“President [Bush] says Democrats in Congress ‘had access to the same intelligence’ he did before the Iraq war, but some Democrats deny it. ‘That was not true,’ says Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean. ‘He withheld some intelligence. …The intelligence was corrupted.’ Neither side is giving the whole story in this continuing dispute. The President’s main point is correct: the CIA and most other U.S. intelligence agencies believed before the war that Saddam had stocks of biological and chemical weapons, was actively working on nuclear weapons and ‘probably’ would have a nuclear weapon before the end of this decade. That faulty intelligence was shared with Congress–along with multiple mentions of some doubts within the intelligence community–in a formal National Intelligence Estimate just prior to the Senate and House votes to authorize the use of force against Iraq. No hard evidence has surfaced to support claims that Bush somehow manipulated the findings of intelligence analysts. In fact, two bipartisan investigations probed for such evidence and said they found none. So Dean’s claim that intelligence was ‘corrupted’ is unsupported.”
– “Iraq: What Did Congress Know, And When?,” FactCheck.org, Nov. 19, 2005