Prewar intelligence was questioned, report indicates

WASHINGTON -- In February 2002, the Defense Intelligence Agency questioned the reliability of a captured top Al Qaeda operative whose allegations became the basis of Bush administration assertions that terrorists had been trained in the use of chemical and biological weapons in Iraq, according to declassified material released by Senator Carl M. Levin, Democrat of Michigan.

Referring to the first interrogation report of Al Qaeda senior military trainer Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, the DIA took note that the Libyan terrorist could not name any Iraqis involved, any chemical or biological material used, or where the training occurred. As a result, ''it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers," a DIA report concluded.

In January 2004 Libi recanted his statements, and in February 2004 the CIA withdrew all intelligence reports based on his information. By then, the United States and its coalition partners had invaded Iraq.

Levin, ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said he arranged for the material to be declassified by the DIA last month. He said he was releasing it to illustrate what he called another case in which the administration had made unqualified assertions about the threat from Iraq in the run-up to the war. At the same time that the administration was linking Baghdad to Al Qaeda, he said, the DIA and other intelligence agencies were privately raising questions about the sources underlying the assertions.

Since then, Levin said in an interview Friday, almost all government intelligence on whether Iraq pursued or possessed weapons of mass destruction has proved faulty. In addition to the allegation of training terrorists loyal to Osama bin Laden, there were government assertions that Iraq's then-president Saddam Hussein had stocks of chemical and biological weapons, that he had reconstituted his nuclear weapons programs, that unmanned airborne vehicles posed a threat, that Iraq had mobile biological weapons factories, and that it was seeking uranium from Africa, Levin said.

He said that he could not be certain that White House officials read the DIA report, but his ''presumption" was that someone at the National Security Council saw it because it was sent there.

Levin noted in a prepared statement that beginning in September 2002, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, then-national security adviser Condoleezza Rice, then-CIA director George J. Tenet, and then-secretary of state Colin L. Powell used the alleged chemical and biological training by Baghdad as valid intelligence in speeches and public appearances to gather support for the Iraq war.

In none of the speeches or appearances was reference made to the DIA questioning the reliability of the source of the claims, Levin said. The doubts about Libi were contained in the DIA's February 2002 ''Defense Intelligence Terrorist Summary," which was sent to the White House and the National Security Council and circulated among US intelligence agencies.

''The newly declassified information provides additional dramatic evidence that the administration's prewar statements regarding links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda represents an incredible deception," Levin said.

Levin pointed specifically to an Oct. 7, 2002, speech in which the president outlined what he said was the ''grave threat" from Iraq days before the House and Senate voted on a resolution giving him the authority to go to war.