It's easy to forget, but in November 2003, after the Weekly Standard published a leaked summary of the Office of Special Plans's analysis of the Iraq-al-Qaeda question, the Pentagon immediately released an official statement distancing itself from the OSP's controversial findings. The central contention of the statement tracks with the positions taken in Douglas Feith and Eric Edelman's rebuttals -- that whatever OSP did, it wasn't intelligence analysis.

The items listed in the classified annex were either raw reports or products of the CIA, the National Security Agency or, in one case, the Defense Intelligence Agency. The provision of the classified annex to the Intelligence Committee was cleared by other agencies and done with the permission of the intelligence community. The selection of the documents was made by DoD to respond to the committee’s question. The classified annex was not an analysis of the substantive issue of the relationship between Iraq and al Qaeda, and it drew no conclusions.

Of course, digging through such raw reports to criticize the intelligence community was exactly what the OSP* was charged with doing. And after the Pentagon released its statement, the Standard shot back its disbelief: "But make no mistake--contrary to what Defense now says--these are conclusions and this is analysis."

At the time, the Defense Department's statement merely seemed bizarre. Now, however, it appears to have had a subtler purpose than simply distancing the Pentagon from the OSP. By stating that OSP didn't perform analysis and "drew no conclusions," it's likely that the Pentagon was trying to forestall criticism of illegally performing intelligence work. Curiouser and curiouser...

* By the way, we're using the term "OSP" here as the inspector general's report does: as "generic terminology" for Iraq and al-Qaeda-related program activities that occurred in 2001 and 2002 in the office of the undersecretary of defense for policy.