September 11, 2003
Guardian
CIA weapons expert to quit after uranium scandal
The chief expert on weapons of mass destruction at the CIA, which was caught up in the recent storm over the invasion of Iraq, is quitting the agency next month after 26 years.
Alan Foley, who heads the Weapons Intelligence, Non- proliferation and Arms Control Centre, became enmeshed in the row over inclusion of a bogus reference to Iraqi efforts to purchase uranium in Niger, in President George Bush's State of the Union address.
In a note to colleagues, reported in the Washington Post, he alluded to the "pressures" of recent months but denied he had been forced to leave.
US officials have said White House national security council weapons expert Bob Joseph discussed the uranium line with Mr Foley, but there were differing recollections about who said what. In one version, Joseph asked CIA's Mr Foley if it was OK to use the uranium line and cite the British as the source.
In another version, Mr Foley told Mr Joseph that the CIA had recommended the British not include the claim in their September 2002 Iraq dossier but the British included it anyway.
Washington Post, July 24, 2003
...Another potential problem for the White House is the sharp disagreement between testimony given the committee last Thursday by CIA senior analyst Alan Foley about his conversation with Robert Joseph, a National Security Council staff member, about what was to go into the State of the Union address and how Bartlett described it to reporters Tuesday.
For all the purported discipline and unity within the Bush administration, disputes among members of the national security team have been common, particularly in the run-up to the war with Iraq. Those disputes, however, generally pitted the State and Defense departments against one another, but once Bush made a decision, the combatants generally accepted that and moved on.
What is unusual about this episode is that the combatants are officials at the White House and the CIA -- and that the White House has tried without success to resolve the controversy. The biggest lesson learned so far, said one administration official, is that "you don't pick a bureaucratic fight with the CIA." To which a White House official replied, "That wasn't our intention, but that certainly has been the perception."
White House allies outside the government have expressed surprise at the administration's repeated missteps over the past two weeks, using phrases such as "stumbled," "caught flat-footed" and "can't get their story straight." Said one senior administration official, "These stories get legs when they're mishandled and this story has been badly mishandled."
Joe Lockhart, who was press secretary to President Bill Clinton, said he has been equally surprised by the way this White House has dealt with the controversy. "Their every move has resulted in people being more interested in the story rather than less interested," he said.
Mary Matalin, a former Bush White House adviser, said, "It's impossible to have a consistent message when the facts keep changing. We forsook consistency for honesty, in an effort to be as forthcoming as possible in putting out new facts as they became available."