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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sully- who wrote (426904)	7/14/2003 5:21:57 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

<font color=green> Your article is interesting but dated.......here is the latest from the Telegraph. The story re. the French does not seem to have 'legs'......probably wishful thinking on the part of M16 who is under considerable heat in the UK.<font color=black> ****************************************************** telegraph.co.uk Spy chief queried Niger claim 3 months before Bush's speech By Toby Harnden in Washington (Filed: 14/07/2003) George Tenet, the Central Intelligence Agency's director, personally intervened with the White House last October to have a reference to Saddam Hussein seeking uranium from Niger excised from a speech by President Bush, it emerged yesterday. The disclosure added weight to suspicions that some of Mr Bush's senior aides were overly eager to include the claim, which the White House now says should not have been made, in his State of the Union speech three months later. Concerns: Tenet Mr Tenet was the most isolated official in Washington yesterday as Mr Bush returned from his tour of Africa to face intensifying controversy over the Niger claim.** The storm over the short passage continued to rage despite a statement from Mr Tenet, the only member of Mr Bush's cabinet to have been appointed to his post under President Bill Clinton, accepting full responsibility for the error. Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush's national security adviser, said Mr Tenet had expressed concerns about a draft speech in October because the Niger claim was based on a single intelligence source whereas by January additional sources, most notably from MI6, had buttressed the case. "We have never said that the British report was wrong," she said. Ms Rice reiterated that the White House saw no need for Mr Tenet to resign. "The President has confidence in George Tenet," she told CNN. "This was a mistake." Mr Tenet said on Friday that when Mr Bush had told the world that "the British Government has learnt that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa", he was speaking erroneously because of a CIA failure. But there was no hiding the fact that Mr Bush has been deeply embarrassed by the uranium passage. A Newsweek poll yesterday found that 38 per cent of Americans believed that the Bush administration had deliberately misled the public. Fifty-five per cent said they approved of the way that Mr Bush was doing his job, down 16 points from the day Baghdad fell. There has been a chorus of calls from senior Republicans for Mr Tenet to step down. Democrats argue that he is being made a scapegoat for White House failings. Mr Tenet is regarded with deep suspicion by Republicans. A former Democratic operative on Capitol Hill, many conservatives regard him as a person who does not believe in Mr Bush's agenda and presents himself as supportive while undermining the President. In addition, he has not been forgiven for alleged mistakes made by the CIA before September 11. "There have been more failures in intelligence on the watch of George Tenet than anybody in recent history as director of the CIA," said Sen Richard Shelby, a leading Republican on the Senate intelligence committee. A rash of newspaper articles based on sources presenting the CIA in a favourable light and suggesting that Mr Tenet yielded to overwhelming political pressure from the White House has led to intense annoyance among Mr Bush's senior aides. Sen Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the committee, said there had been a "campaign of press leaks by the CIA in an effort to discredit the President".