On Thursday, Michigan Senator Carl Levin commented on a report prepared by the Department of Defense's (DOD) Inspector General on the pre-war activities of the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and the Department of Defense. Levin called the new report a "devastating condemnation" of the activities of the aforementioned entities. The Senator also asserted that the findings of the DOD's Inspector General support the analysis and conclusions Levin reached in his 2004 review of intelligence pertaining to the alleged connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda. Levin had asked the Inspector General to prepare the report in September of 2005; one month after Undersecretary of Defense for Policy Douglas Feith left his job at the Pentagon.

In the unclassified portions of the report--an Executive Summary and some accompanying presentation slides--the Inspector General concludes that the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy's activities, while not illegal, were "inappropriate" and misleading in light of the prevailing consensus in the intelligence community that there was no relationship between Iraq and al-Qaeda. The Summary states that the office "...produced and then disseminated alternative intelligence assessments on the Iraq and al-Qaeda relationship, which included some conclusions that were inconsistent with the consensus of the Intelligence Community, to senior decision-makers." This intelligence, believed to be produced at the behest of the Secretary of Defense or the Deputy Secretary of Defense, was inappropriately gathered by Douglas Feith's office as it is not that office's job to perform the "intelligence activities of developing, producing, and disseminating" information, rather those activities are typically undertaken by the intelligence community. This intelligence was later cited by Vice President Dick Cheney in support of the war, with Cheney stating that Feith's office was "the best source of information" on the connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda.

In a statement made today by Levin at the Senate Armed Services Committee Briefing on the report, Levin expanded on his assertions that the report confirms his earlier analysis of the actions of Douglas Feith and the Office of Under Secretary of Defense for Policy. Levin explained that the Inspector General's report responded to specific questions from him and now gives a further account of the activities of Feith in the lead-up to the war. The Inspector General explained that Feith's office created its own intelligence analysis of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda" and presented "its analysis to other offices in the Executive Branch (including the Secretary of Defense and the staffs of the National Security Council and the Office of the Vice President)," despite the fact that the "intelligence analysis produced by the Feith office differ[ed] from the Intelligence Community analysis on the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda." The report further found that Feith's office presented "a briefing on the Iraq-al Qaeda relationship to the White House in September 2002 unbeknownst to the Director of Central Intelligence, containing information that was different from the briefing presented to the DCI, not vetted by the Intelligence Community, and that was not supported by the available intelligence (for example, concerning the alleged Atta meeting), without providing the IC notice of the briefing or an opportunity to comment." The items presented at that briefing that were not supported by available intelligence were "the conclusion 'intelligence indicates cooperation in all categories; mature symbiotic relationship', or that there were 'multiple areas of cooperation,' and 'shared interest and pursuit of WMD' and 'some indications of possible Iraqi coordination with al Qaida specifically related to 9/11'."

Despite the lack of support for the assertions made by Feith's office, the alleged connection between Iraq and al-Qaeda was reported in the media and was used by the Bush administration to support its decision to invade Iraq. Like the so-called "Downing Street Memo" that stated that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around policy" in the lead up to the invasion of Iraq, the Inspector General's report is another example of how the Bush administration produced its own intelligence to support its invasion. The same doctoring of intelligence was also at work when then Secretary of State Collin Powell presented the administration's case to the United Nations. Powell later described his speech as "a blot on his reputation," just Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director Michael Hayden and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates have described their discomfort at the activities of Feith's office. However, the damage has been done and the war has cost the lives of more than 655,000 Iraqi civilians.