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CIA doubting Baghdad's prewar al-Qaeda `links'

A reassessment by the CIA has cast doubt on a central piece of evidence used by the administration of George W. Bush before the invasion of Iraq to draw links between former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's government and al-Qaeda's terrorist network, government officials said Tuesday.

The CIA report, sent to policy-makers in August, says it is now not clear whether Saddam's government harbored members of a group led by the Jordanian terrorist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the officials said. The assertion that Iraq provided refuge to Zarqawi was the primary basis for the administration's prewar assertions connecting Iraq to al-Qaeda.

The new CIA assessment, based largely on information gathered after the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003, is the latest to revise a prewar intelligence report used by the administration as a central rationale for war.

In June of this year, Bush described Zarqawi as "the best evidence of connection to al-Qaeda affiliates and al-Qaeda." But while Zarqawi was once thought to be closely linked to al-Qaeda, his affiliations are now less certain.

Some US and European officials have said there is no clear coordination between Zarqawi and al-Qaeda, though their aims are similar. In the meantime, Zarqawi has emerged as an architect of repeated car bomb attacks and as the most active and deadly foreign terrorist operating in Iraq as part of the anti-US insurgency.

The CIA's new assessment states that it could not be conclusive even about his relationship with Saddam's government. The CIA review, first reported by Knight-Ridder newspapers, did not say on what basis the earlier assessment was being softened, and government officials declined to explain on Tuesday.

A CIA spokesman declined to comment about any new intelligence assessment. The government officials who outlined its findings represented several different agencies, but all were guarded in discussing it, saying they did not want to add to tensions between the CIA and the White House.

One official said the new report "doesn't make clear-cut assertions one way or another" about whether Iraq harbored Zarqawi. But officials said it had established beyond doubt that Zarqawi spent time in Baghdad in 2002, that from there he ordered the assassination of a US diplomat in Jordan and that he was in contact with members of the insurgent group Ansar al-Islam.
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