CRG: Dr David Kay's Testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee
David Kay
Testimony before the Senate ASC
KAY: In my judgment, based on the work that has been done to this point of the Iraq Survey Group, and in fact, that I reported to you in October, Iraq was in clear violation of the terms of Resolution 1441. Resolution 1441 required that Iraq report all of its activities: one last chance to come clean about what it had.
We have discovered hundreds of cases, based on both documents, physical evidence and the testimony of Iraqis, of activities that were prohibited under the initial U.N. Resolution 687 and that should have been reported under 1441, with Iraqi testimony that not only did they not tell the U.N. about this, they were instructed not to do it and they hid material.
KAY: Senator Warner, you're absolutely -- I think -- and I think I've said, but let me be absolutely clear about it -- Iraq was in clear and material violation of 1441. They maintained programs and activities, and they certainly had the intentions at a point to resume their program. So there was a lot they wanted to hide because it showed what they were doing that was illegal.
CLINTON: And of course, my time has expired, but I think that rightly does raise questions that we should be examining about whether or not the U.N. inspection process pursuant to 1441 might not also have worked without the loss of life that we have confronted both among our own young men and women, as well as Iraqis.
KAY: Well, Senator Clinton, let me just add to that.
We have had a number of Iraqis who have come forward and said, "We did not tell the U.N. about what we were hiding, nor would we have told the U.N. because we would run the risk of our own" -- I think we have learned things that no U.N. inspector would have ever learned given the terror regime of Saddam and the tremendous personal consequences that scientists had to run by speaking the truth.
CORNYN: And indeed, the deception that you've talked about of Saddam's own military and scientists and others who perhaps led him to believe that they were following through on his orders to develop these weapons of mass destruction, would you say that that deception not only convinced perhaps Saddam to some extent, but indeed that contributed to his intransigence before the world community and defiance of the United Nations and, finally, of U.N. Resolution 1441?
KAY: I think that probably did. I'm just hesitant because analyzing the mind of someone who would end up in a spider hole like Saddam requires a skill that I suspect I was not equipped for. But, yes, I think that's a reasonable interpretation.
Cease with the personal attacks - final warning.
