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The latest subject of Bush administration inter-agency squabbling over intelligence manipulation and politicization? Syria, and the mystified reactions from professional US intelligence sources over the apparently dubious claim by an anonymous US military official in Baghdad that Zarqawi had planned recent Iraq attacks while being sheltered in Syria. Knight Ridder's Warren Strobel and Jonathan Landay report:
Link.U.S. intelligence has no evidence that terrorist Abu Musab al Zarqawi visited Syria in recent months to plan bombings in Iraq, and experts don't believe the widely publicized meeting ever happened, according to U.S. officials.
Two weeks ago, a top U.S. military official in Baghdad, Iraq, told reporters that Zarqawi had traveled to Syria in April and met with leaders of the Iraqi insurgency to plan the recent wave of bombings against American troops and the Iraqi government. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity.
In the following days, top Bush administration and Iraqi officials increased their threats against Syria.
The reassessment comes amid a debate within the U.S. intelligence community over how to fight the insurgency and over Syria's role in it, the officials said.
Some analysts argue that, while Damascus has been unhelpful in stopping terrorists crossing its border, its importance is being exaggerated and that the key to defeating the insurgency is in Iraq, not in Syria or Iran.
Three officials who said that the reports of Zarqawi's travels were apparently bogus spoke on condition of anonymity because intelligence matters are classified and because discussing the mistaken report could embarrass the White House and trigger retaliation against them.
The allegation by the U.S. military official in Baghdad that Zarqawi and his lieutenants met in Syria suggests that, despite the controversy over the Bush administration's use of flimsy and bogus intelligence to make its case for war in Iraq, some officials are still quick to embrace dubious intelligence when it supports the administration's case _ this time against Damascus.
One of the U.S. officials said the initial report was based on a single human source, who's since changed his story significantly. Another official said the source and his information were quickly dismissed as unreliable by intelligence officials but caught the attention of some political appointees.
These officials and two others said that the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were mystified by the reports of Zarqawi's visit because they had no such information...