Text of Tenet's remarks at Georgetown

A text of CIA Director George Tenet, speaking on Thursday at Georgetown University in Washington, as transcribed by eMediaMillWorks Inc.:

I have come here today to talk to you and to the American people about something important to our nation and central to our future: how the United States intelligence community evaluated Iraq's weapons of mass destruction programs over the past decade, leading to a national intelligence estimate in October of 2002. I want to tell you about our information and how we reached our judgments. I want to tell you what I think, honestly and directly.

There's several reasons to do this: because the American people deserve to know, because intelligence has never been more important to the security of our country.

As a nation we have, over the past seven years, been rebuilding our intelligence with powerful capabilities that many thought we would no longer need after the Cold War. We have been rebuilding our clandestine service, our satellite and other technical collection, our analytical depth and expertise.

Both here and around the world, the men and women of American intelligence are performing courageously, often brilliantly, to support our military, to stop terrorism and to break up networks of proliferation.

The risks are always high. Success and perfect outcomes are never guaranteed. But there's one unassailable fact: We will always call it as we see it. Our professional ethic demands no less.

To understand a difficult topic like Iraq takes patience and care. Unfortunately, you rarely hear a patient, careful or thoughtful discussion of intelligence these days. But these times demand it because the alternative — politicized, haphazard evaluation, without the benefit of time and facts — may well result in an intelligence community that is damaged and a country that is more at risk.

Before talking about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, I want to set the stage with a few words about intelligence collection and analysis, how they actually happen in a real world. This context is completely missing from the current debate.

By definition, intelligence deals with the unclear, the unknown, the deliberately hidden. What the enemies of the United States hope to deny we work to reveal.

The question being asked about Iraq in the starkest terms is, were we right or were we wrong? In the intelligence business, you are almost never completely wrong or completely right.