According to CNN , authors of a new biography on Hillery Clinton say that Clinton and 93 other senators did not read the 90-page, classified National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq, according to "Her Way: The Hopes and Ambitions of Hillary Rodham Clinton."
For members of Congress to read the report, they had to go to a secure location on Capitol Hill. The Washington Post reported in 2004 that no more than six senators and a handful of House members were logged as reading the document.
The Clinton biography, written by New York Times reporters Jeff Gerth and Don Van Natta Jr., summarizes the intelligence estimate, which combined reports of U.S. intelligence agencies about Iraq.
Clinton, a New York Democrat, was briefed on the intelligence report multiple times, a spokesperson told CNN.
Clinton is one of six presidential candidates who were in the Senate in October 2002 who voted for the resolution to authorize the invasion of Iraq.
Candidate and then-Sen. John Edwards "read and was briefed on the intelligence" while sitting on the Senate Intelligence Committee, a spokesman said. Edwards has called his vote for the 2002 resolution a mistake. Another Democratic candidate, Sen. Joseph Biden, said he read the report.
6/4 Correction: Clinton, a senator from New York, said she had been “thoroughly briefed” about intelligence on Iraq and tried to dismiss the question as part of an argument “about the past.” Edwards, who also said he read only a summary of the 90-page intelligence report, said he “had the information I needed.” He then repeated his assertion, which Clinton has declined to echo, that his vote against the war was “wrong.”
A spokesman for presidential candidate Sen. Christopher Dodd said the Connecticut Democrat did not read the document, either.
Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona also voted in favor of the resolution without reading the report.
A spokesman for McCain told CNN his boss was briefed on the document "numerous times, and read the executive summary."
Other candidates were not available for comment Monday.
The National Intelligence Estimate concluded that the United States had "compelling evidence" that Iraq was restarting its efforts to develop a nuclear bomb and had concealed stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons from U.N. inspectors after the cease-fire that ended the 1991 Persian Gulf War.
That was wrong, but that wasn't established until after a U.S. -led army toppled Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's government in April 2003.
The intelligence report did contain passages that raised questions about the weapons conclusions, said John McLaughlin, then deputy director of the CIA.
"I think if someone read the entire report, they would walk away thinking the intelligence community generally thinks he has weapons of mass destruction, but there are quite a bit of differences," he said.
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