ASHINGTON, Oct. 23 — Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and his senior advisers have assigned a small intelligence unit to search for information on Iraq's hostile intentions or links to terrorists that the nation's spy agencies may have overlooked, Pentagon officials said today.
Some officials say the creation of the team reflects frustration on the part of Mr. Rumsfeld, Deputy Defense Secretary Paul D. Wolfowitz and other senior officials that they are not receiving undiluted information on the capacities of President Saddam Hussein of Iraq and his suspected ties to terrorist organizations.
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But officials who disagree say the top civilian policy makers are intent on politicizing intelligence to fit their hawkish views on Iraq.
In particular, many in the intelligence agencies disagree that Mr. Hussein can be directly linked to Osama bin Laden and his network, Al Qaeda, or that the two are likely to make common cause against the United States. In addition, the view among even some senior intelligence analysts at the Central Intelligence Agency is that Mr. Hussein is contained and is unlikely to unleash weapons of mass destruction unless he is attacked.
But Mr. Rumsfeld's inner circle of advisers view Mr. Hussein's record, which includes aggression against Kuwait and the use of poison gas against his people, as much more alarming, and they are not willing to risk leaving him in power. They cite numerous intelligence findings indicating links between the Iraq and senior Qaeda leaders.
The four- to five-person intelligence team was established by Douglas J. Feith, the under secretary of defense for policy and another strong advocate for military action against Mr. Hussein. It was formed not long after the Sept. 11 attacks to take on special assignments in the global war on terror.
The team's specialty is using powerful computers and new software to scan and sort documents and reports from the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and other intelligence agencies.
The team's current task, described by one official as "data mining," is to glean individual details that may collectively point to Iraq's wider connections to terrorism, but which may have been obscured by formal assessments that play down the overall Iraqi threat.
In an interview tonight, Mr. Wolfowitz said the members of the special intelligence team "are helping us sift through enormous amounts of incredibly valuable data that our many intelligence resources have vacuumed up." He emphasized, "They are not making independent intelligence assessments."
He described "a phenomenon in intelligence work, that people who are pursuing a certain hypothesis will see certain facts that others won't, and not see other facts that others will."
"The lens through which you're looking for facts affects what you look for," he added.
But as adherents of different views on the Iraqi threat use intelligence findings to argue their case, Mr. Wolfowitz said, "It should not permit you to create facts or deny facts."
"The correct process is one that surfaces as many facts as possible," he added.
By law, the sprawling American intelligence bureaucracy is managed by the director of central intelligence, George J. Tenet, who also is in charge of the best-known spy organization, the Central Intelligence Agency. Separate intelligence units also are operated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Departments of State, Energy and the Treasury.
But nearly 80 percent of the overall budget for intelligence is within the Defense Department and managed by Mr. Rumsfeld. This classified sum is divided among such organizations as the National Security Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency and the intelligence arms of the armed services.
Agencies like the N.S.A. and the D.I.A. in effect have two masters, since the defense secretary controls the budget and is a significant client of their information, while the director of central intelligence watches over the entire constellation of spy organizations.