CIA lacked information on Saddam's WMDs - panel

Washington U.S. intelligence analysts lacked new, hard information about Saddam Hussain's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons after United Nations inspectors left Iraq in 1998, and so had to rely on data from the early and mid-1990s when they concluded in months leading up to the war that those programmes continued into 2003, according to preliminary findings of a CIA internal review panel.

While the post-1998 evidence was largely circumstantial or "inferential" because of the inspectors' absence and the lack of reliable agents inside Iraq, the panel said Thursday, the judgment that Saddam continued to have weapons of mass destruction appears justified.

"It would have been very hard to conclude those programmes were not continuing, based on the reports being gathered in recent years about Iraqi purchases and other activities before the war," said Richard Kerr, a former CIA deputy director who heads the four-person review panel appointed in February by CIA Director George Tenet.

The panel's mission, initially suggested by Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, is to provide "lessons learned" from the Iraq war by comparing the pre-war analyses and estimates to the intelligence gathered inside the country after the war.

Kerr said the pre-war intelligence reports given to Bush administration policy-makers from the CIA, the Pentagon and State Department contained caveats and disagreements on data underlying some judgments, such as whether Saddam's nuclear programme was being reconstituted.

But "on the whole, the analysts were pretty much on the mark," he said. Kerr said his preliminary report is the first half of the review.

On another controversial Iraq intelligence issue, the preliminary report indicates that although Al Qaida and Saddam had a common enemy in the United States, and there were some ties among individuals in the two camps, "it was not at all clear there was any coordination or joint activities," said one individual in the CIA who is familiar with the report.

"There were people talking to each other," in Iraq and other countries, the source said, "but that was how Saddam kept track of what was going on" in Al Qaida. In promoting the war, Bush and his top aides said there were links between Al Qaida and Iraq.

Kerr also looked into whether U.S. analysts changed their views, particularly in light of the administration's desire to gain support for going to war and questions about whether analysts were pressured to promote that cause.

"My instincts," Kerr said, "is that they did not change over time." Based on his experience, he said, "there nearly always are differences between people who follow terrorists and the regional analysts."

On the whole, he said, "they were very cautious, explored things carefully and followed evidence as far as could be." Intelligence judgments are always inferential, he said.