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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.
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In a Nov. 15 press release, the Defense Department said the "provision of the classified annex to the intelligence committee was cleared by other agencies, and done with the permission of the intelligence community." But Levin's report said that statement was incorrect, because the Central Intelligence Agency had not cleared the release of Feith's annex. It also disclosed for the first time that the CIA, in December 2003, had sent Feith a letter pointing out corrections he should make to the document before providing it to Levin, who had requested the document as part of the investigation.
An unclassified Jan. 15, 2003, letter sent to the Senate Armed Services Committee by Daniel Stanley, the principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, said that an attached, classified addendum had been prepared by Feith's staff "containing the CIA's proposed changes." But in his report, Levin said that Feith had in fact used the addendum to reiterate assertions challenged by the CIA.
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Yes, the Neocons did lie us into war. Don't accept this baloney they simply went to war because of faulty CIA assesments.
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