The Germans certainly – the intelligence service believed that there were WMD. It turns out that we were all wrong, probably in my judgment, and that is most disturbing. David Kay Read Quote
The case of Iran, a nuclear program that the Iranians admit was 18 years on, that we underestimated. And, in fact, we didn’t discover it. It was discovered by a group of Iranian dissidents outside the country who pointed the international community at the location. David Kay Read Quote
I had innumerable analysts who came to me in apology that the world that we were finding was not the world that they had thought existed and that they had estimated. Reality on the ground differed in advance. David Kay Read Quote
But the most important thing about that story, which is not often told, is that as a result after the Cuban missile crisis, immediate steps were taken to correct our inability to collect on the movement of nuclear material out of the Soviet Union to other places. David Kay Read Quote
I came not from within the administration, and it was clear and clear in our discussions and no one asked otherwise that I would lead this the way I thought best and I would speak the truth as we found it. David Kay Read Quote
There’s a long record here of being wrong. There’s a good reason for it. There are probably multiple reasons. Certainly proliferation is a hard thing to track, particularly in countries that deny easy and free access and don’t have free and open societies. David Kay Read Quote
I also believe that it is time to begin the fundamental analysis of how we got here, what led us here and what we need to do in order to ensure that we are equipped with the best possible intelligence as we face these issues in the future. David Kay Read Quote
And you know, almost in a perverse way, I wish it had been undue influence because we know how to correct that. We get rid of the people who, in fact, were exercising that. David Kay Read Quote
I would also point out that many governments that chose not to support this war – certainly, the French president, Jacques Chirac, as I recall in April of last year, referred to Iraq’s possession of WMD. David Kay Read Quote
I do believe we have to understand why reality turned out to be different than expectations and estimates. But you have more public service – certainly many of you – than I have ever had, and you recognize that this is not unusual. David Kay Read Quote
