The officials agreed to be interviewed to counter charges that intelligence reports had exaggerated accounts of internal instability in Iran and the purported Soviet threat to lend support to the Iran initiative.

But some of this country's Western allies and the embattled Tunisian opposition say the Government has heightened a purported threat from abroad to justify its hostility to most forms of dissent at home.

However, Ostrovsky's sudden assassination cuts short his message and leaves intelligence officers within the Israeli-based Office to guess at the scope of the purported threat against their country.

The jury has not been told about the purported threats, just as it has not been told about other matters Justice Hall has deemed irrelevant or improperly prejudicial.

But the subject of purported threats did surface before the jury at one point - at least in the defense's view.

Perhaps he is referring to the purported threat that Mr. Arafat made against Mayor Elias Freij of Bethlehem.

The purported threat was published in the party daily, Kommunist, alongside a long article that charged two leaders of an independent Armenian political movement with advocating a violent uprising.

'There's Nothing to It' Colonel Milstead described an angry, fearful Mr. Mecham trying to minimize the purported threat.

All Zionist lies and exaggerations, was the conservative newspaper Kayhan's verdict on the purported nuclear threat.

Rove's "strategic communications" task force within WHIG helped write and coordinate speeches by senior Bush administration officials, emphasizing Iraq's purported nuclear threat.