An unidentified senior CIA official attributed the failure to "extremely sloppy" handling of key evidence backing the White House's case against Iraq, but for another CIA analyst, the case pointed in another direction.

"Information not consistent with the administration agenda was discarded and information that was (consistent) was not seriously scrutinized," the analyst told the Post.

The revelation is the latest update in the growing controversy over the US government's alleged attempts to manipulate information on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction to justify the US-led war to overthrow Saddam Hussein.

The CIA in February 2002 sent a retired US ambassador to Iraq to investigate claims that Iraqi officials had sought to buy uranium from Niger one or two years earlier.

The envoy reported back to the CIA that the story was false and that a series of letters about the alleged purchase between Iraqi and Niger officials may have been forged.

The envoy's conclusions, however, were not included in the CIA's intelligence reports it shared with other US government agencies. The CIA merely said Niger officials had denied that the attempted purchase had taken place.

Unaware of the CIA's report, US President George W. Bush, in his State of the Union address in January mentioned Iraq's attempts at purchasing uranium in Niger, to support his contention that Hussein was pursuing a secret nuclear weapons program.

The Niger evidence, however, was excluded from US Secretary of State Colin Powell's February 5 address to the UN Security Council because it was considered inaccurate, sources told the daily.

WAR.WIRE