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Posted on 07/11/2003 2:13:51 PM PDT by JustPiper
ENTEBBE, Uganda - President Bush (news - web sites) and his national security adviser on Friday put responsibility squarely on the CIA (news - web sites) for the president's erroneous claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq (news - web sites) tried to acquire nuclear material from Africa.
"I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services," Bush told reporters in Uganda.
National security adviser Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) was more direct, saying, "The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety."
If CIA Director George Tenet had concerns about the information, "these doubts were not communicated to the president," Rice said.
The deepening controversy has undermined administration efforts to quiet doubts about the president's justifications for going to war. The United States said military action was justified, in part, because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, but no such weapons have been found.
The concerted White House offensive, following comments on Thursday from Secretary of State Colin Powell (news - web sites), raised new questions about the ability of Tenet, a holdover from the Clinton administration, to survive the controversy.
Rice said Tenet "absolutely" had the president's confidence.
Still, she expressed dismay that information on alleged attempts by Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) to buy uranium "yellowcake" from Niger — intelligence that turned out to be based on forged documents — had found its way into a major presidential speech after being vetted by the CIA. Yellowcake is a powered form of uranium used in making nuclear weapons.
"If the director of central intelligence had said, `take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone — without question," Rice said.
Rice talked with Tenet by phone shortly before meeting with reporters to tell him what she planned to say, according to several administration officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity. These officials said Tenet was sent a final version of the speech before it was delivered.
A spokesman for the CIA was unavailable for comment and did not return repeated calls from The Associated Press.
Tenet's tenure had seemed shaky at the outset of the Bush administration, but by all accounts he ingratiated himself to the president through loyalty, hard work, and by personally giving the president daily intelligence briefings. Still, administration officials privately suggested that the current controversy might be hard for Tenet to overcome.
Tenet has been further isolated by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said Thursday that he had reservations about the information used in the speech and thus did not use it Feb. 5 in a speech to the U.N. Security Council in which he offered a detailed catalogue of alleged Iraqi transgressions.
Anxious to dispense with the controversy, which has dogged the president on his Africa trip, the White House took unusual steps Friday to make Rice available for questions. She spent nearly an hour going over allegations with reporters on Air Force One. And Bush responded to a reporter's shouted question at a picture-taking session even after his Ugandan host said no questions would be allowed.
Asked how an erroneous piece of intelligence got into his speech and whether someone should be held accountable, Bush responded:
"I gave a speech to the nation that was cleared by the intelligence services. And it was a speech that detailed to the American people the dangers posed by the Saddam Hussein regime. And my government took the appropriate response to those dangers. And as a result, the world is going to be more secure and more peaceful."
Earlier this week, the White House acknowledged that it was a mistake for the information to be included in the speech.The administration's strong rebuttal on Friday came after several news organizations, including the AP, reported that U.S. intelligence officials had expressed doubts — before and after Bush claimed in January that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa — over the basis for such a claim.
Bush in his State of the Union address had cited a British intelligence report as the basis for the information.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair (news - web sites), who plans to meet with Bush at the White House on Thursday, also has faced intense questioning for his claims that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction.
American intelligence officials told British officials their doubts about the purported Africa-Iraq uranium connection cited by Bush in his speech, some U.S. officials said.
But Rice said the CIA itself, as part of its regular classified National Intelligence Estimate to Bush, asserted that Iraq was "seeking yellowcake in Africa."
When the text of the speech was sent to the CIA for vetting, Rice said the agency raised only one objection to the sentence involving the Africa-Iraq-uranium allegation. "Some specifics about amount and place were taken out," Rice said, adding that "with the changes in that sentence, the speech was cleared."
As the controversy continued this week, Democratic candidates for president have maintained a steady drumbeat questioning Bush's veracity.
On Friday, Sen. John Kerry (news, bio, voting record), D-Mass., said the ongoing controversy only strengthens the case for a full, honest accounting of any intelligence failures.
"The continued finger-pointing, charge-countercharge, and bureaucratic warfare within the administration do nothing to make this country safer and will simply further erode the confidence of the American public and our allies around the world," he said.
Why is what I ask?! Tenet was crooked under Bubba. I knew from day one , I shook my head, saying "W" you 'will' reqret this!
I feel like George is a mole who stayed to undermine our President and make it so bad, Hitlery would stand a chance in 2004'. When I first heard about the uranium, I told my daughter, please don't let this be the CIA. He needs to take the fall simply because I will always believe he did this deliberately!!!
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The president did not knowingly say anything that we knew to be false. ... We wouldn't put anything ... knowingly in the speech that was false. -- Condoleezza Rice, U.S. National Security adviser
(CNN) -- In a harsh rebuke of the CIA, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Friday criticized the agency's "extremely sloppy handling" of some prewar intelligence on Iraq and accused the agency of leaking information that reflected badly on President Bush.
"What now concerns me most ... is what appears to be a campaign of press leaks by the CIA in an effort to discredit the president," U.S. Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, chairman of the panel, said in a written statement.
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