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.

Blair Exonerated in Suicide Report -Tabloid Leak

Tue January 27, 2004 07:55 PM ET

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By Paul Majendie and Mike Peacock

LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's Sun tabloid reported on Wednesday it had been leaked a judge's report into an Iraq weapons expert's suicide that appeared to exonerate Prime Minister Tony Blair.

If true, the conclusions would provide some respite for Blair who narrowly survived a knife-edge vote in parliament on Tuesday night over his higher education policy.

The daily said the BBC, which had asserted in a report that Blair's government "sexed up" intelligence about Iraqi weapons to make its case for war last year, was accused of being "at fault" over a story that should have been checked more closely.

"As far as Tony Blair is concerned, he is cleared completely of any dishonorable conduct in the naming strategy for Dr David Kelly," Sun political editor Trevor Kavanagh said.

The Sun, a leading newspaper in Rupert Murdoch's global media empire, has consistently accused the BBC of being the prime culprit in the events leading to the death of government scientist Kelly, outed as the source for the bombshell report.

The Sun, quoting what it called a "trusted source," said Blair's Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon and former government media chief Alastair Campbell had also been cleared by Hutton.

It said Hutton had concluded there was no "dishonorable, underhand or duplicitous strategy" by the government to make Kelly's name publicly known.

Kelly slit his wrist after being exposed as the source behind the BBC report that claimed Blair had exaggerated the threat from Iraq.

INTELLIGENCE SERVICES

Blair's Downing Street office "categorically denied" leaking the judge's report. Blair, among other key protagonists, received a copy of it earlier on Tuesday to pore over before its official release after midday on Wednesday.

His six-year-old government has been frequently criticized for putting favorable spin on stories using favored media outlets before they are published.

Adam Boulton, political correspondent for Sky TV which is also in the Murdoch empire, said of the Sun story: "It is worth an awful lot to the government as a pre-emptive strike."

BBC correspondent Nick Hyam, who covered the Hutton inquiry from the start, hinted the same.

"This is exactly what Lord Hutton didn't want to happen, somebody getting hold of all or some of his conclusions and putting their own spin on it before he had a chance to do it himself."

The Sun's Kavanagh said, however, he had received details of the report's conclusion from a good source and insisted "there was no axe to grind."

But Liam Fox, chairman of the opposition Conservative Party, said: "We must find out who's behind it (the leak) because it has all the fingerprints of a government that's willing to say or do anything to save its own skin."

At the start of what has been dubbed Blair's "24 hours from hell," the House of Commons voted by 316 to 311 on Tuesday in favor of a bill to increase fees for university students.

Blair commands the biggest parliamentary majority in recent British history, controlling 408 of the 659 seats in the House of Commons. Losing a vote should have been inconceivable.

But since waging a war in Iraq that most Britons had opposed, and with no banned weapons yet found, Blair has lost the unquestioning support he once enjoyed.

"He is a dead man walking and he should know it," Conservative legislator Nigel Evans said.

Hutton's inquiry raised fundamental questions -- about how the government handled intelligence in the run-up to war and whether it exposed Kelly to public humiliation.

After Kelly's death, Blair denied authorizing the leaking of the scientist's name. But a top civil servant told Hutton that Blair led a meeting where officials decided to publicly clarify the government's position, a move that led to Kelly's exposure.

(Additional reporting by Andrew Cawthorne) Previous 1| 2