White House Ignored CIA Warnings on Iraq

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Washington, D.C., October 13, 2005 - The White House disregarded intelligence projections on post-Saddam Iraq according to a newly-declassified CIA report, "Intelligence and Analysis on Iraq: Issues for the Intelligence Community," posted today on the website of the National Security Archive.

"In an ironic twist," the report finds, "the policy community was receptive to technical intelligence (the weapons program), where the analysis was wrong, but apparently paid little attention to intelligence on cultural and political issues (post-Saddam Iraq), where the analysis was right."

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The report also finds that intelligence analysts were under constant pressure to find "links between Saddam and " causing them to take a "purposely aggressive approach" to the issue, "conducting exhaustive and repetitive searches for such links." No such ties were ever found, however, and "the Intelligence Community remained firm in its assessment that no operational or collaborative relationship existed."

http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20051013/index.htm