July 9, 2004

HARMAN APPLAUDS SENATE INTELLIGENCE REPORT
Urges Administration to Snap Out of Its Deep State of Denial Over Intelligence Failures

Washington, DC - Representative Jane Harman (D-36), Ranking Minority Member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, issued the following statement today:

I commend Chairman Roberts, Vice Chairman Rockefeller and the entire Senate Intelligence Committee for producing a serious, detailed, and bipartisan report.

The report confirms what many of us have been saying since last September - that the judgments of the Intelligence Community on Iraq's WMD programs were overstated and wrong. A major breakdown occurred, as this report states, in the way the information was analyzed. Old assumptions were never challenged, and the underlying evidence did not support the conclusions used to justify the war.

The report also confirms that the intelligence community correctly concluded there was no operational connection between Iraq and al Qaida - a point that the Bush administration does not want to concede.

It is time for the Administration to snap out of its deep state of denial on these intelligence failures. Today's report cries out for structural reform of the intelligence community.

I strongly agree with Vice Chairman Rockefeller that the report is incomplete in that it omits analysis of how intelligence was used by Bush Administration officials to justify the war in Iraq.

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