WASHINGTON, Oct 24: The weapons and terrorism case against former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein was overstated by CIA and other American intelligence agencies, says a US Senate report published partly on Friday.

The report, prepared by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, names CIA Director George J. Tenet as one of the key officials responsible for exaggerating prewar reports about Iraq.

The committee concluded that US intelligence agencies used a lot of “circumstantial evidence and single-source or disputed information” to write key intelligence documents.

Even the October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate, summarizing Iraq’s capabilities and intentions, was based on unconfirmed or half-confirmed information, the committee observed.

Committee members interviewed more than 100 people who collected and analyzed the intelligence used to back up statements about Iraq’s chemical, biological and nuclear weapons capabilities, and its possible links to terrorist groups.

The committee is deeply divided over investigating how the Bush administration used intelligence in its public statements about Iraq. Opposition lawmakers insist that the White House deliberately misled the American public while lawmakers from the ruling Republican Party blame the intelligence community.

Democrats also want to probe whether President Bush, Vice President Cheney, Defence Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and others senior officials were directly involved in exaggerating the threat from Iraq.

But it is unclear whether the committee has jurisdiction on this topic. Also, the administration could cite executive privilege and refuse to give the committee information related to internal White House discussions, as it did when a congressional inquiry tried to find out what President Bush had been told about Al Qaeda and the possibility of civilian aircraft used as weapons before the Sept 11, 2001, attacks.

The Senate panel’s report, congressional sources said, will be harsher and better substantiated than the inquiry near completion by the House counterpart.

Among the more than 100 people interviewed by the Senate are analysts, scientists, operators and supervisory officials from the CIA, the departments of Energy and State, the National Security Agency and the Defence Intelligence Agency, as well as officials at the International Atomic Energy Agency.