Lawmakers see failures in prewar intelligence

? The House and Senate intelligence committees have unearthed a series of failures in the prewar intelligence on Iraq similar to those identified by former weapons inspector David Kay, leading them to believe that CIA analysts and their superiors did not seriously consider the possibility that Saddam Hussein no longer possessed weapons of mass destruction, according to congressional officials.

The committees, working separately for the past seven months, have determined that the CIA relied too heavily on circumstantial, outdated intelligence and became overly dependent on satellite and spy-plane imagery and communications intercepts.

Like Kay, the committees have found that CIA operatives and analysts failed to detect that the Iraqi chain-of-command for developing chemical, biological and nuclear weapons had fallen apart, and that Iraqi scientists and others were engaged in their own campaign to deceive the Iraqi leader, telling him they had weapons that didn’t exist.

“It was like a runaway train,” said Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., chairman of the Senate intelligence committee, referring to the CIA’s assessment of Iraq’s weapons program. “Once it left the station, it kept going faster and faster. Some analysts may have been trying to slow it down, but it just kept going.”

The White House, meanwhile, edged closer Thursday to acknowledging that there were flaws in the intelligence about Iraq, but continued to say it was not yet possible to draw final conclusions about Saddam’s weapons.

On CBS-TV’s “Early Show,” national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said “what we have is evidence that there are differences between what we knew going in and what we found on the ground.”