- WASHINGTON -- What went wrong
with intelligence on Iraq will never be known unless the inquiry proposed
by President Bush examines secret intelligence efforts led by Vice President
Dick Cheney and Pentagon hawks, current and former U.S officials said Monday.
-
- The officials said they feared that Bush, preparing for
re-election, will try to limit the inquiry's scope to the CIA and other
agencies, and ignore the key role that the administration's own internal
intelligence efforts played in making the case for war.
-
- The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because
of the sensitivity of the issue, didn't dispute that the CIA failed to
accurately assess Iraq's weapons programs. But they said the intelligence
efforts led by Cheney magnified the errors through exaggeration, oversights
and mistaken deductions.
-
- Those efforts bypassed normal channels, used Iraqi exiles
and defectors of questionable reliability, and produced findings on former
dictator Saddam Hussein's links to al Qaeda and his illicit arms programs
that were disputed by analysts at the CIA, the State Department and other
agencies, the officials said.
-
- "There were more agencies than CIA providing intelligence
... that are worth scrutiny, including the [Pentagon's now disbanded] Office
of Special Plans and the office of the vice president," said a former
senior military official who was involved in planning the Iraq invasion.
Some disputed findings were presented as facts to Americans as Bush drummed
up his case for war.
-
- Those findings included charges of cooperation between
Saddam and al Qaeda, Cheney's assertion that Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear-weapons
program and would soon have a nuclear bomb, and Bush's contention in his
2003 State of the Union address that Saddam was seeking nuclear-bomb-making
material from Africa.
-
- On Monday, senior officials revealed new details of how
Cheney's office pressed Secretary of State Colin Powell to use large amounts
of disputed intelligence in a February 2003 presentation to the United
Nations Security Council laying out the U.S. case for an invasion.
-
- A senior administration official said that during a three-day
prespeech review, Powell rejected more than half of a 45-page assessment
on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction compiled by Cheney's chief of staff,
I. Lewis Libby, and based on materials assembled by pro-invasion hard-liners
in the Pentagon and the White House.
-
- Powell also jettisoned 75 percent of a separate report
on al Qaeda, the official said.
-
- Still, he said, until a few minutes before the speech,
Libby continued unsuccessfully pressing Powell to include dubious information
purportedly linking Saddam to 9-11.
-
- Bush said Monday that he will name an independent bipartisan
commission to review intelligence failures in Iraq. It would also look
at what is known about efforts by Iran, North Korea and terrorist groups
to obtain nuclear, biological and chemical weapons.
-
- Two congressional committees, an internal CIA board and
a White House advisory panel are already reviewing the Iraq intelligence.
-
- David Kay, who quit last month as chief U.S. weapons
inspector in Iraq, said Saddam had not hidden the banned chemical- and
biological-warfare stockpiles. Bush had cited such weapons as his prime
justification for the March invasion.
-
- Bush and GOP leaders in Congress had resisted a demand
by Democrats for an independent review of the Iraq intelligence, but calls
by Kay and key Republicans last week for such an inquiry led Bush to reconsider.
-
- - Joseph L. Galloway, Senior Millitary Correspondent
for Knight Ridder Newspapers, Contributed to This Report.
-
- © 2004 Star Telegram and wire service sources. All
Rights Reserved.
|
