Feith Responds To Evidence That He Manipulated Iraq Intel

Think Progress reports » Doug Feith Responds With ‘Naked Incoherence’ To Evidence That He Manipulated Iraq Intel.

Feith was the Undersecretary of Defense and had an office in the DoD that was charged with critiquing the CIA's intel about Iraq. Though suspicions are that he was tasked with creating his own intel that there were connections.

Last week Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) released a declassified version of the Defense Department's Inspector General's report into this.

Since then Feith responded on his own web site with a series of bullet point that make Tufte's point that powerpoint is evil. He praises that the report found he did nothing unlawful or unauthorized but faults them for finding his actions "inappropirate"; then he accuses Levin of cherry picking from the report.

You can get the 121 page report here. It's annoying to read because of the acronyms and repetition but here's the complete paragraph from the executive summary labelled "Results":

"The Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy devloped, produced, and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaida relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers. While such actions were not illegal or unauthorized, the actions were, in our opinion, inappropriate given that the intelligence assessments were intelligence products and did not clearly show the variance with the consesus of the Intelligence Community. This condition occurred because of an expanded role and mission of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from policy formulation to alternative intelligence analysis and dissemination. As a result, the Office of the Under Secretary of Defence for Policy did not provide "the most accurate analysis of intelligence" to senior decision-makers."

I'll stick with Think Progress on this one.