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WASHINGTON � A top State Department expert on chemical and biological weapons told Congressional committees in closed-door hearings last week that he had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views, several Congressional officials said today.

The officials described what they said was a dramatic moment at a House Intelligence Committee hearing last week when the weapons expert came forward to tell Congress he had felt such pressure.

By speaking out, they said, the senior intelligence expert, identified by several officials as Christian Westermann, became the first member of the intelligence community on active service to make this sort of admission to members of Congress.

The House Intelligence Committee was examining questions concerning the Bush administration's handling of prewar reports on evidence that Iraq had illegal weapons and ties to terrorist groups.

Mr. Westermann, officials said, is an analyst in the State Department's Bureau of Intelligence and Research, a small but important office at the State Department that is intended to provide the secretary of state with intelligence analysis independent of the C.I.A. and other agencies.

Mr. Westermann told lawmakers last week that while he felt pressure, he never actually changed the wording of any of his intelligence reports.

James Risen and Douglas Jehl, The New York Times

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Tony Blair's press chief Alastair Campbell has told MPs he regrets the problems with the "dodgy dossier" about Iraq's illegal weapons.

But he denied claims that he had "sexed up" an earlier and more important dossier about Iraq's weapons and demanded the BBC apologise for what he called a "lie".

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He said plagiarising part of an academic thesis was "a mistake", but set that within the context of many documents being sent to a "round-the-clock, round-the-world" media. Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had increased the pressure on Mr Campbell on Tuesday when he told the committee that the February document an "embarrassment" for the government.

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Tony Blair's press chief Alastair Campbell has told MPs he regrets the problems with the "dodgy dossier" about Iraq's illegal weapons.

But he denied claims that he had "sexed up" an earlier and more important dossier about Iraq's weapons and demanded the BBC apologise for what he called a "lie".

The Downing Street communications director is being grilled by MPs on the Commons foreign affairs committee investigating whether the UK Government exaggerated the case for invading Iraq.

Mr Campbell commissioned February's "dodgy dossier" which copied material from an academic thesis about Iraq.

He said plagiarising part of an academic thesis was "a mistake", but set that within the context of many documents being sent to a "round-the-clock, round-the-world" media.

Are we really so cynical that we think any prime minister, is going to make prior decisions to send British forces into conflict and wouldn't rather avoid doing that

Alastair Campbell


BBC rejects apology demand

Foreign Secretary Jack Straw had increased the pressure on Mr Campbell on Tuesday when he told the committee that the February document an "embarrassment" for the government.

Mr Campbell said the government apologised to the Californian student Ibrahim al-Marashi whose thesis was plagiarised for the document.

Committee chairman Donald Anderson opened Wednesday's hearing by saying Mr Campbell was accused of embellishing the evidence in a way that misled the House of Commons and the public in his "zeal" to make the case for war.

The key mistake

Mr Campbell said staff in the government's Communications Information Centre (CIC) had drafted the February dossier as a briefing paper for journalists.

It was designed to show new intelligence about how Iraq was hiding weapons of mass destruction.

The "mistake" during the drafting process was that they had taken parts of the academic thesis from a Middle Eastern journal and failed to attribute it.
This error was not realised by others working on the document, who had altered parts of Dr al-Marashi's work thinking they were making the government's own work more accurate, said Mr Campbell.

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Conservative MP Sir John Stanley said the way Mr Blair had presented the document to the Commons made MPs wrongly think it had the "seal of approval" from intelligence chiefs.

He suggested the inadequate way Mr Campbell had briefed the prime minister had caused him to mislead Parliament.

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Mr Campbell said he was prepared for the MPs to see all the drafts of the September dossier if the chairman of the joint intelligence committee approved that move.

Mr Campbell denied former cabinet minister Clare Short's claim that Mr Blair had agreed with US President George Bush last September to attack Iraq in February.

Instead, the prime minister had worked "flat out" for agreement at the United Nations as a way of avoiding conflict, said Mr Campbell.

It was wrong to think the government had "glibly" decided to go to war and then tried to "sex up" the dossier to win public backing.

"I know scepticism is fine ... but are we really so cynical that we think the prime minister, any prime minister, is going to make prior decisions to send British forces into conflict and wouldn't rather avoid doing that?"

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Mr. Westermann told lawmakers last week that while he felt pressure, he never actually changed the wording of any of his intelligence reports.

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Yesterday, the committee's chairman gave a vote of confidence to US intelligence efforts, specifically in the search for Iraq's weapons, ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein, and Osama bin Laden, leader of the Islamist militant group accused in the September 11, 2001, terror attacks in the United States.

"The critical question is, do we have the capacity to find out and are we doing it, and the answer is, yes," Representative Porter Goss of Florida, himself a former Central Intelligence Agency operative, said.

"There is no question that lethal weapons in the hands of mischief makers have been proven to be a problem.

"Be patient and understand that we have people working very hard on this."

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Originally posted by Veers:
Jay: They will probably dismiss the report as lies, since it comes from the New York Times.

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And we all know that if one or two writers fakes some of their articles, then the whole paper is a tissue of lies, and it is never to be believed EVER AGAIN.

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If not, then they'll say the State Department guy is a liar.
Or, they'll just blame it on Clinton.

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He did not immediately provide lawmakers with details about his complaints, and it remains uncertain the degree to which his concerns related to Iraq or other regional issues.

Administration officials said his most specific complaints concerned issues related to intelligence on Cuba, and he has not yet provided similar specific complaints about the handling of intelligence on Iraq

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This isn't even ABOUT Iraq! It's about this guy disagreeing with Bolton about CUBA!

Never expected me to actually have a subscription to the NYT, didja?

Gee, Jay. Talk about presenting misleading evidence to bolster your attack...

Jay caught misleading Flareites! First of Two calls for impeachment! Film at 11!

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"The best defense is not a good offense. The best defense is a terrifyingly accurate and devastatingly powerful offense, with multiply-overlapping kill zones and time-on-target artillery strikes." -- Laurence, Archangel of the Sword

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CNN) -- The CIA has in its hands the critical parts of a key piece of Iraqi nuclear technology -- parts needed to develop a bomb program -- that were dug up in a back yard in Baghdad, CNN has learned.

The parts were unearthed by Iraqi scientist Mahdi Obeidi who had hidden them under a rose bush in his garden 12 years ago under orders from Qusay Hussein and Saddam Hussein's then son-in-law, Hussein Kamel.

U.S. officials emphasized this was not evidence Iraq had a nuclear weapon -- but it was evidence the Iraqis concealed plans to reconstitute their nuclear program as soon as the world was no longer looking.

The parts and documents Obeidi gave the CIA were shown exclusively to CNN at CIA headquarters in Virginia.

Obeidi told CNN the parts of a gas centrifuge system for enriching uranium were part of a highly sophisticated system he was ordered to hide to be ready to rebuild the bomb program.

"I have very important things at my disposal that I have been ordered to have, to keep, and I've kept them, and I don't want this to proliferate, because of its potential consequences if it falls in the hands of tyrants, in the hands of dictators or of terrorists," said Obeidi, who has been taken out of Iraq with the help of the U.S. government.

Obeidi also said he wasn't the only scientist ordered to hide that type of equipment.

"I think there may be more than three other copies. And I think it is quite important to look at this list so they will not fall into the hands of the wrong people," he said.

Centrifuges are drums or cylinders that spin at high speed and separate heavy and light molecules, allowing increasingly enriched uranium to be drawn off.

David Kay, who led three U.N. arms inspection missions in Iraq in 1991-92 and now heads the CIA's search for unconventional weapons, started work two days ago in Baghdad. CNN spoke to him about the case over a secure teleconferencing line.

"It begins to tell us how huge our job is," Kay said. "Remember, his material was buried in a barrel behind his house in a rose garden.

"There's no way that that would have been discovered by normal international inspections. I couldn't have done it. My successors couldn't have done it."

CNN had this story last week but made a decision to withhold it at the request of the U.S. government, which cited safety and national security concerns.

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We missed out on such gems as:

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Gee, Jay. Talk about presenting misleading evidence to bolster your attack...

Jay caught misleading Flareites! First of Two calls for impeachment! Film at 11!

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In a second hearing last week with the Senate Intelligence Committee, he made it clear that he had felt pressure from John Bolton, the under secretary of state for arms control and international security, that originally dated to a clash the two had over Mr. Bolton's public assertions last year that Cuba had a biological weapons program. Mr. Westermann argued those assertions were not supported by sufficient intelligence.

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...had been pressed to tailor his analysis on Iraq and other matters to conform with the Bush administration's views...

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Originally posted by Veers:

This is not the equivalent of a "smoking gun" (No one said it was, but I am just pointing it out).

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