Senate Report On Pre-war Intelligence On Iraq - Chronology of The Investigation

Chronology of The Investigation

In the course of the investigation, Committee staff reviewed more than 30,000 pages of documentation provided by the intelligence community. The Committee requested that it be supplied copies of the President's Daily Briefs (PDBs) concerning Iraq's WMD capabilities and ties to terrorism, but the White House denied that request. An article by journalist Murray Waas has described a specific controversy over the PDB for September 21, 2001, which allegedly said that the US intelligence community had "no evidence" linking Saddam Hussein to the September 11 attacks, and "scant credible evidence" that Iraq had any significant collaborative ties with al Qaeda.

Committee staff also interviewed more than 200 people, including intelligence analysts and senior officials with the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), Defense Intelligence Agency, the Department of Defense, and other federal entities involved in intelligence gathering and analysis. The Committee also held a series of hearings on the intelligence concerning Iraqi WMD and ties to terrorism.

On February 12, 2004, Senators Roberts and Rockefeller announced an expansion of the scope of the investigation. The new elements added to the investigation were:

• the collection of intelligence on Iraq from the end of the Gulf War to the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom;
• whether public statements and reports and testimony regarding Iraq by U.S. Government officials made between the Gulf War period and the commencement of Operation Iraqi Freedom were substantiated by intelligence information;
• the postwar findings about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and weapons programs and links to terrorism and how they compare with prewar assessments;
• prewar intelligence assessments about postwar Iraq;
• any intelligence activities relating to Iraq conducted by the Policy Counterterrorism Evaluation Group (PCTEG) and the Office of Special Plans within the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy; and
• the use by the Intelligence Community of information provided by the Iraqi National Congress (INC).

On June 17, 2004, Senators Roberts and Rockefeller announced that the completed report had been unanimously approved by the Committee's members, and that they were working with the CIA on the issue of declassification. The completed report, with blacked-out text ("redactions") made by the CIA, was released on July 9, 2004. The report did not cover most of the new topics announced in the February 12, 2004, press release; instead, those topics were now to be covered in a separate report, to be completed later, covering "phase two" of the investigation.