Meanwhile, Powell on Friday fiercely defended the intelligence used by the Bush administration to justify war against Iraq, saying he spent several late nights poring over the CIA's reports because he knew the credibility of the country and the president were at stake.
The CIA's pre-war assessments have been sharply questioned by some intelligence officials and lawmakers in recent days, as US forces have uncovered limited evidence of unconventional weapons programs and Iraqi ties to terrorists.
Amid complaints from some intelligence officials that they felt pressured by Defense Department officials to produce reports that supported the administration's positions on Iraq, the CIA has started a review to determine whether its prewar assessments of Saddam Hussein's weapons programs were accurate.
The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has also asked the agency to provide a report on its Iraq intelligence, and is considering holding closed-door hearings on the issue, House officials said.
Powell used those assessments -- along with satellite photographs and intercepted conversations between Iraqi military officers -- in a dramatic presentation to the UN on Feb. 5, when he argued that Iraq's weapons programs and links to al-Qaeda made it an imminent threat to the world.
Asked on Friday whether he thought those assessments had been politicized to bolster the administration's call to arms, Powell said no, calling it "solid information" based on multiple sources that had been presented to him by unbiased analysts.
"I went out to the CIA, and I spent four days and four nights going over everything that they had," Powell told reporters traveling on Air Force One with Bush to Poland. For three consecutive nights, the chore kept him at the agency until midnight, he said.
"I knew that it was the credibility of the US that was going to be on the line on the Feb. 5," he said.
"The credibility of the president of the US and my credibility."
At the time, Powell was widely viewed as the most cautious member of Bush's national security team on Iraq, and his urgent presentation to the UN in February was intended to provided an extra layer of credibility to the administration's case for war.
Powell argued on Friday that the accuracy of the pre-war assessments was proven by the discovery of two Iraqi trailers that the CIA and Pentagon have concluded were designed to produce deadly germs. Powell presented drawings of suspected mobile biological labs to the UN in February.
"You should have seen the smile on my face when one day the intelligence community came in and gave me a photo, and said, `look,'" Powell said on Friday.
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