MSN Home   |   My MSN   |   Hotmail   |   Search   |   Shopping   |   Money   |   People & Chat  
MSN.com
[ W e b M D ] [ W e b M D ]
 
MSNBC.com
Home page




Tenet takes blame for uranium claim
Video
CIA director in cross hairs over statement helping justify war against Iraq
July 11 - The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee accused CIA Director George Tenet of trying to discredit President Bush, while other officials said the agency informed the White House long ago. NBC’s Andrea Mitchell reports.

NBC, MSNBC AND NEWS SERVICES
WASHINGTON, July 11 —  CIA Director George Tenet said Friday that he was responsible for President Bush’s false allegation in his State of the Union address that Baghdad was trying to buy uranium in Africa, a key part of Bush’s argument for military action in Iraq.

   
E-mail This     Print This Complete Story
 

     
•  Post-war U.S. deaths
•  Rebuilding Iraq
•  Iraq's would-be leaders
•  Iraq: Relief groups
•  Road to Baghdad
•  Past U.S. occupations
•  Special Report: Occupational hazards
•  Facts: Iraq's oil
•  FAQ: Saddam
•  More Iraq interactives
•  Complete coverage: After Saddam


       THE WHITE HOUSE has mounted a spirited defense of Bush’s accusation that Baghdad sought uranium from an African later identified as Niger, even though it subsequently acknowledged this week that making the claim was a mistake.
       National security adviser Condoleezza Rice and other officials asserted this week that the president’s statement was justified at the time because the CIA cleared the address in its entirety, including the uranium claim. They said the CIA never told the White House that the claim was suspicious.
       But U.S. officials told NBC News’ Andrea Mitchell that Tenet himself advised Rice’s top deputy, Steven Hadley, to remove a reference to the uranium report from a speech Bush delivered Oct. 7 in Cincinnati, establishing that the nation’s top intelligence officials suspected that the allegation was false more than three months before they approved Bush’s repeating it in his nationally televised address on Jan. 28.
       The Washington Post reported Friday that the CIA also told British officials about its doubts and passed word along to several U.S. agencies before the State of the Union address.
       
BRITISH REPORT AT ISSUE
       As charges of deception swirled around the White House and Democratic and Republican senators alike called for an investigation, the CIA issued a statement early Friday evening in which Tenet said he was to blame.
       Tenet acknowledged that the CIA approved the State of the Union address, including the uranium claim. “The President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound,” Tenet said. “These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President.”
President Bush remains confident in his intelligence agencies, a top adviser said. Click "Play" for more on the Iraq dispute.

       The false allegation, which Bush made to bolster his argument for military action in Iraq, was based on a British intelligence report in September that said Baghdad had “sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
       The United Nations, however, determined in February that the British report was based primarily on forged documents initially obtained by European intelligence agencies. Senior U.S. officials, meanwhile, said they concluded as long ago as early 2002 that the claim was unlikely, after a retired diplomat traveled to Niger at the CIA’s request and spoke with officials who denied having any dealings with Iraq.
       Tenet said CIA officials approved the speech because it was “factually correct” that the British report said Iraq sought uranium from Africa, without taking into account the agency’s own serious doubts that the British report was accurate.
       “This should not have been the test for clearing a Presidential address,” Tenet said. “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.”
Text of Tenet's statement

Add local news and weather to the MSNBC home page.


       
PRESSURE BUILDS ON TENET
       Tenet’s statement came at the end of a week during which the president’s top advisers blamed him for not blowing the whistle on the false uranium claim and leading senators demanded an investigation.
       Asked whether Tenet would consider resigning, CIA spokesman Mark Mansfield said Friday night, “I’ve heard no discussion along those lines.”
       Likewise, when asked whether Bush had confidence in the CIA, Rice replied, “Absolutely.”
       Speaking to reporters Friday aboard Air Force One as Bush flew from South Africa to Uganda on his tour of Africa, Rice insisted that if Tenet had any misgivings about the uranium claim, “he did not make them known” to Bush or his staff.
       “If the CIA — the director of central intelligence — had said, ‘Take this out of the speech,’ it would have been gone. We have a high standard for the president’s speeches,” she said.
       Rice acknowledged that Secretary of State Colin Powell had his own reservations about the report and chose not to mention the allegations in his presentation to the U.N. Security Council a few days later.
       Tenet’s position weakened later Friday afternoon significantly when Pat Roberts of Kansas, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, blamed him for the CIA’s “sloppy handling” of the faulty information. Roberts had not previously been a harsh critic of the agency or of Tenet.

•  Complete MSNBC coverage
•  Slideshow of postwar Iraq
•  Encarta: Detailed Iraq map
•  WashPost: Special coverage
       Roberts did not call on Tenet to resign, but he said the director had not served Bush well. As late as about 10 days before the State of the Union speech, the CIA was “still asserting that Iraq was seeking to acquire uranium from Africa and that those attempts were further evidence of [former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s] efforts to reconstitute his nuclear program,” Roberts said in a statement.
       “If the CIA had changed its position, it was incumbent on the director of central intelligence to correct the record and bring it to the immediate attention of the president. It appears that he did not,” he said.
       
CIA INVESTIGATION SOUGHT
       Democrats went further, accusing the administration of deliberately misleading the public about the need for war in Iraq. One of them, Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, introduced a bipartisan non-binding resolution Thursday night calling for an investigation. The Senate attached an amendment that would authorize such an investigation to a bill to authorize State Department spending, which the Senate could approve as early as next week.

Slide show: Iraq heats up


       “The credibility of our president is on the line, and I believe that he should move forward as quickly as possible to call for a full investigation,” Durbin said. “We should be able to point to those people responsible for putting that misleading language in the State of the Union address. They should be held accountable, and they should be dismissed.”
       Sen. Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, one of nine Democrats running for president, released a statement warning that the White House “cannot and should not play fast and loose with our intelligence information.”
       “Quite simply, we need to know what people in the administration knew about the weakness of our uranium intelligence reports and when they knew it.”
       Sens. John Kerry of Massachusetts and Bob Graham of Florida, two of Lieberman’s challengers for the Democratic nomination, made similar statements Thursday, while former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean has made the issue a centerpiece of his campaign.
       
       NBC’s Andrea Mitchell and David Gregory, MSNBC.com’s Alex Johnson, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

What's on MSNBC TV
Hardball, 7 p.m. ET
•  Is the government spending tax dollars on sex studies? The debate raging in Congress, on Hardball, Friday, 7 p.m. ET
       
       
       
 
       
   
MSNBC News Tenet takes blame for uranium claim
MSNBC News Bush team united Iraq front unravels
MSNBC News U.S. soldiers heed Iraqi warnings
MSNBC News CIA asked Britain to drop Iraq claim
MSNBC News MSNBC Cover Page

MSNBC News Tenet takes blame for uranium claim
MSNBC News Bush team united Iraq front unravels
MSNBC News Iran's president offers to resign
MSNBC News Report: N. Korea takes nuclear step
MSNBC News MSNBC Cover Page

 
     
InfocenterWrite UsNewstoolsHelpSearchMSNBC News

  SPONSORED LINKS
 
   
  MSNBC READERS' TOP 10  
 

Would you recommend this story to other readers?
not at all   1    -   2  -   3  -   4  -   5  -   6  -   7   highly

 
   
 
  Download MSN Explorer!NBC.com
  MSNBC is optimized for
Microsoft Internet Explorer
Windows Media Player
 
MSNBC Terms,
  Conditions and Privacy © 2003
   
 
Cover | News | Business | Sports | Local News | Health | Technology & Science | Living | Travel
TV News | Opinions | Weather | Comics
InfoCenter | Newsletters | Search | Help | News Tools | Jobs | Write Us | Terms & Conditions | Privacy
   
  MSN - More Useful Everyday
  MSN Home   |   My MSN   |   Hotmail   |   Search   |   Shopping   |   Money   |   People & Chat
  ©2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved. Terms of Use  Advertise  Truste Approved Privacy Statement  GetNetWise