Did White House pressure CIA? Panel divided

By T. Christian Miller and Maura Reynolds
Los Angeles Times

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WASHINGTON — Yesterday's Senate report on prewar intelligence drew a new battle line in the presidential campaign by failing to settle a politically volatile question: Did the White House pressure the CIA to concoct reasons to invade Iraq?

The question split the Senate Intelligence Committee's otherwise bipartisan unanimity on the intelligence failures in Iraq, with Democrats saying they had a "major disagreement" with Republicans over the issue.

Republicans noted in the report's conclusion that no intelligence analysts had said they were pressured. But Democrats objected, saying there was ample evidence that top Bush administration officials had intimidated analysts to twist their judgments about whether Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction.

In the end, the committee decided to put off consideration of the Bush administration's use of intelligence for later, all but guaranteeing the issue a prominent role in the campaign.

"The committee's report fails to fully explain the environment of intense pressure in which the intelligence community officials were asked to render judgments on matters relating to Iraq when the most senior officials in the Bush administration had already forcefully and repeatedly stated their conclusions publicly," said Sen. John "Jay" Rockefeller IV, D-W.Va., the committee's ranking minority member.

Standing nearby, Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., the committee's chairman, shot back: "I do not think there is any evidence of undue pressure on any analyst."

Many of the intelligence analysts who came before the committee did report feeling pressure — especially from the Defense Department — on the links between Iraq and al-Qaida.

Analysts said they were told repeatedly to go back and review old intelligence reports and documents to determine whether they had overlooked connections between the regime of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and Osama bin Laden.

But the committee's conclusion noted that no analysts reported changing a decision on Iraq, on its links to al-Qaida or its threat capabilities because of political pressure.
 
Instead, many analysts said the pressure served only to make sure they weren't missing anything.

"I think there was intense pressure in the prewar period, and I felt the pressure ... to ensure we got this one right," the deputy director of the CIA's terrorism analysis office told the committee. "We couldn't afford not to get it right."

Democrats on the committee, while acknowledging that they unanimously had approved the report, said they disagreed with the conclusion that there had been no political pressure.

Of particular concern was an intelligence meeting in August 2002, attended by representatives from the office of Doug Feith, the Pentagon's deputy undersecretary for policy and a fervent proponent of the war. The Pentagon officials criticized the CIA's failure to turn up a link between bin Laden and Saddam and presented evidence that they said had been ignored.

Several analysts told the committee it was unusual to have the Pentagon representatives attend their meeting, which was an initial gathering to begin a broader look at the links between Iraq and terrorism. Nonetheless, none of the analysts said they had changed their conclusions as a result of the Feith staff's presence.

Democrats, however, said the meeting was a clear indication that the administration had created a climate of pressure that affected analysts.

Some political analysts said it was likely Republicans would bottle up conclusions until after the November elections.

But even if the Senate committee does not draw conclusions about the president's role and his degree of accountability, analysts said, the public might.

Predictably, Democrats and Republicans differed over what that judgment would be.

"I don't think the buck stops at (CIA Director) George Tenet's desk," Democratic strategist Howard Wolfson said. "There is only one person who can lead us into war. ... The buck always stops with the president. And if (the White House) points fingers at the CIA, it will only look like they are passing the buck."

But Karlyn Bowman, an election analyst with the conservative American Enterprise Institute, said the American public is not much interested in revisiting the lead-up to the Iraq war.

"It's hard to rewind the clock, and I think the public doesn't have much time for that," she said.

Also left unsettled was the question of whether Bush would quickly name a replacement for Tenet, who announced in June, in advance of the report's release, that he would resign. His last day on the job is tomorrow.