US 'reviews intelligence on Iraq'

Rumsfeld: 'Irritated' by lack of agreement between Pentagon and agencies

The US Government is studying pre-war intelligence reports on Iraq to see if it may have misjudged Baghdad's weapons programme and links to terror groups, the New York Times says.

The paper quoted US officials as saying Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George Tenet had appointed a team to pore over hundreds of intelligence reports filed by the CIA and other agencies before the conflict began.

A senior intelligence official told the newspaper that the review had been requested by US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The official said the review was not a "witch hunt" over any perceived failure to find any so-called smoking gun regarding weapons of mass destruction.

Rather, the official said, it was an exercise aimed at "making the intelligence community work better".

However the review comes as pressure is increasing on the US to find firm evidence of Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction - the main reason given for going to war.

'Lack of agreement'

US intelligence agencies are also reported to have been at odds with the Pentagon over any connections between Baghdad and terror networks.

Questions regarding the strength of intelligence on supposed links between Saddam Hussein's regime and the al-Qaeda network have long been raised by intelligence officials.

Before the conflict, reports of frustration within the US intelligence community emerged, as analysts said they had felt under pressure to bring reports into line with the Bush administration's stance on Iraq.

One official told the New York Times that Mr Rumsfeld had become increasingly irritated by the lack of agreement between intelligence agencies and the Pentagon over such links.

And some Pentagon officials were also annoyed by what they saw as excessive caution on the part of CIA analysts, other officials said.

"Rumsfeld and Tenet regularly have lunch," one official told the paper.

He said that last year they agreed to review US intelligence to see "how it stacks up against reality".