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Robinson report - Download 606K Listen to Robinson report Experts are urging the Bush administration to use patience and caution in its approach to Iran over its nuclear ambitions.  The comments by former U.S. weapons inspector David Kay and others at an event on Capitol Hill Wednesday came as President Bush and other officials reiterated a call for Iran to end its uranium enrichment efforts and reach a peaceful and negotiated solution.  David Kay (file photo) David Kay, who has been critical of the Bush administration's faulty pre-war intelligence on weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, says Washington needs to...

Genome sequencing has given rise to a new generation of genetically engineered bioweapons carrying the potential to change the nature of modern warfare and defense. Introduction Biological weapons are designed to spread disease among people, plants, and animals through the introduction of toxins and microorganisms such as viruses and bacteria. The method through which a biological weapon is deployed depends on the agent itself, its preparation, its durability, and the route of infection. Attackers may disperse these agents through aerosols or food and water supplies (1). Although bioweapons have been used in war for many centuries, a recent surge in...

<p>Americans are waking up from a distorted reality. Half now believe that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. That's up sharply from last year, when only 36% believed that he had banned weapons.</p> <p>The numbers, from a Harris Poll conducted earlier this month, showed — again — that the "Bush lied" crowd doesn't have a good handle on the truth.</p>

Newly released State Department emails help reveal how a major Clinton Foundation donor was placed on a sensitive government intelligence advisory board even though he had no obvious experience in the field, a decision that appeared to baffle the department’s professional staff. The emails further reveal how, after inquiries from ABC News, the Clinton staff sought to “protect the name” of the Secretary, “stall” the ABC News reporter and ultimately accept the resignation of the donor just two days later. Copies of dozens of internal emails were provided to ABC News by the conservative political group Citizens United, which obtained...

Is it really true that Saddam Hussein had no "stockpiles" of weapons of mass destruction before the U.S. invaded in March 2003? Not exactly - at least not if one counts the 500 tons of uranium that the Iraqi dictator kept stored at his al Tuwaitha nuclear weapons development plant. The press hasn't made much of Saddam's 500-ton uranium stockpile, downplaying the story to such an extent that most Americans aren't even aware of it. But it's been reported - albeit in a by-the-way fashion - by the New York Times and a handful of other media outlets. And one...

THE kumbaya crowd which pressed for East Timor's independence must shoulder much of the blame for the failure of its dysfunctional Government. But while the collective of liberation theologists and civil rights lawyers cheered Fretilin's Portugese-educated Marxist guerrilla leaders, the same candle-wavers protested against the toppling of the mass murdering Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein. Yet East Timor, with a population estimated at about one million, whose independence was internationally recognised on May 20, 2002, is now arguably in proportionately worse shape than Iraq, population 26 million, where the first election under its new constitution took place just last December. The...

Technical Intelligence in Retrospect: The 2001 Anthrax Letters Powder ------------------------------------------------- Authors: Dany Shoham; Stuart M. Jacobsen --------------------------------------------------- Published in: International Journal of Intelligence and CounterIntelligence, Volume 20, Issue 1 March 2007 , pages 79 - 105 -------------------------------------------- (Weblink : http://newsdetails.blogspot.com/2007/05/technical-intelligence-in-retrospect.html ) -------------------------------------------- EXCERPTS (...) Naturally, the U.S. Intelligence Community first tried to profile the SSP by technically comparing it with past weaponized anthrax powders made by the U.S. Army. But, while the dehydration-based forming of dry powder, weapon-grade, biological material conducted by William Patrick in the U.S. Army during the 1950s relied on freeze drying, and then grinding down the...

"Relying, apparently, on concrete findings, former top U.S. weapons inspector Dr. David Kay said that "the Iraqis had developed new techniques for drying anthrax - techniques that were superior to anything the United States or the old Soviet Union had. That would make the former regime of Saddam Hussein the most sophisticated manufacturer of anthrax in the world." (Washington Post, 16 septembre 2005)

SPIEGEL INTERVIEW WITH IRAQ WMD SLEUTH DAVID KAYDavid Kay was charged by the Bush administration with finding weapons of mass destruction in Iraq after the invasion. Instead of finding weapons, though, he found what he told SPIEGEL was 'the biggest intelligence fiasco of my lifetime.' SPIEGEL: As head of the Iraq Survey Group, you led the effort to follow up on the claims made by 'Curveball,' the asylum seeker from Iraq who told German intelligence that Saddam Hussein was building mobile biological weapons laboratories. Do you remember the first time you began to doubt his story? Kay: The real shock...

Reprinted from NewsMax.com Wednesday, Nov. 30, 2005 1:14 p.m. EST David Kay Flashback: Iraqi Documents Showed WMD What happened to the internal Iraqi government documents that top U.S. weapons inspector David Kay said had convinced him that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction? In January 2004, Kay told Congress that the U.S. was "almost all wrong" in believing that Saddam had WMDs. But six months earlier in July 2003, Kay said he was sure Iraq had the banned weapons - based on millions of pages of internal government documents recovered from Saddam's regime. "I've already seen enough to convince...

(excerpt)And let me take one of the explanations most commonly given: Analysts were pressured to reach conclusions that would fit the political agenda of one or another administration. I deeply think that is a wrong explanation.

The Democrats And WMD By Trevor Bothwell (02/05/04) David Kay, who resigned last week as chief U.S. weapons investigator in Iraq, came to the conclusion recently that "we are very unlikely to find large stockpiles of weapons. I don't think they exist." Predictably, the Bush-lied-us-into-war crowd considers this proof that President Bush knew full well that Saddam Hussein didn't possess weapons of mass destruction, but dragged the country into war anyway. On the contrary, Kay reported last June his suspicions that he would find chemical and biological weapons rather quickly. These suspicions were gleaned largely from interviews with Iraqi scientists...

It pains me to be hard on Charles Duelfer. A smart and dedicated civil servant with vast experience in Iraq, he at least had an understandable reason for wrapping up his investigation into Iraq’s WMD programs: Osama bin Laden’s man in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, was trying to blow him up. Dr. Duelfer told London’s Independent in April of this year that a car bomb set by Zarqawi’s men “tried to get me and my follow car. Two of my guards were killed and one was badly wounded. My hearing's not been right since." This was the unofficial reason that...

President George W. Bush has appointed a commission to examine the performance of US intelligence regarding Baathist Iraq, especially errors concerning weapons of mass destruction (WMD). David Kay, the retiring head of the team that has gone in search of such weapons, has testified before the US Congress that, despite pre-war administration claims ­ and an international consensus ­ to the contrary, “we were almost all wrong” about Iraq’s WMD stockpiles: There weren’t any. Given the time that the commission will have for its inquiry ­ its report won’t be due until 2005 ­ perhaps it can examine an aspect...

SEOUL North Korea said it would reject any settlement of the nuclear weapons dispute as long as the United States was led by President George W. Bush, whom a North Korean official called a "cowboy." Meanwhile, the United States reportedly warned allies that North Korea might be ready to carry out an underground nuclear test as early as June. "Bush is a hooligan bereft of any personality as a human being, to say nothing of stature as president of a country," a spokesman of the North Korean Foreign Ministry told the country's official news agency, KCNA, on Saturday. The official...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. officials played down a report on Monday that the administration might seek a United Nations resolution empowering nations to intercept shipments in and out of North Korea that may contain nuclear-related materials. While acknowledging there may be some discussion of such a move, they said no proposal has been presented to senior policymakers, nor was there a decision to formally bring the issue of North Korea's nuclear programs to the U.N. Security Council. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters traveling with her to Latin America that the United States' main way of dealing with...

The Washington Post yesterday said a quotation used in its lead Page One headline in Thursday's paper -- that the United States got it "almost all wrong" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq -- was not new and was incorrectly attributed to the chief U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq. In an article on Thursday, The Post identified Charles A. Duelfer, whom the Bush administration picked to complete a U.S. investigation of Iraq's weapons programs, as the source of that remark. The dispatch by Dana Priest and Walter Pincus reported that Mr. Duelfer, chairman of the CIA's Iraq Survey Group,...

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Former U.S. chief weapons inspector David Kay urged the United States on Wednesday not to make the same mistakes with Iran that he said it made with Iraq ahead of the second Persian Gulf War. Former President Jimmy Carter, meanwhile, said that even a pre-emptive strike against Iran's nuclear facilities "would not be successful," but he agreed with U.S. officials who have demanded more transparency from the Islamic republic. Kay told CNN he is worried because he's hearing some of the same signals about Iran and its nuclear program that were heard as the Bush administration made...

WASHINGTON, Feb 9 (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence is unlikely to know much about Iran's contentious nuclear program and could be vulnerable to manipulation for political ends, former intelligence officers and other experts say. Amid an escalating war of words between Washington and Tehran, the experts say they doubt the CIA has been able to recruit agents with access to the small circle of clerics who control the Islamic Republic's national security policy. Serious doubts also surround the effectiveness of an expanded intelligence role for the Pentagon, which former intelligence officials say is preparing covert military forays to look for evidence...

One year ago I told the Senate Armed Services Committee that I had concluded "we were almost all wrong" at the time of the Iraq war about that country's activities with regard to weapons of mass destruction -- and never more wrong than in the assessment that Iraq had a resurgent program on the verge of producing nuclear weapons. I testified about what I saw as the major reasons we got it so wrong, and I urged the establishment of an independent commission to examine this failure and begin the long-overdue process of adjusting our intelligence capabilities to the new...