WASHINGTON — U.S. intelligence officials suspected a detained Al Qaeda operative of "intentionally misleading" them about ties between the terrorist group and Iraq months before the Bush administration used those claims to bolster their case for war, newly declassified information shows.
The doubts about the veracity of Ibn al-Shaykh al-Libi, who had been captured in late 2001, came in a February 2002 Defense Intelligence Agency report released Sunday by senators who are ranking Democrats on foreign policy panels, Carl Levin of Michigan and John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia.
"He's an entirely unreliable individual upon whom the White House was placing a substantial intelligence trust," Rockefeller told CNN's "Late Edition," describing the situation as "a classic example of a lack of accountability to the American people."
Despite apparent concerns that Libi was not telling the truth, the relationship between Al Qaeda and the regime of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein was cited repeatedly in the months before and after the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003.
In an October 2002 speech in Cincinnati, President Bush said that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb-making and poisons and gas." And then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell cited the links between Al Qaeda and Iraq when he went before the U.N. Security Council in February 2003 to make the case for war. In a September 2003 appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press," Vice President Dick Cheney described "a relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda that stretched back through most of the decade of the '90s."
Yet the newly declassified document, dated eight months before Bush's speech in Cincinnati, said that Libi lacked "specific details on the Iraqis involved, the ... materials associated with the assistance, and the location where training occurred."
"It is possible [Libi] does not know any further details; it is more likely this individual is intentionally misleading the debriefers," warned the report, sections of which were first disclosed Sunday in the Washington Post and the New York Times. He "may [sic] describing scenarios to the debriefers that he knows will retain their interest. Saddam's regime is intensely secular and is wary of Islamic revolutionary movements."
The report was available to the White House, the CIA, the Pentagon and other agencies, but it is not clear whether the Senate intelligence panel had access to it.
