Rice Says She Knew of Doubts Over Key Iraqi Nuclear Intelligence

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WASHINGTON – National security advisor Condoleezza Rice yesterday said she knew that a key piece of evidence for Saddam Hussein’s supposed nuclear ambitions was disputed at the time she cited it as proof that Iraq was seeking to build a nuclear weapon before the war.


Though she said she was aware of the existence of a disagreement within the American intelligence community over whether aluminum tubes sought by Iraq could actually be used for enriching uranium, Ms. Rice said she hadn’t investigated the doubts at the time she discussed the tubes on national television. And yesterday, she continued to defend President Bush’s decision to launch the invasion.


“At the time, I knew that there was a dispute. I actually didn’t really know the nature of the dispute,” Ms. Rice said on the ABC news program, “This Week.”


In the lead-up to the invasion, Ms. Rice had said on national television that Iraq had attempted to purchase high-quality aluminum tubes that were “only really suited for nuclear weapons.” She later learned that “the Department of Energy had reservations about what these tubes were for,” she said.


Ms. Rice’s staff had been told in 2001 that experts at the Energy Department believed the tubes were likely intended for small artillery rockets, according to a report in the New York Times, which cited four officials at the Central Intelligence Agency and two senior administration officials, all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity.


Questioned about the report, Ms. Rice said the Department of Energy agreed with the broader conclusion that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting his nuclear weapons program, and that he could have a nuclear weapon by the end of the decade.


“When you’re confronting that kind of threat, you’re best to go after it before it is too late. And I stand by the decision firmly today,” she said.


To date, there has been no evidence found that Iraq had reconstituted its nuclear weapons program.


But in addition to the tubes, Ms. Rice said there were other reasons why “the intelligence community assessment as a whole was that these were likely and certainly suitable for his nuclear weapons program.”


She said, “Throughout this entire period, the case that was presented to us was that, because of the nature of the tubes, their very fine specifications, because they were extremely expensive, because they had gone through particular bank accounts, that they were associated with the nuclear weapons programs.”


On September 8, 2002, Ms. Rice said on CNN, “We do know that there have been shipments going into … Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes that really are only suited to – high-quality aluminum tubes that are only really suited for nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs.”


In an appearance before the United Nations on February 5, 2003, Secretary of State Powell characterized the Iraqi leader as so “determined to get his hands on a nuclear bomb” that he had made repeated covert attempts to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes “that can be used as centrifuges for enriching uranium.”


Mr. Powell also noted at the time that, “There is controversy about what these tubes are for. Most U.S. experts think they are intended to serve as rotors in centrifuges used to enrich uranium. Other experts, and the Iraqis themselves, argue that they are really to produce the rocket bodies for a conventional weapon, a multiple rocket launcher.”


Asked whether she accepts today that these tubes were likely for rockets, not nuclear weapons, Ms. Rice said yesterday, “As I understand it, people are still debating this. And I’m sure they will continue to debate it.”


Ms. Rice also defended the president’s performance in Thursday’s presidential debate, which focused on foreign policy and national security, as a “fine job.” Critics who say the Iraq war was a diversion from the war on terrorism “simply don’t understand” that Iraq is a “central front” in the broader war on terror, she said.


“It is not enough to deal with Al Qaeda and Osama bin Laden, even though we are doing that. You have to change the circumstances that produced Al Qaeda, and that is what a free Iraq will do,” she said.


Ms. Rice also defended the president’s statement that the network of Abdul Qadeer Khan, a Pakistani nuclear scientist who provided nuclear technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea, “has been brought to justice,” even though Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf quickly pardoned Mr. Khan, who remains under house arrest and has not been questioned by the CIA.


“A.Q. Khan is out of business and he is out of the business that he loved most. And if you don’t think that his national humiliation is justice for what he did, I think it is. He’s nationally humiliated,” she said yesterday on CNN’s Late Edition.


Ms. Rice also predicted that the military may step up attacks against insurgent strongholds in Iraq, on the heels of a major offensive over the weekend in which American and Iraqi troops took control of the city of Samarra.


“There will be, I think, strong efforts to now root out these terrorists, as you’ve just seen, in Samarra,” she said on ABC.


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