Reply #2: I have been waiting for years - for one moment of testimony in those hearings

[salin]

to get some airing. It appeared for exactly *one day* in the news. During the hearings the CIA reps who had been responsible for preparing the NIE explained that the form of the NIE that reached Congress was vastly stripped down from the original NIE that was reviewed (by the WH, I believe). What was stripped down were a lot of caveats and footnotes that qualified different 'claims' - explaining, for example, why X piece of intelligence may not be credible or may not have been verified by a second source. What was stunning was that when asked WHO had ordered and made the change - the authors/preparers of the report stated - on the record - that they really did not know how or why of at whose request the report as it was prepared for congress had been edited.

Significant in several ways - gets right to the heart of "everyone thought Iraq had WMDs" and that "people in Congress had the same intel as the WH" .... which is the core of trying to blame dems in congress equally as the WH - and framing the 'mistake' as bad intel that "anyone would have believed. It gets right to the point that NO what the WH had and what was given to the Congress was vastly different.

It also gets to the heart of the manipulation of intelligence to fool congress and the people as to the "why" of going to war (a story line much of the public now accepts thanks to the Downing Street Memos - but getting the details of WHO ordered the changes and what those changes were is important.)

Please Sen Rockefeller, *please* include what came from this part of the testimony and investigations in the final reports you release from this Investigation.