WASHINGTON, May 9 (UPI) -- U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said he is being careful with intelligence reports about Iran's nuclear activities given the flaws in the intelligence on Iraq.
"The intelligence community had views on Iraq. That information was available to the president, to me, it was the information that was available to Secretary Colin Powell and Condi Rice, when they and George Tenet worked on his presentation for the United Nations over a period of many days. It was the intelligence information that was available to the Congress of the United States. It was available to other countries that had exactly the same view that we all did. It turns out it was wrong -- that intelligence," Rumsfeld said.
"Fair enough. It's a tough business. It's a difficult thing to be right all the time. And the information was not correct. Does that give one pause? You bet," he said.
Iran, like Iraq, is a closed society, and closed societies make difficult intelligence targets -- information is controlled even within the highest ranks of the government, and deception is used among government officials that do not trust each other. That was a significant reason for the intelligence failures in Iraq, a two-year-long Pentagon study revealed.
