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Bush to Declassify National Intelligence Estimate
WASHINGTON -- President Bush on Tuesday said it is naive and a mistake to think that the war with Iraq has worsened terrorism, as a key portion of a national intelligence assessment by his own administration suggests. He said he was declassifying part of the report. "Some people have guessed what's in the report and concluded that going into Iraq was a mistake. I strongly disagree," Bush said. He asserted that portions of the classified report that had been leaked were done so for political purposes, referring to the Nov. 7 midterm elections. Bush announced that he had instructed National Intelligence Director John Negroponte to declassify those parts of the report that don't compromise national security or intelligence-gathering methods.Portions of the document that have been leaked suggest that the threat of terrorism has grown worse since the Sept. 11 terror attacks and the war in Afghanistan, due in part to the war in Iraq. Democrats have used the report - written by analysts from a range of U.S. intelligence branches - to bolster their criticism of Bush's Iraq policy. The administration does not dispute the findings, but claims only part of the report was leaked - and does not tell the full story. Negroponte "is going to declassify the document as quickly as possible - declassify the key judgments for you to read yourself," Bush told reporters in the East Room. "And he'll do so in such a way that we'll be able to protect sources and methods . . . that our intelligence community uses." Using a portion of the report to attack his Iraq policy and suggest it has fanned more terrorism is "naive," Bush asserted. Bush said the full report shows "that, because of our successes against the leadership of al-Qaida, the enemy is becoming more diffuse and independent." Both the chairman and the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee had urged the White House to release the material. "You read it for yourself. Stop all this speculation," Bush said. He complained that "somebody leaked classified information for political purposes" and criticized both the news media and people in government who talked to them about classified material. And in related news: Democratic Leader Asks For Closed House Session (AP) WASHINGTON House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi asked her colleagues Tuesday to close the House's doors for a highly unusual secret session to discuss a classified intelligence analysis on global terrorism.
According to the media reports, the intelligence estimate "is the administration's worst nightmare. It is not a corroboration of what the president is saying. It is a contradiction of what the president is saying," she said.
It wasn't immediately clear whether the Republican-controlled House would allow the Democratic effort to shift the chamber's attention to one of the most controversial political issues of the November elections: the Bush administration's policies in the war on terror and its handling of the situation in Iraq.
Posted by: Steve 2006-09-26 |
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