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April 6th,
2007 - Hussein-Qaeda Link ‘Inappropriate,’ Report Says |
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Hussein-Qaeda Link
‘Inappropriate,’ Report Says By Bloomberg News April 6, 2007 Washington, April 5 - The
Pentagon provided “inappropriate” analysis for its reports of a strong link
between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda, a finding that was cited by the White
House as a rationale for invading Iraq, a report by the Pentagon inspector
general says. The declassified report said
Defense Department officials “undercut” the intelligence community. It specifically said that
analysts reporting to Douglas Feith, who was the under secretary for policy,
told Stephen J. Hadley, the deputy national security adviser at the time, and
I. Lewis Libby, Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, that there were
“fundamental problems with how the intelligence community is assessing
information.” The 121-page report, which
had been summarized at a Congressional hearing in February by the acting
inspector general, Thomas Gimble, was released Thursday by Senator Carl
Levin, Democrat of Michigan and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee. By coincidence, it appeared
on the day Vice President Cheney again drew a link between the war and Al
Qaeda, telling the radio host Rush Limbaugh that “to advocate withdrawal from
Iraq at this point seems to me simply would play right into the hands of Al
Qaeda.” Mr. Gimble’s report drew a
direct connection between a briefing at the White House on Sept. 16, 2002, and
public comments Mr. Cheney made in the days leading to the war four years
ago. The criticism of the intelligence community is one of several on a slide
used in that briefing. Inclusion of the slide,
which was omitted from an earlier briefing with George Tenet, who was
director of central intelligence, “clearly did not bolster support for the
intelligence community,” Mr. Gimble wrote. Mr. Levin, in a statement
Thursday, said the analysis from Mr. Feith’s office “was not supported by
available intelligence and was contrary to the consensus view of the
intelligence community,” yet was “used by the administration to support its
public arguments in its case for war.” The slide used by the
Pentagon analysts to brief the White House officials states the intelligence
agencies assumed “that secularists and Islamists will not cooperate, even
when they have common interests,” and there was “consistent underestimation
of importance that would be attached by Iraq and Al Qaeda to hiding a
relationship.” The Pentagon, in written
comments included in the report, strongly disputed that the White House
briefing and the slide citing “Fundamental Problems” undercut the
intelligence community. “The intelligence community
was fully aware of the work under review and commented on it several times,”
the Pentagon said, adding that Mr. Tenet, at the suggestion of the defense
secretary then, Donald H. Rumsfeld, “was personally briefed.” Four days after that
briefing at the White House, Mr. Cheney referred at fund-raiser to a
“well-established pattern of cooperation between Iraq and terrorists.” And on Dec. 2, he warned in
a speech that Mr. Hussein’s government “had high-level contact with Al Qaeda
going back a decade and has provided training to Al Qaeda terrorists.” His
language mirrored that on a briefing chart titled “Summary of Known
Iraq-Al-Qaeda Contacts - 1990-2002.” Mr. Gimble noted that Mr.
Cheney, in an interview in January 2004, praised a memo compiled by the
Pentagon analysts that was cited in the conservative magazine Weekly Standard
as “your best source of information” on the purported link. The analysts’ appraisal of
the intelligence community was in contrast to that of the Senate Select Committee
on Intelligence in its 2004 report on prewar intelligence. That committee
praised the C.I.A.’s approach to assessing a possible link between Mr.
Hussein and Al Qaeda as a “methodical approach for assessing a possible
Iraq/Al Qaeda relationship” that was “reasonable and objective,” Mr. Gimble
wrote. Mr. Levin also pointed out,
“The report specifically states that ‘the C.I.A. and D.I.A. disavowed any
“mature, symbiotic” relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.’ ” The Pentagon policy offices
set up by Mr. Feith have been abolished, and he has left the Pentagon and is
writing a book on the war. Mr. Gimble said the establishment of the Office of
the Director of National Intelligence should prevent similar inappropriate
conduct. Copyright 2007 The New York
Times Company External link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/06/washington/06qaeda.html |