Likely to receive close attention is the panel's finding that of the 200 intelligence analysts interviewed, none said they had been specifically told to alter findings. According to Democratic sources, however, the committee focused narrowly on whether analysts were given direct orders to change wording. The panel did not explore the more nuanced question of whether institutional pressures and politics played a role in shaping the analysis. Rockefeller is expected to maintain that because the White House started from the premise that war was necessary, the intelligence bureaucracy was under pressure to tell policymakers what they wanted to hear.

If pressed on the issue of politicized intelligence, Republicans are likely to bring up a memo written by Democratic Intelligence Committee staff that was leaked by Republicans to conservative Fox News talk-show host Sean Hannity last fall. The memo said Democrats should be prepared "to launch an independent investigation when it becomes clear we have exhausted the opportunity to usefully collaborate with the majority. We can pull the trigger on an independent investigation of the administration's use of intelligence at any time, but we can only do so once. The best time to do so will probably be next year." A spokeswoman for Roberts said: "They wanted to politicize the process. There you have it, in black and white."

Larry Johnson, a former CIA and State Department analyst, now works as a private security consultant, but he remains in touch with former colleagues at the CIA. "I do know they were getting pressure to be the team player [on Iraq], to present the threat as more dire than they might otherwise," Johnson said.

The intelligence community has never been far removed from politics, Johnson added. He learned that lesson in 1986, when he was enrolled in an introductory course for new CIA analysts. His instructor was George Allen, the CIA's South Asia bureau chief during the Vietnam War. According to Johnson, Allen told the new recruits how the Defense Department during Vietnam had pressured the intelligence community to downplay estimates on North Vietnamese and Vietcong casualties, out of concern that releasing a high "body count" would tip the public to the strength of the insurgency. "Allen said he always regretted that he didn't stand up at the time. He said he had a kid in college and another in high school and that he wasn't wealthy and could have lost his job. Well, that stuck with me," Johnson said.

But intelligence officials like the exiting Tenet are in a bind, Johnson noted. "It is the responsibility of the director of central intelligence to present all the facts and let the policymakers make up their minds. That sounds simple in theory, but in practice it's not." Policymakers at the White House send strong signals that they don't want information that makes their jobs more complicated or undermines their policy goals. The truth gets soft-pedaled, Johnson said. "The intelligence community is on the horns of a dilemma in wanting to tell policymakers the truth, but not in such a harsh manner that they won't listen ... anymore," he said.

If there is any true bipartisan agreement on the subject of intelligence, it is on who should not succeed Tenet. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Porter Goss, R-Fla., is actively campaigning for the job. More recently, the name of 9/11 commissioner John Lehman, a former secretary of the Navy, has been floated. But both names are receiving raspberries in the Senate, which will confirm the new intelligence director. Goss and Lehman are viewed as too political and bureaucratic, say both Republican and Democratic staffers -- exactly what the broken-down intelligence community does not need. As Rockefeller told reporters recently, "Any politician, from either party, would be a mistake."

The Senate Democrats' fumble on the intelligence investigation could prove a costly error for John Kerry's presidential campaign. Whether they were too credulous or too passive, Democrats failed to advance their case, and now that the report is out, it is Republicans in the Senate who, at least for the moment, are shaping the interpretation of the volatile WMD issue. Kerry and his running mate, North Carolina Sen. John Edwards (a member of the intelligence panel), must now fight to regain the political ground that their Senate colleagues have conspicuously ceded to the administration.

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