Team sifts through intelligence to find Iraq-al-Qaida links

WASHINGTON -- The Pentagon has assigned a high-level team to sort through mountains of intelligence data for links between terrorists and countries like Iraq that other agencies may have overlooked.

The creation of the team does not signal a rift between the Defense Department and the CIA, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld said Thursday.

"I'm not unhappy at all about intelligence," Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news conference.

The Pentagon team, created in the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, is using powerful computers and other methods to analyze information about terrorism gathered by the CIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other spy agencies.

Rumsfeld said the team has about four members who work for Douglas Feith, the undersecretary of defense for policy. He said the team's analysis was meant as an aid to policy-makers, not as competition to the CIA or other intelligence agencies.

"I don't get briefed today by anyone other than the CIA," Rumsfeld said. He said he didn't know of the Defense Department group until the New York Times wrote about it Thursday.

Darker view

Rumsfeld and other top Pentagon policy-makers have taken a darker view of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein than the CIA and other intelligence officials have.

A CIA report to Congress, for example, concluded that Saddam was unlikely to use his chemical or biological weapons or give them to terrorists unless Iraq was attacked. Rumsfeld, on the other hand, has repeatedly argued that Saddam cannot be trusted to use any restraint, noting his invasions of Iran and Kuwait and use of chemical weapons on Iraqi citizens.

"There's always going to be people who have different intelligence views within the agency," Rumsfeld said. "And there's no question but that on some of these important terrorism issues, you're seeing differences of opinions out of the intelligence community and the Central Intelligence Agency."

The Times quoted Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz as saying the team might "see certain facts that others won't."

"The lens through which you're looking for facts affects what you look for," he told the Times, adding that supporting any particular opinion "should not permit you to create facts or deny facts."

Rumsfeld has repeatedly denied persistent news reports of tension between the Defense Department and the CIA -- as well as between Rumsfeld and George Tenet, the director of central intelligence. Rumsfeld said Thursday he has lunch with Tenet about once a week.

Tenet oversees both the CIA and Defense Department intelligence agencies, while Rumsfeld makes budget recommendations for the 80 percent of intelligence spending that goes to the defense agencies.