WASHINGTON — The war in Iraq has made global terrorism worse by fanning Islamic radicalism and providing a training ground for lethal methods that are increasingly being exported to other countries, according to a sweeping assessment by U.S. intelligence agencies.
The classified document, which represents a consensus view of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies, paints a considerably bleaker picture of the impact of the Iraq war than Bush administration or U.S. intelligence officials have acknowledged publicly, according to officials familiar with the assessment.
"They conclude that the Iraq war has made it worse," said a government official familiar with the document who spoke on condition of anonymity because of its classified nature.
President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney repeatedly have described the war in Iraq as the central front in the war on terrorism and argue that Americans are safer as a result of the administration's policies.
The report, titled "Trends in Global Terrorism: Implications for the United States," was completed and described to U.S. government officials in April but not made public. The document is what is known as a National Intelligence Estimate, or NIE, which is designed to represent the U.S. intelligence community's most comprehensive treatment of a subject.
The 30-page report documents an array of disturbing trends in the war on terrorism and focuses on forces that are contributing to the evolution of Islamic terrorist networks from centralized structures to an increasingly fragmented ideological movement.
"It paints a fairly stark picture of what we all know, and that this is a movement that is spreading and gaining momentum around the world," said the official familiar with the document. "Things like the Iraq war have given the terrorists recruiting tools and places to ply their trade and a training ground."
The official said the estimate touches on a number of factors fueling the jihadist movement, but that "the reference to Iraq was the main one."
A U.S. intelligence official who has seen the document said that many of the report's findings were outlined in a speech in San Antonio in April by Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the former principal deputy director of national intelligence. Hayden has since become director of the CIA.
