Remarks as prepared
for delivery by Director of Central Intelligence George J. Tenet at Georgetown University
5 February, 2004
Iraq and Weapons of Mass Destruction
I have come here today to talk to youand to the American peopleabout
something important to our nation and central to our future: how the
United States intelligence community evaluated Iraqs weapons of
mass destruction programs over the past decade, leading to a National
Intelligence Estimate in October of 2002.
I want to tell you about our information and how we reached our judgments.
I will tell you what I thinkhonestly and directly.
There are several reasons to do this. Because the American people
deserve to know. Because intelligence has never been more important
to the security of our country.
As a nation, we have over the past seven years been rebuilding our
intelligencewith powerful capabilitiesthat many thought
we would no longer need after the end of the Cold War. We have been
rebuilding our Clandestine Service, our satellite and other technical
collection, our analytic depth and expertise.
Both here and around the world, the men and women of American intelligence
are performing courageouslyoften brilliantlyto support our
military, to stop terrorism, and to break up networks of proliferation.
The risks are always high. Success and perfect outcomes never guaranteed.
But there is one unassailable factwe will always call it as we
see it. Our professional ethic demands no less.
To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care.
Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtfuldiscussion
of intelligence these days.
But these times demand it. Because the alternativepoliticized,
haphazard evaluation, without the benefit of time and factsmay
well result in an intelligence community that is damaged, and a country
that is more at risk.
The Nature of the Business
Before talking about Iraqs weapons of mass destruction, I want
to set the stage with a few words about intelligence collection and
analysishow they actually happen in the real world. This context
is completely missing from the current public debate.
By definition, intelligence deals with the unclear, the unknown,
the deliberately hidden. What the enemies of the United States hope
to deny, we work to reveal.
The question being asked about Iraq in the starkest of terms is:
were we right or were we wrong.
In the intelligence business, you are almost never completely wrong
or completely right.
That applies in full to the question of Saddams weapons of mass
destruction. And, like many of the toughest intelligence challenges,
when the facts on Iraq are all in, we will be neither completely right
nor completely wrong.
As intelligence professionals, we go where the information takes us.
We fear no fact or finding, whether it bears us out or not. Because
we work for high goalsthe protection of the American peoplewe
must be judged by high standards.
Lets turn to Iraq.
Reviewing the Record on Iraq
The History
Much of the current controversy centers on our prewar intelligence
on Iraq, summarized in the National Intelligence Estimate of October
2002. National Estimates are publications where the intelligence community
as a whole seeks to sum up what we know about a subject, what we do
not know, what we suspect may be happening, and where we differ on key
issues.
This Estimate asked if Iraq had chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons
and the means to deliver them. We concluded that in some of these categories,
Iraq had weapons. And that in otherswhere it did not have themit
was trying to develop them.
Let me be clear: analysts differed on several important aspects of
these programs and those debates were spelled out in the Estimate.
They never said there was an imminent threat. Rather,
they painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal
dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs
that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests.
No one told us what to say or how to say it.
How did we reach our conclusions? We had three streams of informationnone
perfect, but each important.
First: Iraqs history. Everyone knew that Iraq had
chemical and biological weapons in the 1980s and 1990s. Saddam Hussein
used chemical weapons against Iran and his own people on at least
10 different occasions. He launched missiles against Iran, Saudi
Arabia, and Israel. And we couldnt forget that in the early
1990s, we saw that Iraq was just a few years way from a nuclear weaponthis
was no theoretical program. It turned out that we and the other intelligence
services of the world had significantly underestimated his progress.
And, finally, we could not forget that Iraq lied repeatedly about
its unconventional weapons.
So, to conclude before the war that Saddam had no interest in rebuilding
his WMD programs, we would have had to ignore his long and brutal
history of using them.
Our second stream ofinformationwas that the United
Nations could notand Saddam would notaccount for all the
weapons the Iraqis had: tons of chemical weapons precursors, hundreds
of artillery shells and bombs filled with chemical or biological agents.
We did not take this data at face value. We did take it seriously.
We worked with the inspectors, giving them leads, helping them fight
Saddams deception strategy of cheat and retreat.
Over eight years of inspections, Saddams deceptionsand
the increasingly restrictive rules of engagement UN inspectors were
forced to negotiate with the regimeundermined efforts to disarm
him.
To conclude before the war that Saddam had destroyed his existing
weapons, we would have had to ignore what the United Nations and allied
intelligence said they could not verify.
The third stream of information came after the UN inspectors left
Iraq in 1998. We gathered intelligence through human agents, satellite
photos, and communications intercepts.
Other foreign intelligence services were clearly focused on Iraq
and assisted in the effort. In intercepts of conversations and other
transactions, we heard Iraqis seeking to hide prohibited items, worrying
about their cover stories, and trying to procure items Iraq was not
permitted to have.
Satellite photosshowed a pattern of activity designed to
conceal movement of material from places where chemical weapons had
been stored in the past.
We also saw reconstruction of dual purpose facilities previously
used to make biological agents or chemical precursors.
And human sources told us of efforts to acquire and hide materials
used in the production of such weapons.
And to come to conclusions before the war other than those we reached,
we would have had to ignore all the intelligence gathered from multiple
sources after 1998.
Did these strands of information weave into a perfect picturecould
they answer every question? Nofar from it. But, taken together,
this information provided a solid basis on which to estimate
whether Iraq did or did not have weapons of mass destruction and the
means to deliver them. It is important to underline the word estimate.
Because not everything we analyze can be known to a standard of absolute
proof.
The Estimate
Now, what exactly was in the October Estimate? Why did we say it?
And what does the postwar evidence thus far show?
Before we start, let me be direct about an important factas we
meet here todaythe Iraq Survey Group is continuing its important
search for weapons, people, and data.
And despite some public statements, we are nowhere near 85% finished.
The men and women who work in that dangerous environment are adamant
about that fact.
Any call I make today is necessarily provisional. Why? Because
we need more time and we need more data.
So, what did our estimate say?
Lets start with missile and other delivery systems for WMD.
Our community said with high confidence that Saddam was continuing and
expanding his missile programs contrary to UN resolutions. He had missiles
and other systems with ranges in excess of UN restrictions and was seeking
missiles with even longer ranges.
What do we know today?
Since the war, we have found an aggressive Iraqi missile program
concealed from the international community.
In fact David Kay said just
last fall that the Iraq Survey Group discovered sufficient evidence
to date to conclude that the Iraqi regime was committed to delivery
system improvements that would have, if [Operation Iraqi Freedom]
had not occurred, dramatically breached UN restrictions placed on
Iraq after the 1991 Gulf war.
We have also found that Iraq had plans and advanced design work
for liquid propellant missiles with ranges up to 1000 km activity
that Iraq did not report to the UN and which could have placed large
portions of the Middle East in jeopardy.
We have confirmed that Iraq had new work underway on prohibited
solid propellant missiles that were also concealed from the UN.
Significantly, the Iraq Survey Group has also confirmed prewar
intelligence that Iraq was in secret negotiations with North Korea
to obtain some of its most dangerous missile technology.
My provisional bottom line today: On missiles, we were generally
on target.
Let me turn to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles.The Estimate said that
Iraq had been developing an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle, probably intended
to deliver biological warfare agents. Baghdads existing Unmanned
Aerial Vehicles could threaten its neighbors, US forces in the Persian
Gulf, andif a small Unmanned Aerial Vehicle was brought close
to our shores -- the United States itself.
What do we know today?
The Iraq Survey Group found that two separate groups in Iraq were working
on a number of Unmanned Aerial Vehicle designs that were hidden from
the UN until Iraqs Declaration of December 2002. Now we know
that important design elements were never fully declared.
The question of intentespecially regarding the smaller Unmanned
Aerial Vehiclesis still out there. But we should remember that
the Iraqis flight-tested an aerial Biological Weapon spray system intended
for a large Unmanned Aerial Vehicle.
A senior Iraqi official has now admitted that their
two large Unmanned Aerial Vehiclesone developed in the early 90s
and the other under development in late 2000were intended for
delivery of biological weapons.
My provisional bottom line today: We detected the development of prohibited
and undeclared Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. But the jury is still out
on whether Iraq intended to use its newer, smaller Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
to deliver biological weapons.
Let me turn to the nuclear issue. In the
Estimate, all agencies agreed that Saddam wanted nuclear weapons. Most
were convinced that he still had a program and if he obtained fissile
material he could have a weapon within a year. But we detected no such
acquisition.
We made two judgments that get overlooked these daysWe said
Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and, probably would have
been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009.
Most agencies believed that Saddam had begun
to reconstitute his nuclear program, but they disagreed on a number
of issues such as which procurement activities were designed to support
his nuclear program. But let me be clear, where there were differences,
the Estimate laid out the disputes clearly.
So what do we know today?
David Kay told us last fall that the testimony we have
obtained from Iraqi scientists and senior government officials should
clear up any doubts about whether Saddam still wanted to obtain nuclear
weapons.
Keep in mind that no intelligence agency thought that Iraqs
efforts had progressed to the point of building an enrichment facility
or making fissile material. We said that such activities were a few
years away. Therefore it is not surprising that the Iraq Survey
Group has not yet found evidence of uranium enrichment activities
Regarding prohibited aluminum tubes a debate laid out extensively
in the Estimate and one that experts still argue over -- were they
for uranium enrichment or conventional weapons? We have additional
data to collect and more sources to question.
Moreover, none of the tubes found in Iraq so far match the high
specification tubes Baghdad sought and may have never received in
the amounts needed. Our aggressive interdiction efforts may have prevented
Iraq from receiving all but a few of these prohibited items.
My provisional bottom line today: Saddam did not have a nuclear
weapon. He still wanted one and Iraq intended to reconstitute a nuclear
program at some point. But we have not yet found clear evidence that
the dual-use items Iraq sought were for nuclear reconstitution. We
do not know if any reconstitution efforts had begun but we may have
overestimated the progress Saddam was making.
Let me turn to biological weapons.The Estimate said that Baghdad
had them, and that all key aspects of an offensive programResearch
and Development, production, and weaponizationwere still active,
and most elements were larger, and more advanced than before the first
Gulf war.
We believed that Iraq had lethal Biological Weapon
agents, including anthrax, which it could quickly produce and weaponize
for delivery by bombs, missiles, aerial sprayers, and covert operatives.
But we said we had no specific information on the types or quantities
of weapons, agent, or stockpiles at Baghdads disposal.
What do we know today?
Last fall, the Iraq Survey Group uncovered (quote) significant
informationincluding research and development of Biological
Weapons -applicable organisms, the involvement of the Iraqi Intelligence
Service (IIS) in possible Biological Weapons activities, and deliberate
concealment activities. All of this suggests Iraq after 1996 further
compartmentalized its program and focused on maintaining smaller,
covert capabilities that could be activated quickly to surge the production
of Biological Weapon agents. (unquote)
The Iraq Survey Group found a network of laboratories
and safehouses controlled by Iraqi intelligence and security services
that contained equipment for chemical and biological research and
a prison laboratory complex possibly used in human testing for Biological
Weapon agents, that were not declared to the UN.
It
also appears that Iraq had the infrastructure and talent to resume
productionbut we have yet to find that it actually did so, nor
have we found weapons. Until we get to the bottom of the role played
by the Iraqi security serviceswhich were operating covert labswe
will not know the full extent of the program.
Let me also talk about the trailers discovered in Iraq last summer.
We initially concluded that they resembled trailers described by a
human source for mobile biological warfare agent production today.
There is no consensus within our community over whether the trailers
were for that use or if they were used for the production of hydrogen.
Everyone agrees they are not ideally configured for either process,
but could be made to work in either mode.
To give you some idea of the contrasting evidence we wrestle with,
some of the Iraqis involved in making the trailers were told they
were intended to produce hydrogen for artillery units.
But an Iraqi artillery officer says they never used these types
of systems and that the hydrogen for artillery units came in canisters
from a fixed production facility. We are trying to get to the bottom
of this story.
And I must tell you that we are finding discrepancies in some claims
made by human sources about mobile Biological Weapons production before
the war. Because we lack direct access to the most important sources
on this question, we have as yet been unable to resolve the differences.
My provisional bottom line today: Iraq intended to develop Biological
Weapons. Clearly, research and development work was underway that
would have permitted a rapid shift to agent production if seed stocks
were available. But we do not know if production took place
and just as clearlywe have not yet found biological weapons.
Before I leave the Biological Weapons story, an important fact you
must remember. For years the UN searched unsuccessfully for Saddams
Biological Weapons program. His son-in-law, Husayn Kamil, who controlled
the hidden program defected, and only then was the world able to confirm
that Iraq indeed had an active and dangerous biological weapons program.
Indeed, history matters in dealing with these complicated problems.
While many of us want instant answers, this search for Biological Weapons
in Iraq will take time and patience.
Let me now turn to Chemical Weapons.We said in the Estimate
with high confidence that Iraq had them. We also believed, though with
less certainty, that Saddam had stocked at least 100 metric tons of
agent. That may sound like a lot, but it would fit in a few dorm rooms
on this campus.
Initially, the community was skeptical about whether Iraq had restarted
Chemical Weapons agent production. Sources had reported that Iraq had
begun renewed production, and imagery and intercepts gave us additional
concerns.
But only when analysts saw what they believed to be satellite photos
of shipments of materials from ammunition sites did they believe that
Iraq was again producing Chemical Weapon agents.
What do we know now?
The work done so far shows a story similar to that of his biological
weapons program. Saddam had rebuilt a dual-use industry. David Kay
reported that Saddam and his son Uday wanted to know how long it would
take for Iraq to produce chemical weapons. However, while sources
indicate Iraq may have conducted some experiments related to developing
chemical weapons, no physical evidence has yet been uncovered. We
need more time.
My provisional bottom line today: Saddam had the intent and the
capability to quickly convert civilian industry to chemical weapons
production. However, we have not yet found the weapons we expected.
Ive now given you my provisional bottom lines. But it is important
to remember that Estimates are not written in a vacuum. Let me tell
you some of what was going on in the fall of 2002. Several sensitive
reports crossed my desk from two sources characterized by our foreign
partners as established and reliable.
The first, from a source who had direct access to Saddam and his inner
circle said:
Iraq was not in possession of a nuclear weapon. However,
Iraq was aggressively and covertly developing such a weapon. Saddam
had recently called together his Nuclear Weapons Committee irate that
Iraq did not yet have a weapon because money was no object and they
possessed the scientific know how.
The Committee members assured Saddam that once the fissile material
was in hand, a bomb could be ready in just 18-24 months. The return
of UN inspectors would cause minimal disruption because, according
to the source, Iraq was expert at denial and deception.
The same source said Iraq
was stockpiling chemical weapons and that equipment to produce insecticides,
under the oil-for-food program, had been diverted to covert chemical
weapons production.
The source said that
Iraqs weapons of last resort were "mobile
launchers armed with chemical weapons which would be fired at
enemy forces and Israel."
Iraqi scientists were dabbling with biological
weapons, with limited success,
But the quantities were not sufficient to constitute a real
weapons program.
A stream of reporting from a different sensitive source with access
to senior Iraqi officials said he believed:
production of chemical and biological weapons was taking place,
that biological agents were easy to produce and to hide, and
prohibited chemicals were also being produced at dual-use facilities.
This source stated that a senior Iraqi official in Saddam's inner circle
believed, as a result of the UN inspections, Iraq knew the inspectors
weak points and how to take advantage of them. The source said there
was an elaborate plan to deceive inspectors and ensure prohibited items
would never be found.
Now, did this information make a difference in my thinking? You bet
it did. As this and other information came across my desk, it solidified
and reinforced the judgments we had reached and my own view of the danger
posed by Saddam Hussein and I conveyed this view to our nation's leaders.
Could I have ignored or dismissed such reports at the time? Absolutely
not.
Continuing the Search
Now, I am sure you are asking: Why havent we found the weapons?
I have told you the search must continue and it will be difficult.
As David Kay reminded us, the Iraqis systematically destroyed and looted
forensic evidence before, during and after the war. We have been faced
with the organized destruction of documentary and computer evidence
in a wide range of offices, laboratories, and companies suspected of
WMD work. The pattern of these efforts is one of deliberate rather
than random acts. Iraqis who have volunteered information to us are
still being intimidated and attacked.
Remember finding things in Iraq is very tough. After the first Gulf
War, the U.S. Army blew up chemical weapons without knowing it. They
were mixed in with conventional weapons in Iraqi ammo dumps.
My new Special Advisor, Charles Duelfer, will soon be in Iraq to join
Major General Keith Dayton commander of the Iraq Survey Group
to continue our effort to learn the truth. And, when the truth
emerges, we will report it to the American public no matter what.
REVIEWING OUR WORK
As Director of Central Intelligence, I have an important responsibility.
I have a responsibility to evaluate our performance -- both our operational
work and our analytical tradecraft.
So what do I think about all of this?
Based on an assessment of the data we collected over the past 10 years,
it would have been difficult for analysts to come to any different conclusions
than the ones reached in October of 2002.
However, in our business that is not good enough.
We must constantly review the quality of our work. For example, the
National Intelligence Council is reviewing the Estimate line-by-line.
Six months ago we also commissioned an internal review to examine the
tradecraft of our work on Iraqs weapons of mass destruction.
And, through this effort we are finding ways to improve our processes.
For example, we recently discovered that relevant analysts in the community
missed a notice that identified a source we had cited as providing information
that, in some cases was unreliable, and in other cases was fabricated.
We have acknowledged this mistake.
In addition to these internal reviews, I asked Dick Kerr, a former
Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, and a team of retired senior
analysts to evaluate the Estimate.
Among the questions that we as a Community must ultimately reflect
on are:
Did the history of our work, Saddam's deception and denial, his
lack of compliance with the international community, and all that
we know about this regime cause us to minimize, or ignore, alternative
scenarios?
Did the fact that we missed how close Saddam came to acquiring
a nuclear weapon in the early 1990s cause us to over-estimate his
nuclear or other programs in 2002?
Did we carefully consider the absence of information flowing from
a repressive and intimidating regime, and would it have made any difference
in our bottom line judgments?
Did we clearly tell policy makers what we knew, what we didnt
know, what was not clear, and identify the gaps in our knowledge?
We are in the process of evaluating just such questions - and while
others will express views on the questions sooner, we ourselves must
come to our own bottom lines.
I will say that our judgments were not single threaded. UN inspections
served as a baseline and we had multiple strands of reporting from signals,
imagery, and human intelligence.
After the UN inspectors left Iraq in 1998, we made an aggressive effort
to penetrate Iraq. Our record was mixed.
While we had voluminous reporting, the major judgments reached were
based on a narrower band of data. This is not unusual.
There was, by necessity, a strong reliance on technical data, which
to be sure was very valuable, particularly in the imagery of military
and key dual use facilities, on missile and Unmanned Aerial Vehicle
developments--and in particular on the efforts of Iraqi front companies
to falsify and deny us the ultimate destination and use of dual use
equipment.
We did not have enough of our own human intelligence.
We did not ourselves penetrate the inner sanctum - our agents were
on the periphery of WMD activities, providing some useful information.
We had access to émigrés and defectors with more direct access to WMD
programs and we had a steady stream of reporting with access to the
Iraqi leadership come to us from a trusted foreign partner. Other partners
provided important information.
What we did not collect ourselves, we evaluated as carefully as we
could. Still, the lack of direct access to some of these sources created
some risk such is the nature of our business.
To be sure, we had difficulty penetrating the Iraqi regime with human
sources, but a blanket indictment of our human intelligence around the
world is simply wrong.
We have spent the last seven years rebuilding our clandestine service.
As Director of Central Intelligence, this has been my highest priority.
When I came to the CIA in the mid-90s our graduating class of case
officers was unbelievably low. Now, after years of rebuilding our training
programs and putting our best efforts to recruit the most talented men
and women, we are graduating more clandestine officers than at any time
in CIAs history.
It will take an additional five years to finish the job of rebuilding
our clandestine service, but the results so far have been obvious:
A CIA spy led us to Khalid Sheik Muhammad, the mastermind of Al
Qa'idas September 11th attacks.
Al Qa'idas operational chief in the Persian Gulf, Nashiri
the man who planned an executed the bombing of the USS COLE
was located and arrested based on our human reporting.
Human sources were critical to the capture of Hambali, the chief
terrorist in South Asia. His organization killed hundreds of people
when they bombed a nightclub in Bali.
So when you hear pundits say that we have no human intelligence capability
they dont know what they are talking about.
Beyond Iraq: The Larger Role of US Intelligence
Its important that I address these misstatements because the
American people must know just how reliable American intelligence is
on the threats that confront our nation.
Lets talk about Libya where a sitting regime has volunteered
to dismantle its Weapons of Mass Destruction programs.
This was an intelligence success.
Why? Because American and British intelligence officers understood
the Libyan programs.
Only through intelligence did we know each of the major programs
Libya had going.
Only through intelligence did we know when Libya started its first
nuclear weapon program, and then put it on the backburner for years.
Only through intelligence did we know when the nuclear program
took off again. We knew because we had penetrated Libyas foreign
supplier network.
And through intelligence last fall when Libya was to receive a
supply of centrifuge partswe worked with foreign partners to
locate and stop the shipment.
Intelligence also knew that Libya was working with North Korea
to get longer-range ballistic missiles.
And we learned all of this through the powerful combination of
technical intelligence, careful and painstaking analytic work, operational
daring, and, yes, the classic kind of human intelligence that people
have led you to believe that we no longer have.
This was critical when the Libyans approached British and US intelligence
about dismantling their chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs.
They came to the British and American intelligence because they knew
we could keep the negotiations secret.
And in repeated talks, when CIA officers were the only official
Americans in Libya, we and our British colleagues made clear just
how much insight we had into their WMD and missile programs.
When they said they would show us their SCUD-Bs, we said
fine but we want to examine your longer range SCUD-Cs.
It was only when we convinced them we knew Libyas nuclear
program was a weapons program, that they showed us their weapon design.
As should be clear to you, Intelligence was the key that opened
the door to Libyas clandestine programs.
Let me briefly mention Iran. I cannot go into detail. I want to assure
you that recent Iranian admissions about their nuclear programs validate
our intelligence assessments. It is flat wrong to say that we were
surprised by reports from the Iranian opposition last year.
And on North Korea, it was patient analysis of difficult-to-obtain
information that allowed our diplomats to confront the North Korean
regime about their pursuit of a different route to a nuclear weapon
that violated international agreements.
One final spy story:
Last year in my annual World Wide Threat testimony before Congress
in open session, I talked about the emerging threat from private proliferators,
especially nuclear brokers.
I was cryptic about this in public, but I can tell you now that
I was talking about A.Q. Khan. His network was shaving years off
the nuclear weapons development timelines of several states including
Libya.
Now, as you know from the news coming out of Pakistan, Khan and his
network have been dealt a crushing blow, with several of his senior
officers in custody. Malaysian authorities have shut down one of the
networks largest plants. His network is now answering to the
world for years of nuclear profiteering.
What did intelligence have to do with this?
First, we discovered the extent of Khans hidden network.
We tagged the proliferators. We detected the network stretching from
Pakistan to Europe to the Middle East to Asia offering its wares to
countries like North Korea and Iran.
Working with our British colleagues we pieced together the picture
of the network, revealing its subsidiaries, scientists, front companies,
agents, finances, and manufacturing plants on three continents.
Our spies penetrated the network through a series of daring
operations over several years. Through this unrelenting effort we
confirmed the network was delivering such things as illicit uranium
enrichment centrifuges.
And as you heard me say on the Libya case, we stopped deliveries
of prohibited material.
I welcome the Presidents Commission looking into proliferation.
We have a record and a story to tell and we want to tell it to those
willing to listen.
CONCLUSION
I came here today to discuss our prewar estimate on Iraq and how we
have followed Iraq's development of weapons of mass destruction programs
for well over ten years. It is absolutely essential to do so openly
and honestly.
I have argued for patience as we continue to learn the truth. We are
no where near the end of our work in Iraq, we need more time. I have
told you where we are and where our performance can be improved.
Our analysts at the end of the day have a duty to inform and warn.
They did so honestly and with integrity when making judgments about
the dangers posed by Saddam Hussein.
Simply assessing stacks of reports does not speak to the wisdom experienced
analysts brought to bear on a difficult and deceptive subject.
But as all these reviews are underway, we must take care. We cannot
afford an environment to develop where analysts are afraid to make a
call. Where judgments are held back because analysts fear they will
be wrong. Their work and these judgments make vital contributions to
our nations security.
I came here today also to tell the American people that they must know
that they are served by dedicated, courageous professionals.
It is evident on the battlefields of Afghanistan and Iraq.
It is evident by their work against proliferators.
And it is evident by the fact that well over two thirds of al-Qa'ida's
leaders can no longer hurt the American people.
We are a community that some thought would not be needed at the end
of the Cold War.
We have systematically been rebuilding all of our disciplines with
a focused strategy and care.
Our strategy for the future is based on achieving capabilities that
will provide the kind of intelligence the country deserves. The President
has ensured that this will be the case.
We constantly learn and improve.
And at no time, will we allow our integrity or our willingness to make
the tough calls be compromised.