President Bush has ordered the public release of the summary of a classified report by U.S. intelligence agencies on America's vulnerability to terrorist attack -- and how the war in Iraq affects the effort to fight terrorism.
Many of the findings suggest that conditions in Iraq are creating a terrorist breeding ground.
"The Iraq conflict has become the 'cause celebre' for jihadists," the report reads, "breeding a deep resentment of U.S. involvement in the Muslim world and cultivating supporters for the global jihadist movement."
Descriptions of the National Intelligence Estimate had surfaced in newspapers over the weekend, the result of what the president called politically motivated leaks.
Director of National Intelligence John Negroponte released the summary Tuesday -- the first time a current N.I.E. has been declassified since the flawed 2002 Iraq estimate.
News of the classified document overshadowed the president's meeting with Afghanistan's President Hamid Karzai, who said his country was grateful for U.S. support.
"I think it's a bad habit for our government to declassify every time there is a leak," President Bush said. "Because it means it will be difficult to get good product out of our analysts."
Copyright 2023 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
