Posted on 02/09/2007 4:11:02 PM PST by Enchante
Acting inspector general Thomas Gimble, who produced the classified report after one-year investigation, concluded Mr Feith was authorized by senior Pentagon officials to pursue alternative intelligence analyses and his actions were lawful.
But Mr Feith's actions were sometimes "inappropriate" because they "did not clearly show the variance with the consensus of the intelligence community," an unclassified two-page executive summary of the report said
(Excerpt) Read more at ireland.com ...
"Mr Feith, who left the government in 2005, said he welcomed the finding that his activities were legal and authorized, but said it was "an absurd position" to say his activities were inappropriate.
"It, of course, varied from (the) consensus. It was a criticism of that consensus. That is why it was written," he said in a statement.
"A Feb. 9 front-page article about the Pentagon inspector general's report regarding the office of former undersecretary of defense Douglas J. Feith incorrectly attributed quotations to that report. References to Feith's office producing "reporting of dubious quality or reliability" and that the office "was predisposed to finding a significant relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda" were from a report issued by Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.) in Oct. 2004. Similarly, the quotes stating that Feith's office drew on "both reliable and unreliable reporting" to produce a link between al-Qaeda and Iraq "that was much stronger than that assessed by the IC [Intelligence Community] and more in accord with the policy views of senior officials in the Administration" were also from Levin's report."
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