CIA 'Disagreed With More Than 50%' Of Pentagon's 'Controversial' Iraq WMD Findings

Courtesy Of: The Los Angeles Times
By Greg Miller and Julian E. Barnes,
Times Staff Writers
February 10, 2007
latimes.com

Analysts from the CIA and other agencies "disagreed with more than 50%" of 26 findings the Pentagon team laid out in a controversial paper, according to testimony Friday from Thomas F. Gimble, acting inspector general of the Pentagon.

The dueling groups sat down at CIA headquarters in late August 2002 to try to work out their differences. But while the CIA agreed to minor modifications in some of its own reports, Gimble said, the Pentagon unit was utterly unbowed.

"They didn't make the changes that were talked about in that August 20th meeting," Gimble said, and instead went on to present their deeply flawed findings to senior officials at the White House.

The work of that special Pentagon unit — which was run by former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas J. Feith — is one of the lingering symbols of the intelligence failures leading up to the war in Iraq.

...The activities of Feith's group weren't illegal, Gimble concluded. But they were, "in our opinion, inappropriate, given that the intelligence assessments were [presented as] intelligence products and did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community."

...Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) noted Friday that Cheney has referred to Feith's work as an "assessment," suggesting it was a formal intelligence document. But Feith maintained in interviews he was not creating an intelligence "product," but was just checking the work of the CIA.

...But Robert M. Gates, the new secretary of Defense and former CIA director, said..."Based on my whole career, I believe all intelligence activities need to be carried on by the established institutions, where there is appropriate oversight,"...

..."There were like 26 points," in the Feith team's paper, Gimble said. "And essentially [experts at other agencies] disagreed with more than 50% of it, and either agreed or partially agreed with the remainder."

...P.J. Crowley, a retired Air Force colonel and a senior fellow at the Center of American Progress, said that the intelligence peddled by Feith tainted the public dialogue.

"They weren't creating intelligence, but they were assembling the pieces to create a rationale for war," Crowley said. "Their production was discredited, but they had the desired effect. The little pieces ended up infecting the process."

FULL LA TIMES ARTICLE AT THIS LINK