Iran flap exposes public skepticism of US intelligence, intentions

February 18, 2007
Iran flap exposes public skepticism of US intelligence, intentions

And "for the umpteenth time," as US Defense Secretary Robert Gates put it, they denied that the United States was trying to prepare the ground for military action in Iraq.

But the flap exposed how deep public suspicion of US intelligence claims runs nearly four years after the United States went to war with Iraq on the strength of erroneous intelligence that it had weapons of mass destruction.

"I think this controversy is traceable to one big problem," said Loren Thompson, director of the Lexington Institute, a private Washington research group.

"The US intelligence community does not have an adequate network of agents in Iraq or Iran. Because of that, everything is guesswork," he said.