Washington ? The CIA defended itself Saturday against charges by two congressional critics that there were “significant deficiencies” in the intelligence community’s ability to gather information on Iraq before the U.S.-led war.

“The intelligence community stands fully behind its findings and judgments as stated in the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction programs,” CIA spokesman Bill Harlow said.

In a letter first reported Saturday on The Washington Post’s Web site, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., and its ranking Democrat, Rep. Jane Harman of California, said the CIA relied on old intelligence dating to 1998, along with “some new ‘piecemeal’ intelligence” to develop its reports on Iraq’s weapons programs.

Harlow said that was not the case. “The notion that our community does not challenge standing judgments is absurd,” he said in a statement. “In the post-1998 time period the intelligence community launched an important and sustained effort to enhance our unilateral understanding of Iraq and its weapons of mass destruction programs. From all of our disciplines, important gains were made.”