The issue spilled into Congress this week when Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) accused the administration of deliberately withholding information on suspected Iraqi weapons facilities from Blix's teams.
Levin, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee and a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said the inspectors have been given "only a small fraction" of the sites that appear on classified lists circulated in the intelligence community.
He warned of a "nightmare scenario" if U.S. troops are attacked with weapons of mass destruction from sites that could have been inspected had the CIA shared information.
Levin also accused the White House of seeking to undermine the inspection process, saying the administration has withheld data in part "because they genuinely believe the inspections were useless and said so from the beginning."
But CIA officials rejected the charges. In a letter to key lawmakers released Thursday night, CIA Director George J. Tenet said the agency has "provided detailed information on all of the high-value and moderate sites" to the United Nations.
Tenet said the CIA has shared information on "all but a handful" of sites -- even those deemed of "lower interest" -- with the current weapons inspectors or those who worked in Iraq between 1991 and 1998. Blix's team has visited "far more than half of these 'lower interest sites,' " Tenet said.
He said the CIA shared its analysis of Iraq's 12,000-page Dec. 7 declaration to the United Nations of its weapons programs and inventory. Both U.S. and U.N. officials sharply criticized the document as untruthful and incomplete.
"We've briefed them on missiles, we've briefed them on the nuclear program, we've briefed them on chemical weapons, on biological weapons, on a whole range of subjects," Tenet added.
A U.S. intelligence official said some of the information the CIA has compiled is of such low value that it would not be useful to inspectors.
"You don't swamp the U.N. with everything we have ever heard," the official said. Asked whether the CIA would withhold important information, the official said, "The logic of that escapes me."
Other officials said that the CIA has shared its best data with inspectors, but that the information may not be enough. One congressional source said the intelligence community has identified "hundreds" of suspect sites, including dozens that are of "top" or "high" value.
