Via Kevin Drum, an important New York Times piece by Doug Jehl on some more information the Senate Select Intelligence committee has been sitting on for 20 months: evidence from the US intelligence community that it reported that an al Qaeda official in US custody talking about Iraqi training of Al Qaeda was a fabricator. The fabrications, doubts about which were raised as early as February 2002 by the DIA, were nevertheless cited by Bush, Cheney, and Powell, in making the case for war to the American people:

A high Qaeda official in American custody was identified as a likely fabricator months before the Bush administration began to use his statements as the foundation for its claims that Iraq trained Al Qaeda members to use biological and chemical weapons, according to newly declassified portions of a Defense Intelligence Agency document.

The document provides the earliest and strongest indication of doubts voiced by American intelligence agencies about Mr. Libi's credibility. Without mentioning him by name, President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, Colin L. Powell, then secretary of state, and other administration officials repeatedly cited Mr. Libi's information as "credible" evidence that Iraq was training Al Qaeda members in the use of explosives and illicit weapons.

Among the first and most prominent assertions was one by Mr. Bush, who said in a major speech in Cincinnati in October 2002 that "we've learned that Iraq has trained Al Qaeda members in bomb making and poisons and gases."

The newly declassified portions of the document were made available by Senator Carl M. Levin of Michigan, the top Democrat on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Mr. Levin said the new evidence of early doubts about Mr. Libi's statements dramatized what he called the Bush administration's misuse of prewar intelligence to try to justify the war in Iraq. ...

Will be interesting to learn what else the committee has been sitting on. It also begs the question why someone who works for the committee said its chairman Pat Roberts considered the Phase II investigation -- of policymakers' use of the intelligence they received -- a "monumental waste of his time." I think with more than 2,000 Americans killed in a war whose chief rationales have been exposed as fabrications, shouldn't it be a top priority?

Update: More from Walter Pincus. See this as well.

Posted by Laura at November 5, 2005 06:09 PM