Douglas Feith, under secretary of defence for policy, plans to step down before the summer, Donald Rumsfeld, defence secretary, said on Wednesday.

Mr Feith cut a controversial figure in Washington. His efforts to build a parallel intelligence gathering unit in the Pentagon, which critics say cherry-picked information to make the case for war, infuriated the Central Intelligence Agency. One former senior administration official said the White House had been wanting to oust Mr Feith for months but the Pentagon “had been digging their heels in”.