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COPYRIGHT 2003 The Dallas Morning News
Jul. 28--WASHINGTON-Already on the defensive over the quality of the intelligence used to make its case for war against Iraq, the Bush administration stands accused of politically manipulating intelligence in a manner unseen in decades.
White House officials strongly deny any pressure to make the CIA or other agencies alter intelligence data.
But some intelligence veterans, congressional Democrats and others charge that administration officials aggressively meddled in the process, pressing to overemphasize some intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program to fit the goal of removing Saddam Hussein.
Among the examples they cite are:
-- President Bush's now-famous State of the Union assertion that Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa. Though CIA Director George Tenet accepted responsibility for not ensuring that the questionable sentence was stricken from the Jan. 28 speech, the White House has acknowledged that the CIA had voiced strong doubts about the claim in two memos and a telephone call last October to Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley.
-- Defense Department policymakers' creation of an intelligence unit that echoed the administration's belief the Hussein regime had links to al-Qaeda, at a time when the CIA was actively discounting such ties.
-- Vice President Dick Cheney's repeated trips to...
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