Tenet says Bush didn’t misconstrue facts on Iraq

CIA Director George Tenet is defending the administration amid the criticism, saying he believes policy-makers are entitled to flexibility in how they interpret and describe intelligence.

“At the end of the day, they make policy judgments and they talk about things differently,” Tenet told the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday.

Tenet appeared before the panel to present his annual worldwide threat assessment, but much of the hearing focused on whether he is responsible for publicly correcting officials who make false or misleading statements on intelligence.

Though he generally did not discuss when he had spoken to administration officials about their intelligence statements, Tenet said he contacted Cheney after the vice president had said in an NPR interview in January that trailers seized in Iraq probably were biological weapons labs. Intelligence agencies now doubt that was the case.

Last month, Tenet said in a speech at Georgetown University that intelligence analysts had not claimed before the war that Iraq was an imminent threat, although they had described how Saddam was continuing programs that could have threatened U.S. interests.

Democrats allege that the Bush administration misconstrued intelligence to argue its case for war. Their criticism intensified after the former chief arms inspector, David Kay, said in January that deposed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was unlikely to have had weapons stockpiles or an advanced nuclear program before the war last year.

They particularly fault the Pentagon’s Office of Special Plans for allegedly presenting a distorted picture of Saddam’s weapons and ties to al-Qaida.

Some of Tuesday’s toughest questioning came from Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., who last week chastised Tenet for not coming forward earlier to “set the record straight.”

“You can’t have it both ways, can you, Mr. Tenet?” Kennedy said, contrasting that speech to Tenet’s refusal to describe steps he took to correct statements made by administration officials.

Tenet said, “I’m not going to sit here today and tell you what my interaction was. What I did, what I didn’t do,” Tenet said. “When I believed that someone was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it. I don’t stand up in public and do it.”

When Tenet said policy-makers don’t use precisely the same words as intelligence analysts, Kennedy said, “I’m not talking about parsing words. We’re talking about words that are basically warmongering.”

Kennedy asked if Tenet believed the administration had misrepresented facts to justify the war.

“No, sir, I don’t,” Tenet said.

Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the panel’s top Democrat, noted a Jan. 9 interview with the Rocky Mountain News in which Cheney referred to a Weekly Standard article on links between al-Qaida and Saddam Hussein. That article was based on a classified Defense Department assessment that was later retracted by the Pentagon.

Tenet said he wasn’t aware of Cheney’s comments until Monday night. “I will talk to him about that,” he said.

Levin suggested that Tenet should have been aware earlier of Cheney’s statements.

“It seems to me there’s got to be someone in your office who is going to say to you, `You know, the vice president said something which just doesn’t have our support.”

Tenet replied, “Sir, it’s a fair point.”

Committee Chairman John Warner, R-Va., sought to fend off Democrats’ insistence that Tenet monitor and correct the statements of administration officials.

“In the end, he is not their keeper,” he said.