Two former CIA officials said the part of the book with the most new information focuses on post-invasion warnings. The book "plowed some new ground as far as agency views and comments on the situation on the ground in Iraq," one official said.
In particular, the readers said, the book describes warnings from the CIA station in Baghdad that were greeted with dismay and mounting suspicion within the White House, including a November 2003 assessment that described the situation as an insurgency.
After that assessment was leaked to the press, Bush summoned Tenet and other CIA officials to the White House and warned that he didn't want anyone in his administration to use the term "insurgency," according to the officials.
"There's a lot of stuff in the book that paints a picture of an administration wrapped in its own beliefs, not being able to handle information that was contrary to those beliefs," said the former official who commented about Tenet's view of Cheney.
The official said the book is also critical of Rice.
Tenet "has a strong belief that Condoleezza Rice has been a failure as a national security advisor, and that's one of the themes," the official said.
Tenet, who served as CIA director for seven years, engages in some hairsplitting over his role in certain controversies. He acknowledges having used the term "slam-dunk," for example, but in his interview with "60 Minutes" he insisted he had not meant that the evidence was unequivocal that Iraq possessed banned weapons -- only that he had believed the government could make a compelling case to the public.
Former officials said the book also examines the "16 words" controversy surrounding the CIA's efforts to warn the White House against including in Bush's 2003 State of the Union address the allegation that Iraq had sought uranium from Africa.
greg.miller@latimes.com
Times staff writer Maura Reynolds in Washington contributed to this report.
