US Senator (Rockefeller) Says Senate Inquiry on Iraq Ignoring White House

posted by admin on Friday October 24, @04:12PM

UPDATE: Naming of agent 'was aimed at discrediting CIA'

UPDATE: C.I.A. Disputes Accusations That Its Prewar Conclusions on Iraq Arms Were Flawed

Voice of America - October 25

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Also Friday, at a meeting with Senate Democrats, a former CIA senior intelligence analyst said Vice President Dick Cheney made several visits to the agency before the Iraq war.

C.I.A. Disputes Accusations That Its Prewar Conclusions on Iraq Arms Were Flawed

http://www.nytimes.com/2003/10/25/international/middleeast/25INTE.html

WASHINGTON, Oct. 24 — The Central Intelligence Agency responded angrily on Friday to new Congressional criticism of its handling of prewar intelligence about Iraq's suspected illicit weapons program. At a briefing at C.I.A. headquarters, four senior intelligence officials said that a top-secret internal review now underway had found no evidence of faulty work.

"What it has shown us is that the judgments were not only sound, they were very sound, and backed up by more than one source," a senior intelligence official said of the review, which is being conducted under orders from George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence.

The briefing was organized in response to a report in The Washington Post that said the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence was preparing to issue a report saying that intelligence agencies made serious errors of judgment in their prewar conclusion that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons and was reconstituting its nuclear program.

In an angry public statement, the C.I.A. spokesman, Bill Harlow, said that any such finding would be premature. Mr. Harlow said that top intelligence officials had not yet been given an opportunity to share their own findings with members of the intelligence committee...........

Naming of agent 'was aimed at discrediting CIA'

http://news.ft.com

The Bush administration's exposure of a clandestine Central Intelligence Agency operative was part of a campaign aimed at discrediting US intelligence agencies for not supporting White House claims that Saddam Hussein was reconstituting Iraq's nuclear weapons programme, former agency officials said yesterday.

In a rare hearing called by Senate Democratic leaders, the officials said the White House engaged in pressure and intimidation aimed at generating intelligence evidence to support the decision to make war on Iraq.

Senior administration officials in July revealed the name of Valerie Plame, a former clandestine CIA officer and the wife of Joseph Wilson, who was sent by the CIA in 2002 to assess claims that Iraq was trying to buy enriched uranium from Niger.

Vince Cannistraro, former CIA operations chief, charged yesterday: "She was outed as a vindictive act because the agency was not providing support for policy statements that Saddam Hussein was reviving his nuclear programme."

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