JUDGING INTELLIGENCE: NEWS ANALYSIS

JUDGING INTELLIGENCE: NEWS ANALYSIS; Policy, Politics And Pressure

By DAVID JOHNSTON

Published: July 10, 2004

WASHINGTON, July 9—
Although the Senate Intelligence Committee found no evidence that the Bush administration had tried to coerce the C.I.A. to produce exaggerated prewar warnings about Iraq's weapons programs, its findings did little to still the furious debate about whether the White House and the Pentagon tried to influence the agency's conclusions.

The White House took comfort in the committee's report on Friday, but it was clear from the arguments still raging across Washington that the administration's dealings with the Central Intelligence Agency will remain a politically volatile issue through the election campaign.

At a news conference on Friday, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia, the senior Democrat on the committee, said thereport ''failed to explain the environment of intense pressure in which intelligence community officials were asked to render judgments on matters relating to Iraq, when policy officials had already forcefully stated their own conclusions in public.''

Mr. Rockefeller, recalling that President Bush described Saddam Hussein in March 2002 as ''a dangerous man who possesses the world's most dangerous weapons,'' said such comments put pressure on intelligence agencies to conform with the president's views.

Democrats also noted that the formation of a special intelligence unit at the Pentagon by the Bush administration to review ties between Iraq and terror groups served notice on the C.I.A. that powerful corners of the administration were ready to challenge agency assessments. Frequent visits to the agency by Vice President Dick Cheney, they said, also were