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CIA head `quit over report'

A classified Senate report very critical of the CIA's performance on Iraq, especially its miscalculations on weapons of mass destruction, may have precipitated CIA Director George Tenet's resignation, The New York Times said yesterday.

The 400-page report, described by officials as presenting a broad indictment of the CIA's performance on Iraq, included only factual findings; its conclusions are being drafted by the members of the Senate Intellingence Committee, the daily said.

An unclassified version of the report will be made public this month, it added.

Tenet's resignation, effective July 11, was announced Thursday morning by US President George W. Bush only minutes before he left on a tour of Europe, catching most of Washington by surprise.

Tenet said he was stepping down for personal reasons and Bush and other top US officials expressed regrets at seeing him go, but that did not stop a flurry of rumors that Tenet was paying the price for the mistakes behind Bush's Iraq policy.

The Senate report's criticism of the CIA, according to officials who have read it, ranged from inadequate prewar collection of intelligence by spies and satellites to a sloppy analysis, often based on uncorroborated sources, that produced the conclusion that Iraq had biological and chemical weapons.

A senior intelligence official said Tenet had neither read nor been briefed on the report, adding that the notion it had anything to do with the CIA chief's resignation was "bunk."

Congressional officials told the daily that, until early this week, Tenet had been tentatively scheduled to appear before the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed session on Thursday, in what would have amounted to a final rebuttal before the report was rleased.

Tenet, however, canceled the appearance citing other commitments, but giving no hint that he was preparing to resign, the officials said.

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