US: The future of CIA Director George Tenet looked uncertain last night after news that the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence had drawn up a scathing report on pre-war intelligence on Iraq.
The report by the Republican-dominated committee rips into Mr Tenet and other intelligence officials for overstating the weapons and terrorism case against Saddam Hussein, according to the Washington Post.
By pointing the finger at Mr Tenet, who will now be under some pressure to resign, the committee shifts the focus of criticism away from US President George Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney over hyped claims made to justify the war.
With the presidential election just over a year away, it is even more crucial for the administration that intelligence chiefs rather than the White House get the blame for misleading the American public if weapons of mass destruction are never found, the newspaper said.
The Intelligence Committee was reportedly surprised by the amount of circumstantial evidence and single-source or disputed information used to write key intelligence documents.
The CIA yesterday protested that it was hard to understand how the committee could reach any conclusions while the efforts of a weapons search team led by David Kay was "at an early stage", and asked for a special hearing for Mr Tenet.
The Senate committee was reported to be deeply divided on investigating how the White House used the intelligence, which leading Republican Pat Roberts called "sloppy".
Senator John Rockefeller, the committee's ranking Democrat, said he intended to investigate whether Mr Bush, Mr Cheney, Defence Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld and others exaggerated the threat from Iraq.
The committee report was prepared after interviews with more than 100 officials and examination of documents, including the key October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, the basis for pre-war claims about Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities, and its possible links to terrorist groups.
The estimate contained much circumstantial and disputed information and there was no intelligence evidence for its blunt opening statement that "Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons", the committee found.
Democrats want to widen the inquiry to investigate if the White House and the Defence Department knowingly exaggerated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein. Meanwhile Republicans in the Senate are reportedly voicing anger at Mr Rumsfeld over his "high-handed" treatment of members of Congress.
The Republican chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Senator John Warner, and his top Democratic colleague, Senator Carl Levin, were rebuffed when they sent Mr Rumsfeld a private letter expressing concern about the anti-Islamic comments of a senior Pentagon general, William Boykin.
Mr Rumsfeld did not respond until a furious Senator Warner of Virginia made the letter public several days later, and then said dismissively, "It may be somewhere around the building, but I am not aware of it." Gen Boykin, in charge of the search for Osama bin Laden, is under review for his remarks, made in uniform at Christian gatherings.
Mr Rumsfeld also embarrassed the White House this week over his comments in a leaked memo that the US was having "mixed results" with al-Qaeda, that Afghanistan and Iraq could be a "long hard slog" and that the US did not know if it was winning the war on terror.