At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee, New York Senator Hillary Clinton expressed concern about "the quality, the accuracy and the use of intelligence" including the now-discredited claims of an Africa-Iraq link.

"In this new threat environment in which we find ourselves, we are increasingly reliant on intelligence," Clinton said.

"Of the lessons to be learned, that I hope we have learned, the thorough scrubbing and very careful analysis of intelligence has to be at the top of the list," she said.

Rumsfeld testified that he had only learned "within recent days" that intelligence reports stating that Iraq had tried to obtain processed uranium from Africa were bogus.

Asked by Democrat Mark Pryor of Arkansas whether he had ever received any communication stating that the intelligence was flawed, Rumsfeld grew testy.

"I see hundreds and hundreds of pieces of paper a day. Is it conceivable that something was in a document? It's conceivable. Do I recall hearing anything, or reading anything like that? The answer is no."

He concurred, however, that the quality of intelligence is a potential US vulnerability.

"I agree completely on the importance of intelligence," Rumsfeld said.

"It's such a big, complicated world and there are so many areas that need to be looked at today -- unlike the Cold War period, when you could focus on the Soviet Union and develop a good deal of conviction about it."

"We're dealing with closed societies; we're dealing with countries that very skillfully use our advanced technologies," he said.

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