More on the Dissemination of Pre-War Intelligence
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ThinkProgress has two good posts that offer previously published news reports that serve as reminders that there were large swaths of intelligence that either didn't make it to Congress or were dampened to the point of irrelevance. The first post is on the claim that everyone was using the same intelligence across the board. Here's a sample:
The second post focuses on the claim that the Senate Intelligence Committee report gave BushCo the all-clear in regards to politicizing/manipulating intelligence and specifically in regards to the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). Here's a sample:FACT — Sen. Kerrey: Bush “Has Much More Access” to Intel Than Congress:
Former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-NE), ex-Senate Intelligence Committee vice chairman: “The president has much more access to intelligence than members of Congress does. Ask any member of Congress. Ask a Republican member of Congress, do you get the same access to intelligence that the president does? Look at these aluminum tube stories that came out the president delivered to the Congress — ‘We believe these would be used for centrifuges.’ — didn’t deliver to Congress the full range of objections from the Department of Energy experts, nuclear weapons experts, that said it’s unlikely they were for centrifuges, more likely that they were for rockets, which was a pre-existing use. The president has much more access to intelligence than any member of Congress.” [10/7/04]
Essentially, the Bush administration took the intelligence that was presented to them in the classified NIE and twisted it to present a stronger case for war in the public version of the NIE. Here are some examples:
Classified NIE: “Although we have little specific information on Iraq’s CW stockpile, Saddam Hussein probably has stocked at least 100 metric tons” of such poisons.
Unclassified NIE: The phrase “although we have little specific information” was deleted. Instead, the public report said, “Saddam probably has stocked a few hundred metric tons of CW agents.” [Senate Intel Cmte Report]
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