Bush: CIA OK'd Iraq Speech (Untrue, before and after his speech the CIA said it was bogus. Bush is acting as though he can just make up anything and people will accept it...maybe they DID but they aren't now)
WASHINGTON, July 11, 2003
(CBS/AP) What CIA analysts said and when they said it were matters of dispute Friday as the Bush administration denied that it made an allegation against Iraq against the intelligence agency's advice.
Senior administration officials told CBS News that the president's State of the Union speech claimed that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from Africa, despite initial objections from the CIA. That claim has since been withdrawn because it was apparently based on faulty evidence.
President Bush, whose tour of Africa has been dogged by questions about Iraq's alleged weapons, said Friday that the Jan. 28 speech had been checked by spy agencies.
"I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services," the president said as he visited Uganda.
Earlier, in a rare press conference aboard Air Force One, the president's national security adviser said the CIA had vetted the speech.
If CIA Director George Tenet had any misgivings about that sentence in the president's speech, "he did not make them known" to Mr. Bush or his staff, said Condoleezza Rice.
However, there are indications of misgivings both before and after the State of the Union.
A newspaper reports the CIA voiced doubts about the Africa claim to Britain as early as September.
And Secretary of State Colin Powell did not repeat the claim in his Feb. 5 testimony to the Security Council.
Rice acknowledged that the State Department's intelligence division considered the uranium-purchasing allegations dubious, and this was noted in a footnote in an intelligence assessment given to Mr. Bush.
The White House withdrew the uranium claim on Monday. The evidence in question referred to a supposed deal between Iraq and Niger, though neither the president nor the British identified that country in public.
The president's statement was incorrect because it was based on forged documents, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday.
The White House retraction followed assertions by an envoy sent by the CIA to Africa to investigate the allegations. The envoy, Joseph Wilson, has written that he quickly found the story was no true and told the vice president's office. Fleischer said Monday that Cheney did not request information about Wilson's mission to Niger.
But CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin reports that before the State of the Union speech was delivered, CIA officials warned members of the president's National Security Council staff that the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa.
According to sources, White House officials responded that a September dossier issued by the British government contained the unequivocal assertion: "Iraq has…sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
As long as the statement was attributed to British intelligence, the White House officials argued, it would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections.
In his State of the Union speech, the president ultimately said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
But The Washington Post is reporting that the CIA's doubts were so strong it even tried to persuade Britain from including the uranium allegation in a September dossier.
Rice said the CIA "cleared the speech," and raised only one objection to the sentence involving an allegation that Iraq was trying to obtain yellow cake uranium, she said. "Some specifics about amount and place were taken out," Rice said.
"With the changes in that sentence, the speech was cleared," she said. "The agency did not say they wanted that sentence out."
"If the CIA — the director of central intelligence — had said 'Take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone," Rice said. "We have a high standard for the president's speeches."
According to Rice, the CIA had mentioned the claim that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium from Africa in a classified National Intelligence Assessment made periodically to the president.
Rice also said that the State Department's intelligence division considered the uranium-purchasing allegations dubious, and this was also noted in a footnote in an intelligence assessment given to Mr. Bush.
Rice acknowledged that Powell had reservations about the report and chose not to mention the allegations in his Iraq presentation to the Security Council a few days later.
"I didn't use the uranium at that point because I didn't think that was sufficiently strong as evidence to present before the world," Powell said Thursday.
The White House retraction of the uranium claim is the only time it has admitted a flaw in its case for war with Iraq, in which Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction was a leading rationale.
No weapons have been found yet, spurring allegations the prewar intelligence was exaggerated. Three Congressional committees are reviewing the prewar claims, but Democrats are calling for a public inquiry.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., a presidential candidate, said Friday that the uranium dispute needs "full and thorough investigation."
He called on an independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks to look at the matter, as well as the larger question of the quality of the nation's intelligence.
The administration says the Niger claim was only one part of the argument for military action, and only a portion of the evidence that Saddam was pursuing nuclear weapons.
©MMIII, CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report. |
