Even so, al-Assaf was cited by name as one of four corroborating sources for the mobile weapons-lab assertion in the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate. That report, which assessed Iraq's weapons of mass destruction, was delivered to Congress on the eve of the congressional vote authorizing an Iraq invasion. Secretary of State Colin Powell, in his February 2002 Security Council speech, also cited four human sources for his assertion that the mobile labs were capable of producing biological weapons. (The main source for the mobile weapons-lab claim, an Iraqi exile with the code name Curveball, was found to be a fraud who had never worked on any Iraqi weapons program. In addition, investigations by Congress and the intelligence community later disclosed that the DIA's notice on al-Assaf was lost, because it was not properly recorded in the computer systems of other intelligence agencies, including the CIA.)

The new Senate report also discloses that on Sept. 18, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld told the House Armed Services Committee that Saddam's weapons of mass destruction facilities could not be eliminated by simple aerial bombing because "a good many are underground and deeply buried" and therefore "not … vulnerable to attack from the air." In fact, the Senate report found, there was no intelligence-community reporting to support Rumsfeld's assertion. An August 2002 DIA report on the subject stated flatly that "no biological weapons (BW)-related underground facilities are currently confirmed to be in use in Iraq."

In a disclosure that one Intelligence Committee member, Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden, called "stunning," the Senate panel found Rumsfeld commissioned the National Intelligence Council to prepare a secret special assessment on the underground-facilities issue. The council's conclusion in November 2002 ran directly counter to Rumsfeld's testimony to Congress: it found that "all the military and regime associated UGFs [underground facilities] we have identified thus far are vulnerable to conventional, precision-guided penetrating munitions because they are not deeply buried." (The intelligence council report also stated that while it assessed that Iraq "has some large, deeply buried UGFs … we have not been able to locate any of these"--a failure that the council concluded was because of the "Iraqi denial and deception program.") The classified intelligence-council report was shared with the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time it was finished, but its existence was not made public until last week.  

But the questions about al-Libi may be the most significant--and embarrassing--new disclosure in the Senate panel's report, both for the White House and the CIA. The Senate report found that al-Libi was "the principal intelligence source" for assertions by Bush, CIA director George Tenet, national-security adviser Condoleezza Rice and Powell that Iraq had provided chemical and biological weapons training to Al Qaeda operatives.

It has been previously reported that the Defense Intelligence Agency repeatedly raised doubts about al-Libi prior to the Iraq War. But the existence of the CIA's even sharper and more pointed questions about his credibility--including the possibility that he might be a fabricator--was not previously known.

The CIA's analysis is even more surprising given that, as Republicans on the Senate Intelligence Committee pointedly noted, the agency itself had vetted and approved the language based on al-Libi's claims in both Bush's Cincinnati speech and Powell's presentation to the United Nations. Without actually using his name, Powell included the most expansive version of al-Libi's claims about chemical- and biological-weapons training--without hinting that there were doubts about the source's credibility. "I can trace the story of a senior terrorist operative telling how Iraq provided training in these weapons to Al Qaeda," Powell said during one dramatic flourish. "Fortunately, this operative is now detained, and he has told his story. I will relate to you now as he himself described it."