Great article from Jason:
Four years ago this month, President Bush, in his State of the Union address, said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."
To further demonstrate just how far the White House was willing to go to suppress any new information about the infamous sixteen words from becoming public, look no further than At the Center of the Storm, a book written by former CIA director George Tenet. The book was due to be published in two weeks, but according to an email exchange with a senior editor at Harper Collins, Tenet's publisher, the book has been "postponed indefinitely" at the request of the White House because of details Tenet included in his manuscript about how the sixteen words ended up in Bush's speech. The editor, who requested anonymity, would not divulge details of Tenet's narrative, but he said information about the sixteen words contradicts the White House's official statements and Tenet's own July 2003 mea culpa accepting responsibility for allowing the president to cite the sixteen words as fact when he [Tenet] knew the intelligence was unreliable.
The Harper Collins editor said in the email that it was this description of Tenet's book that gave the White House pause:
In this autobiography, Tenet offers his candid views on the agency's mistakes when it came to gathering intelligence on weapons of mass destruction, as well as previously unreported encounters and meetings with members of the Bush administration ... his warnings to White House officials in the spring and summer of 2001, and the plan for a response laid down just six days after the attack. He explains the land-mine missteps made along the way, and the role of his own statements. While recounting the headline events, Tenet also offers his thoughts on the future of the CIA and its role in international relations and foreign policy decisions.
Tenet provides fresh insights and background, including a privileged account of how the famous "sixteen words" made it into the President's State of the Union speech, the real context of his own now-famous "slam-dunk" comment, and the CIA's views of the rise of an Iraqi insurgency.
If Tenet's book lives up to the publisher's hype, it could certainly change the narrative about the Iraq War, and may even shed additional light on the events that led Libby and other officials to leak Plame's status with the CIA.
In his column, Kristoff had accused Cheney of allowing the truth about the Niger documents the administration used to build a case for war to go "missing in action." The failure of US armed forces to find any WMDs in Iraq in two months following the start of the war had been blamed on Cheney.
What in the previous months had been a request to gather information that could be used to discredit Wilson turned into a full-scale effort involving the Office of the Vice President, the National Security Council, and the State Department to find out how Wilson came to be chosen to investigate the uranium allegations involving Iraq and Niger.
Cheney was personally involved in this aspect of the information-gathering process as well, visiting CIA headquarters to inquire about Wilson. Hadley also raised questions about Wilson during this month with the State Department officials; he asked that information regarding Wilson's trip to Niger be sent to his attention at the National Security Council.
Witnesses testified before Fitzgerald's grand jury that Joseph and Hadley had worked directly with senior officials from vice president Cheney's office - including Libby, Hannah and Rove - during June 2003 to coordinate a response to reporters who had phoned the vice president's office and the NSC about the administration's use of the Niger documents.
On September 14, 2003, during an interview with Tim Russert of NBC's "Meet the Press," Cheney maintained that he didn't know Wilson or have any knowledge about his Niger trip or who was responsible for leaking his wife's name to the media. But Cheney knew Wilson well. He had spent months obsessing about him, according to court filings.
"I don't know Joe Wilson," Cheney said, in response to Russert, who had quoted Wilson as saying there was no truth to the Niger uranium claims. "I've never met Joe Wilson. And Joe Wilson - I don't know who sent Joe Wilson. He never submitted a report that I ever saw when he came back ... I don't know Mr. Wilson. I probably shouldn't judge him. I have no idea who hired him."
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/012307J.shtml
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