WASHINGTON, June 4: A classified Senate report very critical of the CIA's performance on Iraq, especially its miscalculations on weapons of mass destruction, may have precipitated CIA Director George Tenet's resignation , The New York Times said on Friday.

The 400-page report, described by officials as presenting a broad indictment of the Central Intelligence Agency's performance on Iraq, included only factual findings; its conclusions are being drafted by the members of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the daily said.

An unclassified version of the report will be made public this month, it added. Mr Tenet's resignation, effective on July 11, was announced on Thursday morning by President George Bush only minutes before he left on a tour of Europe, catching most of Washington by surprise.

Mr Tenet said he was stepping down for personal reasons and Bush and other top officials expressed regret at seeing him go, but that did not stop a flurry of rumours that George Tenet was paying the price for the mistakes behind Mr Bush's Iraq policy.

The Senate report's criticism of the CIA, according to officials who have read it, ranged from inadequate pre-war collection of intelligence by spies and satellites to a sloppy analysis, often based on uncorroborated sources, that produced the conclusion that Iraq possessed biological and chemical weapons.

A senior intelligence official said Mr Tenet had neither read nor had been briefed on the report, adding that the notion it had anything to do with the CIA chief's resignation was "bunk". -AFP