Kerry Did Not Read Iraq Study, Aides Say

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. John F. Kerry, whose campaign demanded to know whether President Bush had read a key Iraq intelligence assessment, did not read the document himself before voting to give Bush the authority to go to war, aides said.

“Along with other senators, he was briefed on the contents of the [National Intelligence Estimate] by [then-CIA Director] George Tenet and other administration intelligence officials,” Kerry spokesman Phil Singer said Wednesday.

Kerry’s campaign has challenged Bush to say whether he read the complete intelligence report before deciding to go to war, or whether he just read a one-page summary, which Democrats say gave him none of the dissenting views included in the full version.

Singer said the issue was not whether Kerry read the intelligence assessment himself, but why the White House had refused to release the one-page presidential summary.

“The bigger question is why ... the president -- the commander in chief, who decided when and how to take us to war -- won’t share this document with the Congress,” Singer said.

The National Intelligence Estimate concluded that Iraq possessed chemical and biological weapons but noted dissent from the State Department’s intelligence service.

On the campaign trail in several battleground states this week, Bush defended his decision to go to war despite a Senate Intelligence Committee report that said U.S. intelligence agencies had overstated the threat of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, which was a chief White House reason for the war.