Free Republic

PREWAR INTELLIGENCE WASHINGTON, July 30 - A senior leader of Al Qaeda who was captured in Pakistan several months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks was the main source for intelligence, since discredited, that Iraq had provided training in chemical and biological weapons to members of the organization, according to American intelligence officials. Intelligence officials say the detainee, Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, a member of Osama bin Laden's inner circle, recanted the claims sometime last year, but not before they had become the basis of statements by President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell and others...

Bush, Vice President Cheney and top members of the administration reacted with shock when they found out that Abdul Qadeer Khan, Pakistan’s top nuclear scientist, spent the past 15 years selling outlaw nations nuclear technology and equipment. So it was sort of a surprise when Bush, upon finding out about Khan’s proliferation of nuclear technology, let Pakistan off with a slap on the wrist. But it was all an act. In fact, it was actually a cover-up designed to shield Cheney because he knew about the proliferation for more than a decade and did nothing to stop it. Cheney went...

After speaking to "innumerable" U.S. intelligence officers, David Kay has concluded that Bush administration officials did not pressure analysts to exaggerate the threats posed by Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. On Capitol Hill, the Senate Intelligence Committee staff has interviewed over 175 analysts and critics and reached the same conclusion. Leading the C.I.A.'s own internal review, Richard Kerr has apparently also concluded that there is no evidence that political pressures influenced the C.I.A. reports. And this is precisely the problem. For decades, the U.S. intelligence community has propagated the myth that it possesses analytical methods that must be insulated pristinely...