(CBS) Senior administration officials tell CBS News the
President’s mistaken claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was
included in his State of the Union address -- despite objections from the CIA.
Traveling with the president in Africa, national security adviser Condoleezza
Rice on Friday said that the CIA had cleared the reference to the attempted
uranium purchase.
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.
The White House officials responded that a paper issued by the British
government contained the unequivocal assertion: "Iraq has ... sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa." As long as the statement
was attributed to British Intelligence, the White House officials argued, it
would be factually accurate. The CIA officials dropped their objections and
that’s how it was delivered.
"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Mr. Bush said.
The statement was technically correct, since it accurately reflected the
British paper. But the bottom line is the White House knowingly included in a
presidential address information its own CIA had explicitly warned might not be
true.
Today at a press conference during the President’s trip to Africa, Secretary of
State Colin Powell portrayed it as an honest mistake.
"There was no effort or attempt on the part of the president or anyone
else in the administration to mislead or to deceive the American people,"
said Powell.
But eight days after the State of the Union, when Powell addressed the U.N., he
deliberately left out any reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from
Africa.
"I didn’t use the uranium at that point because I didn’t think that was
sufficiently strong as evidence to present before the world," Powell said.
That is exactly what CIA officials told the White House before the State of the
Union. The top CIA official, Director George Tenet, was not involved in those
discussions and apparently never warned the President he was on thin ice.
Secretary Powell said today he read the State of the Union speech before it was
delivered and understood it had been seen and cleared by the intelligence
community. But intelligence officials say the director of the CIA never saw the
final draft.
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