Following release of the findings of a yearlong inquiry by the Senate Intelligence Committee, the panel's Republican chairman said Congress might not have approved the Iraq war had lawmakers known the truth.

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The report, which was highly critical of departing Director George Tenet, said the CIA kept key information from its own and other agencies' analysts, engaged in "group think" by failing to challenge the assumption that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction and allowed President Bush and Secretary of State Colin Powell to make false statements."

In what sources described as an escalating "war," top officials at the Pentagon and elsewhere have bombarded CIA analysts with criticism and calls for revisions on such key questions as whether Iraq has ties to the Al Qaeda terrorist network, sources said.

The sources stressed that CIA analysts—who are supposed to be impartial—are fighting to resist the pressure. But they said analysts are increasingly resentful of what they perceive as efforts to contaminate the intelligence process.

"Analysts feel more politicized and more pushed than many of them can ever remember," said an intelligence official, speaking on condition of anonymity.

"The guys at the Pentagon shriek on issues such as the link between Iraq and Al Qaeda. There has been a lot of pressure to write on this constantly, and to not let it drop."

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Intelligence sources say the pressure on CIA analysts has been unrelenting in recent months, much of it coming from Iraq hawks including Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his top deputy, Paul D. Wolfowitz.

CIA officials who brief Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz on Iraq routinely return to the agency with a long list of complaints and demands for new analysis or shifts in emphasis, sources said.

"There is a lot of unhappiness with the analysis," usually because it is seen as not hard-line enough, one intelligence official said.

Another government official said CIA briefers "are constantly sent back by the senior people at Defense and other places to get more, get more, get more to make their case."