Cheney key to Iraq probe, critics say

An inquiry into intelligence failures must include his and the Pentagon's handling of spy data, officials said.

By Jonathan S. Landay, Warren P. Strobel and Joseph L. Galloway
Inquirer Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON - What went wrong with intelligence on Iraq may never be known unless the inquiry proposed by President Bush examines secret intelligence efforts led by Vice President Cheney and Pentagon hawks, current and former U.S. officials said yesterday.

The critics said Bush may limit the inquiry's scope to the CIA and other agencies, and ignore the key role the officials said the administration's own internal intelligence efforts played in making the case for war.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, did not dispute that the CIA failed to accurately assess the state of Iraq's weapons programs. But they said intelligence efforts led by Cheney magnified the errors through exaggeration, oversights and mistaken deductions.

Those efforts bypassed normal channels, used Iraqi exiles and defectors of questionable reliability, and produced findings on former dictator Saddam Hussein's links to al-Qaeda and his illicit arms programs that were disputed by analysts at the CIA, the State Department and other agencies, the officials said.

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printed from Cheney key to Iraq probe, critics say on 2004-06-03 15:22:43