On February 12, 2003, CIA Director George “Tenet testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that Iraq has ‘provided training in poisons and gases to two al-Qaeda associates,’ a point that [Secretary of State Colin] Powell had also made in his UN presentation [on February 5, 2003]. Such claims were, of course, not checkable by the media or the American public, as they relied on highly classified intelligence, and, in any event, they could only be refuted or confirmed by invading Iraq.”
– Peter Bergen, The Longest War, Page 146