[tentmaker]

News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate.

As already pointed out earlier in this thread, if you accentuate the word, "NEW", the release implies that all the information referenced in the memo was previously released, and reports that it is NEW are inaccurate.

[JohnGalt]

Wrong.

The DoD meant that the stand by their intelligence reports and will not be making any changes. That is to say that the information in the memo was already known to people making policy decisions; likely, it was produced by the folks in the the Office of Special Plans close to a year ago.

Again, the information in the memo has already been considered and deemed inaccurate or not trustworthy enough compared with other sources for the administration to change its position on the nature of the relationship between AQ and Saddam's Iraq.