[Blitzer:] Welcome back to CNN. I'm Wolf Blitzer in Washington. Where are the weapons? New insight into what may have gone wrong with the intelligence on Iraq's WMDs. We'll get to that. First, though, a quick check of the latest headlines. The search continuing for a man suspected of killing four people, including his infant daughter, and kidnapping three young girls, including two other daughters. The killings occurred in northwest Georgia, but authorities have issued an Amber Alert for the entire Southeast. Officials say the girls are in extreme danger. The worst of the U.S. flu season may be over. The head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says health officials are cautiously optimistic the flu has peaked, at least in parts of the country. The virus is still widespread in 38 states, but that's down from 42 states last week. The Pacific Northwest is in the grip of harsh winter weather for the second day in a row. Snow and freezing rain have closed roads and schools. Tens of thousands of people are without power. And the Portland Airport is closed until at least tomorrow morning. In Pakistan, Army troops, backed by helicopters, are engaged in a major operation aimed at suspected terrorists in the mountains along the border with Afghanistan. The offensive follows new calls by Osama bin Laden for Muslims to attack U.S. forces and their allies. There's more blistering criticism today on the way the Bush administration made the case for war against Iraq, specifically the threat posed by Saddam Hussein's weapons, weapons which have yet to be found. But a key administration figure today argued that the case is by no means closed. Let's turn now to our national security correspondent, David Ensor. He's joining us live from the State Department David.
[David Ensor, Cnn National Security Correspondent:] Wolf, the Carnegie Endowment put out a report today. It's six months in the making. And the authors traveled to Iraq, interviewing inspectors, Iraqis, going through a lot of documents. They are scathing about the way the Bush administration talked about what it knew, the intelligence it had about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction before the war.
[Jessica Mathews, President, Carnegie Endowment:] The representations by senior administration officials show a fairly systemic misrepresentation of the facts, over and above the intelligence failings, with respect to chemical and biological weapons.
[Ensor:] Now, at a news conference here at the State Department today, Secretary of State Colin Powell was asked the first question was about this Carnegie report. Here is how he responded.
[Colin Powell, Secretary Of State:] I'm confident of what I presented last year. The intelligence community is confident of the material they gave me. I was representing them. It was information they presented to the Congress. It was information they had presented publicly. And they stand behind it. And this game is still unfolding.
[Ensor:] There is a theory now among some officials in the U.S. government, Wolf, that it is the possible that some of the scientists in Iraq may have actually been lying about what weapons-related capabilities they had developed to Saddam Hussein and to the leadership, and that, therefore, they may have, in the process, deceived U.S. and other intelligence officials about what they really did and did not have. I should point out that the authors of this report, a couple of them are former Democratic administration members. They were always critical of the war. Still, this is a carefully put-together report. You can expect it to be quoted by whoever gets the Democratic Party nomination this year Wolf.
[Blitzer:] David Ensor, who is at the State Department today David, thanks for that report. Ken Pollack served on the National Security Council during the Clinton administration. He also worked at the CIA. His book "The Threatening Storm" made the case for invading Iraq. But in the current issue of "The Atlantic Monthly," he looks at what went wrong with the intelligence on Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction. He is now at the center at the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution here in Washington. Ken Pollack, of course, is a CNN analyst. What went wrong, Ken?
[Kenneth Pollack, Cnn Analyst:] Well, a whole variety of things did, Wolf. The ultimate answer is that this was a series of different mistakes. But if I had to point to one thing in particular on the intelligence side that went wrong, was that, in probably about 1996, Saddam Hussein seems to have made a very important decision and everyone outside of Iraq missed that decision. The decision was that he went from early on trying to hold on to as much of his weapons of mass destruction as he possibly could to a decision about 1996 that that was not paying benefits for him. And, in fact, he was paying a very heavy price, having to surrender these weapons, having them found out. And, instead, he went to minimizing
[Blitzer:] Well, you say everyone seemed to miss it. Not everyone seemed to miss it. Hans Blix, the U.N. weapons inspector, had a different assessment than the U.S. Mohamed ElBaradei, the nuclear inspector, had a different assessment than Colin Powell at the Security Council. Even a former inspector like Scott Ritter said, you know, the administration was way overblowing these allegations. So not everyone seemed to have missed it.
[Pollack:] I don't know if I would necessarily characterize the statements that Ritter, ElBaradei, and Blix made as necessarily being accurate, given what we now know. They certainly did believe that the threat from Iraq was not nearly as great as the United States did. But what we're finding is that what was going on in Iraq did not necessarily conform what to what they were claiming either. In fact, the Iraqis were preserving some elements of their weapons of mass destruction program. They were just preserving much less and much more rudimentary capabilities than what was recognized.
[Blitzer:] Was this a flaw because of the political leadership in the Bush administration or did the career professionals in the intelligence community and you were one at the CIA once did they screw up? Did they mess up?
[Pollack:] I think there's enough blame to go around. You had a combination of problems. First, you did have problems not just in our intelligence community, but in intelligence communities around the world. We should remember, it wasn't just the U.S. intelligence community that believed this. The French, Russians, Germans, British, Israelis, basically anyone who had any independent ability to collect on Iraq also came to the same conclusions. And, for that matter, basically, what they were suggesting was that the Iraqis were much further along than they, in fact, were. There were programs there, but they were exaggerated. The intelligence community did not understand that they the Iraqis had greatly minimized what they were holding on to. And on the political side, there's no question that there were some Bush administration officials who played fast and loose with the intelligence of weapons of mass destruction, who took what, it turns out to have been, exaggerated estimates from the intelligence community and then further embellished on them when they were presenting the case in public.
[Blitzer:] What happens if, tomorrow, the U.S. military finds a truck, a semi, buried someplace in Iraq with anthrax and V.X. and all sorts of other deadly weapons of mass destruction? Will once again everybody have to say, well, you know what, the intelligence community was right?
[Pollack:] I think they will have to. And I think that, if that were to happen, obviously, that would be a wonderful thing for Tony Blair. I don't know if it really matters for George Bush at all. The polls in the United States...
[Blitzer:] Politically, you mean.
[Pollack:] Exactly. Politically, I think the polls in the United States have consistently shown that the American people believe that the war was justified regardless of the presence of weapons of mass destruction.
[Blitzer:] Did you come across any evidence, any information to back up this suspicion that perhaps the weapons of mass destruction were transferred outside of Iraq, to Syria or Iran or some other country?
[Pollack:] I didn't. And that doesn't mean that it's not possible, but it does seem highly unlikely. Is it possible that the Iraqis may have moved small items or small shipments? Sure. That's possible. Could they have moved an enormous program? Could they have moved thousands and thousands of rounds? Probably not. That, we would have caught.
[Blitzer:] We have got a lot more to talk about. And we will tomorrow at noon Eastern here on CNN. Ken Pollack, excellent article in the new issue of "The Atlantic Monthly."
[Pollack:] Thank you, Wolf.
[Blitzer:] Thank you very much. Our "Web Question of the Day" is this: Was the war in Iraq justified if Iraq was not pursuing a weapons of mass destruction program? You can vote right now. Go to CNN.comWolf. We'll have the results later in this broadcast. Liberation in Iraq, this time for former prisoners. U.S. officials release 80 detainees. Why now? Salmon scare. A new study warns about the effects of a favored fish. What you need to know later this hour. Two man matchup? New polls shows Wesley Clark edging Howard Dean. We'll take you on the campaign trail. That's coming up next all of that coming up. First, though, look, a quick look at some other news making headlines around the world. Alive in the rubble. Almost two weeks after the Iran earthquake, a man has been pulled from the rubble. Doctors say he survived because he had access to water. Fighting SARS. Now that a second suspected SARS case has been reported in China, officials are stepping up efforts to fight the disease. Streets are being cleaned up and passengers with fevers are being barred from trains. Remembering the dead. Memorials were held in Egypt for the victims of last week's charter jet crash; 148 people died when the airliner plunged into the Red Sea. Two queens. Britain's Queen Elizabeth II today christened Cunard's Queen Mary II. The first new trans-Atlantic ocean liner in decades begins its maiden voyage next week. And that's our look around the world.