CIA braced for damning report on Iraq intelligence failures
The CIA is today expected to face heavy criticism by the US Senate for its flawed analysis of the alleged threat posed by Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to the Gulf War.
The report on intelligence failures leading up to the invasion of Iraq, to be released today, will conclude that analysts were not pressured to change their views to support arguments for the attack, congressional and other officials said.
But some intelligence analysts did tell the committee they felt a need to emphasise one piece of evidence over another – a form of pressure, several Democratic lawmakers will point out in an “alternative view”, according to a Democratic congressional aide.
Republicans and Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee have said their report on pre-war intelligence is a tough critique of the intelligence agencies’ performance. Significant blame will be laid on the CIA for flawed estimates on Iraq.
One US official familiar with the report said it does not charge the agency with losing objectivity but accuses its analytic side of not being rigorous or careful in its intelligence assessments.
The Democratic congressional aide said some lawmakers think a hawkish atmosphere encouraging an Iraq invasion contributed to an environment of pressure that analysts operated in.
While analysts told the committee they did not literally feel pressured, some said that they felt they needed to emphasise certain information.
Several Democrats plan to offer this opinion in one of at least a half dozen “alternative views” that will be attached to the report that spans roughly 500 pages. Earlier this week, Senator Jay Rockefeller, the top Democrat on the committee, said, “The pressure was overwhelming.”
That runs counter to an impassioned defence in February from outgoing CIA Director George Tenet. “No one told us what to say or how to say it,” he said in a speech at Georgetown University.
Officials familiar with the report say the year-long review examines the intelligence community’s objectivity and reasonableness as it formed various estimates on Iraq, including the government’s purported mobile weapons labs, chemical and biological weapons, nuclear programme and unmanned aerial vehicles.
Senate Armed Services Chairman John Warner, a Republican who is also a member of the Intelligence Committee, has encouraged restraint in drawing final conclusions until the work of the Iraq Survey Group, hunting for the former Iraqi regime’s alleged weapons of mass destruction, is complete.
Today’s report is the first of two phases. Democrats wanted to see the investigation immediately consider other issues, including how senior Bush administration officials may have misrepresented the analysis provided by the nation’s intelligence apparatus to make the case for war.
The report comes as President George Bush is deciding what to do with an opening in his administration for a permanent CIA director to replace Mr Tenet, who officially resigns on Sunday.
Mr Tenet’s deputy, John McLaughlin, will then take over.
The Intelligence Committee and its staff interviewed hundreds of people, including Mr Tenet. The outgoing CIA director has publicly asserted that his analysts never said there was an “imminent threat” from Iraq.
