Joint Statement of the Co-Chairmen of the Commission on the Intelligence Capabilities of the United States Regarding Weapons of Mass Destruction

Thursday, June 24, 2004

Today the Commission completed two days of meetings in its offices in Arlington, Virginia. Yesterday's session was devoted to the United States' human intelligence collection capabilities. During that session, we heard separate briefings from both the CIA's Directorate of Operations and the Defense Department's Directorate for Human Intelligence. These presentations focused on the United States' current capabilities to collect human intelligence on countries or transnational terrorist networks that pose WMD proliferation threats, and also provided an opportunity for these agencies to present to the Commission their plans and proposals for improving those capabilities. Yesterday's meeting also included a panel discussion with senior analysts from throughout the Intelligence Community, which allowed the Commission to hear analysts' perspectives on the Intelligence Community's ability to gather human intelligence.

Today's agenda included separate briefings from the Director of Central Intelligence's Counterterrorist Center (CTC) and the Terrorist Threat Integration Center (TTIC). These discussions focused on the Intelligence Community's capabilities to identify, and to prepare the United States to respond to, the acquisition and delivery of WMD by terrorist networks. We also heard a presentation today from the Staff Director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence concerning that Committee's study on pre-war intelligence concerning Iraq's WMD programs. In addition to these full Commission meetings, Commission members continue to have productive visits with component agencies of the Intelligence Community; this week, for instance, several members of the Commission met with representatives of both the Department of Energy's Office of Intelligence and the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency.

Because our June meetings concerned highly classified matters of national security, they were not - and indeed could not have been - open to the public. We nonetheless intend to keep the public informed of our work through periodic statements and through the Commission's website, available at www.wmd.gov.

Commission Co-Chairs:
The Honorable Laurence H. Silberman
The Honorable Charles S. Robb