No Holds Barred

By Adam Zagorin

WHO SCREWED UP? The finger pointed directly at U.S. spy agencies: prewar knowledge of Saddam's WMD was "dead wrong." Most of the material it was based on was "either worthless or misleading." Important for the President, the report states that his Administration didn't pressure intelligence analysts to support its conclusions about Iraq. The panel passed on the issue of whether senior officials hyped the bad info to justify the invasion.

DID ANYTHING GO RIGHT? There was praise for the spy community's discovery of Libya's nuclear program, an act that led Muammar Gaddafi to close it.

SO, EVERYTHING'S O.K. NOW, RIGHT? Nope. The bottom line is that many of the causes of the intelligence breakdown in Iraq persist and "are still all too common" in U.S. espionage. They include a "poorly coordinated" bureaucracy that failed to question key information from an Iraqi defector who was a "fabricator" known as Curveball. Even today the U.S. "knows disturbingly little about the nuclear programs of many of the world's most dangerous actors," notably Iran and North Korea.

CAN THE PROBLEM BE FIXED? The commission's 74 recommendations are designed to transform intelligence by undoing bureaucracies and smashing competing CIA, FBI and Pentagon fiefs. The report stresses the need to develop more human agents instead of relying so much on technology. --By Adam Zagorin

Read more about the commission's findings at time.com/intelligence