By the time the slide show was ready for presentation to top administration policymakers, it had shrunk to about 50 minutes and focused on one topic: possible links between Saddam’s regime and Al Qaeda. According to people familiar with the slimmed-down presentation, it strongly implied possible Iraqi involvement in 9/11, mentioning allegations that Muhammad Atta had met in Prague in spring 2001 with an Iraqi agent and that Saddam had operated a training camp for Arab terrorists (among others) at Salman Pak, south of Baghdad. The abridged briefing also included a slide that criticized the CIA for employing what sources characterized as “fundamentally flawed” analytical methods, which led agency officials to dismiss potentially interesting reports because they lacked a “juridical level of certainty.” The slide also accused the CIA of not being aggressive enough and of averting its eyes to “grim realities” about international terrorism.
The slide show was presented to top Pentagon officials, including Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, in summer 2002. In August, Pentagon officials traveled to CIA headquarters to present the briefing to CIA Director George Tenet and aides; the slide that criticized CIA methods was omitted from this presentation. In September, a Pentagon briefer gave the presentation to White House national-security officials, including Condoleezza Rice’s deputy, Steven Hadley. Cheney’s chief of staff, Lewis (Scooter) Libby, sat in for part of the presentation. Officials close to the CIA now say the agency was “underwhelmed” by the presentation, many of whose key points–including the Atta meeting in Prague–have been widely discredited. Even some Pentagon officials acknowledge that the allegation about Saddam’s training Arab terrorists is not supported by evidence. A Pentagon official said that the slide critical of the CIA was probably left out of the CIA briefing to be “collegial.” A Cheney spokesman said Libby “came late and left early” from the briefing and did not tell the veep about it. A spokesman for the National Security Council said that the slide show had “no effect on Mr. Hadley’s thinking. He receives his intelligence information from the CIA.”
