US intelligence exaggerated Iraq reports, Senate says

9.00am

WASHINGTON - US intelligence agencies overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, relied on dubious sources and ignored contrary evidence in the run-up to the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, a Senate committee reported on Friday.

In a harshly critical report, the Senate Intelligence Committee took US spy agencies to task for numerous failures in reporting on alleged Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which helped President Bush build a case for war. No such weapons have been found.

But the report found nothing to back charges the White House had pressured analysts to reach pre-set conclusions.

"The committee did not find any evidence that administration officials attempted to coerce, influence or pressure analysts to change their judgments related to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction capabilities," it said.

The second part of the committee's investigation -- examining how the Bush administration used the intelligence it received -- was unlikely to be finished until after the November 2 presidential election.

The report, which ran to more than 500 pages and was partly blacked out for security reasons, said that conclusions in an October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate on Iraqi weapons programs "either overstated or were not supported by the underlying intelligence reporting."

It found that US agencies relied too heavily on Iraqi defectors and foreign intelligence services for information but were unable to check the reliability of such reports.

Senator John Rockefeller of West Virginia, the ranking Democrat on the bipartisan committee, said the Senate would not have voted overwhelmingly in 2002 to approve the war if it had known how deeply flawed the intelligence was.

"The administration at all levels, and to some extent us, used bad information to bolster its case for war. And we in Congress would not have authorised that war, we would not have authorised that war, with 75 votes, if we knew what we know now," he said.

Rockefeller said the Iraq war left the United States less safe and would affect national security for generations.

"Our credibility is diminished. Our standing in the world has never been lower," he said. "We have fostered a deep hatred of Americans in the Muslim world, and that will grow. As a direct consequence, our nation is more vulnerable today than ever before."

The committee chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, said the intelligence community suffered from "collective group think" in reaching the unwarranted conclusion that Iraq was actively pursuing nuclear, chemical and biological weapons programs.

"This 'group think' caused the community to interpret ambiguous evidence, such as the procurement of dual-use technology, as conclusive evidence of the existence of WMD programs," said Roberts, a Kansas Republican.

Some Democrats said they believed the administration's role in presenting the intelligence needs a closer look.

"The committee's report does not acknowledge that the intelligence estimates were shaped by the administration," said Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat. "In my view, this remains an open question that needs more careful scrutiny."

Bush cited intelligence suggesting that Iraq was aggressively pursuing unconventional weapons programs as a key justification for his decision to go to war in 2003.

CIA Director George Tenet, who reportedly told Bush it was a "slam dunk" that Iraq had such weapons before the war, announced his resignation last month and will step down on Sunday, citing personal reasons.

The report said the intelligence community suffered from a "broken corporate culture and poor management."

John McLaughlin, who will replace Tenet as acting CIA director, said the Senate panel spent nearly a year essentially dissecting one intelligence report.

"It is wrong to exaggerate the flaws or leap to the judgment that our challenges with prewar Iraq weapons intelligence are evidence of sweeping problems across the broad spectrum of issues with which the intelligence community must deal," he said in a rare CIA news conference.

The committee found that agencies focused on reports that Iraq had developed mobile laboratories to produce biological weapons and ignored information that contradicted it.

The report also said US intelligence did not have sources collecting information about Iraqi weapons programs after 1998, when UN weapons inspectors were pulled out of Iraq.

- REUTERS

Herald Feature: Iraq