Pentagon official distorted intelligence, report says

Pentagon official distorted intelligence, report says
By Douglas Jehl The New York Times
Friday, October 22, 2004
http://www.iht.com/bin/print_ipub.php?file=/articles/2004/10/21/news/intel.html
WASHINGTON As recently as January 2004, a top Defense Department official misrepresented to Congress the view of American intelligence agencies about the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, according to classified documents described in a new report by a Senate Democrat.
The report said that a classified document prepared by Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy, did not accurately reflect the intelligence agencies' assessment of the relationship, despite a Pentagon claim that it did.
In issuing the report, Senator Carl Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee, said that he would ask the panel to take "appropriate action" against Feith. Levin described the Jan. 15 communication from Feith as part of a pattern in which the Defense Department official, in briefings for Congress and the White House, repeatedly described the ties between Iraq and Al Qaeda as far more significant and extensive than the intelligence agencies had assessed....