News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate.

That sentence I quoted from the DOD press release states that the news reports are inaccurate.

The sentence is poorly constructed, so I'll help

News reports that the Defense Department recently confirmed new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq in a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee are inaccurate.

Stripped of the long, intervening phrase (in italics, above), the sentence reads:

News reports are inaccurate.

Which news reports? Those which claimed that the Defense Department confirmed new information. Which new information? Contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq. Where was this alleged new information? In a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Therefore the Defense Department did not confirm new information with respect to contacts between al-Qaida and Iraq.

If you read the entire press release - itself no easy task - I think you'll find that Douglas J. Feith, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, was questioned by the SIC concerning his testimony on July 10. The SIC asked for documents which Feith apparently cited in attempting to establish a linkage between Iraq and al-Qaida, and he (Feith) referred the committee to a classified annex. The commitee got clearance to examine the documents in the classified annex which Feith had cited, and found "...The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaida, and it drew no conclusions."

Therefore, Feith referred the committee to documents which did not support his arguments (for reasons cited in the closing sentence of the paragraph above.)

S