I believe, as commander-in-chief all intelligence agencies serve the President. Bush has the power of appointment to each agency as well.
They strive to provide indepenent info, but I believe the President makes the call on whether info can be released or not, even to Congress.
Additionally Cheney was set up as the head of Iraqi Intelligence in the run up to the Iraq war. His creation in the Pentagon, The
Office of Special Plans was used to directly collect all other intelligence agencies data so it could be fed to the appropriate outlets, like congress.
http://www.sanluisobispo.com/mld/san...cs/7859310.htm
Quote:
Those efforts bypassed normal channels, used Iraqi exiles and defectors of questionable reliability, and produced findings on former dictator Saddam Hussein's links to al-Qaida and his illicit arms programs that were disputed by analysts at the CIA, the State Department and other agencies, the officials said.
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Otherwise the Iraq War vote would not have gone smoothly as it did. Tenet had plenty of information, which has been coming out since we went to war, that directly refuted each claim Bush was making about Iraqi wmd.