United Nations: Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) director George J Tenet's resignation may have been hastened by a highly critical report from Senate Intelligence Committee about the mistakes and miscalculations by intelligence agencies about Iraq's suspected weapons of mass destruction programme, a report said today (June 3, 2004).

The classified, 400-page report was presented to the CIA for comment last month, 'New York Times' reported.

According to the Government officials and people close to Tenet, the report contained a detailed account of mistakes and miscalculations by American intelligence agencies on whether Iraq possessed illicit weapons before the US invaded it.

An unclassified version of the report is to be made public this month, 'The Times' said.

People close to Tenet, who resigned yesterday (June 2, 2004), said that the report was among the factors that led him to resign from a post he had considered leaving for several years.

But a senior intelligence official told 'The Times' Tenet had neither read nor been briefed on the Senate report. The official described as "bunk" the idea that his departure had been related to the Senate findings.

Officials who have read the report described it to the paper as presenting a broad indictment of the CIA's performance on Iraq.

They said its criticisms ranged from inadequate pre-war collection of intelligence by spies and satellites to a sloppy analysis, often based on uncorroborated sources that produced the conclusion that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons.

"There are some things that are indefensible," a recently retired intelligence official who had seen the report told 'The Times', "There are some real errors, of omission and commission, and it's not going to be a pretty picture."

A Congressional official, 'The Times' said, declined to comment on the tone of the report or its specific content, but said, "Our intention has been to be as detailed and as thorough as possible, and we've been very specific."

The version of the report that was shown to the CIA included only factual findings. Democrats and Republicans are still drafting separate conclusions on the Republican-controlled panel; Government officials were quoted as saying.

But the findings alone were portrayed by three officials as likely to be particularly embarrassing to the CIA, whose analysts were the main proponents among the intelligence community of the view that Iraq possessed illicit weapons.

Tenet and his agency, 'The Times' said, have insisted that it is too soon to say whether the CIA made mistakes in its pre-war assessment.

But even before Tenet announced his resignation, the committee chairman, Senator Pat Roberts, Republican of Kansas, said at a meeting yesterday that he believed intelligence agencies were still "in denial."

Richard J Kerr, a former deputy director of Central Intelligence who has been leading the CIA's internal review of its performance, told 'The Times' that that he had not read the Senate report.

But he said he believed that it had been a factor in Tenet's decision to resign.