The Knight Ridder news agency is reporting the Pentagon is still paying millions of dollars to a group of Iraqi defectors known as the Iraqi National Congress even though the group has been accused of providing fabricated and exaggerated intelligence to the U.S. prior to the invasion of Iraq.

The money, up to $4 million is going to the INC’s Information Collection Program which was started in 2001 and was “designed to collect, analyze and disseminate information” from inside Iraq.”

In addition Knight Ridder has obtained evidence that some of the intelligence gathered by the INC went directly to officials in the Pentagon and Vice President Dick Cheney’s office thus by passing the CIA, which had been critical of the INC.

Some of the INC’s information alleged that Saddam was rebuilding his nuclear weapons program, which was destroyed by U.N. inspectors after the 1991 Gulf War, and was stockpiling banned chemical and biological weapons, according to the letter.