IraqGate: Fights between CIA and White House

posted by ewing2001 on Friday July 11, @02:20AM

CIA 'cleared' Iraq uranium claim

CNN Breaking: Tenet Says CIA Made A Mistake on Intelligence

BBC -Friday, 11 July, 2003

A rift has opened up between the White House and the CIA over a claim that Iraq sought to acquire nuclear material from Africa. US President George W Bush's national security adviser says the CIA approved a speech Mr Bush made in January that included the allegation that Iraq had been trying to buy uranium from Niger.

Advertisement

"The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety," Condoleezza Rice told reporters on Air Force One, en route from South Africa to Uganda.

US media reported on Thursday that the White House had ignored a CIA request to remove the accusation from Mr Bush's State of the Union address on 28 January.

Earlier this week, the White House acknowledged for the first time that the claim about Iraq seeking to buy uranium from Niger might be wrong.

But Ms Rice insisted the president "did not knowingly say anything that we knew to be false".

In his January address, Mr Bush said: "The British Government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

If anyone had any doubts about the uranium claim, "those doubts were not communicated to the president," Ms Rice told reporters.

However, she said the CIA did make some changes to that particular sentence in the speech.

"Some specifics about amount and place were taken out," she said.

"With the changes in that sentence, the speech was cleared."

The uranium claim was undermined by the International Atomic Energy Agency, which said it was based on forged documents.

But a spokesman for UK Prime Minister Tony Blair said on Friday that the British intelligence services stood by the uranium claim, and that Britain had separate information from that of the US.

AP/Boston Globe

Bush and Rice say CIA cleared Bush's State of the Union speech

"...Much of the criticism has focused on Bush's contention that Saddam Hussein's government had chemical and biological weapons and was working to build more of them and develop nuclear bombs. No such weapons have been found in Iraq.

Critics also have attacked the administration's characterizations of the current outlook in Iraq, where the war's former commander, Gen. Tommy Franks, told a House panel Thursday that U.S. troops may have to remain in Iraq for four years.

U.S. officials have said the doubts about the uranium allegations date back to early 2002, when a retired diplomat asked by the CIA to investigate the reports went to Niger and spoke with officials who denied having any uranium dealings with Iraq.

Though the U.S. officials expressed their doubts to the British, the British included their information in a public statement on Sept. 24, 2002, citing intelligence sources, that said Iraq ''sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.''

About a month after Bush's speech, the United Nations determined the uranium reports were based primarily on forged documents initially obtained by European intelligence agencies..."

CIA Asked Britain To Drop Iraq Claim

WP -July 11, 2003

The CIA tried unsuccessfully in early September 2002 to persuade the British government to drop from an official intelligence paper a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa that President Bush included in his State of the Union address four months later, senior Bush administration officials said yesterday.

Furor Over CIA Role In WMD Claim

CBS News -July 11, 2003

"...the CIA reportedly did make its objections known to Britain as early as September. And Secretary of State Colin Powell did not repeat the claim in his Feb. 5 testimony to the Security Council.

The president's statement was incorrect because it was based on forged documents, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said Monday.

Before the speech was delivered, the portions dealing with Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction were checked with the CIA for accuracy, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.

CIA officials warned members of the president’s National Security Council staff the intelligence was not good enough to make the flat statement Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa, sources tell CBS News.

The "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False" Headline That Changed on CBSNews.com

Buzzflash -July 11, 2003

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

In case you were wondering about the change in the CBSNews.com headline from "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False" to "Bush Knew Iraq Info Was Dubious," none other than the right wing bad boy and charter member of the vast right wing conspiracy, Brent Bozell, takes note of the original CBS headline that ran until this morning...

<  Bush Knew Iraq Info Was False | Boston Globe: Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz should be fired  >