From Observor/Guardian.co.uk, July 13, 2003:
Blair ignored CIA weapons warning
Intelligence breakdown after Britain dismissed US doubts over Iraq nuclear link to Niger

Excerpt:
…when the CIA, having seen a draft of the September dossier on Iraq’s WMD, demanded that the Niger claim be removed, it was ignored because the agency did not back it up with ‘any explanation’.

READ: The CIA didn’t tell us why we shouldn’t use it, so we decided they were wrong and we should use the Niger claim anyway, despite the fact that any rational adult would NOT do such a thing.

From Associated Press/Washington Post, July 11, 2003:
Tenet Takes Responsibility for False Iraq Intelligence
CIA Director Admits Analysts Had Doubts About Information

Excerpt:
Director George Tenet acknowledged Friday his agency wrongly allowed President Bush to tell the American people that Iraq was seeking nuclear material from Africa when analysts had doubts about the quality of the intelligence.

READ: Tenet is sacrificing himself as the voluntary fallguy - this is being done because Tenet, and the rest of the Bush 43 admin hope his “responsibility-taking” will distract from the fact that Bush knew the evidence was shady and should not be trusted but used it anyway.

From Voice Of America News, July 12, 2003:
Bush Publicly Backs CIA Director

Excerpt:
President Bush says he still has confidence in Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet, who has taken full responsibility for a false claim on Iraq’s alleged nuclear program.

During his visit to Nigeria Saturday, Mr. Bush said he “absolutely” trusts Mr. Tenet and considers the controversy over.

READ: Bush realizes Tenet’s the voluntary fallguy and in return defends him. Quid pro quo.

From the Financial Times, July 11, 2003:
Bush expresses ‘confidence’ in CIA director

Excerpt:
“The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety,” said Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush’s national security adviser. She added: “If the CIA, the director of Central Intelligence, had said ‘Take this out of the speech’, it would have been gone without question.”

Mr Tenet said the CIA had approved the speech before it was delivered, despite serious doubts within the agency about the accuracy of intelligence suggesting that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger.

READ: SEE? SEE? It’s HIS fault! Despite the fact that if Bush 43 and the rest of his team knew the evidence was a forgery it would still be up to them to do the right thing. Just because your mom doesn’t tell you to play with matches, you know not to play with matches, right? Blaming it on your mom doesn’t absolve you of any responsibility, does it?

From New York Newsday, July 13, 2003:
White House Says Case Closed

Excerpt:
The White House yesterday said that the CIA’s statement that it erred in approving inconclusive intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program cited in President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address puts the controversy to rest. But intelligence officials contend that CIA Director George Tenet’s mea culpa Friday produced instead clear evidence that the administration knowingly exaggerated data to press for war against Iraq.

Also from the same article at New York Newsday:

Excerpt:
But independent intelligence experts, who have reviewed Tenet’s carefully crafted response after Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice blamed the CIA for clearing the speech, said in interviews yesterday that it shows agency officials tried several times to warn the White House that the uranium ore claims were unsubstantiated. The CIA finally caved after the White House deleted a reference to Niger as the purported supplier of the ore, which is a precursor for nuclear bombs, and changed the amount of ore intended to be shipped. In addition, the intelligence was attributed to the British government.

Bush, in his State of the Union speech, was unequivocal in his assertion that the British government had “learned that Saddam Hussein sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

That last bit speaks for itself.

Click on the above bold headlines to read the articles, they’re all very informative one way or the other.

From The Observer/Guardian.co.uk:

Blair ignored CIA weapons warning

Intelligence breakdown after Britain dismissed US doubts over Iraq nuclear link to Niger

Kamal Ahmed, political editor
Sunday July 13, 2003
The Observer

Britain and America suffered a complete breakdown in relations over vital evidence against Saddam Hussein and weapons of mass destruction, refusing to share information and keeping each other in the dark over key elements of the case against the Iraqi dictator.

In a remarkable letter released last night, the Foreign Secretary, Jack Straw, reveals a catalogue of disputes between the two countries, lending more ammunition to critics of the war and exerting fresh pressure on the Prime Minister.

The letter to the Foreign Affairs Committee, which investigated the case for war against Iraq, reveals that Britain ignored a request from the CIA to remove claims that Saddam was trying to buy nuclear material from Niger, despite concerns that the allegations were bogus. It also details a government decision to block information going to the CIA because it was too sensitive.

As diplomatic relations between America and Britain become increasingly strained over Iraq’s WMD, Straw said that the Government had separate evidence of the Niger link, which it has not shared with the US.

The revelations come just four days before Tony Blair travels to America for his toughest visit there since he came to power in 1997. As well as WMD, the Prime Minister will also raise Britain’s ’serious concerns’ over the treatment of British citizens held at Guantanamo Bay.

Straw’s letter reveals:

� That evidence given to the CIA by the former US ambassador to Gabon, Joseph Wilson - that Niger officials had denied any link - was never shared with the British.

� That Foreign Office officials were left to read reports of Wilson’s findings in the press only days before they were raised as part of the committee’s inquiry into the war.

� That when the CIA, having seen a draft of the September dossier on Iraq’s WMD, demanded that the Niger claim be removed, it was ignored because the agency did not back it up with ‘any explanation’.

Although publicly the two governments are trying to maintain a united front, the admission two days ago by the head of the CIA, George Tenet, that President Bush should never have made the claim about the Niger connection to Iraq, has left British officials exposed.

Last night, Downing Street and Foreign Office sources said that ‘they would not blink’ over the Niger claims. One Downing Street figure said that they were based on intelligence from a third country that was reliable. ‘We are not backing down,’ he said.

Another official said that the claim was based on the ‘intelligence assessment’ made at the time, leaving the door open to a climbdown if the intelligence is found to be wrong.

‘I want to make it clear that neither I nor, to the best of my knowledge, any UK officials were aware of Ambassador Wilson’s visit until reference first appeared in the press,’ Straw said in the letter.

‘The media has reported that the CIA expressed reservations to us about this element the Niger connection of the September dossier. This is correct. However, the US comment was unsupported by explanation and UK officials were confident that the dossier’s statement was based on reliable intelligence which had not been shared with the US. A judgment was therefore made to retain it.’

Straw said that the Joint Intelligence Committee’s assessment of the Iraqi nuclear threat did not just rest on attempts to procure uranium. There was also other evidence of links between the two countries and attempts to sign export deals.

Robin Cook, the former Foreign Secretary who has become a trenchant critic of the Government’s case for war against Iraq, said that it ’stretched credibility’ to say that the Americans and the British had failed to share such basic information.

‘From all I know of the intimate relationship between the CIA and the Secret Intelligence Services, I find it hard to credit that there was such a breakdown of communication between them,’ Cook said.

‘It is time the Government came clean and published the evidence. The longer it delays, the greater the suspicion will become that it didn’t really believe it itself.

‘There is one simple question it must answer. Why did its evidence of the uranium deal not convince the CIA? If it was not good enough to be in the President’s address, it was not good enough to go in the Prime Minister’s dossier.’

Yesterday, in another damaging broadside, Richard Butler, who was executive chairman of the United Nations Special Commission to Iraq from 1997 to 1999, said that anyone who had claimed that there was a link between Niger and Iraq should resign.

Referring to Australian politicians who had made similar claims, only to withdraw them and apologise later, Butler said: ‘In the justification for the war, these claims were false and known to be false.

‘A Minister who misleads Parliament must accept responsibility for it and resign. Ministers must be held responsible, not public servants.’

Tenet Takes Responsibility for False Iraq Intelligence

CIA Director Admits Analysts Had Doubts About Information
By John Solomon
Associated Press Writer
Friday, July 11, 2003; 6:53 PM

WASHINGTON (AP) - CIA Director George Tenet acknowledged Friday his agency wrongly allowed President Bush to tell the American people that Iraq was seeking nuclear material from Africa when analysts had doubts about the quality of the intelligence.

“These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president,” Tenet said in a statement released after Bush and his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, blamed the miscue on the CIA and members of Congress called for someone to be held accountable.

“This was a mistake,” the director’s statement said.

Tenet said the responsibility for vetting the allegations included in Bush’s State of the Union address about Iraqi efforts to get uranium from Africa beloing to the CIA and ultimately with himself.

“Let me be clear about several things right up front,” he said. “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 CIA officials reviewed portions of the draft speech and raised some concerns with national security aides at the White House that prompted changes in language concerning allegations that Iraq sought to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger. But he said the CIA officials failed to stop the remark from being uttered despite the doubts about its validity.

“Officials who were reviewing the draft remarks on uranium raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues,” Tenet said. “Some of the language was changed. From what we know now, agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa.”

“This should not have been the test for clearing a presidential address,” the statement continued. “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.”

Tenet’s two-page statement came at the end of a tumultous 24 hours in which reports surfaced suggesting the CIA had raised concerns about the nature of the African allegations before the president made his speech.

That prompted Bush and his Rice to take issue. On a trip in Africa, they said Tenet’s agency approved the language in the speech and never raised objections to them.

Members of Congress called on the CIA to be held accountable. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, R-Kansas, said Tenet was ultimately responsible for the mistake.

“The director of central intelligence is the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters,” Roberts said. “He should have told the president. He failed. He failed to do so,” Roberts said.

Tenet said there were “legitimate questions” about the CIA’s conduct and he sought in his statement explain his agency’s role in the matter.

Although the CIA did not learn until well after the president’s speech in January that some documents obtained by British intelligence that formed the basis of the Iraq-Niger uranium allegations were forged, CIA officials recognized at the beginning that the allegation was based on “fragmentary intelligence gathered in late 2001 and early 2002,” the director said.

A former diplomat was sent by the CIA to the region to check on the allegations and reported back that one of the Nigerian officials he met “stated that he was unaware of any contract being signed between Niger and rogue states for the sale of uranium during his tenure in office,” Tenet said.

“The same former official also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss ‘expanding commercial relations’ between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales,” Tenet said.

The diplomat sent to the region has alleged he believed Vice President Dick Cheney’s office was apprised of the findings of his trip. But Tenet stated that the CIA “did not brief it to the president, vice president or other senior administration officials.”

Tenet said when British officials in fall 2002 discussed making the Niger information public, his agency expressed their reservations to the British about the quality of the intelligence.

A CIA report that came out in October 2002 mentioned the allegations but did not give them full credence, stating “we cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore.” In addition, the report noted that State Department intelligence analysts found the allegations “highly dubious.”

Because of the doubts, Tenet said he never included the allegations in his own congressional tetsimonies or public statements about Iraqi efforts to obtain weapons of mass destruction.

� 2003 The Associated Press

Bush Publicly Backs CIA Director

VOA News
12 Jul 2003, 23:08 UTC
President Bush says he still has confidence in Central Intelligence Agency director George Tenet, who has taken full responsibility for a false claim on Iraq’s alleged nuclear program.

During his visit to Nigeria Saturday, Mr. Bush said he “absolutely” trusts Mr. Tenet and considers the controversy over.

At issue is a sentence in the President’s State of the Union address in January that Iraq had tried to buy nuclear material (uranium) from Africa.

Mr. Tenet on Friday said his agency was responsible for approving the now discredited claim. He said President Bush had every reason to believe the information, which came from British intelligence sources, was true.

In London Saturday, British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw defended the information, saying the claim was based on intelligence not shared with the United States.

Some members of the U.S. Congress are calling for a joint bipartisan inquiry into the matter. Critics of the war in Iraq and many Democratic presidential candidates say the incident adds to concerns the Bush administration may have overstated the threat posed by Saddam Hussein to justify launching the war.

Some information for this report provided by AP and AFP.

Bush expresses ‘confidence’ in CIA director

By Edward Alden in Washington and FT reporters
Published: July 11 2003 20:13 | Last Updated: July 12 2003 18:38

President George W. Bush, on a visit to Nigeria on Saturday, expressed his ‘confidence’ in George Tenet, Central Intelligence Agency director, a day after the CIA took responsibility for faulty prewar intelligence on Iraq.

The CIA on Friday took responsibility, saying it should never have allowed Mr Bush to claim Saddam Hussein had attempted to buy uranium from Africa.

Mr Bush, said on Saturday that he now considered the controversy closed.

The admission by Mr Tenet came late on Friday after Mr Bush attempted to absolve himself and White House officials of blame in the growing controversy, saying the CIA had “cleared” the claim he made in his January State of the Union address.

Mr Tenet said the CIA had approved the language used by Mr Bush. “This was a mistake. These 16 words should never have been included in the text.”

The White House this week admitted that the claim was based on “bogus” evidence.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, the Democratic presidential contender who backed the Iraq war, on Friday invoked a Watergate-era question: “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.”

But both the White House and the CIA agreed on Friday that the buck stopped with Mr Tenet.

“The CIA cleared the speech in its entirety,” said Condoleezza Rice, Mr Bush’s national security adviser. She added: “If the CIA, the director of Central Intelligence, had said ‘Take this out of the speech’, it would have been gone without question.”

Mr Tenet said the CIA had approved the speech before it was delivered, despite serious doubts within the agency about the accuracy of intelligence suggesting that Iraq had tried to buy uranium from the African nation of Niger.

But the controversy could still open a rift between the White House and Mr Tenet, who has been one of the president’s most trusted advisers since the September 11 terrorist attacks.

Mr Tenet faced criticism on Friday from Republican Pat Roberts, the Senate intelligence committee chairman. “I am very disturbed by what appears to be extremely sloppy handling of the issue from the outset by the CIA,” he said. If Mr Tenet had had any doubts about the intelligence, “he should have told the president and it appears that he failed to do so”.

CBS News reported on Thursday that the White House had ignored CIA warnings and instead chose to attribute the charges to “British intelligence”. But Ms Rice denied that, saying there was “some discussion on that specific sentence so that it reflected better what the CIA thought”.

Mr Tenet further tried to shield the White House, saying the CIA had not briefed the president, the vice president or any senior US officials on the findings of a CIA envoy sent to Niger in February 2002 to examine claims that Iraq had tried to buy large quantities of uranium. The envoy, Joseph Wison, reported that the claims were false.

Nonetheless, Mr Tenet said British intelligence officials were warned in the fall of 2002 that the CIA had doubts about claims, and discouraged the UK from going public with the information. And he said that in the CIA’s top-secret October 2002 National Intelligence Estimate (NIE), the State Department’s intelligence arm had called the claims “highly dubious”.

White House Says Case Closed

By Knut Royce
WASHINGTON BUREAU

Washington — The White House yesterday said that the CIA’s statement that it erred in approving inconclusive intelligence about Iraq’s nuclear program cited in President George W. Bush’s State of the Union address puts the controversy to rest. But intelligence officials contend that CIA Director George Tenet’s mea culpa Friday produced instead clear evidence that the administration knowingly exaggerated data to press for war against Iraq.

Hoping that Tenet’s statement would dampen the political firestorm over Bush’s claim in the January speech that Iraq had been shopping for uranium in Africa — intelligence later determined to be based largely on forged documents — White House spokesman Ari Fleischer declared, “The president is pleased that the director of central intelligence acknowledged what needed to be acknowledged. The president has moved on.”

And Bush himself, concluding a five-nation tour of Africa, told reporters yesterday that he “absolutely” maintained confidence in Tenet.

But independent intelligence experts, who have reviewed Tenet’s carefully crafted response after Bush and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice blamed the CIA for clearing the speech, said in interviews yesterday that it shows agency officials tried several times to warn the White House that the uranium ore claims were unsubstantiated. The CIA finally caved after the White House deleted a reference to Niger as the purported supplier of the ore, which is a precursor for nuclear bombs, and changed the amount of ore intended to be shipped. In addition, the intelligence was attributed to the British government.

” officials who were reviewing the draft remarks on uranium raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues,” Tenet said in his statement. “Some of the language was changed. … officials in the end concurred that the text of the speech was factually correct — i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa.”

Tenet also indicated that an October National Intelligence Estimate, which Rice confirmed served as the underpinning for many of the claims about Iraq’s weapons program, was full of warning flags. Among them, he said, was that Iraq already had a “significant 550-metric-ton uranium stockpile” — implying that cash-strapped Iraq did not have to waste funds or risk getting caught by shopping abroad. As to the credibility of the alleged Niger deal, he said that the intelligence estimate cautioned that U.S. intelligence could not confirm it.

Bush, in his State of the Union speech, was unequivocal in his assertion that the British government had “learned that Saddam Hussein sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”

W. Patrick Lang, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Mideast division, said that the CIA “fulfilled its obligation” by warning the White House that the intelligence was not supported. He said the CIA’s accession to the passage “was not in any way an endorsement. They couldn’t stop it, that’s all. What Tenet’s report says is that when they couldn’t stop it, they accepted a semantic deal over it.”

Vincent Cannistraro, who was director of intelligence operations in President Ronald Reagan’s National Security Council, said that any debate between the CIA and the National Security Council is a mismatch. “When you’re speaking for the National Security Council, you are speaking for the president,” he said. “This is not a debate among equals.”

He said that Tenet’s statement made clear to him that the White House “wanted some reference in the State of the Union address to Iraq’s nuclear weapons acquisition program and they were hell-bent to put it in.” The compromise that finally satisfied both sides to leave the reference in the speech, he said, was the attribution of the intelligence to the British. Tenet’s acceptance of fault, Cannistraro said, “will not put to rest” the debate of whether the administration exaggerated or distorted intelligence about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction program. “The issue is beginning to have resonance, and there is a lot of political heat,” he said.

Copyright � 2003, Newsday, Inc.