At about the same time Mr Scarlett received Defence Intelligence Staff experts' view that the way the 45 minute claim was described in the summary should be changed to match the more cautious wording in the text.
The view was echoed by market intelligence firm Ipreo, which tracks a rolling six months filed backlog that was at just 35 deals in mid-December, its lowest levels in over three and a half years.
It was because we needed people looking at that intelligence, good intelligence produced by the CIA and other agencies -- we needed people looking at it from the point of view of what do we need to understand from this intelligence about these connections to allow us to develop a Defense Department strategy for the war on terrorism.