Why did the CIA change its mind about Iraq after September 11, 2001?

“Moreover, the automated video monitoring systems installed by the UN at known and suspect WMD facilities in Iraq are still not operating,” according to the 2001 CIA report. “Having lost this on-the-ground access, it is more difficult for the UN or the US to accurately assess the current state of Iraq’s WMD programs.”

Ironically, in the February 2001 report, Tenet said Osama bin Laden and his al-Qa’ida terrorist network remain the single greatest threat to U.S. interests here and abroad. Tenet eerily describes in the report a scenario that six months later would become a reality:

“Terrorists are also becoming more operationally adept and more technically sophisticated in order to defeat counter-terrorism measures. For example, as we have increased security around government and military facilities, terrorists are seeking out "softer" targets that provide opportunities for mass casualties. Employing increasingly advanced devices and using strategies such as simultaneous attacks, the number of people killed. . . Osama bin Laden and his global network of lieutenants and associates remain the most immediate and serious threat. Since 1998, bin Laden has declared all U.S. citizens legitimate targets of attack. As shown by the bombing of our embassies in Africa in 1998 and his Millennium plots last year, he is capable of planning multiple attacks with little or no warning.”

However, Tenet only briefly discussed the al-Qa’ida threat and devoted the bulk of his testimony on how to deal with the threat of rogue countries such as North Korea, Syria, Iran and Iraq. Six months later, bin Laden was identified as the mastermind behind 9-11.

Between 1998 and early 2002, the CIA’s reports on the so-called terror threat offered no details on what types of chemical and biological weapons that Iraq obtained.

But that changed dramatically in October 2002 when the CIA issued another report, that this time included details of Iraq’s alleged vast chemical and biological weapons.

The October 2002 CIA report into Iraq’s WMD identifies sarin, mustard gas, VX and numerous other chemical weapons that the CIA claims Iraq had been stockpiling over the years, in stark contrast to earlier reports by Tenet that said the agency had no evidence to support such claims. And unlike testimony Tenet gave a year earlier, in which he said the CIA had no direct evidence of Iraq’s WMD programs, the intelligence information in the 2002 report, Tenet said, is rock solid.

“This information is based on a solid foundation of intelligence,” Tenet said during a CIA briefing in February.

“It comes to us from credible and reliable sources. Much of it is corroborated by multiple sources.”

The CIA would not comment on the differing reports between 2001 and 2002 or how the agency was able to obtain such intelligence information and corroborate it so quickly.

Still, in early 2001, while hardliners in the Bush administration were privately discussing ways to remove Saddam Hussein from power, Secretary of State Powell said the U.S. successfully “contained” Iraq in the years since the first Gulf War and that because of economic sanctions placed on the country Iraq was unable to obtain WMD.

“We have been able to keep weapons from going into Iraq,” Powell said during a February 11, 2001 interview with “Face the Nation. “We have been able to keep the sanctions in place to the extent that items that might support weapons of mass destruction development have had some controls on them. . . it's been quite a success for ten years. . .”