CIA Got Uranium Reference Cut in Oct.
Why Bush Cited It In Jan. Is Unclear
By Walter Pincus and Mike Allen
Washington Post Sunday, July 13, 2003
CIA Director George J. Tenet successfully intervened with White House officials to have a reference to Iraq seeking uranium from Niger removed from a presidential speech last October, three months before a less specific reference to the same intelligence appeared in the State of the Union address, according to senior administration officials.
Tenet argued personally to White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it came from only a single source, according to one senior official. Another senior official with knowledge of the intelligence said the CIA had doubts about the accuracy of the documents underlying the allegation, which months later turned out to be forged...
Administration sources said White House officials, particularly those in the office of Vice President Cheney, insisted on including Hussein's quest for a nuclear weapon as a prominent part of their public case for war in Iraq. Cheney had made the potential threat of Hussein having a nuclear weapon a central theme of his August 2002 speeches that began the public buildup toward war with Baghdad...
By January, when conversations took place with CIA personnel over what could be in the president's State of the Union speech, White House officials again sought to use the Niger reference since it still was in the NIE.
"We followed the NIE and hoped there was more intelligence to support it," a senior administration official said yesterday. When told there was nothing new, White House officials backed off, and as a result "seeking uranium from Niger was never in drafts," he said.
washingtonpost.com
My comment: There aren't very many people who can overrule the CIA director. Especially when the topic is the reliability of a piece of intelligence data. It's a short list, of people who have that much clout. Looks like it was Cheney who insisted on including the Chad uranium story in Bush's speeach, over Tenet's repeated personal objections. Looks to me like the wrong person took the blame for it. And I'm beginning to wonder why the Brits aren't smoothing the troubled waters for Bush. |
