2004 Colin Powell Interview by Sir Trevor McDonald

Interview Excerpt:

MR. MCDONALD: Mr. Secretary, sir, let me take you back just before the war. In February 2003, you told the UN, "My colleagues, every statement I make today is backed up by sources, solid sources. These are not assertions. What we are giving you is facts and conclusions based on solid evidence."

When you look back at that now, do you think that was true?

SECRETARY POWELL: It was absolutely true at the time I said it because at the time I said it, the intelligence community of the United States, the intelligence community of the United Kingdom, of a number of other countries, and the whole body of information and evidence and experience we had working with Iraq for a period of 12 years, what the UN had been doing in there for years, all suggested the following that: (1) Saddam Hussein had never given up the intention to have weapons of mass destruction and was working on them; (2) that he had the capability, the infrastructure, the factories that could churn this stuff out, the programs that were in place to go back to full production if he ever got loose of sanctions, and we also believed that he had stockpiles. Now --

MR. MCDONALD: That wasn't true though, was it?

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, well you went to the third point. Let me come back to the first two.

He never lost the intention and there is nobody who could say that he ever lost the intention to have this capability. And the evidence is clear from documents, from what Dr. Kay, the chief inspector that we had over there found, that the programs were there in various stages. What we haven't found are stockpiles. And whether they'll be found or whether anything will be found I don't know; we'll let the new leader of the group, Mr. Duelfer, look for that.

But the only thing that I have any curiosity about now is why did we believe there were stockpiles there and so far we haven't found any? But I have no doubt about his intention. I have no doubt about the capability that he was keeping in his infrastructure -- in his industrial infrastructure and in his military infrastructure. And I am absolutely convinced that if he had gotten out of sanctions, if he had gotten out of the pressure that was being put upon him by the United Nations, if he finally got the United Nations to ignore all those years of sanctions against him, there's no doubt in my mind that he would have recreated all of that and he would have been the same kind of threat he was years ago when he gassed his neighbors in Iran and when he gassed his own people in Halabja, killing 5,000 people in one day in March of 1988.

MR. MCDONALD: But how does what you say square with the fact that many of the intelligence officers now say, and quite openly, that they felt that the intelligence was misused. And they go further. They say it was misused for political reasons.

SECRETARY POWELL: Well, some say that, and most say no. Most say, Dr. Kay says, Mr. Tenet says --

MR. MCDONALD: Mr. Tenet says there never -- we never said there was an imminent threat.

SECRETARY POWELL: Mr. Tenet did not say the information was misused.

MR. MCDONALD: He said there's no threat. He said he never said there was a threat.

SECRETARY POWELL: No, no. He didn't say there was no threat, Trevor. He said that he did not use the word imminent.

The information that I used on the 5th of February before the UN, and the information that the President used to make his decision was information provided by the Director of Central Intelligence, Mr. Tenet, and not as an individual, but as somebody who had all of the facilities of the United States intelligence community available to him.