Sunday 29 April 2007

Ex-CIA chief says he was "in bed, asleep" during Bush's 2003 State of
the Union speech when the president claimed Iraq was attempting to
obtain uranium from Niger.
George Tenet told former Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen
Hadley in October 2002 that allegations about Iraq's attempt to acquire
yellowcake uranium from Niger should immediately be removed from a
speech President Bush was to give in Cincinnati. Tenet told Hadley that
the intelligence was unreliable.

"Steve, take it out," the ex-CIA director writes in a new book, "At
the Center of the Storm," about a conversation he had with Hadley on
October 5, 2002, about the 16 words that alleged Iraq tried to obtain
uranium from Niger. As deputy National Security Adviser, Hadley was also
in charge of the clearance process for speeches given by White House
officials. "The facts, I told him, were too much in doubt."

The 16 words in question, "the British government has learned that
Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from
Africa," was cited by Bush in a January 28, 2003 State of the Union
address and was widely seen as the single most important element that
helped convince Congress and the public to back an invasion of Iraq.
However, the intelligence was wholly unreliable and based on forged
documents. Tenet says that White House officials knew that and used the
language anyway.

Following his conversation with Hadley, one of Tenet's aides sent a
follow-up letter to then Deputy National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice, Hadley, and Bush's speechwriter Mike Gerson highlighting
additional reasons the language about Iraq's purported attempts to
obtain uranium from the African country of Niger should not be used to
try and convince Congress and the public that Iraq was an imminent
threat, Tenet wrote in the book.

"More on why we recommend removing the sentence about [Saddam's]
procuring uranium oxide from Africa," Tenet wrote in the book,
apparently quoting from a memo sent to the White House. "Three points:
(1) The evidence is weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as
the location of the uranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by
the source is under the control of French authorities; (2) the
procurement is not particularly significant to Iraq's nuclear
ambitions...And (3) we have shared points one and two with Congress,
telling them the Africa story is overblown and telling them this was one
of two issues where we differed with the British."

The revelation about the behind-the-scenes jockeying, as portrayed
by Tenet, related to the so-called 16 words has not been previously
reported. A copy of Tenet's book was purchased by a Truthout reporter at
a bookstore Saturday afternoon. The book officially goes on sale Monday.
Tenet received a $4 million advance for "At the Center of the Storm,"
according to news reports.

In the book, Tenet did not say whether he or his staff briefed a
particular member of Congress, a Congressional committee, or the full
Congress about the 16words. Still, no one in Congress has stepped up
over the past five years to say they were informed about the flawed
Niger intelligence, and if so why they allowed the story to be peddled
as fact for the past five years. To the contrary, Congressman Henry
Waxman, chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee,
has sparked renewed interest in the issue.

Waxman issued a subpoena last week for Rice in order to compel her
testimony about her role in the 16 words controversy. Specifically,
Waxman wants Rice to testify about whether she knew in advance that the
intelligence was false. Rice said she would not honor the subpoena. For
more than four years, Rice has said she could not recall receiving any
oral or written warnings from the CIA about Iraq's interest in uranium
from Niger as being unreliable. And despite previous warnings Tenet said
Rice was given, she penned an Op- Ed January 23, 2003 claiming Iraq was
actively trying "to get uranium from abroad."

Waxman has asked Tenet to testify about the Niger allegations, but
the congressman has not yet received a reply. Neither Tenet nor his
spokesman was available for comment.

Still, the written and verbal warnings Tenet had made to various
members of the administration in October 2002 and thereafter about
citing intelligence claiming Iraq was actively trying to obtain uranium
from Niger apparently fell on deaf ears. On January 28, 2003 Bush cited
the 16 words in the State of the Union. Tenet said he had no idea what
the president said that evening because he "was at home, in bed,
asleep."

"You won't find many Washington officials who will admit to not
watching the most important political speech of the year, but I was
exhausted from fifteen months of nonstop work and worry since the
tragedy of 9/11," Tenet writes in the chapter "16 words." "We had warned
the White House against using the Niger uranium reports previously but
had not done so with the State of the Union," Tenet wrote.

According to Tenet's book, and previously published news reports,
Robert Joseph is the official who suggested that the sixteen words about
Iraq's supposed attempts to acquire uranium from Niger be included in
the State of the Union Address. Joseph, formerly the director of
nonproliferation at the National Security Council, is now the under
secretary of state for arms control - a position once held by John
Bolton. Bolton is the former United States ambassador to the United
Nations.

Joseph fought to have the language included despite a telephone call
he received from Alan Foley, director of the CIA's nonproliferation,
intelligence and arms control center, demanding the 16 words be taken
out of Bush's speech. Joseph has said he did not recall receiving a
phone call from Foley, according to Tenet's book and a July 18, 2003
story in the Washington Post http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/
exec/view.cgi/18/1372.

Foley had revealed the details of his conversation with Joseph
during a closed-door hearing before the Senate Select Committee on
Intelligence back in July 2003 - just two weeks after Wilson wrote an
op-ed in the New York Times documenting his role investigating whether
Iraq tried to acquire uranium from Niger, according to the Post story
and Tenet's "At the Center of the Storm."

The Senate committee held hearings during this time to try to find
out how the administration came to rely on the Niger intelligence at a
time when numerous intelligence agencies had warned top officials in the
Bush administration that it was unreliable.

According to the report in the Washington Post, Foley said he had
spoken to Joseph a day or two before President Bush's January 28, 2003,
State of the Union address and told Joseph that detailed references to
Iraq and Niger should be excluded from the final draft. Foley told
committee members that Joseph had agreed to water down the language and
would instead, he told Foley, attribute the intelligence to the British,
which is exactly how Bush's speech was worded.

Tenet wrote that he believes the administration was excited about
the prospect of removing Saddam Hussein from power and ignored his
previous warnings about the bogus intelligence in order to win support
for the war.

"The vision of a despot like Saddam getting his hands on nuclear
weapons was galvanizing" and "provided an irresistible image for
speechwriters, spokesmen, and politicians to seize on," Tenet wrote.

Still, Tenet says when the furor surrounding the 16 words reached a
boiling point in July 2003 he "decided to stand up and take the hit."

"Obviously, the process for vetting the speech at the Agency had
broken down," Tenet wrote. "We had warned the White House about the lack
of reliability of the assertion when we had gotten them to remove
similar language from the president's October [2002] Cincinnati speech
and we should have gotten that language out of the [State of the Union]
as well."

Tenet wrote in his book that when it came time to issue a mea culpa
for allowing Bush to use the 16 words in the State of the Union, White
House officials held a background briefing for the media and placed most
of the blame for the intelligence gaffe on the CIA. At that time, July
18, 2003, one of the officials at the briefing, later identified as I.
Lewis "Scooter" Libby, who was recently convicted of perjury and
obstruction of justice for his role in the leak of covert CIA operative
Valerie Plame Wilson, released a portion of the highly classified
National Intelligence Estimate which attempted to provide further
credibility to the uranium claims - even though the intelligence it was
based upon was exposed as forgeries.

The briefing was sparked by an Op-Ed written by former Ambassador
Joseph Wilson two weeks prior in which he accused the administration of
twisting the Niger intelligence to build a case for war. Wilson had been
the special envoy who traveled to Niger in February 2002 at the behest
of the CIA to investigate the uranium claims. He reported back to the
CIA that the allegations were baseless.

Tenet wrote that the intent of the White House's background briefing
"was obvious.... They wanted to demonstrate that the intelligence
community had given the administration and Congress every reason to
believe that Saddam had a robust WMD program that was growing in
seriousness every day. The briefers were questioned about press accounts
saying that the White House had taken references to Niger out of the
Cincinnati speech at the CIA's request. Why then did they insert them
again in the State of the Union?" Tenet wrote that the White House
officials had told the media that the language pertaining to Niger
omitted from the Cincinnati speech was dramatically different than the
Niger claims that ended up in the State of the Union.

"That simply wasn't so," Tenet wrote. "It was clear that the entire
briefing was intended to convince the press corps that the White House
staff was an innocent victim of bad work by the intelligence community."