Feb. 5 (Bloomberg) -- George Tenet, director of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, said his agency's prewar assessments never cast Iraq as ``an imminent threat'' and there was no pressure to manipulate the findings.

The reports ``painted an objective assessment'' of ``a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests,'' Tenet said in a speech at Georgetown University. ``No one told us what to say or how to say it.''

The U.S. cited the threat of Iraqi chemical and biological weapons to justify the invasion in March 2003 that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. No weapons have been found and David Kay, the former UN weapons inspector who led the postwar search, says he doubts large stockpiles existed immediately before the war.

``Analysts differed on several important aspects of these programs, and those debates were spelled out in the estimate,'' Tenet said. ``They never said there was an imminent threat.''

Tenet said his agency ``may have overestimated'' Iraq's progress in reviving its nuclear programs and is evaluating that assessment and others in light of postwar findings in Iraq. ``The search must continue and it will be difficult,'' he said. ``We are nowhere near 85 percent finished,'' he said, disputing an assertion Kay made in an interview with Reuters Jan. 23.

``Any call that I make today is necessarily provisional. Why? Because we need more time and we need more data,'' he said in his first public defense of prewar intelligence findings.

U.S. intelligence is never ``completely wrong or completely right,'' and that would prove to be the case when the search for weapons in Iraq is finished, Tenet said.

Kerry's Reaction

Both President George W. Bush and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair, Bush's closest ally in the war, are under pressure to admit their prewar intelligence was flawed and prove they didn't manipulate it. Both announced inquiries last week into the accuracy of the reports.

Massachusetts Senator John Kerry, who leads among Democrats vying to oppose Bush in the November election, used Tenet's speech to attack the president.

Tenet ``admitted that the intelligence agencies never told the White House that Iraq posed an imminent threat,'' Kerry said in a statement. ``But that's not what the White House told the American people. They said Iraq posed a ``mortal threat,'' an ``urgent threat,'' an `immediate threat,' a ``serious threat.''

``Americans should be able to trust that what the president tells them is true,'' Kerry said.

Bush today defended the decision to wage war.

``We know Saddam Hussein had the intent to arm his regime with weapons of mass destruction because he hid all those activities from the world until the last day of his regime,'' he said in a speech at the Port of Charleston, South Carolina. ``Knowing what I knew then, and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq,'' he said.

Biological Weapons

Tenet, a 1976 graduate on Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, spoke to about 700 students and teachers in Gaston Hall, the university's main auditorium. His address came exactly one year after Secretary of State Colin Powell made the U.S. case to the United Nations for invading Iraq.

Tenet said U.S. intelligence ``may have overestimated'' the progress Iraq's progress in reconstituting its nuclear program, but he said its finding that Hussein was pursuing a missile program that might deliver biological weapons has been proved accurate.

``Our community said with high confidence that Saddam was continuing and expanding his missile programs contrary to UN resolutions,'' Tenet said. ``He had missiles and other systems with ranges in excess of UN restrictions and he was seeking missiles with even longer ranges.''

The Iraq Survey Group found ``a network of safe houses'' and evidence that Iraq may have been operating ``covert labs'' to weaponize chemical and biological agents, Tenet said. ``Iraq had the infrastructure and the talent to resume productions.''

Nuclear Threat

Tenet said his agency never said Hussein had nuclear weapons. ``We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009,'' he said. ``My provisional bottom line today: Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon; he still wanted one; and Iraq intended to reconstitute a nuclear program at some point.''

Tenet said U.S. intelligence ``had difficulty'' penetrating the Iraqi regime and that the intelligence services are being beefed up.

``It will take an additional five years to rebuild our clandestine services,'' he said.

``I welcome the president's commission,'' Tenet said. ``But as all these reviews are under way we must take some care. We cannot afford an environment to develop where analysts are afraid to make a call, where judgments are held back because analysts fear they will be wrong.''

Broader Questions

The U.S. probe will extend to intelligence findings on Iran, North Korea and Libya and broader questions involving capabilities needed to curb proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Blair told Parliament yesterday that removing Hussein boosted international efforts to control the spread of weapons to these countries and to terrorist groups like al-Qaeda. Libya is now dismantling its weapons programs.

Bush no longer insists that Hussein had large stockpiles of banned weapons immediately before the war. He, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Powell say there was overwhelming reason to think he did and cite a history of using such weapons against his own people and his neighbors and his continuing defiance of UN resolutions and weapons inspectors.

They also say that Iraqis and the rest of the world are better off without Hussein and the decision to wage war was right.

Rumsfeld said yesterday that he's not convinced large stockpiles of banned weapons won't be found.

``It took us 10 months to find Saddam Hussein'' and ``the hole he was in was large enough to hold enough biological weapons to kill thousands of human beings,'' he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

To contact the reporter on this story: Tony Capaccio in Washington at acapaccio@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: February 5, 2004 14:24 EST