»CIA and Bush administration accused of manipulation«

'Mischaracterization' of data on weapons of mass destruction
A Senate Intelligence Committee report released on Friday sharply criticizes the Central Intelligence Agency for pre-war intelligence failures in Iraq, concluding that while agency analysts remained objective, they got careless as they estimated the threat Iraq posed prior to the U.S.-led invasion, according to officials familiar with the report.

While the White House was spared from criticism, the CIA was criticized for a "series of failures, particularly in analytic tradecraft” that “led to the mischaracterization of the intelligence” on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction.

The report criticizes leadership at the CIA, including the agency’s director George Tenet, whose resignation is effective Sunday. The CIA, the report says, "in several significant instances, abused its unique position in the intelligence community" by not sharing information on Iraq's weapons.

As to those false claims about Iraq's nuclear imports in President Bush's 2003 State of the Union speech, the report says Tenet "should have taken the time to read the State of the Union speech and fact check it himself."
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As an example of the sort of information he said was not included in the report, Levin cited a CIA statement he received this week saying that there is no credible information that Sept. 11 hijacker Mohammed Atta met with an Iraqi intelligence officer in the Czech Republic in April 2001. In fact, the report concludes, CIA analysts “are increasingly skeptical that such a meeting occurred.”

“(The finding) demonstrates that it was the administration, not the CIA, that exaggerated the relations between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida," Levin said at a news conference.

Intelligence suggesting such a meeting was cited repeatedly by administration officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, as supporting the assertion of such a link.

Cheney most recently said in a June 17 interview with CNBC that the meeting between Atta and the Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague “couldn’t be ruled out.”
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But several Democratic lawmakers write in their alternative views that some intelligence analysts told the committee they felt a need to emphasize some pieces of evidence at the expense of others, a form of pressure, according to a Democratic congressional aide who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“They were shaping intelligence in order to meet the policy needs of the administration. There can’t be much doubt about that,” Sen. Levin said Friday on NBC’s “Today” show.