Senator Levin Is Going After Feith For Distorting Intelligence

[Oilwellian]

WASHINGTON As recently as January 2004, a top Defense Department official misrepresented to Congress the view of American intelligence agencies about the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, according to classified documents described in a new report by a Senate Democrat.

The report said that a classified document prepared by Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, did not accurately reflect the intelligence agencies' assessment of the relationship, despite a Pentagon claim that it did.

In issuing the report, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he would ask the panel to take "appropriate action" against Feith. Levin described the Jan. 15 communication from Feith as part of a pattern in which the Defense Department official, in briefings for Congress and the White House, repeatedly described the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda as far more significant and extensive than the intelligence agencies had assessed.

The broad outlines of the role played by Feith as a champion of the view that Iraq and Al Qaeda were closely linked have been disclosed previously. The view, a staple of the Bush administration's public statements before the Iraq invasion in March 2003, has since been discredited by the Sept. 11 commission, which concluded that Iraq and Al Qaeda had "no close collaborative relationship."

http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/10/21/news/intel.html

[tmooses]

1. This should be a major story

I wouldn't be surprised if this gets buried by the media. I think Levin reported during this briefing that the connection between Saddam /Al Qaeda was discounted by the CIA as early as March 2002.

[Oilwellian]

2. It's getting buried here as well

:kick: :D