NYT/AP: U.S. Urged to Release Terror Assessment

[DeepModem Mom]

U.S. Urged to Release Terror Assessment
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: September 25, 2006

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee urged the Bush administration Monday to declassify the most recent, high-level intelligence assessment on global terror -- a report that has given new fervor to the election-year debate about how the Iraq war has changed security threats.

Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kan., said the American people should be able to see a public version of the report and draw their own conclusions about its contents. So far, he said, the public discussion has given the ''false impression'' that the National Intelligence Estimate focuses exclusively on Iraq and terrorism....

***

In a letter to National Intelligence Director John Negroponte, West Virginia Sen. Jay Rockefeller, the committee's top Democrat, said declassifying the report's conclusions would provide a complete picture of the report and ''contribute greatly to the public debate'' on counterterrorism policies.

The report distills the thinking of senior U.S. intelligence analysts working throughout the nation's 16 spy agencies. Its conclusions are considered to be the voice of the U.S. intelligence community.

The New York Times first reported Saturday that the highly classified assessment finds that the U.S. invasion of Iraq has helped fuel a new generation of extremists and that the overall terror threat has grown since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 -- a conclusion at odds with President Bush's assertions that the nation is safer....

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Terrorism-Intelligence.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

[BadGimp]

1. Fat Chance

[rodeodance]

2. i am surprized that Roberts wants it released. Makes me think Cheney

has already said yes.