Rumsfeld: Pentagon did not bypass intelligence community on Iraq

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said Friday he does not believe Pentagon policy officials bypassed intelligence channels in building the case for invading Iraq, and therefore they will not be punished.

New criticism surfaced this week that Pentagon officials within the office of Douglas Feith, deputy undersecretary of Defense for policy, circumvented intelligence channels when they briefed senior aides for the National Security Council and the office of Vice President Dick Cheney on Iraq intelligence in August 2002 without the knowledge or consent of CIA Director George Tenet.

During a town hall meeting Friday, Rumsfeld said officials within the Office of Special Plans and the Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, both under Feith, did not create or gather intelligence and did not need Tenet's permission to conduct briefings.

"We do it all the time in this department. We brief the president. We brief the vice president," Rumsfeld said. "Nobody was bypassed; there was no mystery."

He added: "Are we going to punish them? No, I think not."

Tenet disclosed during a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday that he had not learned until last week about the August 2002 briefing, which was given by Feith's colleagues to senior aides of Cheney and President Bush. Committee ranking member Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., said the briefing was about alleged links between Iraq and al Qaeda.

According to the New York Times, government officials who saw copies of the briefing said the information was presented to Stephen Hadley, the deputy national security adviser, and I. Lewis Libby, Cheney's chief of staff, and included slides that were strongly disparaging of CIA analyses.

Levin asked Tenet if he had talked to Rumsfeld or other administration officials about whether Feith's office was bypassing normal intelligence community channels.

Tenet said he had not, adding that he is Bush's primary source of intelligence.

"My experience is that people come in and may present those kinds of briefings on their views of intelligence," Tenet said. "But I have to tell you, senator, I'm the president's chief intelligence officer; I have the definitive view about these subjects."

Rumsfeld said he received the briefing as well, and recommended it be given to Tenet. Tenet confirmed he received the briefing in August 2002, but did not have a recollection of whether it was accurate. He said he spent about 15 minutes on it, turned it over to his analysts, "and it didn't go further than that."

A Pentagon official told Government Executive last month that the Office of Special Plans and Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group played different roles.

The Office of Special Plans was created in October 2002 when the Pentagon's Northern Gulf Directorate within the Office of Near East and South Asia Affairs was expanded. The directorate's staff increased from four to 16 people due to a heavier workload related to policy issues on Iraq, Iran and the war on terrorism.

The official said the Pentagon did not want to create a policy office that specialized on planning for war with Iraq because such a public move could have undercut diplomatic efforts.

The official said the directorate was a policy-planning group that did not produce intelligence reports.

The Office of Special Plans was disbanded in 2003 and renamed the Near East, South Asia/Northern Gulf Directorate.

The Counter Terrorism Evaluation Group, on the other hand, consisted of two people and was established in October 2001 after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks to "analyze conflict with a terrorist network, versus a traditional nation-state," the official said.

"The mission of [the group] was to review the vast amount of existing intelligence on terrorist networks, think through how various terrorist organizations relate to each other, and how they relate to different groups that support them," the Pentagon official said. p> The main conclusion realized was that groups and states were willing to cooperate across philosophical and ideological lines to achieve their goals. The unit made "interesting observations" about linkages between Iraq and al Qaeda, the official said.

Tenet also said during Tuesday's hearing that he privately told policymakers when he believed they were misconstruing intelligence. When questioned directly, Tenet said he does not believe the Bush administration misrepresented facts to justify going to war with Iraq.