You have said that Tenet didn't really want to [put together the NIE]. ...
The exact timing was September of 2002. Sen. Bob Graham -- to his credit -- wondered why no National Intelligence Estimate had been prepared. He was on the Senate [Select Committee on Intelligence], and he was told that no one asked for a National Intelligence Estimate. So Graham said, "Well, I will."
The fact of the matter is, the CIA didn't want to produce one. The White House didn't want one because they didn't want to allow any venting of whatever opposition there was to what they wanted to be the conventional wisdom on weapons of mass destruction. But Graham got his way, and the CIA produced this estimate in three or four weeks. They didn't produce it very well, but basically they produced the case that the administration wanted.
This was comparable to sort of judge shopping in the courthouse: If you want a certain verdict on a decision, you usually know which judge you can go to. ... George Tenet and John McLaughlin picked the very people in the National Intelligence Council ... who had a very hard line on all of these issues.
So three or four key people were picked to write this estimate that was a fraud; I don't know how else to describe that National Intelligence Estimate. It should be fully released. I don't know why they're protecting sources and methods because the sources were obviously specious or flawed in one way or another. The methodology, obviously, was a disgrace. And it should be studied; it should be part of the national understanding of how we went to war. ...