CIA Officials Deny Agency Faked Intelligence Document

WASHINGTON — Two former CIA officers yesterday denied that they or the spy agency faked an Iraqi intelligence document purporting to link Saddam Hussein with a bomber in the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, Mohammed Atta, as they are quoted as saying in a new book.

The White House issued the statement on behalf of the former officials after a day of adamant denials from the CIA and Bush administration about the claim, made in "The Way of the World," a book by Washington-based journalist Ron Suskind.

"I never received direction from George Tenet or anyone else in my chain of command to fabricate a document ... as outlined in Mr. Suskind's book," the CIA's former deputy director of clandestine operations, Robert Richer, said.

Mr. Richer also said he talked yesterday to John Maguire, who headed the CIA's Iraq Operations Group at the time and who gave Mr. Richer "permission to state the following on his behalf: 'I never received any instruction from then Chief/NE Rob Richer or any other officer in my chain of command instructing me to fabricate such a letter. Further, I have no knowledge to the origins of the letter and as to how it circulated in Iraq," the statement said.

Mr. Suskind claims the White House concocted the fake letter, meant to come from the director of Iraqi intelligence under Saddam, Tahir Jalil Habbush al-Tikriti, in the fall of 2003 to bolster its case for the invasion earlier that year as it was becoming clear that there were no weapons of mass destruction to be found in Iraq. Those weapons were a chief rationale for the war. The letter was provided to a British journalist by an Iraqi government official, according to the book.