The CIA denied today that its new director had told the spy agency to shape intelligence to support the policies of President George W. Bush.
The agency was responding to a report in The New York Timeswhich said CIA Director Mr Porter Goss had told his staff to back Bush, a sharp departure for an agency that is supposed to stick to facts and stay out of policy judgments.
Critics have pointed at the resignations of some top CIA officials as a sign that Mr Goss and his advisers who came with him from Capitol Hill were acting in a partisan manner.
There have also been some suspicions at the White House that the CIA leaked negative information about Iraq before the November election to hurt Bush.
The White House and CIA said the full e-mail sent by Mr Goss to the workforce on Monday put the comments in context, but neither released it.
"I also intend to clarify beyond doubt the rules of the road. We support the administration and its policies in our work. As agency employees we do not identify with, support, or champion opposition to the administration or its policies. We provide the intelligence as we see it, and let the facts alone speak to the policymaker," Mr Goss said in the e-mail, as read by a source.
A CIA spokesman said that comment did not mean that the CIA was now expected to take policy positions.
Ever since Mr Goss was chosen as the new CIA director he has been dogged by critics raising questions about whether the former Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee could be nonpartisan in running an agency that is expected to provide independent assessments to policymakers.
"We do not make policy though we do inform those who make it. We avoid political involvement, especially political partisanship," Mr Goss said in the e-mail.
White House spokesman Mr Scott McClellan said some people had "misconstrued" the Goss e-mail and that the CIA's role was to provide unvarnished facts and objective analysis to policymakers. "He (Goss) was not talking about advocacy one way or the other," McClellan said.