CIA Chief to Update Lawmakers on Iraq

CIA Director George J. Tenet agreed to brief key lawmakers on Iraq today after members of the Senate Intelligence Committee complained that the agency was refusing to answer important questions about the effects of a potential U.S. invasion.

Sen. Bob Graham (D-Fla.), chairman of the committee, accused the CIA on Thursday of “obstructionism” for not producing intelligence reports concerning issues committee members specifically requested last month.

Among the issues are what effect a U.S. invasion of Iraq would have on neighboring countries, and how a military strike might affect the cooperation of other countries in the war on terrorism.

Lawmakers also asked for an agency assessment of certain White House plans regarding Iraq, a U.S. intelligence official said, a politically hazardous task the agency considers inappropriate and would rather avoid.

Senators, mainly Democrats, said the CIA’s failure to provide the information prevents them from making informed decisions about Iraq as the Senate debates a resolution that would grant President Bush authority to launch a military strike.

“This is the moment when we should demand of the intelligence community total cooperation in assessing the threat,” said Sen. Richard Durbin (D-Ill.), a member of the intelligence committee. “Congress is being asked to give unilateral authority to attack another nation.”

Durbin said one of his main concerns is whether invading Iraq would undermine the broader war on terrorism by making other countries, particularly those in the Middle East, reluctant to cooperate with the United States.

“I think that question has gone unanswered,” Durbin said.

The intelligence official, who requested anonymity, said the CIA is working to comply with lawmakers’ requests, and had already produced a comprehensive report concerning Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction “in record time.”

The 90-page report, known as a National Intelligence Estimate, was delivered to the committee late Tuesday. Lawmakers said it arrived too late for members to study it before a closed-door hearing Wednesday on Iraq.

Durbin said aspects of the report “raised serious questions about some of the public assertions that have been made by the administration.” He declined to elaborate.

Lawmakers also were miffed that Tenet did not attend Wednesday’s hearing. Instead, members were briefed by CIA Deputy Director John McLaughlin and Robert Walpole, the national intelligence officer for strategic and nuclear programs.

The U.S. intelligence official said Tenet couldn’t attend because he was needed at a meeting of the national security staff at the White House. The Senate committee had been notified of that scheduling conflict days in advance, the official said.

The latest squabble comes when relations between the CIA and Congress are under significant strain stemming from an ongoing congressional investigation of intelligence failures surrounding the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

Last week, Tenet fired off an angry letter to Graham and other committee members after it was disclosed at a hearing that committee staff had warned lawmakers in private briefing documents that a CIA witness might “dissemble” when asked certain questions.

Thursday’s disagreement also reflects the political pressures surrounding the debate over Iraq.

Last month, lawmakers say, they were alarmed to learn that there was no current National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq. Durbin and others wrote Tenet asking for a new estimate.

The report delivered Tuesday complied with part of the request. The agency is also working to produce a second estimate on Iraq’s conventional military forces.

But lawmakers’ request that the agency assess White House plans are more problematic, the U.S. intelligence official said.

“National intelligence estimates are designed to examine the capabilities, the vulnerabilities of foreign nations,” the official said.

“Not to examine the policies of the United States.”

The official stressed that the CIA is willing “to talk about our role in any possible Iraq action.... But if they’re asking us to pass judgment on the Department of Defense or the State Department, that’s not what we do.”