George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, is described as not opposing the proposals, and at least one Pentagon official said discussions were under way with the intelligence sector on how to work out new arrangements between Special Operations forces and American intelligence.
The new intelligence assessment was described by an intelligence official and a second government official.
The new estimate by American intelligence agencies was described by government officials who had access to the classified intelligence report.
Sometime in the early spring of 1990, intelligence that was described as a hundred per cent reliable — perhaps an N.S.A. intercept — reached Washington with the ominous news that General Beg had authorized the technicians at Kahuta to put together nuclear weapons.
A large portion of the Iraq Survey Group is made up of support and security personnel, so the reassignment of even a relatively small number of people directly involved in intelligence work was described by the officials as significant.
Mr. Medvedev dismissed as "pure provocative nonsense" the notion that a Russian military intelligence officer was linked to an explosion outside the American Embassy in Tbilisi, a charge that was tentatively corroborated by a United States intelligence assessment that was described to reporters last week.
The chief witness, intelligence agent Robert Poley, was described by his well-respected contemporary William Camden as an "expert dissembler".
"The Invisible Government," which was published in 1964 and explained the role of intelligence agencies in diplomacy, was described by Orville Prescott in The New York Times as an "able and interesting work of topical reporting".
Enemy artificial intelligence for these sections was described as predictable and basic, adopting repeated firing stances or ignoring the character despite being shot repeatedly.
The document, which was described by intelligence officials familiar with the review, provided President Bush with his last major overview of the status of Iraq's program to develop weapons of mass destruction before the start of the war.
