A rchive Date
[ 12-07-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ U.S ]
|
[http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/07/11/133293-ap.html
White House blames CIA for nuke claim
By BETH GORHAM
Fri, July 11, 2003
WASHINGTON (CP) - U.S. President George W. Bush pointed the finger at intelligence officials Friday, blaming them for a bogus line in his state of the union speech that suggested an imminent nuclear threat from Iraq.
CIA Director George Tenet said Friday his agency wrongly allowed Bush to tell Americans that Iraq was seeking nuclear material from Africa when analysts had doubts about the quality of the intelligence.
Still, with critics howling about massive expenses for 145,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq on dangerous post-war duty with no end in sight, Bush's seemingly invulnerable anti-terrorism agenda suffered some major blows this week.
"I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services," Bush said in Africa during mounting controversy at home.
Bush's national security adviser Condoleezza Rice went further, saying the CIA approved the Jan. 28 speech and that if Tenet had any misgivings about that sentence "he did not make them known" to Bush or his staff.
However, several U.S. networks reported that CIA officials who saw a draft of Bush's speech questioned whether his statement was too strong.
Tenet said the responsibility for vetting the allegations included in Bush's State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to obtain uranium from Africa rests with the CIA and ultimately with the director.
"Let me be clear about several things right up front," he said.
"First, CIA approved the president's State of the Union address before it was delivered. Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency. And third, the president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound."
Tenet said CIA officials reviewed portions of the draft speech and raised some concerns with national-security aides at the White House that prompted changes in language concerning allegations that Iraq sought to buy uranium from the African country Niger. But he said the CIA officials failed to stop the remark from being uttered despite the doubts about its validity.
"Officials who were reviewing the draft remarks on uranium raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues," Tenet said.
"Some of the language was changed. From what we know now, agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa."
"This should not have been the test for clearing a presidential address," the statement continued.
"This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed."
Members of Congress called on the CIA to be held accountable. Senate intelligence committee chairman Pat Roberts, a Kansas Republican, said Tenet was ultimately responsible for the mistake.
"The director of central intelligence is the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters," Roberts said.
"He should have told the president. He failed."
"He failed to do so," Roberts said.
Tenet said there were "legitimate questions" about the CIA's conduct and he sought in his statement to explain his agency's role in the matter.
Although the CIA did not learn until well after the president's speech in January that some documents obtained by British intelligence that formed the basis of the Iraq-Niger uranium allegations were forged, CIA officials recognized at the beginning the allegation was based on "fragmentary intelligence gathered in late 2001 and early 2002," the director said.
A former diplomat was sent by the CIA to the region to check on the allegations and reported back that one of the officials he met "stated that he was unaware of any contract being signed between Niger and rogue states for the sale of uranium during his tenure in office," Tenet said.
The diplomat sent to the region has alleged he believed Vice-President Dick Cheney's office was apprised of the findings of his trip. But Tenet stated the CIA "did not brief it to the president, vice-president or other senior administration officials."
Tenet said when British officials in fall 2002 discussed making the Niger information public, his agency expressed their reservations to the British about the quality of the intelligence.
A CIA report that came out in October 2002 mentioned the allegations but did not give them full credence, stating "we cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore."
In addition, the report noted U.S. State Department intelligence analysts found the allegations "highly dubious."
Because of the doubts, Tenet said he never included the allegations in his own congressional testimonies or public statements about Iraqi efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction.
The White House admitted Monday that there was no sound basis for Bush's claim the British had discovered Iraq was trying to buy nuclear material in Africa, saying it never should have been included in the pivotal speech.
"It's beginning to sound a bit like Watergate," said Democratic presidential candidate Howard Dean.
"We need to find out what the president knew and when he knew it."
Until now, Democrats have been reticent to hit Bush too hard on Iraq. But they became more vocal as the week progressed and details surfaced that intelligence officials had expressed doubts for months about the British report the president cited to back his claims.
By Friday, Senator Joe Biden said he doesn't believe the Bush administration.
"I find it hard to believe that the intelligence community . . . had not made somebody aware, unless they had not seen the speech. I just don't understand it."
Just a week after Bush's speech, Secretary of State Colin Powell dropped the line from his address to the United Nations outlining Washington's case for invading Iraq.
The State Department's intelligence division considered the nuclear allegation dubious, and that was in an intelligence assessment given to Bush, said Rice.
Powell insisted there was no effort to "mislead or deceive the American people."
But many Democrats are now saying they won't know that without a full, public investigation and not just closed-door hearings of the Senate intelligence committee that started last month.
"Consider what's at stake here," Democrat Senator Richard Durbin said Friday.
"It's the credibility of the White House on issues of gravest importance involving national security. The president was rationalizing and justifying the need for war, for American families to risk the lives of their children in uniform."
"Now we have called into question whether someone at the highest level of the White House distorted information from the intelligence agencies which led to the president's statement."
Even Republican Senator John McCain said Friday the issue warrants action.
"We need to have an investigation, find out who was responsible and fire 'em," said McCain. "That's not going to change the fact the war was justified."
Bush may have trouble convincing Americans of that if attacks against U.S. soldiers in Iraq keep growing.
Gen. Tommy Franks, the war's former commander, told a panel this week that U.S. troops may have to remain in Iraq for four more years, provoking renewed demands that Bush try harder to convince other countries to help.
The cost is ballooning too. Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld estimated the monthly pricetag at $3.9 billion US, a figure that shocked many on Capitol Hill. And there is still no sign of those weapons of mass destruction.
In a surprising statement, Rumsfeld said this week that new information about Iraq's weapons didn't prompt the war anyway, but that officials saw "existing evidence" in a new light after the attacks on America Sept. 11, 2001.
One intelligence expert said the Bush administration has a "top-down" use of intelligence where they look for data that supports the answers they want.
"The principal reason that Americans did not understand the nature of the Iraqi threat, in my view, was the failure of senior administration officials to speak honestly about what the intelligence showed," said Gregory Thielmann, a former State Department official who worked in the intelligence bureau.
Joseph Cirincione, at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, said a thorough review of assessments of Iraq's weapons capabilities shows the Bush administration's public claims "went far beyond" what the studies showed.
"All the 'could-be' and 'may have' and 'possibly' were dropped from the public statements, and they became 'is,' 'has' and 'definitely'," he said.
"So, the administration officials repeatedly went beyond the existing intelligence assessments and in some of these cases this included the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, who should have known better."
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
|