WASHINGTON (AP) ­ National Intelligence Director Mike McConnell said Tuesday he would resign if administration officials mischaracterized or "cherry-picked" intelligence to support their own political agenda.

"If it were cherry-picked in an inappropriate way, then for me, that's a professional obligation to object, and I would submit my resignation," McConnell told reporters.

Bush administration officials have been accused of selectively releasing intelligence that supported the case for an invasion of Iraq prior to the war.

McConnell also said a new national intelligence estimate on Iran should be complete in about a month, but its key findings will not be released publicly.  He says doing so could alert Iran to its intelligence vulnerabilities.

The NIE will outline the evidence and consensus judgment of the intelligence agencies on the threat posed by Iran.  It was due last spring but was delayed by an influx of new information that raised new questions, said McConnell, the nation's top intelligence official.

"Our objective is to present the clinical evidence and let it stand on its own merits," he said.  "And then the second part is we'll provide our assessment.  That is what we are wrestling through now."

McConnell said the intelligence community learned from its flawed 2002 national intelligence estimate about Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction, and is applying new discipline in its creation of the Iran NIE.

"When I go back and look at it, I think we the community, the nation and the nation's leadership probably would have been better served if we had been insistent, absolutely insistent upon a higher level of integrity with regard to what does the clinical evidence say, long before we get to what we think about it," he said.

"We are a much better community analytically.  We learned those lessons of October 2002 very, very well.  And the quality of the output is much better in my view," he said.

McConnell also said he would attempt to prosecute anyone who leaked classified information, including findings from the Iran NIE.

The intelligence agencies have not attempted to prosecute for such leaks thus far because they fear a trial would reveal even more classified information.  That is no longer a deterrent, McConnell said.  "That's an issue we just have to be willing to accept.  So we will go down that path if we have to.  And I intend to be very aggressive about it," he said.  "I will make every effort that I can to prosecute them." Separately Tuesday, the former vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission chastised Congress for failing to exercise strong oversight over intelligence activities.

"Because you're not doing your job the country is not as safe as it ought to be," retired Rep.  Lee Hamilton, D-Ind., told the Senate Intelligence Committee.

He said intelligence agencies regularly make end runs around the intelligence oversight committees by sending their requests directly to the committees that control spending to get money with minimal congressional interference.

Hamilton, whose panel proposed a major overhaul of the intelligence agencies and their congressional overseers, said the appropriations committees are too busy to be able to make informed decisions about intelligence spending.

"They are just simply overloaded," he said.

Unless the intelligence committees get the power of the purse, the administration will continue to ignore them, Hamilton said.

Sen.  Richard Burr, R-N.C., proposed bipartisan legislation Tuesday that would give the intelligence committee the power to appropriate money for intelligence rather than just recommend how the funds should be spent.  It would cut the appropriations committee from the intelligence funding process.

The Senate rejected a similar bill in 2004 by a 74-23 vote.