主题：【伊拉克】中情局陷入政治斗争漩涡 -- 西风陶陶

U.S. Intelligence on Iraq: Political Battleground

Tue January 27, 2004 07:53 PM ET

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By Tabassum Zakaria

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. intelligence agencies on the firing line between the Bush administration and critics of its war on Iraq have landed in the one spot they always try to avoid -- the political battleground.

In this high-stakes election year with Democrats trying to unseat Republican President Bush, prewar intelligence reports that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction are contrasted against a postwar hunt that has come up empty.

"Everybody agrees that intelligence has now become the weapon of choice in partisan games. It used to be ethics," House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss said.

Given budget cuts in the mid-1990s, the intelligence on Iraq was "not very complete, but they did the best they could do," the Florida Republican told Reuters on Tuesday. "I have not seen any evidence whatsoever that anybody cooked the intelligence," Goss added.

Democrats try to fix the focus on the White House by saying it hyped the threat from Iraq to make a case for war by stressing Baghdad had an arsenal of biological and chemical weapons.

Former chief U.S. weapons inspector David Kay, who led the hunt for banned arms in Iraq after his appointment by CIA Director George Tenet in June, said last week he believed there were no large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons. Kay, who left that post, was scheduled to testify on Capitol Hill on Wednesday.

The intelligence agencies are urging a wait-and-see attitude after being taken aback by Kay's blunt comments that cast doubt on the accuracy of prewar intelligence.

"It's premature for anyone to come to any conclusions on this question," a U.S. intelligence official said.

"At some point, somebody will say, 'OK we have exhausted all avenues and have found nothing,' or we will find something," another official said on condition of anonymity. "So we're not ready to throw the towel in yet."

'TENSION'

Congressional intelligence committees are conducting separate investigations about the accuracy of prewar assessments on Iraq; the CIA is conducting its own review; and the Defense Department's Iraq Survey Group continues to hunt for illicit weapons under the guidance of Kay's successor

Tenet, scheduled to testify before the Senate Intelligence Committee next month, is expected to defend the overall conclusions of the intelligence reports on Iraq and the work of the spy agencies on weapons of mass destruction.

Both Republicans and Democrats on the congressional intelligence committees say no intelligence analyst has stepped forward and charged there was overt White House pressure to skew intelligence reports toward its point of view.

"I think the administration was clearly critical of intelligence performance when they first came into office. They were surprised that the intelligence analysts didn't see the world exactly the way they did, so there was tension between some policymakers and some people in the intelligence community," Ellen Laipson, president of The Henry Stimson Center, said.

"I do think people get a little bit immune to the charge of intelligence failure all the time, but in this case people who have worked on Iraq for a long time are probably quite troubled and chagrined at not having gotten closer to the truth," Laipson said. She left her post in March 2002 as vice chairman of the National Intelligence Council, which produces intelligence estimates and reports to Tenet.

"My view is that the administration was going to do regime change in Iraq and that WMD was one of the arguments to make to Congress," she said.