Senate WMD Probe Expands

The Senate Intelligence Committee has agreed to expand its review of intelligence on Iraq to examine whether the Bush administration accurately described the information it had on Saddam Hussein's weapons.

The committee will examine "whether public statements and reports and testimony regarding Iraq by U.S. government officials (between the 1991 Gulf War and the Iraq War) were substantiated by intelligence information," committee leaders said in a statement Thursday night.

The panel is nearing completion of a report expected to be extremely critical of the intelligence agencies' collection and analysis of prewar intelligence. Since the inquiry began in June, Democrats have insisted that the commission also examine whether the administration distorted intelligence to help build the case for war.

Republicans have refused and both sides have accused the other of using the traditionally bipartisan committee for political purposes.

The expansion of the inquiry is not expected to delay the release of the committee's report. It is not clear how long it will take to review the administration statements or whether a public report would be released before the November election.

Pressure for the expanded inquiry grew after the former chief weapons inspector in Iraq, David Kay, said last month that intelligence agencies had wrongly concluded Iraq had large chemical and biological weapon stockpiles and an advanced nuclear weapons program. That intelligence served as President Bush's main argument for war.

Mr. Bush last week appointed a bipartisan commission to examine intelligence agencies' work on Iraq and other U.S. adversaries. The commission is led by Laurence Silberman, a former judge and ambassador to Yugoslavia, and Charles Robb, a former two-term Democratic senator and Virginia governor.

In addition to examining public statements, the Senate committee will also review intelligence activities involving the office of Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, and intelligence provided by the Iraqi National Congress, the leading exile group.

Democrats have charged that the Office of Special Plans under Feith functioned as a renegade intelligence agency, feeding policy-makers uncorroborated intelligence from the exile group. The Pentagon has said the office was a small operation set up to review intelligence produced by other agencies.

Committee Chairman Pat Roberts of Kansas called the expanded inquiry "a refinement and to a great extent a restatement of the committees ongoing review of prewar intelligence."

The panel's top Democrat, Senator Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia, said outstanding issues remain, "but we've made a lot of progress, and its clear that were moving in the right direction."

Last week, CIA director George Tenet said his agency's analysts " never said there was an imminent threat."

But there were differences between how classified CIA reports and public presentations described Iraq's capabilities.

For example, the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, drafted in October 2002, reveal doubts by some intelligence agencies about the extent of its nuclear program, the purpose of work its on unmanned aircraft, its doctrine for using WMD and the circumstances under which Saddam Hussein might partner with al Qaeda.

Administration officials rarely, if ever, hinted at those doubts.

And when Mr. Bush and aides in January 2003 mentioned an allegation that Iraq had tried to buy uranium in Africa, it flew in the face of repeated efforts by the agency to keep the charge — which was not substantiated — out of the case for war.

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