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Cheney likely to take the fall for intelligence errors
Iraq intelligence efforts led by Cheney magnified errors, officials say
What went wrong with intelligence on Iraq will never be known unless the inquiry proposed by President Bush examines secret intelligence efforts led by Vice President Dick Cheney and Pentagon hawks, current and former U.S officials said Monday.
The officials said they feared that Bush, gearing up his fight for re-election, would try to limit the inquiry's scope to the CIA and other agencies, and ignore the key role the administration's own internal intelligence efforts played in making the case for war.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, didn't dispute that the CIA failed to accurately assess the state of Iraq's weapons programs. But they said that the intelligence efforts led by Cheney magnified the errors through exaggeration, oversights and mistaken deductions.
The officials said they feared that Bush, gearing up his fight for re-election, would try to limit the inquiry's scope to the CIA and other agencies, and ignore the key role the administration's own internal intelligence efforts played in making the case for war.
The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, didn't dispute that the CIA failed to accurately assess the state of Iraq's weapons programs. But they said that the intelligence efforts led by Cheney magnified the errors through exaggeration, oversights and mistaken deductions.
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