The activities of Feith's group weren't illegal, Gimble concluded. But they were, "in our opinion, inappropriate, given that the intelligence assessments were [presented as] intelligence products and did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community."
The Pentagon team touted a series of claims that have not survived postwar review. Among them was the allegation that Mohammed Atta, the presumed ringleader of the Sept. 11 hijackers, had met with an Iraqi agent in Prague before the attacks.
A critical question raised by the inspector general's report is whether Feith and his office were just critiquing CIA analysis, or were creating their own intelligence assessment, a role that is supposed to be left to the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin (D-Mich.) noted Friday that Cheney has referred to Feith's work as an "assessment," suggesting it was a formal intelligence document. But Feith maintained in interviews he was not creating an intelligence "product," but was just checking the work of the CIA.
Laurence H. Silberman, a semiretired U.S. appeals court judge and co-chairman of a presidential commission on Iraq's weapons, said it is appropriate to question intelligence.
"Policymakers, whether they are in Defense, State, the White House or Congress, are absolutely entitled to question the intelligence community, look over the material and come up with their own views," he said.
Feith's work had the blessing of his boss, former Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The operation was set up at the behest of then-Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz with approval from Rumsfeld, Gimble noted. By most accounts, those three officials had distrust, if not disdain, for the work of the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
But Robert M. Gates, the new secretary of Defense and former CIA director, said that groups outside the CIA and other chartered intelligence agencies should not be involved in freelance analysis.
"Based on my whole career, I believe all intelligence activities need to be carried on by the established institutions, where there is appropriate oversight," he told reporters traveling with him in Europe for meetings on security.
Gimble provided new details on the chain of events leading from the creation of the Feith team, through a series of briefings it made for senior officials and culminating in a presentation before deputies in the National Security Council at the White House.
