Tenet: CIA lax in policing Iraq claims

0 Comments | USA TODAY, March, 2004 | by John Diamond

WASHINGTON -- CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged Tuesday that his agency was "wildly inconsistent" about policing White House statements on Iraq before the invasion last year. The result, Democrats say, is that Bush administration exaggerations about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction went unchallenged.

Senate Democrats pressed the nation's top spy on whether Tenet had a responsibility to ensure policymakers did not overstate the CIA's carefully qualified intelligence reports. With the presidential campaign under way, the senators made clear their real target was not Tenet but President Bush.

But the CIA chief said he had no major problems with the case the administration made for going to war. And when asked by Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., whether he...