I would also say the front part is, what I was trying to do today is defend our community to the American people, but be absolutely honest in telling you what we said and didn't say in this estimate.

Question: You've presented a very sobering view of the intelligence community today. My question involves elements that are technically outside of the intelligence community.

Recent investigative reports, including a long piece in the journal Mother Jones, which came out this past January, detailed the creation of a Pentagon group a few weeks after September 11th which, as of January of 2002, became known as the Office of Special Programs. And it contained prominent neoconservatives with direct ties to Dick Cheney and members of the administration.

This group was shown to have a clear political agenda, to have influenced people in the intelligence community, and definitely used gross intelligence to promote their case.

So my question is, can you confirm or deny the existence of such a Pentagon group? And if so, how can we prevent small ideological groups from influencing intelligence estimates?

Tenet: Well, I haven't read Mother Jones in a while, but let me say this.

Let me say this. I'm the director of central intelligence. The president of the United States sees me six days a week, every day. I tell him what the American intelligence community believes.

There are always people all around town — you know, "There's gambling in this casino." Everybody has different views of what the intelligence means or doesn't mean.

I can tell you with certainty that the president of the United States gets his intelligence from one person and one community: me. And 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.

The rest of it, I don't know.

Question: Good morning, Director Tenet. Let me first say thank you for your last seven years of service.

Nowadays the knee-jerk reaction is to say, "We need more human intelligence," as you referred to. What that reaction seems to overlook is that regimes like Iraq are designed specifically not only to deceive external — us, our allies — but internally as well — the Kurds, the Shiites, whatnot.

Question: So how do you solve that problem? How do you figure out exactly what the regime is trying to do, when they're, in fact, deceiving themselves?