Bolton "stretched" Syria threat, according to a new piece out tonight in the NYT. Tuesday Update: Today's NYT piece reminded Spencer Ackerman that he had written about Bolton's exaggeration of the Syria nuclear threat in the New Republic a couple years back:

Moving Syria into the category of potential nuclear threats has been championed for months by Undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security (and über-hawk) John Bolton. Intelligence analysts, by and large, had not seen indications of either Syrian intentions of becoming a nuclear power or the capabilities to do so and had until recently been able to ward Bolton off. After Bolton told the House International Relations Committee in June that American officials are "looking at Syria's nuclear program with growing concern," an outraged CIA delivered nearly 40 pages of written objections to the Bush administration and succeeded in delaying further testimony from Bolton on the issue. Now the CIA's own report matches Bolton's analysis practically word for word. When one incredulous former intelligence official contacted a CIA analyst who worked on the assessment to find out why the Agency was blessing Bolton's position, he was told, "Well, it's just [a report] to the Congress, and it's the administration position." Another dubious ex-analyst learned from an active-duty colleague that the intelligence community has not collected any new reporting that changes the equation on Syrian nukes in at least a year. "This is really discouraging," he says. "The administration, having been burned [on Iraq], now seems to be doing the same thing [on Syria]."

Just so we don't level all the fault of exaggerated WMD threat estimates on the US "intelligence community" if this ever becomes a subject of dispute (if you could ever imagine that happening).

Posted by Laura at April 25, 2005 11:03 PM