A former top CIA official has accused the administration of US President George W. Bush of ignoring intelligence assessments about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs in the months leading up to the Iraq war.
Tyler Drumheller, the former head of the CIA's European operations, is the second CIA veteran in recent weeks to attack the White House's handling of prewar intelligence. The criticism comes as the administration is already facing complaints from retired generals who have criticized the decision to go to war in Iraq and charged that civilian policymakers at the Pentagon ignored the advice of uniformed officers.
In an interview on the CBS News television program 60 Minutes that will be broadcast today, Drumheller said that White House officials had repeatedly ignored the intelligence community's assessments about the state of Iraq's chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. Drumheller declined an interview request on Friday, citing an agreement with CBS that he not make public comments until the television interview is shown. A CBS news release issued on Friday included excerpts from the interview.
According to the release, Drumheller cited one instance in which George Tenet, then the director of central intelligence, told Bush and US Vice President Dick Cheney that a paid agent in Saddam Hussein's inner circle, Foreign Minister Naji Sabri, had reported that Iraq had no active programs for weapons of mass destruction.
Three days later, according to Drumheller's account, the White House told CIA officials that it was proceeding with plans to go to war.
"And we said, `Well, what about the intel?' And they said, `Well, this isn't about intel anymore. This is about regime change."'
A CBS spokesman, Kevin Tedesco, said Drumheller's account was that the exchange took place in September 2002, six months before the US invasion of Iraq.
Paul Gimigliano, a CIA spokesman, did not address Drumheller's accusations.
"Tyler Drumheller is a former employee expressing his personal opinions," Gimigliano said. "They are not the official views of the Central Intelligence Agency."
Drumheller's accusations are significant because it is rare for intelligence officers, even in retirement, to openly criticize an administration that they served.
But Paul Pillar, who until last October oversaw US intelligence assessments about the Middle East, wrote in the March-April issue of Foreign Affairs that the Bush administration had selectively ignored crucial intelligence assessments about Iraq's unconventional weapons and about the likelihood of postwar chaos in Iraq.
In an interview on Friday, Pillar said that many people still serving in the intelligence community were angry about what they deem the manipulation of prewar intelligence.
"Are there people still wearing the badge inside the intelligence community who share these concerns?" said Pillar, who is now a visiting professor at Georgetown University. "Absolutely. There's no question about it."
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