WP: Report Says CIA Distorted Iraq Data (NEW DETAILS!)

[grytpype]

The disparity between the classified and unclassified versions of the September NIE has hit the mainstream papers... big time. Read the whole thing, it's now official... the administration lied to the public about the threat posed by Iraqi WMD.

Report Says CIA Distorted Iraq Data
Senate Panel Cites Exaggerations in Paper Made Public in 2002

By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 12, 2004; Page A05

In the only comprehensive assessment of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction released to the public before the war, the CIA exaggerated and distorted the evidence it had given Congress just days earlier, according to the Senate intelligence committee's report released last week.

The White Paper, released Oct. 4, 2002, and based on a classified assessment given to Congress, was the public's only look at the intelligence that policymakers used to decide whether Iraq posed enough of a threat to warrant immediate military action.

Yet the 28-page public document turned estimates into facts, left out or watered down the dissent within the government about key weapons programs, and exaggerated Iraq's ability to strike the United States, the investigation by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence found.

...

Already, the administration's first defense is shot down:

The national intelligence officer who wrote the White Paper told the committee that dropping "we judge" and "we assess" from the public version was done for stylistic reasons. At the time the White Paper was written, he told the panel, he was unsure whether it would be released by the intelligence community or by the U.S. government, in which case using "we" would not make sense.

The committee, however, noted that an unclassified White Paper issued in 1998 "contained other words which expressed the uncertainty behind the IC judgments without using the word 'we.' " For example, it referred to world experts and said "they believe" or "the evidence strongly suggests" and "Iraq could."

What a laugh. Much more at the link, read the whole thing!!!!!

[buycitgo]

1. did you see the LA Times article linked here?

same stuff......which I don't think was mentioned today on gasbag shows

I SAW Dianne Feinstein, and I'm pretty sure she didn't even say a thing about it, even though she was honest enough to say she would change her vote today on the IWR.

[shraby]

2. Why is the national intelligence officer

who wrote the paper still working? He/she distorted the information deliberately. That person's job should be on the line for misleading congress.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

3. The problem with this write-up and the commission's report is that....

...the CIA had written a ton of qualifying statements into the classified version of the National Intelligence Estimate (NIE). NONE of that information was "exaggerated and distorted" because it was, in fact, QUALIFIED information.

Somehow, that "qualified information" turned into hard evidence by the time the National Intelligence Officer (NIO) had rewritten that information for the unclassified version of the NIE.

Here are my three basic questions:

1. Who exactly is the National Intelligence Officer that wrote the unclassified version of the NIE, because no name was mentioned, and...

2. Who does that NIO actually work, because no organization was mentioned, and....

3. To whom does that NIO report, because no reporting relationship was mentioned?

Remember folks, the NeoCon Junta is working around the clock to place the blame for this entire fiasco on the CIA and George Tenet. We should all be looking in the direction of the OSP, a creature of the NeoCons in the Pentagon and White House. Cheney applied pressure to the CIA analysts while the OSP was reviewing the information the CIA was producing.

[buycitgo]

4. what are you, some kind of troublemaker?

why don't you just sit back and let the media do the job they're paid to do, or is it paid NOT to do?

I'm getting confused

[fearnobush]

5. Does the name Karen Kaiwtkowski ring a bell?

The whore media will not even recognise her existence. Nor will they recognise the Office of Special Plans. I'd like to see Chris (Hardball for Bush) Matthews bring her on his show. Yeah right, never happen. What phoney coward he is.

[Maddy McCall]

8. Those are the same questions I pondered as I read...

Dems did request the classified version (un-"stylized") be released, to no avail. From the article:

When the public White Paper version was released in October, it sparked strong protests from Democrats on the Senate intelligence panel who had the classified version. They believed the public document slanted the case toward the administration's view of the Iraqi threat. In particular, Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), the panel's chairman at the time, pushed the CIA to declassify more information.

[rman]

6. yeah, on request of Cheney:

Though that cane out some time ago so they may be counting on people having forgotten it.


http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/062603B.shtml

http://www.commondreams.org/views03/0627-03.htm

[Maddy McCall]

7. Edited for "stylistic" reasons, my ass.

No, it was edited to give the impression that what it presented was FACT, not supposition.

[Disturbed]

9. OSP

I am writing several Congress Persons and news orgs about the OSP. Seem that these people just don't want to do their jobs.

[enough]

10. Even the repukes are coming very close to saying the war was a mistake.

snip>

Yesterday, speaking on NBC's "Meet the Press," the Senate committee's chairman, Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), said that had Congress known before the vote to go to war what his committee has since discovered about the intelligence on Iraq, "I doubt if the votes would have been there."

Roberts characterized some of the redacted parts of the Senate report as "specific details that would make your eyebrows even raise higher."

[struggle4progress]

11. kick

:kick: