CIA Director George Tenet has claimed that although analysts had concluded Baghdad had weapons of mass destruction, they never called that an "imminent" threat.
In his first public defence against criticism that US intelligence on Iraq was flawed, Mr Tenet attacked critics who said the White House put pressure on intelligence analysts to skew their findings to support an intent to go to war.
"They [the analysts] never said there was an 'imminent' threat," Mr Tenet said. "Rather, they painted an objective assessment for our policymakers of a brutal dictator who was continuing his efforts to deceive and build programs that might constantly surprise us and threaten our interests." M
Mr Tenet added: "No one told us what to say or how to say it."
President George W. Bush did not use the word "imminent" to describe the threat from Iraq leading up to the war, but called it a "grave and gathering danger."
Democrats who are trying to win the White House away from Mr Bush in this year's presidential election seized on Mr Tenet's comments as a sign that the administration had hyped the threat from Iraq.
"Today, the CIA Director, George Tenet, admitted that the intelligence agencies never told the White House that Iraq posed an imminent threat," Senator John Kerry said. "But that's not what the Bush White House told the American people," he said.