C.I.A. Director Defends Assessments of Iraqi Weapons
By DOUGLAS JEHL and ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON, Feb. 4 — After months of silence, George J. Tenet, the director of central intelligence, has decided to mount a strong public defense of the prewar judgments made by American intelligence agencies about Iraq and its illicit weapons stockpiles, intelligence officials said on Wednesday.

In a speech scheduled on short notice at Georgetown University on Thursday, Mr. Tenet will seek "to correct some of the misperceptions and downright inaccuracies concerning what the intelligence community reported and didn't report regarding Iraq," an intelligence official said.

On Wednesday, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld offered his own defense of the Bush administration's prewar intelligence. Mr. Rumsfeld told Congress that he believed that the American-led team still searching for illicit weapons in Iraq might eventually find them despite comments last month by David A. Kay, the group's former leader, that no stockpiles of such arms existed in Iraq at the time of the American-led invasion last March.

The dual defenses come as the strongest administration response to Dr. Kay, and follow a stir caused by Secretary of State Colin L. Powell's comment that he was not sure he would have recommended an invasion if he had known that Iraq did not possess stockpiles of illicit weapons.

Mr. Tenet and Mr. Rumsfeld, both of whom played pivotal roles in the period leading up to the invasion of Iraq, have often been at odds in debates over which should have the upper hand in intelligence matters, and their departments have at times disagreed about intelligence on Iraq. Now they appear to be allies in the administration's efforts to defend the prewar intelligence.

Mr. Bush himself has tried to deflect criticism of the intelligence. In a speech on Wednesday at the Library of Congress, Mr. Bush did not mention banned weapons, saying only that in deposing Saddam Hussein the United States had dealt with a dictator who had "the intent and capability" to threaten his own people and the world.