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DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Wolf, as you say, the president and his aides have been on the offensive in recent days against critics of their use of pre-war -- of intelligence. But there may be some problems with some of what they are saying.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
ENSOR (voice-over): The president and his aides have counter- attacked against critics with two major arguments. The key one, Congress and the administration had access to the same intelligence.
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Leaders in my administration and members of the United States Congress from both political parties looked at the same intelligence on Iraq, and reached the same conclusion. Saddam Hussein was a threat.
ENSOR: In a general sense, that is true. U.S. intelligence believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and said so in a National Intelligence Estimate Congress had access to before the war.
But it is not accurate to say Congress and the administration looked at all the same intelligence. The White House had access to far more than lawmakers did. Presidential daily briefs on intelligence are never given to Congress.
Some intelligence available to the White House but not to Congress gave reason to doubt some of the president's blunt pre-war assertions, for example that Iraq had helped al Qaeda on weapons.
BUSH: We have learned that Iraq has trained al Qaeda members in bomb making, in poisons and deadly gasses.
ENSOR: The president said that in October 2002. Yet eight months earlier, the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned the reliability of the captured al Qaeda operative who was the source of that assertion, in a document delivered to the White House. It was recently declassified at the insistence of Democratic Senator Carl Levin.
Speaking of Ibn Al-Shaykh al-Libi, the DIA said, quote: "It is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers."
Pentagon spokesman called the release of the DIA document, quote, "irresponsible" and "out of context."
The next major argument from the White House, independent reviews have already determined that the administration did not misrepresent the intelligence before the war. STEPHEN HADLEY, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR: They were looked at by the Silberman-Robb Commission, they were looked at by the Senate Intelligence community -- Committee. Both of them concluded that there was no manipulation of intelligence.
ENSOR: But in fact, no commission or committee has yet spoken on whether the White House misrepresented pre-war intelligence. The Senate Intelligence Committee, under pressure from Democrats, is working on it. The orders to the Silberman Commission from the White House specifically left it out.
http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0511/17/sitroom.03.html
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