Washington D.C., 7 April 2006 - Only
14 of the full 93 pages of the National Intelligence Estimate
that President Bush authorized
Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter"
Libby, to disclose to New York Times reporter Judith
Miller has actually been officially declassified, according to
a posting today on the Web site of the National Security Archive
at George Washington University.
The estimate has apparently been released in four forms:
- one, a white
paper that purportedly represented the substance
of the estimate but actually left out most of the dissents and
caveats;
- second, an abstract that Mr. Libby apparently used to brief
New York Times reporter Judith Miller on July 8, 2003;
- third, the July 18, 2003, release by the White House of the
"key
judgments" section and parts of the dissents;
- and fourth, a Freedom
of Information Act release to the National Security
Archive on June 1, 2004, that included two additional pages
but left the vast majority of the estimate whited out.
The July
18, 2003, "key judgments" document was
declassified and released by the Bush administration just ten
days after President Bush authorized Vice President Cheney's chief
of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby, to disclose similar
information to Miller, according
to Libby's testimony before a grand jury.
"The ship of state is the only vessel that leaks from the
top," commented Thomas Blanton, executive director of the
National Security Archive.
Also included in today's posting is the October 2002 unclassified
presentation on "Iraq's
Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs," with
the seal of the Director of Central Intelligence on the cover,
and a version
of the NIE released by the CIA on June 1, 2004, in
response to a Freedom of Information Act request by the National
Security Archive. The document was almost completely redacted
by CIA censors. All of the text except for the two title pages
and the two pages listing National Intelligence Council members
had previously been disclosed in the July
2003 release.
Documents
National
Intelligence Estimate - CIA declassification release
Iraq's Continuing
Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction
October 2002, Top Secret
Source: CIA declassification release under FOIA, June 1, 2004
National
Intelligence Estimate - White House declassification release
Iraq's Continuing
Programs for Weapons of Mass Destruction
October 2002, Top Secret (Extract)
Source: White House, July 18, 2003
National
Intelligence Estimate - CIA Unclassified version
Iraq's Weapons of Mass
Destruction Programs
October 2002, Unclassified
Source: CIA public release, October 2002