CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility Friday for U.S. President George W. Bush’s January State of the Union address, which contained the now-discredited claim that Iraq had sought to obtain uranium from Africa (see GSN, July 11).

“First, CIA approved the president’s State of the Union address before it was delivered.  Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my agency.  And third, the president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound,” Tenet said in a press statement.  “These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president,” he said (CIA release, July 11).

White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said Saturday that the decision for Tenet to release his statement was a mutual one between the CIA director and the White House.

“Discussions with Director Tenet about the statement have been going on for days,” Fleischer said.  “The discussion was, the CIA needs to explain what its role was in this,” he said.

Bush said Saturday that he “absolutely” had faith in both Tenet and the CIA itself.

“I’ve got confidence in George Tenet and in the men and women who work at the CIA,” Bush said during a press conference in Abuja, Nigeria. 

Tenet’s statement should close the issue of the Africa claim, according to Fleischer.

“The president is pleased that the director of central intelligence acknowledged what needed to be acknowledged,” Fleischer said.  “The president has moved on.  And I think, frankly, much of the country has moved on as well,” he said (Richard Stevenson, New York Times, July 13).

The Washington Post reported yesterday that Tenet was able to persuade White House officials to remove a claim that Iraq was attempting to purchase uranium from Niger from a Bush speech in October.

The White House wanted to include in the speech an allegation that Iraq had attempted to purchase 500 tons of uranium oxide, an assertion that was contained in a national intelligence estimate in late September 2002, according to the Post.  Tenet personally told White House officials, including deputy national security adviser Stephen Hadley, that the allegation should not be used because it only came from one source, according to a senior official.  The CIA also doubted the accuracy of the documents that served as the basis of the allegation, which were later revealed to have been forgeries, a second senior official said.

The late September national intelligence estimate was the basis for Bush’s claim in his State of the Union address that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Africa, the Post reported.

A former White House official said that there had been information “available within the system” that should have been able to keep the Africa claim out of the State of the Union address.

“The information was available within the system that should have caught this kind of big mistake,” the former Bush administration official said.  “The question is how the management of the system, and the process that supported it, allowed this kind of misinformation to be used and embarrass the president,” the former official said (Pincus/Allen, Washington Post, July 13).

In his statement Friday, Tenet defended the text of Bush’s State of the Union address as being “factually correct.”

“From what we know now, agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct — i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa,” Tenet said.  “This should not have been the test for clearing a presidential address.  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,” he added (CIA release).

Yesterday, two senior Bush administration officials also defended the text of the State of the Union address as being factually correct.

“The statement that he [Bush] made was indeed accurate,” U.S. national security adviser Condoleezza Rice said on Fox News Sunday.  “The British government did say that,” she said.

Appearing on NBC’s Meet the Press, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld also said that Bush’s address was correct, adding that London has continued to stand by its assertion.

“It turns out that it’s technically correct what the president said, that the U.K. does — did say that — and still says that,” Rumsfeld said.  “They haven’t changed their mind, the United Kingdom intelligence people,” he said (James Risen, New York Times, July 14).

Rumsfeld also said yesterday that Vice President Dick Cheney misspoke when he said on Meet the Press that Iraq had reconstituted nuclear weapons, saying that the vice president had meant to say Iraq had rebuilt its nuclear weapons program.

“In no instance did anyone in the administration that I know of suggested that they had a nuclear weapon,” Rumsfeld said.  “We did believe, and do believe, that they had reconstituted their program, and at some point would have … a nuclear weapon — if left alone,” he said (U.S. Defense Department release, July 13).

British Intelligence Report

Meanwhile, France and Italy are believed to have provided the United Kingdom with information that was used to support the British claim that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium from Africa, according to the Financial Times.

The information used to support the claim came from two Western European countries and not from the documents that were found to have been forgeries, according to senior British government sources.  The United Kingdom did not share the intelligence it received with the United States because it “was not ours to share,” an official said (Huband/Adams, Financial Times, July 13).

The French secret service, the DGSE, is believed to have refused to allow the British MI6 intelligence service to provide the United States with “credible” intelligence that showed that Iraq had attempted to purchase uranium ore from Niger, U.S. intelligence sources said yesterday.

MI6 had more than one “different and credible” piece of intelligence that showed that Iraq had attempted to purchase the uranium, but because it was provided by foreign intelligence services, under rules governing cooperation, it could not be shared without the originator’s permission, British officials said.  U.S. intelligence sources believe that MI6’s information came from the DGSE because Niger is a former French colony and its uranium mines are operated by a French company, according to the London Telegraph.  In addition, France was opposed to the war on Iraq and would have been against the idea of intelligence sharing, according to U.S. sources (Michael Smith, London Telegraph, July 14).

Blix Criticizes British 45-Minute Claim

The British government made “a fundamental mistake” in claiming that the Iraqi military could have deployed biological and chemical weapons within 45 minutes of receiving an order to do so, former U.N. chief weapons inspector Hans Blix said.

“I think that was a fundamental mistake,” Blix said of the 45-minute claim, which was included in a British dossier on Iraq’s WMD programs released in September 2002.  “I don’t know exactly how they calculated this figure of 45 minutes in the dossier of September last year.  That seems pretty far off the mark to me,” he said.

Blix also said that the United Kingdom had “overinterpreted the intelligence they had.”

British Prime Minister Tony Blair, however, was “strongly convinced” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, Blix said.

“I talked to him several times, and I never had any other impression,” Blix said.  “In fact, I was the one who was skeptical and critical, and said that I didn’t think that the evidence was so strong, and said so to the [U.N.] Security Council,” he said (Irving/Whitaker, London Independent, July 13).

Iraqi Militia Claims Al-Qaeda Connection

A group calling itself the “Islamic Armed Group of al-Qaeda, Fallujah branch” has said that it, and not former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, is behind the series of attacks on U.S. troops in Iraq, according to a videotape aired on the al-Arabiya satellite television network yesterday.

On the videotape, a distorted male voice tells U.S. troops to “leave Iraq’s territories and to live up to their promises.”  The voice also takes credit for the recent attacks on U.S. troops.

“By God, not one of (Saddam’s) followers carried out any of the Jihadi (holy war) operations like he claims,” the voice said.

The voice also warned that the “coming days … will show you the strike that will break America’s back” (Associated Press/Yahoo!News, July 14).

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