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PAULA ZAHN NOW Interview With David Kay; Martha Stewart Defense Gaining Ground? Aired February 5, 2004 - 20:00 ET THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED. PAULA ZAHN, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening. I'm Paula Zahn. Thanks so much for joining us tonight. The world, the news, the names, the faces, and where we go from here on this Thursday, February 5, 2004. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) ZAHN (voice-over): "In Focus" tonight, the director of the CIA answers critics who say the U.S. went to war on bad intelligence. GEORGE TENET, CIA DIRECTOR: The question being asked Iraq, in the starkest terms, is, were we right or were we wrong? ZAHN: And Skull & Bones. We'll take you inside the secretive Ivy League society that ties George W. Bush and John Kerry. Also, what a difference one breast makes. Janet Jackson's Super Bowl stunt leads to censorship at the Grammys and the Oscars and more. So just who decides what we'll be allowed to see? (END VIDEOTAPE) ZAHN: And here are some of the headlines you need to know right now. Senator John Kerry picking up the endorsement of Representative Dick Gephardt. The Kerry campaign says the announcement will happen tomorrow morning in Michigan. Gephardt dropped out of the race for president after a poor showing in Iowa. Arizona Senator John McCain will serve on the commission that will look into intelligence failures before the war with Iraq, that word from an administration official who tells CNN, President Bush plans to name all nine members of the commission tomorrow. There are still no signs of an 11-year-old Florida girl abducted on Sunday. A suspect, Joseph Smith, is in custody and expected to be charged in connection with the kidnapping of Carlie Brucia. Later on the program, we'll talk with two of the suspect's neighbors. "In Focus" tonight, in two separate speeches, we heard the president and his CIA chief say they may have been wrong about weapons of mass destruction, but attacking Iraq was still the right thing to do. The CIA director, George Tenet, also said that intelligence officials never reported that Iraq was an imminent threat. Well, today, I asked former chief weapons inspector David Kay about that and whether he had been led to believe Iraq was a threat in the weeks leading up to the war. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) DAVID KAY, FORMER CHIEF U.S. WEAPONS INSPECTOR: Well, I think he certainly opened up space, it sounded to me, different than the tone and I think the substance that I recall hearing prior to the war. I thought that was one of the more interesting aspects of that speech today. It seemed to be a good defense of the agency, but probably a weak defense of the case for going to war. ZAHN: What bothered you most about that? KAY: Well, it trailed off into a very strong case for Saddam had the intentions and Saddam was still amassing capabilities, but it was really weak on any evidence or any claims that there were actual weapons, militarized chemical and biological warfare weapons ready to be used, at least as I listened to it today. That doesn't strike me as the case that I heard either a year ago by Colin Powell in the Security Council or on many other occasions by various other people in the administration. ZAHN: But Mr. Tenet also made the point that the inspections are nowhere near 85 percent finished. Do you still believe that we're almost at that point, where the inspections are complete? KAY: Well, I think this is really a misapplication. I suspect we're actually in agreement. What I've said is, I think, on the issue of, were there large stockpiles of militarized chemical and biological agents at the time of the war, we're 85 percent there of understanding that there were no such weapons and the reasons for why we know that there were no such weapons. On the larger issue of the inspection, of course it needs to go on. And, of course there's a lot more to do, in terms of translation, in terms of interviewing Iraqis, and even just looking. Look, I resigned because the mission of the ISG was being broadened beyond weapons of mass destruction and the resources were being cut. I think we ought to go faster and further, not less. ZAHN: In evaluating our prewar intelligence gathering abilities in Iraq, this is what the director had to say earlier today. Let's listen together. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TENET: 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. (END VIDEO CLIP) ZAHN: How was the U.S. confident enough to go to war without that critical piece of the puzzle? KAY: Well, that's exactly the question I've been asking, really for about seven months. I think the largest gap, the largest surprise in our intelligence collection that I discovered when I took on this job is that, with regard to human intelligence, that is, actual agents on the ground, we were relying on other people, other countries, defectors. But we were not -- by and large, did not have at the center of the Iraqi regime or their supposed WMD program actual live reporting from human agents. And that's very disturbing. ZAHN: Let's listen to another part of George Tenet's speech now. (BEGIN VIDEO CLIP) TENET: 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. (END VIDEO CLIP) ZAHN: Is that true, in your judgment? KAY: You know, I think that's true. But the reason is -- the critical phrase there was, the data we collected over the last 10 years. In fact, we collected little data. We relied on the U.N. inspectors to collect data. We relied on other countries to collect data and sources. We actually collected too little. There were too few dots for the analysts to do really good analysis. ZAHN: And how would you characterize the volume of these intelligence lapses that you had reinforced with your report? KAY: Well, I think the volume is, in the case of a country that you decide to go to war against, the volume of the lapses is pretty significant. I think that's one reason. And I actually thought Director Tenet made a good case today for why you needed an independent panel to review all of these. He opened up space between himself and the administration, between the agency and the administration, but he left us with real uncertainty as, what was the intelligence basis that the decision to go to war was made on? ZAHN: All right, former chief weapons inspector David Kay, thank you very much for your perspective this evening. KAY: Thank you, Paula. (END VIDEOTAPE) ZAHN: And we asked David Kay if he was going to be on that presidential commission further investigating the weapons of mass destruction issue, and he said he's not been told one way or the other. Now, today's developments come exactly one year after Secretary of State Colin Powell went before the United Nations to make the case for war against Iraq. In a riveting and powerful presentation, he outlined the dangers posed by Iraq's weapons programs. National security correspondent David Ensor reports on how much things have changed since then. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) UNIDENTIFIED MALE: The Security Council is called to order. DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): A year ago, with the director of central intelligence backing him up before the United Nations Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell did not hedge. COLIN POWELL, SECRETARY OF STATE: Saddam Hussein has chemical weapons. ENSOR: What a difference a year makes, when nearly 10 months of it have been spent scouring Iraq for weapons. KAY: We have not found any chemical weapons that were present on the battlefield, even in a small number. ENSOR: At the U.N., Powell showed drawings based on Iraqi defector descriptions of biological weapons factories on wheels. POWELL: We know that Iraq has at least seven of these mobile biological agent factories. ENSOR: It all looked so real. And after the invasion, trailers were found that fit Powell's description. In May, the CIA said they were the strongest evidence that Iraq had a secret biological weapons program. SEN. CARL LEVIN (D), MICHIGAN: But in your judgment, the consensus in the intelligence community now is that those are not biological weapons vans? KAY: That is my personal judgment. ENSOR: Most experts now say the trailers were to produce hydrogen for weather balloons or possibly rocket fuel. POWELL: Iraq could use these small UAVs which have a wingspan of only a few meters to deliver biological agents to its neighbors or if transported, to other countries, including the United States. ENSOR: Powell's evidence on the UAVs was what convinced at least one Democratic senator to vote with the president on Iraq. KAY: I don't think there was the deployment capability, the existing deployment capability at that point. ENSOR: And Air Force officials have said since then that the UAVs have glass viewing ports with a bracket for mounting a camera inside for reconnaissance missions.