The director of the CIA denied Democratic allegations on Tuesday that US President George W. Bush's administration misrepresented facts about Iraq's weapons programs in order to make a case for war.
Pressed by Senate Democrats, George Tenet said he has told policy-makers when they were mischaracterizing intelligence, and that he planned to call Vice President Dick Cheney to tell him he had referred in a newspaper interview to a discredited document.
Tenet also made clear that he believes policy-makers should be allowed to be flexible in how they interpret intelligence.
"At the end of the day, they make policy judgments and they talk about things differently," Tenet told the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Tenet appeared before the panel to present his annual worldwide threat assessment. He repeated themes he had discussed before the Senate Intelligence Committee: Although al-Qaeda is damaged, the terror network's anti-American agenda has spread to other groups that threaten the US.
Tenet also warned that violence in Iraq probably will continue as the July 1 transfer of sovereignty to Iraqis approaches.
Much of the hearing focused on whether Tenet is responsible for publicly correcting officials who make false or misleading statements on intelligence.
Prewar claims about Iraq have become a politically charged issue. It especially heated up after the former chief US arms inspector, David Kay, said in January that Saddam Hussein was unlikely to have had stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons or an advanced nuclear program.
Bush's main argument for war was an immediate threat posed by illegal Iraqi weapons.
Administration officials say their claims reflected the intelligence available. Democrats insist the administration misrepresented intelligence and disregarded caveats and dissenting opinions to bolster its case for war.
In particular, they fault the Defense Department's Office of Special Plans with presenting a distorted picture of Saddam's weapons and ties to al-Qaeda.
In a speech at Georgetown University last month, Tenet said that intelligence analysts had not claimed before the war that Iraq was an imminent threat, although they had described how Saddam was continuing programs that could have threatened US interests.
Some of Tuesday's toughest questioning came from Senator Edward Kennedy, who last week criticized Tenet for not coming forward earlier to "set the record straight."
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