That is an excellent article. Definitely the most complete analysis I have ever read about the situation. Very imformative. The part about the Office of Special Plans is the most interesting of all. Two parts stick out:

Reportedly, the worst fights were those over sources. The Administration gave greatest credence to accounts that presented the most lurid picture of Iraqi activities. In many cases intelligence analysts were distrustful of those sources, or knew unequivocally that they were wrong. But when they said so, they were not heeded; instead they were beset with further questions about their own sources.

On many occasions Administration officials' requests for additional information struck the analysts as being made merely to distract them from their primary mission. Some officials asked for extensive historical analyses—a hugely time-consuming undertaking, for which most intelligence analysts are not trained. Requests were constantly made for detailed analyses of newspaper articles that conformed to the views of Administration officials—pieces by conservative newspaper columnists such as Jim Hoagland, William Safire, and George F. Will.


> this whole thread ties in with some recent reading available in the recent Atlantic monthly. You might find it interesting in that it does provide an overview from an intelligence insider - he wrote Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq, and it does mention that convincing arguments were made about WMD all the way back to the Clinton admin. The article is at http://www.theatlantic.com/issues/2004/01/pollack.htm
>The problem I keep seeing surface whenever I read about this subject is what happened during the relative intelligence "blackout" that occurred after the UNSCOM inspectors left (or were booted out) in 1998. Many sources that I've read, and this article again, talks about the Office of Special Plans, basically run by Cheney and the Dept. of Defense - and how they skewed (or politicized) the intelligence that was developed during this period. That this remains contentious is shown by David Kay speaking about it again today (he denies that politics played a part in it). http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4049012/
>Kay's statements directly contradict Pollack's article (the section titled "The Politics of Persuasion") - and what I find interesting here is that Pollack seems to be sympathetic to the Bush administration in general (he did write Threatening Storm: The Case for Invading Iraq). He feels strongly enough about it to make suggestions of steps to take to ensure that this sort of undue influence on the intelligence community doesn't happen again.