The crucial document Rice cited was the October 2002 "National Intelligence Estimate," which was the basis for administration statements that Saddam possessed proscribed weapons.
That intelligence estimate bore the stamp of George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence. On Sunday, White House officials appeared to be subtly shifting the issue from whether they twisted conclusions to what the CIA said as it prepared the estimate, a consensus document that is supposed to reflect the conclusions of competing intelligence services.
The document noted the extensive findings of UN inspectors, before their withdrawal from Iraq in 1998, of missing stores of chemical weapons, biological precursors and equipment.
Powell, appearing on Fox News, noted that the mobile biological laboratories found by US forces bore great resemblance to those he described to the United Nations in February. "I would put before you exhibit A, the mobile biological labs that we have found," he said. `Now, people are saying, well, are they truly mobile biological labs? Yes, they are."
So far, however, there has been no evidence that the labs were ever put into use in producing the critical materials for biological weapons.
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