The Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction, Report to the President of the United States, March 31, 2005 Official Government Ed. by Laurence H. Silberman
This publication contains the official government edition of the unclassified report by the Commission established by executive order of the U.S. President to examine the capabilities of the US intelligence community (including the CIA and the National Security Agency) to collect, analyse and disseminate information related to weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The report focuses on the quality of the intelligence on Iraq's WMD programmes, but also looks at intelligence on WMD programmes in Libya and Afghanistan, and related 21st century threats, including threats posed by states and transnational terrorist networks. Amongst its conclusions, the report finds that there was a major intelligence failure in almost all of the pre-war judgements made about Iraq's WMD programmes, largely due to the lack of good information, serious errors in its analysis and a failure to make clear just how much of that analysis was based on assumptions rather than good evidence. The report makes 74 recommendations aimed at improving the capacity of US intelligence services to warn the United States Government about such threats in the future.