FYI...the statement the MSM has been making:
On July 18, 2003, the administration, facing criticism for the intelligence used to justify the war, declassified an eight-page part of the NIE dubbed "key judgments" and conducted a lengthy background briefing with reporters to discuss it.Key judgments" is the operative word here. They were declassified by Tenet in October of 2002, six days after the NIE was complete per the following information:
On October 7, 2002 DCI Tenet sent a letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee declassifying portions of its new National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq.
More articles:
A 25-page version of the National Intelligence Estimate on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction was released in October 2002. It made clear-cut statements about Iraq's nuclear, biological and chemical weapons capabilities in two pages of "Key Judgments."The American people needed to know these reservations, and I requested that an unclassified, public version of the NIE be prepared. On Oct. 4, Tenet presented a 25-page document titled "Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction Programs." - Statement of Sen. Bob Graham (D-FL).
A copy of the Key Judgments document can be found here. Warning: .pdf file.
As usual, the MSM gets it wrong. The declassification was requested by the Dems and Tenet approved it, way before the MSM says it was done.
But there was a piece of the NIE that was declassified by the President contemporaneous with the response to Wilson's op-ed and in partial rebuttal to it - this has been extensively discussed in the Libby trial. Are they different pieces of the NIE, or what?