Tenet Says He Warned White House About "16 Words"
By Jason Leopold and Matt Renner
t r u t h o u t Report
Sunday 29 April 2007
Ex-CIA chief says he was "in bed, asleep" during Bush' 2003 State of theUnion speech when the president claimed Iraq was attempting to obtainuranium from Niger.
George Tenet told former Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley in October 2002 that allegations about Iraq's attempt to acquire yellowcakeuranium from Niger should immediately be removed from a speech PresidentBush was to give in Cincinnati. Tenet told Hadley that the intelligence wasunreliable.
"Steve, take it out," the ex-CIA director writes in a new book, "At theCenter of the Storm," about a conversation he had with Hadley on October 5,2002, about Iraq's alleged interest in uranium. As deputy National SecurityAdviser, Hadley was also in charge of the clearance process for speechesgiven by White House officials. "The facts, I told him, were too much indoubt."
The 16 words in question, "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium fromAfrica," was cited by Bush in a January 28, 2003 State of the Union addressand was widely seen as the single most important element that helpedconvince Congress and the public to back an invasion of Iraq. However, theintelligence was wholly unreliable and based on forged documents. Tenet saysthat White House officials knew that and used the language anyway.
Following his conversation with Hadley, one of Tenet's aides sent afollow-up letter to then Deputy National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice,Hadley, and Bush's speechwriter Mike Gerson highlighting additional reasonsthe language about Iraq's purported attempts to obtain uranium from theAfrican country of Niger should not be used to try and convince Congress andthe public that Iraq was an imminent threat, Tenet wrote in the book.
"More on why we recommend removing the sentence about [Saddam's]procuring uranium oxide from Africa," Tenet wrote in the book, apparentlyquoting from a memo sent to the White House. "Three points: (1) The evidenceis weak. One of the two mines cited by the source as the location of theuranium oxide is flooded. The other mine cited by the source is under thecontrol of French authorities; (2) the procurement is not particularlysignificant to Iraq's nuclear ambitions...And (3) we have shared points oneand two with Congress, telling them the Africa story is overblown andtelling them this was one of two issues where we differed with the British."
According to Tenet's book, and previously published news reports, RobertJoseph is the official who suggested that the sixteen words about Iraq'ssupposed attempts to acquire uranium from Niger be included in the State ofthe Union Address. Joseph, formerly the director of nonproliferation at theNational Security Council, is now the under secretary of state for armscontrol - a position once held by John Bolton. Bolton is the former UnitedStates ambassador to the United Nations.
Joseph fought to have the language included despite a telephone call hereceived from Alan Foley, director of the CIA's nonproliferation,intelligence and arms control center, demanding the 16 words be taken out ofBush's speech. Joseph has said he did not recall receiving a phone call fromFoley, according to Tenet's book and a July 18, 2003 story in the WashingtonPost http://www.truthout.org/cgi-bin/artman/ exec/view.cgi/18/1372.
Foley had revealed the details of his conversation with Joseph during aclosed-door hearing before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence backin July 2003 - just two weeks after Wilson wrote an op-ed in the New YorkTimes documenting his role investigating whether Iraq tried to acquireuranium from Niger, according to the Post story and Tenet's "At the Centerof the Storm." More on the story.
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