X 4.IN 8/16:IR 1/22 THE IRAQI DOCUMENTS: A GLIMPSE INTO THE REGIME OF SADDAM HUSSEIN HEARING BEFORE THE SUBCOMMITTEE ON OVERSIGHT AND INVESTIGATIONS OF THE COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES ONE HUNDRED NINTH CONGRESS SECOND SESSION APRIL 6, 2006 Serial No. 109-184 Pennsylvania State University Printed for the use of the Committee on IntdrnationalRelatidriis^ies Documents Collection _U.S. D:-pu;i-ory Copy Available via the World Wide Web: http://www.house.gov/international relations 26-907PDF U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE WASHINGTON : 2006 For sale by the Superintendent of Documents, U.S. Government Printing Office Internet: bookstore.gpo.gov Phone: toll free (866) 512-1800; DC area (202) 512-1800 Fax: (202) 512-2250 Mail: Stop SSOP, Washington, DC 20402-0001 COMMITTEE ON INTERNATIONAL RELATIONS HENRY J. HYDE, JAMES A. LEACH, Iowa CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH, New Jersey, Vice Chairman DAN BURTON, Indiana ELTON GALLEGLY, California ILEANA ROS-LEHTINEN, Florida DANA ROHRABACHER, California EDWARD R. ROYCE, California PETER T. KING, New York STEVE CHABOT, Ohio THOMAS G. TANCREDO, Colorado RON PAUL, Texas DARRELL ISSA, California JEFF FLAKE, Arizona JO ANN DAVIS, Virginia MARK GREEN, Wisconsin JERRY WELLER, Illinois MIKE PENCE, Indiana THADDEUS G. McCOTTER, Michigan KATHERINE HARRIS, Florida JOE WILSON, South Carolina JOHN BOOZMAN, Arkansas J. GRESHAM BARRETT, South Carolina CONNIE MACK, Florida JEFF FORTENBERRY, Nebraska MICHAEL McCAUL, Texas TED POE, Texas Illinois, Chairman TOM LANTOS, California HOWARD L. BERMAN, California GARY L. ACKERMAN, New York ENI F.H. FALEOMAVAEGA, American Samoa DONALD M. PAYNE, New Jersey SHERROD BROWN, Ohio BRAD SHERMAN, California ROBERT WEXLER, Florida ELIOT L. ENGEL, New York WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts GREGORY W. MEEKS, New York BARBARA LEE, California JOSEPH CROWLEY, New York EARL BLUMENAUER, Oregon SHELLEY BERKLEY, Nevada GRACE F. NAPOLITANO, California ADAM B. SCHIFF, California DIANE E. WATSON, California ADAM SMITH, Washington BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota BEN CHANDLER, Kentucky DENNIS A. CARDOZA, California RUSS CARNAHAN, Missouri Thomas E. Mooney, Sr., Staff Director I General Counsel Robert R. King, Democratic Staff Director Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations DANA ROHRABACHER, California, Chairman EDWARD R. ROYCE, California WILLIAM D. DELAHUNT, Massachusetts JEFF FLAKE, Arizona, Vice Chairman HOWARD L. BERMAN, California MARK GREEN, Wisconsin BETTY McCOLLUM, Minnesota MIKE PENCE, Indiana ADAM B. SCHIFF, California JOE WILSON, South Carolina Gregg Rickman, Subcommittee Staff Director Gregory McCarthy, Professional Staff Member Cliff Stammerman, Democratic Professional Staff Member Emily Anderson, Staff Associate (ID 2 his many cruelties, Saddam never accounted for or returned at least 605 Kuwaiti prisoners of war. Most of these victims were ci- vilians captured during the brutal and murderous 1990 invasion of Kuwait. As part of the cease-fire agreement in early 1991, Saddam agreed to account for their whereabouts. Needless to say, Saddam failed to keep his word, and all these years there has been no word of the Kuwaiti prisoners. The agony of the Kuwaiti people over their missing family members was painful and omnipresent in that little country. By a scale of comparison, 605 prisoners of war in a small country like Kuwait would be equivalent to the holding of 250,000 Ameri- cans. Until now there has been no solid information about the fate of the Kuwaiti prisoners. In fact, there is question as to the authen- ticity of the documents concerning the Kuwaiti prisoners that has emerged, or that have emerged, I should say. These documents, however, do serve a useful purpose in stimulating the discussion and examination of the issue which is in itself a positive outcome to the document declassification process. Here, to comment on Iraq's monstrous cruelty to its Kuwaiti pris- oners is Ibrahim M. Al-Shaheen, Deputy Chairman of the National Committee for Missing & Prisoners of War from the Government of Kuwait, and we welcome him, and look forward to have him ex- press his views, which will be in one moment. On a broader subject, we will hear from Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Woods, U.S. Army, retired, the lead author of the Iraqi Pro- spective Project, this path-breaking new study, and his project manager, General Tony Cucolo, who are with us today, and from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and that is Am- bassador Negraponte's office, is Dan Butler, who will comment on the declassification process and how the roll-out of these documents will unfold. This hearing focuses on the wholesale declassification of docu- ments and we seek to improve our understanding of the evil nature of the regime that we deposed. Saddam Hussein's megalomania and virulent hatred of the United States and his intentions of re- moving the United States' influence from the Middle East are con- firmed in documents that are waiting to be found and published. Through these documents, we also are provided with a greater insight into the abject fear that Saddam inspired in his own gov- ernment and in his own military leaders, thus causing mistakes and abuses. It remains to be seen what else we will find when more of these documents become public, but I believe this is an im- portant opportunity to learn more about the monster who ruled Iraq, the monster we drove from power, and eventually the mon- ster we found hiding in a hole. I look forward to the hearing, and from our eminently qualified witnesses. Today we are here to proclaim when it comes to information the more, the quicker, the better. The massive document disclosure America is about to engage upon will create an intellectual dy- namic that can only happen in a free society. Not all the documents will be authentic, as we will hear today, but in total they will 5 Even within the documents that have been released regarding Iraq, I think one of the most pressing issues for our consideration ought to be the potential Russian complicity. I would love to have a hearing on that. Bring in the Administration. Bring in those that wrote that report. What do we know about whether the Russians were disclosing our military plans to Saddam's regime? These are some of the questions I would love to have answered, and I know our Chairman and his diligence when he is on the hunt for answers, and I can only imagine that the reason why we are having hearings on the despotic nature of the Hussein regime— which none of us question; he was an awful tyrant; we can stipu- late to that at the beginning of this hearing—but I can only imag- ine the reason we haven't had more of these really critical hearings is that the instructions from the top down are telling this Sub- committee what we can oversee and what we can't. So we can look into how bad Saddam was, but we can't look be- yond that at really almost anything involving the conduct of the war, or our expenditures in the war, or any of the questions that Americans are asking us. My constituents aren't asking whether I think Saddam was a ter- ribly tyrant. They all know he was, and so do I. But they do want to know what has happened with our equipment. Why aren't we better protecting our troops? What has happened with our expendi- tures? Why isn't reconstruction going better? What is this about the White House approving the leaking of Valarie Plame? What is that all about? These are the questions that our constituents want us to get an- swers for, and I just wish this was the subject of our work in this Subcommittee rather than plumbing the depths of the Saddam re- gime. Mr. ROHRABAchEr. Thank you very much. Mr. Berman, do you have any opening statement? Mr. Berman does not. Let us note that if you do have questions about Soviet influence, I think we have some people, some generals, who are with us today who can answer those questions in fact; talk about Soviet influence in Iraq prior to the invasion, prior to the liberation, I should say. Now, instead of focusing on what we are not going to be covering today, I think it is important that we move forward and do the job at hand. Dr. Al-Shaheen, we are very, very pleased that you have come halfway around the world to be with us. This is an issue of utmost importance to your people. As I mentioned, the equivalent number of Iraqi or Kuwaitis being held would have been 250,000 Ameri- cans, and I think the United States of America can be proud of what we have done in the Middle East, and I think when the con- flict and chaos is over in this conflict that is now taking place in Iraq, and the confusion and chaos that always accompanies war and blood-letting—when that ends and we can see what society emerges, the United States of America will be able to be very proud that it has taken the Saddam Husseins of the world and relegated them to holes to hide in, and that we have taken the Saddam Hus- seins and the monsters who would now create some sort of Islamic dictatorship in Iraq and instead we have opened up an opportunity 6 to decent people to live at peace with their neighbors, which you know is more important than anything else right now—to make sure that Iraq isn't recaptured by some monstrous regime that would attack your people and their own people. So with that said, we invite you to let us know about this great suffering that your people have had, and some of the details that may help us understand the importance of finding out information through these documents. STATEMENT OF IBRAHIM M. AL-SHAHEEN, PH.D., DEPUTY CHAIRMAN, THE NATIONAL COMMITTEE FOR MISSING & PRISONERS OF WAR—KUWAIT Mr. Al-Shaheen. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Honorable Chairman, Members of the Subommittee, on behalf of the people and Government of the State of Kuwait, I extend to you our utmost thanks and appreciation for your continuous support to the issues that are vital to the state of Kuwait, especially to the issue of Kuwaiti POWs in Iraq. Also extending many thanks to your kind and considerate invita- tion to participate in this hearing. May I briefly introduce a summary of the this humanitarian tragedy? On the 2nd of August 1990, Iraqi armed forces invaded Kuwait in an act of aggression that was universally condemned. The Iraqi forces remained in Kuwait for 7 months, during which they com- mitted all sort of atrocities against the Kuwaiti people, such as cruel executions of innocent individuals in front of their families, random and mass arrests of citizens, detained in various locations before transferring them forcefully to prisons in Iran, a crime against humanity and a violation of human rights. During the years that followed the liberation of Kuwait, every conceivable effort was exerted in vain, to convince the former Iraqi regime to account for the fate of the prisoners. A humanitarian committee chaired by the International Red Cross was set up to re- solve this issue. Iraq signed its commitment to actively participate in the meetings. But the former regime boycotted the meetings in 1992 until 1994, and then again boycotted from 1998 until 2003. All along, Kuwait insisted on the humanitarian nature of this issue, expressing the importance for the families to know the fate of their loved ones, whether alive and held prisoners, or deceased. Over 50 meetings were held before the fall of Saddam regime, during which Iraq's answer to Kuwait's requests to identify the fate of the prisoners was the claim that it had no information. It was only after the fall of Saddam's regime that the search process picked up steam, breaking free from all deadlocks criminally im- posed by that regime for such a long period. Key information that had been insistently requested and persist- ently denied suddenly became available. It was possible to locate the first mass grave and to start up with the process of mortal re- mains exhumation and identification. Honorable Chairman and Members of the Subcommittee, results achieved to date confirm through DNA tests the identification of 227 individuals out of 605 prisoners. The tests also confirmed that they were executed in 1990 and 1991. Hence, it is ascertained that 8 NATIONAL COMMITTEE FGfc * P.O.WS AFFAI&S The Honorable Ibrahim M. Al-Shaheea Deputy chairman of Kuwaiti national committee for P.O.W's sn Iraq April 6th 2006 House Committee on International Relations, Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Honorable Chairman, Members of the Committee, On behalf of the people and Government of the State of Kuwait, I extend to you, our utmost thanks and appreciation for your continues support to the issues that are vital to the state of Kuwait, especially to the issue of Kuwaiti POW's in Iraq. Also extending many thanks to your kind and considerate invitation to participate in this hearing. May 1 briefly introduce a summary of this humanitarian tragedy.. On the Second of August 1990, Iraqi armed forces invaded Kuwait in an act of aggression that was universally condemned. The Iraqi forces remained in Kuwait for seven months, during which they committed all sorts of atrocities against the Kuwaiti people. Such as, cruel executions of innocent individuals in front of their families, random and mass arrests of citizens, detained in various locations before transferring tbcm forcefully to prisons in Iraq. A crime against humanity and a violation of human rights. 11 Mr. ROHRABACHEr. Thank you very much for that very insightful and also heartwarming testimony, and let me just say that your in- dication that there was—how many have already been identified of the 600? Mr. Al-Shaheen. 227. Mr. ROHRABAchEr. 227. And that is the equivalent of about 100,000 Americans proportionately, and one can—we are very, very pleased that we are bringing closure to that. We are bringing clo- sure to that, and members of your families now can rest assured that that chapter is closed, and they don't have to have that agony. The fact that Saddam Hussein's regime intentionally kept people, mothers and fathers, and brothers and sisters, in the dark for so long indicates how evil he was. He was not satisfied with just in- flicting damage, but instead he had to create agony in the hearts and souls of his victims. So we thank you for letting us know, and again your testimony underscores the importance of these documents. As we go through these documents, it will bring closure to the people in Kuwait and also the large numbers of people in Iraq who are also victimized by the horrible monstrous regime. So again I appreciate your testimony, and let us reconfirm today that we are very grateful for your friendship and the friendship of the Kuwaiti people because I know that as time goes on we can build on that friendship that was borne in this tragedy, and we can build on this friendship to build a better world and to create peace in your region. So thank you very much for being with us today. Mr. Delahunt. Mr. Delahunt. Thank you, Mr. Rohrabacher. I simply would associate myself with the remarks of my friend, the Chairman, and echo all of his sentiments, and I think this is a very important initiative, and an effort for the reasons that you so eloquently described when you were referring to your sister-in- law, and God speed, and may there be the kind of work concluded that will give peace of mind to all those who have suffered so egre- giously. Mr. Al-Shaheen. Thank you very much. Thank you. Mr. ROHRABACHEr. Mr. Wilson. Mr. Wilson. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. Thank you for your comments, and it is so significant that 227 of the 605 have been identified. Have any of the others been identi- fied of POWs/MIAs (missing in action)? Mr. Al-Shaheen. We have brought from Iraq from different mass graves over 320 mortal remains; 227 were identified by the DNA, and the rest are under work tests in the forensic lab in Ku- wait. Mr. WILSOn. I remember visiting Kuwait in 2003, and hearing about this issue, and certainly those of us who—all of us have been concerned about MIAs, the issue that America has faced, and so I understood from the beginning how important this was. Are efforts being made to try to identify the balance? Mr. Al-Shaheen. Yes. We have information about locations of mass graves, and we are cooperating, of course, as I mentioned with the United States military in Iraq, and they have been really 13 Mr. Wilson. Was there a reason why they would pick up people aside from maybe business leaders or government leaders? Mr. Al-Shaheen. No, it was at random. Mr. Wilson. Random. Mr. Al-Shaheen. 124 of them students out of the 600, and of course, the scheme of Saddam was much worse than this. He had thousands of Kuwaitis. Fortunately, they were already in the south, or when there was this revolution in the south, and we had over 6,000 people that came back to us. Mr. Wilson. I see. Mr. Al-Shaheen. Some helped by the coalition forces and some just came through the Shiite revolution in the south. So the scheme of Saddam was much, much bigger and worse than this. Those 600 unfortunate people who had already moved into those areas and were executed at the time. Mr. ROHRABAchEr. Thank you very much, and let us note that it was just said that if we have 6,000 people who were able to get back because of the Shiite uprising that happened, and I remember that very well, that for Kuwait it would be the equivalent of mil- lions of Americans. We would see that the lives of millions of our citizens were saved. That would be very significant. Thank you for alerting us to that and showing us the magnitude of what we are talking about. * Mr. Berman, do you have any questions? Mr. BERMAN. No, Mr. Chairman, but it is quite a story. Mr. ROHRABAchEr. All right, thank you. Well, Dr. Al-Shaheen, thank you very much, and again thank you to your Embassy and your Ambassador for helping us today and preparing for this hearing. I think you have put a human face on this new project of releasing these documents and looking into finding information that is not available, and you have really shown us why it is important to dig and get as much of that infor- mation as we can, and get that information out because there is a real human element here, especially for the people of Kuwait. Let me note it is also for the people of Iraq who have suffered so much under this same tyrant. So thank you all very much, and we will now have the next panel of witnesses. Mr. Al-Shaheen. Thank you. Mr. Rohrabacher. Thank you all very much, and I would ask the witnesses if they can facilitate this by going to their central points, focusing on the objective, pushing away all opposition that will get in their way, and getting right to the meat of the issue, and if they could do this in about a 5-minute summary, it would be helpful. General Cucolo, you may proceed, and we are very, very grateful for each and everyone of you being with us. STATEMENT OF BRIGADIER GENERAL ANTHONY A. CUCOLO III, USA, DIRECTOR, JOINT CENTER FOR OPERATIONAL ANALYSIS, UNITED STATES JOINT FORCES COMMAND General Cucolo. Thank you, Mr. Chairman. I am Brigadier General Tony Cucolo. I am the Director of Joint Center for Operational Analysis, essentially the lessons learned Di- 26 Mr. Butler. Well, the documents are scrutinized. They are scru- tinized in a variety of ways. Again, during the triage process from the tactical level to the operational level and then at the strategic level back here in the U.S. The documents receive quite a bit of scrutiny. Mr. Schiff. So someone at the Pentagon then would have made the decision that it was okay to release this report without verifying the contents? Mr. Butler. No. What would occur in this specific case, for ex- ample, the Russian documents in question, we looked at the report that Joint Forces Command had prepared, anticipated that they would be issuing a nonclassified version of the report for the rea- sons that the General has described, which is to encourage peer re- view and good dialogue among the experts regarding what these documents actually tell us. During the course of that process, we could appreciate that there would be a lot of interest in the underlying documents that were foundational to the study. For that reason we put those documents in a queue to be very quickly reviewed and released, if possible. Mr. Schiff. Mr. Butler, in my remaining seconds, because I have a very specific question—what was the highest level of approval that was applied here to release these Russian documents to the public without verifying their authenticity first? What is the high- est level at the Pentagon or elsewhere that made that approval? Mr. Butler. That is difficult to say, sir, with regard to those spe- cific documents. The documents were reviewed by cleared linguists here in the United States. Those linguists Mr. Schiff. I am sure it wasn't the linguists that made that de- termination. If it was, there is something really wrong. Mr. Butler. No, sir. No, they make recommendations to a gov- ernment official. Mr. Schiff. Who is the government official? Who signed off on this? Mr. Butler. I don't know the name of the government official, but Mr. Schiff. Do we have a title? Mr. Butler. It is generally a U.S. Government analyst with some expertise in the intelligence community that can assess whether or not the document meets certain criteria. Mr. Schiff. So some government analyst approved the disclosure of this document, that that is Mr. Butler. Yes, sir. Mr. Schiff [continuing]. The only approval that was necessary? Mr. Butler. Yes, sir. Under the current process that we have in place, that is true. Our policy is to try and release as many docu- ments as possible, and to lean forward in that regard and be biased toward release, if at all possible, recognizing that there are some— there is information in many of these documents that would be in- convenient for some constituencies; in this case perhaps the Rus- sians, or for individuals that might be identified in documents. But our release criteria specifically protect United States persons or United States citizens in that regard. But we do not endeavor to protect the citizens of other governments, or in this case the Russian Government. 30 My point is I would like someone making this decision on a ration- al basis and not as a matter of accident. Mr. Rohrabacher. Well, again, I think it is a good thing that there has been a big fight on the release of these documents. There has been an enormous struggle as Mr. Butler sort of indicated, and Mr. Butler may have been part of that back and forth as to how much information should be released. I am thinking that the amount of harm that could possibly be done is far outweighed by the good of having the American people and the people of the world being able to get these insights into Saddam Hussein. And as Mr. Delahunt expressed earlier that, well, maybe we had a relationship with Saddam Hussein at some point. Well, I would hope these documents would—I hope we are not censoring the documents to that degree either. Mr. Berman, you have the floor. Mr. Berman. Well, there are some things we don't need the docu- ments to know, and that is, we had a relationship with Saddam Hussein at some time before. The new Iraqi Saladin seeking to be- come a training camp, and in your terms a sanctuary for terrorists, was because of that relationship taken off the list of countries sup- porting terrorism in 1982, when you were at the White House, but I don't blame you for that decision. Mr. Rohrabacher. Did I write that Presidential directive? Mr. Berman. You might have written it, but it was because you were told to. But this is a fascinating—it sort of leads into the question I had. Just as it is easy and somewhat unfair to be a total Monday morn- ing quarterback after the fact, to say, "I could have done it better, or I know what we could have done that was done wrong after it is all over," it is also strange, and I thought I heard the Chairman suggesting this, that information we had no knowledge of before the war took place becomes an after-the-fact justification for a war taken for other reasons. For history's purposes, it is interesting. I don't think it is an an- swer that says, well, your decision, you made the right decision when you had no knowledge of that information. But that is the question I had, or two questions. One, on this issue, you look at documents and you do interviews, and you come to certain conclusions. In the course of doing this, and in your report I gather you have indicated that some of the documents are very likely forgeries. You then put out for public view a number of documents, some of which may be authentic and some may have been forged. So one question I have is, might it not have been sensible to give at least your opinions about those documents as you published those docu- ments? Because I do think it was probably the right call to publish the documents. So that is one question. The second question I am interested in is to what extent—I mean, you are able to have access in Iraq to both files and people that you didn't have access to before. To what extent did our intel- ligence agencies, not our policymakers who made decisions, but our intelligence agencies who were providing the information on which our policymakers made decisions know some of the things that you have found out? Can you give any sense of the breadth of intel- 31 ligence information we had beforehand that was confirmed by these documents? The third one is purely a curious note. I assume Tariq Aziz was one of the people—I believe he was one of the people you spoke with. I am curious about—more from an historical point of view just because he was so active even in the United States during that time when we had that relationship with Saddam Hussein. I am curious how he saw his relationship with Saddam because he did survive through a lot of different periods of time during those last 25 years, and I am wondering what insights he had. Thank you. Mr. Butler. Congressman, if I would, I will take your first ques- tion, and actually I would like to elaborate a little bit on my earlier answer. I think I owe Congressman Schiff a better answer with re- spect to the policy and the process by which we do release docu- ments and how those decisions are made. With respect to the two Russian documents that were cited in the Joint Forces Command report, that report was written by aca- demics, academics like Colonel Woods who also have extensive military backgrounds. We had a lot of confidence in their expertise as analysts and as professionals with firsthand knowledge of what to look for in order to validate the sources that we are using. We were confident, too, that they would not make reference to what they suspected to be unreliable documentation or forgeries in their report, and had no reason to suspect that those particular documents that you have cited were in fact forgeries. We do have instances where documents that were contemplated for release were withheld. I personally was involved in the process where five such documents were evaluated. One was determined to be genuine, and was approved for release. Four were determined to be probable forgeries, and we, per our policy, decided they should not be released for obvious reasons. So I would like to elaborate in that regard. Releasing forgeries to the public obviously would be inappropriate. It would not serve any good interest. Mr. BERMAn. So then, if I may put it in my own words, the docu- ments you made public did not include any documents that you felt the weight of evidence showed they were forged documents or not authentic documents. Is that a fair conclusion? Mr. Butler. That is fair to say with respect to the documents that were referenced earlier. Mr. Berman. You either had authenticated them or had no rea- son to believe they weren't authentic? Mr. Butler. That is correct with respect to these documents. Yes, sir. Mr. Berman. Okay. Congressman Schiff hands me a note here that says the Web site cautioned that the U.S. Government has made no determination re- garding the authenticity of the documents' validity or factual accu- racy of the information contained therein. Well, I mean, that is true. When you release a document you are not authenticating that the truth of what is in that document. This is the document. This is the battle log. You can't get into the head 33 any different if we knew what the Iraqis were thinking and what decisions they were making?" So we came up with this body of work. Again, it came out first in a classified version in another forum in early 2004, and imme- diately began circulation among members of the intelligence com- munity. It became a part of the Joint Professional Military Edu- cation. But what I would like to say is this effort caused the intelligence community to pick up on the type of analysis that might get to the answer of the question that you asked. The breadth of information, I cannot answer that, but I can confirm that the effort to better un- derstand what we did not know prior to the war is ongoing. Mr. Berman. And is there a way in which one of us could find out what their conclusion was about that? General CUCOLO. Sir, I can't answer that, but I would be happy to come back and brief the classified portion of this study at any- time to this Committee. Mr. Berman. Well, I am mostly thinking about what the intel- ligence agencies have done having looked at your study, what they have concluded about what they know versus what was true. General CUCOLO. Sir, I know their work continues, and I would have to defer to DNI. Mr. Berman. Okay. Anybody have any insight on the Tariq Aziz? Lt. Colonel Woods. Yes, sir. He is one of the most interesting characters of all the people we dealt with in the study only because he is a Christian, and he had a very close relationship with Sad- dam Hussein through all the different manifestations of Saddam's reign going back to his time as Vice President, and he was Saddam's trusted Mr. Berman. He was Foreign Minister before he was Vice Presi- dent. Lt. Colonel Woods. Yes, sir. Mr. Berman. Yes. Lt. Colonel WOODS. But Tariq was Saddam's window to the out- side world, a very trusted advisor on the nuances of what is the world thinking. A lot of the taped material, a lot of the discussions that we have on audio tape is Tariq Aziz coming back from world trips to either the U.N. (United Nations) or to other capitals, and relating back to Saddam an outsider's view, and Saddam Hussein is trying to put it into his world view within the context of Mr. BERMAN. This is not just interviews with Tariq Aziz after the fact. This is either—I mean, Saddam Hussein or Tariq Aziz was taping the conversations they were having. Lt. Colonel WOODS. Absolutely, sir. Mr. Berman. Wow. Mr. ROHRABAchEr. That is why it is important, I would imagine, that we get all of these documents out and not have the extensive analysis of everyone of these document because, first of all, let us get back to the statistics, there were 48,000 boxes of documents which include over 585,000 files, and if we go about trying to au- thenticate everything rather than let the public decide for them- selves what they are going to put their trust in and weight on, those documents will not be released, and a lot of information that