Q. You've been making a lot of changes in the CIA's procedures. For example, you want to include more dissent in intelligence analyses. Why?
A. Every major intelligence failure over the last 20 or 40 years has been because the analysts tended to accept the conventional wisdom. The problem has not been a lack of dissent by the various agencies. The problem has come about when they all signed up to a view that was in fact wrong. One example was the conclusion ((before the 1990 invasion of Kuwait)) that Saddam Hussein would spend the next several years trying to rebuild Iraq after the Iran-Iraq war and not be looking for new conquests or new territory.
The point is that we see a world of more, not fewer, mysteries. It seems imperative to change our approach to doing intelligence estimates by building in our judgments alternative possibilities -- what if we're wrong? We must help the policymakers think through the problems, in addition to supplying our best judgment. There is, for example, really no way of knowing for sure how reform in Russia is going to turn out.
Q. General Norman Schwarzkopf complained bitterly to Congress about the quality of intelligence during the gulf war.
A. There were some very important intelligence successes during Desert Storm. It was intelligence that made smart weapons smart; it was intelligence that made the monitoring of the sanctions possible. It was intelligence that made sure that commanders knew where all the 42 Iraqi divisions were and what kind of equipment they had and that there were no technological surprises.
Q. But intelligence failed to identify the magnitude of Iraq's nuclear and chemical threats.
A. The community did a good job identifying the fact of the nuclear and biological programs. Where the community did not have the information was in terms of the scale and pace, for instance, of the nuclear program.
Q. By a big margin.
A. By a significant margin, acknowledged. We knew Saddam Hussein had a nuclear-weapons program, and the status of his centrifuge uranium effort. But we missed his Colutron development.
Q. How's the Iraqi threat evolving?
A. We think he has a couple of hundred Scud missiles hidden. Enough of his nuclear program was found and uncovered so our estimate is it would take several years to get that program significantly restarted. His biological- weapons program could be reconstituted in weeks.
Q. What if Saddam is overthrown?
A. It would depend on the nature of the regime. Clearly, a successor would not be as strong, would not have 20-some years to build a regime of intimidation and fear. Saddam himself is clearly not as strong as he was at the outset of the war. He has many problems that are growing, not shrinking.
Q. What about Iran?
A. Iran is determined to regain its former stature as the pre-eminent power in the Persian Gulf. The Iranians are spending $2 billion a year on sophisticated weaponry -- from MiG-29 and Su-24 fighter bombers, to at least two Kilo-class attack submarines, all from Russia. They have a fairly crude chemical-weapons program, and we suspect they may have a biological program. The Iranians also continue their terrorism. In the past few weeks we know they've sent a large number of weapons to Hizballah.
Q. You speak often of the North Korean threat.