Analysts said the Bush administration had delayed releasing the intelligence because of the risk that it might prompt Syria to retaliate against Israel.
According to Mr. Song's wife, Helen Yao, who was also detained and has since been released, the "intelligence" that Mr. Song was charged with possessing were documents that had already been published, part of his effort to create a collection of historical materials relating to the Cultural Revolution.
Then additional information was released: the intelligence was mostly three years old, the al-Qaida surveillance of US buildings had been mostly conducted through the internet, the computer file had been opened again in January for uncertain reason and with no new surveillance data added to it, and Pakistani officials said that the captured material indicated no new al-Qaida planning.
Schiff warned that if the memo were to be released, the intelligence community might no longer trust members of Congress with "closely guarded national secrets".
The Trump campaign was more interested in the release from WikiLeaks than the release from the intelligence community.
But in a gathering with reporters after meetings here this week with his counterparts at the F.B.I. and C.I.A., Mr. Schily said German law barred the release of the intelligence files to the United States if American prosecutors continued to press for Mr. Moussaoui's execution.
"The limited release to the intelligence committees – following mounting pressure both outside and inside the government – is a tiny step forward, and hopefully indicates the administration is now going to be more open with the American public and the international community," Sarah Knuckey, a human rights lawyer at New York University School of Law, told the Guardian.
Reince Priebus, the outgoing Republican National Committee chairman and now another of the moral eunuchs in Trump's court, said on CBS News's "Face the Nation" that the release of the intelligence community's finding was "clearly politically motivated to discredit the victory of President-elect Trump". Priebus, as my grandmother used to say, knows which side his bread is buttered on.
To the extent they can do this without disclosing classified sources and methods, they should release the underlying intelligence both memos are based on.
The decision to press the International Atomic Energy Agency was brewing even before the plot against the Saudi ambassador was discovered, but that discovery prompted the White House to pursue a full-court, public press of the agency to release the sensitive intelligence.
It has denied having any contact with BP before its decision last year to release the Libyan intelligence officer convicted of the 1988 bombing which killed 270 people, most of them Americans.
