Use of information is a campaign issue

Only one person, Sen. John McKain, is revealed as slated for the panel.
WASHINGTON (AP) -- CIA Director George Tenet says intelligence analysts gave the White House an objective view of the threat posed by Iraq. But Tenet didn't answer a question emerging as a top campaign issue: Did the Bush administration accurately describe that intelligence in making the case for war?
Tenet offered a forceful defense of prewar intelligence in a speech at Georgetown University on Thursday, one day before President Bush was expected to name a commission to examine intelligence failures in Iraq and elsewhere.
Sensing a campaign issue in this election year, Democrats have been clamoring to find out whether the White House pressured analysts or manipulated intelligence, but it's not clear whether the commission will address those areas.
Administration officials say that in addition to assessing how well U.S. intelligence did in determining the existence of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, the commission also will look at the bigger picture of fighting terrorism and monitoring U.S. adversaries, such as those in Iran and North Korea.
The White House has yet to reveal the names of any of the nine commission members, but an administration official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would be one.
Ex-adviser's recommendation
David Kay, the former CIA adviser for the Iraqi weapons search, said Thursday that the commission should look into whether political leaders manipulated intelligence data.
"I think that is an important question that needs to be understood," he said at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.
Kay repeated statements made last week that he doesn't believe analysts were pressured to make the case for war.
It was Kay's criticism of prewar intelligence since resigning two weeks ago that built momentum for an independent commission. Kay said intelligence agencies wrongly concluded that Iraq had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons because they had too little human intelligence and overanalyzed the data in hand.
But Tenet said the intelligence was mostly on target, especially as it applied to Iraq's nuclear, missile and unmanned aerial vehicle programs. He said the analyses were reasonable given the information available to the United States and other nations.
"Based on an assessment of the data we collected over the past 10 years, it would have been difficult for analysts to come to any different conclusions than the ones reached in October of 2002," when a comprehensive intelligence estimate was prepared.
Differences of opinion
He made clear that analysts differed on important aspects of Saddam Hussein's chemical, biological and nuclear programs and spelled out those disputes in the intelligence estimate.
Agreeing with Kay, Tenet said: "No one told us what to say or how to say it."
He also didn't rule out that weapons still could be found.
Democratic presidential candidates said Tenet's speech showed that Bush misled Americans.
Democratic front-runner Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts said Bush and other officials "were playing politics with our national security." Retired Gen. Wesley Clark said, "The question now is: What did (Bush) know at the time?"
Before the war, Bush and his senior advisers made clear they viewed the threat from Saddam as urgent. On Sept. 13, 2002, Bush said of Saddam, "He's a threat we must deal with as quickly as possible." The next month, he said "the danger is already significant and it only grows worse with time."
White House aides have pointed out that Bush, while he cited the urgency of stopping Saddam, never called the threat "imminent."
The question of whether intelligence was manipulated has deeply divided the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is completing its own inquiry.
Committee members reviewed a classified draft report Thursday that is believed to be critical of U.S. intelligence agencies' work.
But Democrats have said the inquiry was too narrow because it didn't examine how the administration used the intelligence. Both parties have accused each other of trying to use the investigation for political purposes.
Sen. Pat Roberts, the committee chairman, said he hoped the report would be a catalyst for intelligence reforms.
"I don't think this is the time to be really beating the intelligence community about the head and shoulders for what appears to be" a global intelligence failure, said Roberts, R-Kan.