Probe faults Pentagon's `alternative' intelligence

By Jonathan S. Landay
McClatchy/Tribune Newspapers
Published February 9, 2007

WASHINGTON -- A special unit run by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's top policy aide inappropriately produced "alternative" prewar intelligence reports on Iraq that wrongly concluded Saddam Hussein's regime had cooperated with Al Qaeda, a Pentagon investigation has determined.

The Department of Defense Inspector General's Office found that former Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith and his staff had done nothing illegal.

But Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), who requested the investigation, called the findings "devastating" because senior administration officials, particularly Vice President Dick Cheney, used Feith's work to help make their case for the 2003 U.S. invasion of Iraq.

"We went to war based on the argument of the administration . . . that there was a link between Al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein and that Saddam Hussein could give Al Qaeda and other terrorist groups weapons," Levin said in an interview. The findings, he said, "are about as damning a statement as one can hear."

Pentagon Acting Inspector General Thomas Gimble was to present the investigation's classified findings Friday to the Senate Armed Services Committee, which Levin heads. Levin and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, disclosed the conclusions of an unclassified summary Thursday.

Feith, who resigned from the Pentagon in 2005 and now teaches at Georgetown University, said he has been exonerated.

"The policy office has been smeared for years by allegations that its pre-Iraq war work was somehow `unlawful' or `unauthorized' and that some information it gave to congressional committees was deceptive or misleading," he said in a statement. "The inspector general's report has now thoroughly repudiated the smears."

But Rockefeller said in a statement that he would examine whether Feith had violated the 1947 National Security Act.

Separately, House Democratic leaders said Thursday that members will vote next week on a resolution opposing President Bush's troop escalation in Iraq, The Associated Press reported.

But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) said he may