Iraq Intelligence Commission

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The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction was a panel created by Executive Order 13328 signed by U.S. President George W. Bush in February of 2004. The impetus for the Commission lay with a public windstorm occasioned by statements, including those of Chief of the Iraq Survey Group David Kay, that the Intelligence Community had grossly erred in judging that Iraq had been developing WMD before the March 2003 start of "Operation Iraqi Freedom." President Bush therefore formed the Commission, but gave it a broad mandate not only to look into any errors behind the Iraq intelligence, but also to look into intelligence on WMD programs in Afghanistan and Libya, as well as to examine the capabilities of the Intelligence Community to address the problem of WMD proliferation and "related threats." The Commission, following intense study of the Intelligence Community, delivered its report to the President on March 31, 2005.

President Bush holds a press briefing at the White House on Friday, Feb. 6, 2004, announcing the formation of the commission. He is flanked by commission co-chairs Senator Charles Robb (left) and Judge Laurence Silberman (right).

Regarding Iraq, the Commission concluded that the Intelligence Community was "dead wrong" in almost all of its pre-war judgments about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and that this constituted a major intelligence failure. The Commission's report described in great detail the systemic analytical, collection, and dissemination flaws that led to the Community's erroneous assessments about Iraq's alleged WMD programs. Chief among these flaws were failures by certain agencies to gather all relevant information and analyze fully information on purported centrifuge tubes, insufficient vetting of key sources, particularly the source "Curveball," and somewhat overheated presentation of data to policymakers. The commission found "no indication" that political pressure had been applied to distort the Intelligence Community's assessments on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The report also looked forward, recommending a large number of organizational and structural reforms. Of these 74 recommendations to the President, he accepted 69 of them fully in a public statement released on June 29, 2005.

The commission's mission was, in part, "to ensure the most effective counter-proliferation capabilities of the United States and response to the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the ongoing threat of terrorist activity." With regards to Iraq, the commission should "specifically examine the Intelligence Community's intelligence prior to the initiation of Operation Iraqi Freedom and compare it with the findings of the Iraq Survey Group and other relevant agencies or organizations concerning the capabilities, intentions, and activities of Iraq relating to the design, development, manufacture, acquisition, possession, proliferation, transfer, testing, potential or threatened use, or use of Weapons of Mass Destruction and related means of delivery."

Commission members were:

Laurence Silberman, Republican, retired U.S. Court of Appeals judge, Deputy Attorney General under Presidents Nixon and Ford, Ambassador to Yugoslavia, et al., co-Chairman
Charles Robb, Democrat, former U.S. Senator from and Governor of Virginia, co-Chairman
John McCain, Republican, U.S. Senator from Arizona
Lloyd Cutler, Democrat, former White House counsel to Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton. Cutler changed status to "Of Counsel" shortly after the Commission formed.
Patricia Wald, Democrat, retired Judge of the DC Court of Appeals.
Rick Levin, President of Yale University.
Retired Admiral Bill Studeman, former Deputy Director of Central Intelligence, Director of NSA.
Charles M. Vest, former President of MIT
Henry S. Rowen, former Assistant Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, and President of RAND.

The first seven members of the panel were appointed on February 6, 2004, the date of the executive order which created it. The two final members, Vest and Rowen, were appointed on February 13.

Days before the American commission was announced, the government of the United Kingdom, the U.S.'s primary ally during the Iraq War, announced a similar commission to investigate British intelligence, known as the Butler Inquiry.

The commission was independent and separate from the 9-11 Commission.