But he insisted that the CIA never sought to hype its assessments of Iraq's capabilities.

"They never said there was an imminent threat," Tenet said. "Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests."

Tenet added: "The president of the United States gets his intelligence from one person and one community — me. He has told me firmly and directly that he's wanted it straight and he's wanted it honest, and he's never wanted the facts shaded. And that's what we do every day."

While Tenet's comments clearly were intended to defend the CIA and dampen the controversy, they did nothing to silence administration critics. Some Democrats pounced on Tenet's admissions as evidence that Bush and his senior aides overstated the threat in leading the country to war.

"They said Iraq posed a 'mortal threat,' an 'urgent threat, an 'immediate threat,' a 'serious threat,' and, yes, an 'imminent threat' to the people of the United States," Sen. John Kerry, the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination, said in a prepared statement. "They were playing politics with our national security."

In describing Iraq during the weeks and months before the war, Bush was careful not to use the term "imminent threat." He instead described Iraq as "a grave and gathering danger" and said Saddam "possesses the weapons of mass murder." In an November 2002 radio address, Bush called the Iraqi threat "unique and urgent."

On Friday, Bush is expected to name nine members — including Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain — to a bipartisan commission that will examine the intelligence the administration relied upon in making its case for war against Iraq, where 528 Americans have died and 2,600 more have been wounded since last March. Several other inquiries into pre-war intelligence and how it was used are under way on Capitol Hill and elsewhere.

Before the war, Tenet said analysts had a "solid basis" for concluding that Saddam possessed chemical and biological weapons and was working to build a nuclear bomb.

But Tenet conceded Thursday that there were large holes in the U.S. understanding of Iraq during the months the Bush administration was preparing for war. Those gaps were largely due to the CIA's inability to penetrate Saddam's government with agents who could provide first-hand information on Iraq's efforts to build weapons of mass destruction, or WMD, Tenet said.

"We made an aggressive effort to penetrate Iraq. Our record was mixed," Tenet said. "We did not ourselves penetrate the inner sanctum. Our agents were on the periphery of WMD activities."