CNN Saturday Night

Mr. Woolsey, good to see you.

JAMES WOOLSEY, FMR. CIA DIRECTOR: Good to be with you, Carol.

LIN: The Senate Intelligence Committee faulted the CIA analysis, saying there was a presumption, a widespread presumption that Saddam Hussein did in fact have weapons of mass destruction. What do you think is actually going to change at the agency now?

WOOLSEY: Well, they faulted the agency’s analysis with respect to the weapons of mass destruction, it’s true, particularly I think with respect to the biological warfare laboratories. That seems to have been the biggest mistakes that they made, the CIA made, as set forth in the Senate report.

They really were pretty well on with respect to ballistic missile threats. They weren’t criticized on that. They did a good job on that.

On nuclear weapons, the agency itself, quite apart from what any policymakers may have said, the agency itself said that the programs had started up again, but were I think five to seven years away from Saddam being able to have a nuclear weapon. And that doesn’t seem to me to be too far off.

I think the main thing was the description of weapons, not — they didn’t talk about biological or chemical agents, as they should have, which is — could have been a small amount of material, but once people hear that there are weapons, they think of fully loaded up bombs and artillery shells and the like. And those have not been found. And I think that’s the source of a lot of understandable congressional and public upset.

LIN: Well, there was some interesting insight also into how the CIA writes up its initial analysis, that is classified, and then what is eventually released to the public in its white paper.

For example, in the initial classified analysis, there are caveats. There are questions about sources in the final analysis that comes out to the public. It’s a definitive conclusion.

Explain how that happens and as the public is going to look at it, it’s understandable why analysts may jump to the conclusion, looking at what was actually released to the public that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous individual.

WOOLSEY: Well, often in a national intelligence estimate, there will be caveats in the body of the estimate. But everything is pulled together sort of in a bottom line in the key judgments. And even if the judgment is sort of a 55/45 proposition, sometimes it shows up as a judgment. And if a caveat has some details that might betray a source or a method, the caveat won’t show up and didn’t in several of these cases in the unclassified version.

I think the CIA needs to look at the ways that it drafts those key judgments. We always used to try in the mid ’90s to use, when we could, gamblers’ odds. You know, one in two chance, one in 10 chance, that sort of thing. It’s vague and it — but it can connote, at least, the idea that this is a small probability, but it’s a serious matter and you should know about it.

They need to look at the way they draft these, particularly when they put out declassified versions.

LIN: Mr. Woolsey, do you think that there was political pressure to incriminate Saddam Hussein? Was there political pressure on the agency to do so?

WOOLSEY: The committee didn’t say so. And they haven’t apparently found anything that suggested that. I must say that…

LIN: What do you think, though, from your own experience?

WOOLSEY: …of the reports I’ve read…

LIN: From your own experience as CIA director?

WOOLSEY: Well, policymakers are often unhappy with intelligence analysis. One of the things that we have kept saying in my time was that Jean-Bertrand Aristide was not going to be the Thomas Jefferson of Haiti. He had ordered some people killed. He had some very serious problems. He was probably better than many of the other people that he might have been a rival of down there, but we were very skeptical about how stable he was going to be. And a lot of the people in the administration at the time, in the Clinton administration, were very enthusiastic about Aristide. They didn’t like that.

I think, frankly, the CIA turned out to be more correct on that in the long run than the administration was. LIN: Well, let me ask you this. The report did allude to some connection, though, between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda?

WOOLSEY: Yes. To my mind, this is the most interesting part of the report, because the committee pretty fully endorsed what the CIA did on al Qaeda and Iraq. And what they said was very interesting. What the body of the report says in Chapter 12, in a number of cases, is that the mutual suspicion by — between al Qaeda and the Iraqi intelligence was set aside because al Qaeda wanted assistance and Iraq wanted the United States attack, that there was a dozen instances of reports of training by Iraq of al Qaeda with respect to chemical and biological and explosives, provision of false documentation, and so on.

So no, Iraq was not a sponsor of al Qaeda. Iraq didn’t govern and rule al Qaeda. And apparently…

LIN: But there were contacts?

WOOLSEY: More than contact? There was clearly training. And this — the people, such as Dick Clarke, who said there was no relationship at all, I think are being shown to be by this report quite wrong.

LIN: Mr. Woolsey, so in final analysis here, do you think that the CIA, as slammed as it was in this Senate Intelligence report, do you think it is solely responsible for the mistakes made and the judgments before the war?

WOOLSEY: They got some things wrong. And they need to change the way they draft their national intelligence estimates. They need to be more precise about the use of the word “weapons” as distinct from the chemicals or the biological agent anthrax itself. There’s some need for increased precision.

But I don’t see anything that was ill-intentioned. They made some mistakes and they got some things right. I think some intelligence community reorganization could help here and help the different parts of the community pull together by having someone separate from the CIA director be the overall head of the community.

There are some needs for reforms, but this is — I don’t think we have a hanging offense here. I think they were doing the best they could. And on the whole, it’s important to realize these people serve the country well. And many of them are quite brave. And many of them are quite bright.

LIN: Right.

WOOLSEY: Anybody who waxes wrath against them needs to stand in their shoes a little bit.

LIN: James Woolsey, thank you very much. We want to know what you think. Our last call question tonight is, is the CIA solely to blame? Give us a call. Give us your thoughts, 1-800-807-2620.