Powell Says C.I.A. Was Misled About Weapons

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell said for the first time on Sunday that he now believes that the Central Intelligence Agency was deliberately misled about evidence that Saddam Hussein was developing unconventional weapons. He also said, in his comments on the NBC News program “Meet the Press,” that he regrets citing evidence that Iraq had mobile biological laboratories in his presentation to the United Nations on Feb. 5, 2003.The assertion about the mobile labs was one of the most dramatic pieces of the presentation, which was intended to make public the Bush administration’s best case for invading Iraq. For days before his speech, Mr. Powell sat in a conference room at the C.I.A., examining the sources for each charge he planned to make. But on Sunday, Mr. Powell argued that the C.I.A. itself was misled, and that in turn he was, too. “Unfortunately, that multiple sourcing over time has turned out not to be accurate,” Mr. Powell said, going farther than he did on April 2 when he conceded that the intelligence was not “that solid.” Full Story