

Senator Bond has attached additional views to the report which explain his concerns about this report in greater detail.

"While I am happy that the release of this report gets the Committee one step closer finally to ending Phase II and moving on to more pressing issues of intelligence oversight, I am disappointed with the report's content. The Phase II inquiry has become too embroiled in politics and partisanship to produce an accurate and meaningful report, vindicating the views of those of us who believed Phase II was a bad idea to begin with."

Bond also was frustrated with the leaking of portions of the Phase II report before the Committee's release today.

"I am very disappointed that select portions of the report were leaked. I encourage you to read my additional views to get the full picture," said Bond.

The Phase II report can be found at the following link.