Wash. Times falsely claimed new intel report found that Bush adminstration "did not distort evidence" on WMD

White House correspondent Joseph Curl falsely reported on April 1 that the Robb-Silberman commission's new report on intelligence regarding weapons of mass destruction said "that the Bush administration did not distort evidence about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction program." In fact, the report of the commission, led by Charles S. Robb, former Virginia governor and U.S. senator, and Laurence R. Silberman, an appeals court judge, specifically declined to examine the use of intelligence by policymakers, including President Bush and his administration. Rather, the panel limited its examination to the U.S. intelligence community itself.
Silberman specifically addressed this limitation in a March 31 press conference on the release of the report:

QUESTION: Could your report be read as an exoneration of the president's use of the intelligence, or did you not tackle that question?

SILBERMAN: We did not -- our executive order did not direct us to deal with the use of intelligence by policymakers, and all of us were agreed that that was not part of our inquiry.