NYT: Report Assails C.I.A. for Failure on Iraq Weapons

[DeepModem Mom]

Report Assails C.I.A. for Failure on Iraq Weapons
By DAVID E. SANGER and SCOTT SHANE

Published: March 29, 2005


WASHINGTON, March 28 - The final report of a presidential commission studying American intelligence failures regarding illicit weapons includes a searing critique of how the C.I.A. and other agencies never properly assessed Saddam Hussein's political maneuverings or the possibility that he no longer had weapon stockpiles, according to officials who have seen the report's executive summary.

The report also proposes broad changes in the sharing of information among intelligence agencies that go well beyond the legislation passed by Congress late last year creating a director of national intelligence to coordinate action among all 15 intelligence agencies....

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The report particularly singles out the Central Intelligence Agency under its former director, George J. Tenet, but also includes what one senior official called "a hearty condemnation" of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the National Security Agency, two of the largest intelligence agencies....

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The report particularly ridicules the conclusion that Mr. Hussein's fleet of "unmanned aerial vehicles," which had very limited flying range, posed a major threat. All of those assertions were repeated by Mr. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and other senior officials in the prelude to the war. To this day, Mr. Cheney has never backed away from his claim, repeated last year, that the "mobile laboratories" were probably part of a secret biological weapons program, and his office has repeatedly declined to respond to inquiries about whether the evidence has changed his view....


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/03/29/politics/29weapons.html?hp&ex=1112072400&en=c50323d01587d494&ei=5094&partner=homepage