Saddam and al Qaeda: Blitzer and Feith Transcript

I'm Wolf Blitzer. You're in THE SITUATION ROOM.

Did top Pentagon officials stack the deck when it came to making the case for a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein before the war? Doug Feith was undersecretary of defense for policy. He's at the heart of this controversy and he's not taking the criticism lying down.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

BLITZER: The inspector general of the Department of Defense says your actions were, quote, "inappropriate", that you and your colleagues had a mindset to prove that there was a connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda, a connection that the intelligence community simply couldn't confirm but you still went ahead and tried to do that to build a case for the war.

DOUGLAS FEITH, FORMER UNDER SECY. OF DEFENSE: What the inspector general is criticizing is the fact that people in the Pentagon criticized the quality of the CIA intelligence. And the inspector general, I think, wrongly says that the criticism of intelligence was intelligence work. And it was inappropriate for non-intelligence people to do that.

BLITZER: But in this case they were right and you were wrong.

FEITH: No they were not right.

BLITZER: There was no connection that the 9/11 Commission could come up with to show that there was a deliberate pre-war, operable connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein.

FEITH: Which nobody ever claimed. I mean it shows how much misinformation there is even somebody as well informed as you...

(CROSSTALK)

BLITZER: What was your bottom line when you wrote that report?

FEITH: The report didn't have a bottom line. What the report said...

BLITZER: It did, if you read...

FEITH: No, it didn't.

(CROSSTALK)

FEITH: No, it didn't.

BLITZER: What did it say about the Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda connection?

FEITH: What it said was the CIA's work was not up to quality. And it specifically said the CIA is filtering its own intelligence to suit a theory that it had that secular Baathists would not cooperate with religious extremists...

BLITZER: But that theory was right, right?

FEITH: Well it's absolutely wrong. I mean you could see even in Iraq today. Who are we fighting in Iraq? We're fighting a strategic alliance of Baathists and Jihadists.

BLITZER: But what they were saying -- correct me if I am wrong -- was that Saddam Hussein would not be involved in working with al Qaeda because al Qaeda didn't want to have anything to do with this secular Iraqi leader.

FEITH: What they were saying is the CIA had intelligence, its own intelligence that was inconsistent with its theory that there couldn't be any cooperation. And the CIA was not drawing on all of its intelligence. It was filtering its own intelligence to suit its own theory. It was a proper criticism...

BLITZER: Here's what the Senator Levin said and I'm going to play a little clip for you and give you a chance to respond.

SEN. CARL LEVIN (D-MI), INTELLIGENCE COMMITTEE: Intelligence relating to the Iraq/al Qaeda relationship was manipulated by high- ranking officials in the Department of Defense to support the administration's decision to invade Iraq when the intelligence assessments of the professional analysts of the intelligence community did not provide the desired compelling case.

BLITZER: All right. You want to respond?

FEITH: I mean that's as inaccurate as almost everything that the senator has said on the subject.

BLITZER: What was the purpose of that report you were putting together on this question of a connection between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein?

FEITH: OK, it wasn't a report. It was a criticism of the CIA's work.

BLITZER: Why did they do that?

FEITH: Because the CIA was doing things that people in the Pentagon thought were substandard and the CIA got angry when they got criticized.
As we know, the CIA did not do a flawless job. And we are in trouble in Iraq because of errors that the CIA made. We need more people in the government doing intelligent, professional criticism of intelligence.

BLITZER: Here's the criticism, as you well know. The criticism is that you and your colleagues, whether the defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, the vice president, Dick Cheney, his staff, Scooter Libby, all of you came to the conclusion that there should be an effort to overthrow Saddam Hussein and, as a result, you just needed the weapons of mass destruction evidence, the al Qaeda connection. And as a result the Congress and the American public would go along with it.

FEITH: That's just wrong. That wasn't the analysis at all. I know it's been described that way by critics of the war. It's just inaccurate.

BLITZER: Looking back ...

FEITH: And the record shows insure some day the documents will be exposed and that will be exposed as a false narrative.

BLITZER: Did you and Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz and Cheney and Scooter Libby and the president make a mistake?

FEITH: Well, I mean, in the -- lots of mistakes were made and lots of right things were done.

BLITZER: In your analysis?

FEITH: The issue here was not that we did an analysis. The issue was we criticized the CIA's analysis.
BLITZER: But right now.

FEITH: Hang on a second.

BLITZER: Are you ready to acknowledge there were no WMDs ...

FEITH: You're not letting me explain the essence of the problem.

BLITZER: I will let you explain but quickly. Are you ready to acknowledge there was no WMD, are you ready to acknowledge that there was no connection between Saddam and al Qaeda?

FEITH: We did not find WMD stockpiles. We found WMD programs. And the Duelfer report as I'm sure you know, was very clear on what we found in the WMD area, although we did not find the stock piles. We found that he had the facilities, he had the personnel, the intention. So there was a WMD threat but it wasn't the way the CIA described it.

BLITZER: There wasn't the stockpiles. What about on the al Qaeda connection?

FEITH: On the al Qaeda connection, George Tenet on October 7th, 2002 wrote an unclassified letter to the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee laying out the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda.

BLITZER: So you believed there was a connection?

FEITH: I believed George Tenet.

BLITZER: But now you know that was now false.

FEITH: I never heard it was false.

BLITZER: You believe Saddam was working with al Qaeda?

FEITH: I believe that what George Tenet published in October of 2002 was the best information on the subject. And as far as I know, that is largely -- I mean, there may be -- look, I've not been in the government the last year and a half.

There may be some more intelligence on that subject. I'm telling you from the time George Tenet published his findings on the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship which is that they had a relationship for 10 years and they talked about various things, bomb making and save haven and other issues, that that was the U.S. government's best understanding of the subject. I never criticized that in public or in private.
BLITZER: All right. Let's talk about Senator Jay Rockefeller. He is the new chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and he says the I.G., the inspector general, may have concluded you didn't violate the law, you didn't break the law, your actions were ...

FEITH: He did conclude that everything we did was lawful and authorized said we did not mislead congress.

BLITZER: He said your actions were inappropriate. That's the word he uses. Even though you didn't break the law. He's not claiming you did break the law. But Rockefeller is saying you may have and he wants to hold hearings on what's called the 1947 National Security Act. He says this, Senator Rockefeller, "Section 502 of the National Security Act of 1947 requires the heads of all departments and agencies of the U.S. government involved in intelligence activities to keep the congressional oversight committees informed."

Did you inform, whether the Armed Services Committees or the Intelligence Committees of your intelligence operation at the Department of Defense?

FEITH: We didn't have an intelligence operation and we didn't do intelligence activities. Here's the heart of the issue.

BLITZER: Because the I.G. says these were intelligence operations.

FEITH: Let me finish the sentence.

BLITZER: All right.

FEITH: That's precisely what I disagree with. The inspector general said that the criticism of the CIA was an intelligence activity. That's preposterous. Policy people criticize intelligence every day. Calling that criticism an intelligence activity improper for non-intelligence people to do means that policy people can't criticize intelligence.

By the way, it's an interesting thing. Senator Rockefeller and Senator Levin have severely criticized the CIA. Now when the policy organization criticized the CIA, that's called by them ...

BLITZER: Inappropriate.

FEITH: An inappropriate activity that only intelligence people should do. When they criticize the CIA what is it, statesmanship?

BLITZER: These are serious -- When you were confronted by the I.G., the inspector general, who disagrees with you on the nature of whether or not this was intelligence or nonintelligence, you made your case but he didn't buy it.

FEITH: The inspector general, with all due respect, was in an area of opinion for which there are no legal standards and he made an argument that is self contradictory, doesn't hang together. The essence of his argument was that criticism of intelligence is intelligence work. Ridiculous.

The other argument that he made was that our work was not the highest quality. How did he do that? He didn't evaluate our work and the work we were criticizing. He didn't look at the underlying intelligence. What he did of said the work we did was he said the work that we did was at variance with the consensus of the intelligence community. Of course it was. It was a critique of the intelligence community's consensus. That's exactly what it was intended to be.

BLITZER: But I just want to be precise on this. Rockefeller says you never informed Congress of your activities. Is he right on that front whether or not legally you were required to do so according to the '47 National Security Act?

FEITH: In fact -- all of these activities were the subject of hearings and document requests. I mean, Congress was thoroughly informed. What he's saying he was calling something that was a perfectly reasonable policy project of criticizing the intelligence, he's calling that an intelligence activity and then saying we should have informed it as an intelligence activity to Congress and it wasn't an intelligence activity.

BLITZER: Thanks very much e for coming in.

FEITH: Thank you.