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ATLANTA Anti-war protesters repeatedly interrupted Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld during a speech Thursday, and a former CIA analyst accused him in a question-and-answer session of lying about Iraq prewar intelligence.

"Why did you lie to get us into a war that caused these kind of casualties and was not necessary?" asked Ray McGovern, a 27-year analyst.

"I did not lie," shot back Rumsfeld, who waved off security guards ready to remove McGovern from the hall at the Southern Center for International Studies.

Three other protesters were escorted away by security as each interrupted Rumsfeld's speech by jumping up and shouting various anti-war messages.

Interviewing McGovern on CNN later, Anderson Cooper observed that he asked questions few reporters had dared to put forward.

A partial transcript of his encounter with McGovern follows. McGovern had opened by mentioning that top CIA officials had accused Rumsfeld of manipulating the facts and misleading the public; that Rumsfeld had firmly claimed "bulletproof evidence" that linked Iraq to al-Qaeda before the war, and that he had said the he knew where WMDs were located.

Rumsfeld denied all this, but fact-checking by news outlets later, including CNN and MSNBC, showed that Rumsfeld had made the "bulletproof" statement to The New York Times and that when he appeared on ABC on March 30, 2003, he said about WMD: "We know where they are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat."

*

RUMSFELD: Well, first of all, I haven’t lied. I did not lie then. Colin Powell didn’t lie. He spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence Agency people and prepared a presentation that I know he believed was accurate, and he presented that to the United Nations. The president spent weeks and weeks with the Central Intelligence people and he went to the American people and made a presentation. iIm not in the intelligence business. They gave the world their honest opinion. It appears that there were not weapons of mass destruction there.

QUESTION: You said you knew where they were.

RUMSFELD: I did not. I said I knew where suspect sites were and –

QUESTION: You said you knew where they were-- Tikrit, Baghdad, northeast, south, west of there. Those are your words.

RUMSFELD: My words — my words were that — no, no, wait a minute, wait a minute. Let him stay one second. Just a second.

QUESTION: This is America.

RUMSFELD: You’re getting plenty of play, sir.

QUESTION: I’d just like an honest answer.

RUMSFELD: I’m giving it to you.

QUESTION: Well we’re talking about lies and your allegation there was bulletproof evidence of ties between al Qaeda and Iraq.

RUMSFELD: Zarqawi was in Baghdad during the prewar period. That is a fact.

QUESTION: Zarqawi? He was in the north of Iraq in a place where Saddam Hussein had no rule. That’s also…

RUMSFELD: He was also in Baghdad.

QUESTION: Yes, when he needed to go to the hospital.

Come on, these people aren’t idiots. They know the story.

(PROTESTER INTERRUPTS)

RUMSFELD: Let me give you an example.

It’s easy for you to make a charge, but why do you think that the men and women in uniform every day, when they came out of Kuwait and went into Iraq, put on chemical weapon protective suits? Because they liked the style?

They honestly believed that there were chemical weapons. We believed he had those weapons.

QUESTION: That’s what we call a non sequitur. It doesn’t matter what the troops believe; it matters what you believe.

MODERATOR: I think, Mr. Secretary, the debate is over. We have other questions, courtesy to the audience.