Former CIA people forget there "slam dunk" intelligence

NY Times:

A former top official of the Central Intelligence Agency has accused the Bush administration of ignoring intelligence assessments about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction programs in the months leading up to the Iraq war.

Tyler Drumheller, the former head of the C.I.A.'s European operations, is the second C.I.A. veteran in recent weeks to attack the White House's handling of prewar intelligence. The criticism comes as the administration is already facing complaints from retired generals who have criticized the decision to go to war in Iraq and charged that civilian policy makers at the Pentagon ignored the advice of uniformed officers.

In an interview on the CBS News television program "60 Minutes" that will be broadcast Sunday evening, Mr. Drumheller said that White House officials had repeatedly ignored the intelligence community's assessments about the state of Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Mr. Drumheller declined an interview request on Friday, citing an agreement with CBS that he not make public comments until the television interview is shown. A CBS news release issued on Friday included excerpts from the interview.

...

How could the NY Times print this story without mentioning George Tenant's assurance that the intelligence on WMD was a "slam dunk"? Won't to bet on whether it comes up in the CBS interview? If this material was in the NIE it was not there as part of the consensus. This is just hind sight hiney covering by former spooks who do not want to take responsiblility for not knowing what Saddam had done with his WMD. The fact is that even with all the searching, we are still left with the conclusion that much of what he had is unaccounted for. He could not account for it before the war, and we could not account for it after the war. There is a difference between unaccounted for and none existance. It should also be noted that the Iraq survey group did find that Saddam was ready to begin producing more as soon as the heat was off.

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