Before the start of the closed-door hearing, lawmakers said they hoped to get closer to the truth of how the statement made its way into Bush's State of the Union address last January.

The panel's ranking Democrat, Senator John Rockefeller, said the major issue was not just the accuracy or inaccuracy of the allegation that Iraq tried to acquire nuclear material from Niger -- a claim long refuted by US intelligence -- but the intention of those in the administration who repeated it, and cleared the president to repeat it, in the key speech to the nation.

"Was there any attempt to take what was either accurate or inaccurate intelligence and shape it in a way which helped the president makes his case that he wanted to go into Iraq?" Rockefeller asked.

"It's an integrated investigation. We're looking not just at the intelligence but also the way it made its way up to the policymakers," the West Virginia Democrat said.

"There has to be an accountability on this," he said before the briefing.

Republican Senator Olympia Snowe of Maine told reporters that lawmakers were keen to hear Tenet's side of the story.

"It's absolutely vital that we ascertain the truth," she said.

"It's inconceivable to me that we cannot retrace the steps in this whole process and put all the pieces of the puzzle together," she said, adding it is "in the vital interest of our national security and the credibility of America."

"Many questions will need to be answered," Snowe said. "We're going to have to evaluate all the inconsistencies and the contradictions to make sure we understand exactly how confident in our intelligence we can be in the future, based on what we did in the past."

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