Drumheller: 'Caught up in the march to war'

DRUMHELLER:  I think they were cherry-picking, and then just what Gary was saying before, is that they recognized the long-term strategic threat of Iraq.  I don’t believe they trust the American people to make that connection, so therefore, they were trying to make a case that would sell what they saw to deal with it.

MATTHEWS:  OK.  Many people in defending this administration, good thinking people, believe that we were misled by accident, that the administration made the same mistake that the French made, the Germans made, and other intelligence organizations; that there was a nuclear threat from Iraq.  Is that a fair defense or is that covering up what was the intent to mislead? 

BERNTSEN:  You have to remember that when the military was planning the invasion of Iraq, there were multiple plans, and the one plan they came to was called Running Start, and the concern was from the military that they would be attacked potentially with chemical weapons.  There were a lot of people, not just in the agency, but within the intelligence community and the military as well, down pretty deep, that saw this as a problem.  Remember, Saddam had beaten us in the 1990’s.  We thought we had all of that in after 1991, and his son-in-law defects and we find out this large program exists. 

MATTHEWS:  Let’s sharpen that point.  The DIA, Defense Intelligence Agency, we all know was way out in front in making the nuclear case, right? 

They weren’t really joined, however, by state or energy or the combined intelligence services, right?  They were out there alone making this case.

Is that because of the civilian ideologues in the Defense Department: Wolfowitz, Feith and the others, who pushed that case? 

BERNTSEN:  It was clear that they had a stronger role in pushing that but the agency doesn’t make policy.  We provide information.  DOD, the secretary of defense, he provides policy. 

MATTHEWS:  What’s your response to the following question?  Was there an attempt by Saddam Hussein to develop, to purchase nuclear materials, uranium yellow cake, from the government of Niger?  Yes or no? 

BERNTSEN:  I don’t believe that was the case. 

DRUMHELLER: No.

MATTHEWS:  Were there aluminum tubes that made the case, this Curveball character?  Was that in fact a hard case for nuclear buildup by Saddam? 

BERNTSEN:  It’s clear now that those were incorrect. 

DRUMHELLER:  That’s right.  They weren’t the case for it.  They were probably rocket tubes or something. 

MATTHEWS:  Keep going.  Let me ask you about the mushroom cloud argument.  Condi Rice and others said if you are waiting for a smoking gun from Saddam Hussein, you’re going to get a mushroom cloud.  In other words, we’re going to be hit here at home.  Did Saddam ever have a deliverable, either a vehicle or a weapon, a war head to use against the United States in our own country? 

BERNTSEN:  No, he didn’t.  But what Saddam wanted to do, he wanted to convince people that he still had some type of capacity, because he saw the Iranians as a greater threat.  He believed that we didn’t invade Baghdad in ‘91 because he thought we thought he had still had chemical weapons up there.  He saw that as a deterrent. 

MATTHEWS:  The smoke screen was helpful to him.  Your view? 

DRUMHELLER:  The smoke screen was helpful to Saddam, why Saddam did the things he did, it’s always hard to judge.  It was for local consumption, it was for the neighbors.

MATTHEWS:  Finally, I’ve looked up the numbers, two thirds of the American believed at the time we were being building up to war in the Fall of 2002, it was really payback for what the Iraqis had done to us on 9/11.  Two thirds of the people believed that the Iraqis were involved in attacking us at The World Trade Center and at the Pentagon.  Was that true? Who was pushing it out of the administration, over and over again?  The president, vice president?  Listen to their speeches over and over again, they kept pounding it, especially the vice president. 

BERNTSEN:  I was in the field at that point, in another part of the world and was not part of that debate. 

DRUMHELLER:  I wasn’t directly part of the debate, but I understand that it came from the office of the vice president, they picked up the report about the meeting between Atta and the Czech and the Iraqi intelligence officer in Prague, which wasn’t true. 

MATTHEWS:  So the VP kept pushing it? 

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