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| UNDERSECRETARY PICKERING | |
 January 11, 1999 
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JIM LEHRER: Margaret Warner takes it from there.
(audio difficulties) Did the U.S. use UNSCOM or the access provided through UNSCOM to gather intelligence on Iraq? AMBASSADOR THOMAS PICKERING, Undersecretary of State: The United States has been very clear, and it has supported exactly what Mr. Butler has said, what it itself has said, and what the secretary-general has said, and we've been very clear by saying that at no time did anyone associated with UNSCOM work for the purpose of overthrowing Saddam Hussein. We have also said very clearly that information gathered by UNSCOM that became available to us was extremely valuable and extremely useful and that we, of course, paid attention to that information, as we would any other information that came into our hands. But the statement I made is a clear and unequivocal statement on the subject. MARGARET WARNER: Now, Scott Ritter, the former UNSCOM inspector, said that by using information gathered through, I gather, a shared intelligence operation - I'm going to ask you to explain that a little more in a minute - but that essentially the U.S. - he put it - he said violated the trust - that our trust was betrayed when the U.S. used the information instead to further its own unilateral objectives. What do you say to that?
This was all based on the fact that the initial resolutions of the United Nations Security Council required Iraq to disclose within 15 days all of those programs. It never did. It was clear over time that it was not only not disclosing but it was actively hiding on those programs. The United States was asked for technical help; it provided that technical help. It provided that technical help for the purposes that were outlined and the information derived was given to UNSCOM for its use to deal with the question of whether it's become known as the concealment mechanism. MARGARET WARNER: And I gather this started about three years ago, is that right? AMBASSADOR PICKERING: Yes, I can't be specific on times, but in that - in that rough period - but you have to remember for the five years before that we were actively providing all kinds of information derived from all kinds of sources, as were, indeed, 40 other countries. We were not unique or alone in this. MARGARET WARNER: All right. So let me go back to the operation, itself. So with the help of, I gather, intelligence equipment and so on furnished by the United States UNSCOM inspectors were able to essentially gather some of this - listen to conversations, I gather, among some senior Iraqi officials, and that information was analyzed, in turn, by U.S. intelligence agencies, is that right? |
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The gathering of intelligence. |
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MARGARET WARNER: All right. Then let me just go - I gather then there was a second phase beginning last March, where the U.S. essentially took over this operation, put in far more sophisticated equipment? AMBASSADOR PICKERING: I can't give you the details of that. I can tell you that a number of countries were associated with this operation. I don't treat it in phases. It was a continuum of activity. It was designed to achieve the same objective, and it dealt with the same sort of methods. I'm not in a position to give you technical details about upgrades or specific parameters of those kinds of activities for reasons you'll understand. MARGARET WARNER: Do you know - was it helpful to UNSCOM, first of all, in trying to uncover the concealment that they believed the Iraqi officials were engaged in, in terms of the weapons programs? AMBASSADOR PICKERING: I believe it was, and I think the simple testimony to that fact was that we continued to work with UNSCOM, as did others, to provide this kind of information. MARGARET WARNER: But then the information was also shared as the U.S. intelligence saw it - and I understand was also shared with Pentagon planners. To what purpose? What use did the U.S. put this information? AMBASSADOR PICKERING: Well, I can't tell you that all of the individual
internal arrangements that were made to deal with the information but,
as I said at the beginning, information that came into our hands from
any source at all from all around the world and from MARGARET WARNER: Let me just ask you one thing in that regard. Scott Ritter, writing in, I think the London Sunday Telegraph, recently said that the most - some of the most important sites hit in Operation Desert Fox, which was the military operation last month, the U.S. military operation against Iraq, were derived from some of this information gathered. Is that true? AMBASSADOR PICKERING: I can't confirm that, but I can tell you that a whole plethora of information was built up over a long period of time, including by photography, including by personnel presence on the ground, including information from other countries, which alerted UNSCOM to activities going on that they might want to inspect, and I would not want in any way at all to particularize the information that was gained from one particular source and then allocated to one particular set of actions, which seems to me to be where you're headed. I don't think the government works that way. I don't think information works that way, and I don't think, in fact, that that is an answer to the issue here. MARGARET WARNER: So what do you think - let's turn to the fallout from this. Now you heard the quote we had from Ambassador Hamdoon saying that this was essentially - it was the death knell or the death of UNSCOM. |
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AMBASSADOR PICKERING: I expect that Ambassador Hamdoon would say nothing less. He's been saying it for eight years, and he will continue to say it. It's very much in his interest to say it. Iraq is at the moment, as you can see, in a highly confrontational mood not only with the United Nations and the Security Council, with all of its neighbors, it's threatened to overthrow its neighbors, and it certainly continued in a confrontational mode with the United States and with others.
AMBASSADOR PICKERING: I think Iraq has continued to try to distort anything that came along for its own purposes. It will continue to do so. It will rely on all kinds of fabrications, which it has done in the past. It will rely on allegations that it has been making for a long period of time. I think if you examine the facts plain and simple, the United States and other countries were helping UNSCOM, it was Iraq that refused to cooperate with UNSCOM. That help is now being taken as some kind of nefarious activity when, in fact, it was completely in keeping with the resolutions - with the call upon other countries to help. And it was for the purpose of disarming Iraq, which, after all, is the stated international purpose in all of this. MARGARET WARNER: Do you think again that the release of this information has undercut Mr. Butler's position? There was notice made of the fact that one of the early stories was leaked supposedly from Kofi Annan's - some aides, speaking without attribution - |
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| Ambassador Butler's position. | ||||||||||||||
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As you can - as you know, we have said Mr. Butler has done an outstanding and professional job in leading the work of UNSCOM. We continue to believe that that is the case. We see Iraq now at a position of having a choice. If it doesn't want UNSCOM back and continue with the effort of disarmament, then sanctions will remain on. The United States will, of course, be prepared to use force to deal with Iraqi threats against its neighbors, reconstitution of weapons of mass destruction and dealing with its own people, particularly those in the North, and our intelligence will continue to provide us the information necessary to carry out those policies, and we will maintain a very strong commitment to our humanitarian policies in the Security Council, the so-called "Oil for Food program," which clearly is necessary if sanctions remain on perpetually. MARGARET WARNER: Finally - and you noted this earlier - there was another one of these skirmishes over Iraq - I believe we also noted in the News Summary - at the time the Kuwaiti government put their forces on full military alert because they are feeling threatened by Iraq. Are things coming to any kind of a boil over there, or is this just kind of a normal noise level that we should expect? AMBASSADOR PICKERING: I think that, of course, this confrontational policy by Saddam Hussein is serious. Saudi Arabia and Egypt, of course, have responded very very strongly. But we will continue, of course, to enforce the no-fly zones and do what's necessary to do that and protect our pilots. We would, of course, hope and believe that Saddam would come back into compliance with the resolutions, but if he doesn't, I've outlined the policies that we will pursue in the future to make sure that he isn't a threat. MARGARET WARNER: All right. Well, thank you very much, Mr. Ambassador, for being with us. AMBASSADOR PICKERING: Thank you very much. |
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MARGARET
WARNER: And for more on this we turn to the State Department's number
3 official, the Undersecretary of State Ambassador Thomas Pickering.
AMBASSADOR
PICKERING: Let me comment on that first, Margaret. First and foremost
the United States under United Nations Security Council resolutions
was like all member states of the United Nations asked fully to support
UNSCOM. UNSCOM made requests of us. And we supported them. Among the
major areas where we provided support for UNSCOM we're providing inspectors;
we're providing information to UNSCOM that would help it do its work,
including in response to a request from UNSCOM from its former head,
Ambassador Rolf Ekeus, for the idea of collecting specific information
through technical methods to determine precisely how and in what way
Iraq was continuing to hide its weapons of mass destruction program.
AMBASSADOR
PICKERING: That's my understanding and provided back to UNSCOM for its
use in dealing with the problem of the concealment mechanism and what
Iraq was hiding. Now, this comes against the backdrop of, of course,
having provided a U2 aircraft in the initial weeks of UNSCOM operation,
and the material provided for those aircraft flights, including photography,
was, of course, provided to UNSCOM. 
inside
Iraq, including from UNSCOM, came from our own information base. How
and in what way that was used and at what particular time I'm not the
expert on. Of course, we're talking about information that came through
UNSCOM over a long period of time, and Butler said today that it would
be naïve to believe that individual countries did not, of course, interview
their inspectors or others who worked in UNSCOM. We clearly wanted to
find out all the information we could about Iraq, and we used all the
information we could find out about Iraq as part of our information
base. 
MARGARET
WARNER: Do you think that the fact that this became public, that this
was leaked, nonetheless, has given Iraq a certain propaganda victory,
whether it's dealing with - in its argument, for instance, to have sanctions
lifted, or in its attempt to get more sympathetic hearing on that point,
has it sort of put a chink in the U.S. armor or just been an embarrassment
in some way to either the U.N. and the U.S. in a way that bolsters Iraq's
political case? 
AMBASSADOR
PICKERING: Mr. Annan has very clearly denied all of that; he denied
it again today in the lead that you ran in the story. What I think about
the purpose of this is it that it was clearly the purpose of people
who disliked UNSCOM who wanted to support Iraq -- to try to substitute
Mr. Butler for Saddam Hussein as the kind of villain of the piece. I
think that hasn't been successful. I think they will, nevertheless,
continue to try.