CIA approved Bush’s erroneous speech
In a strange twist to the ongoing row the CIA director George Tenet claimed his organisation had badly advised the president.
President Bush has been under fire for including in his State of the Union address allegations that Iraq
tried to buy uranium from Niger.
Uranium is a key building block in the development of nuclear weapons.
In the speech Mr Bush said the Blair Government has acquired intelligence that Saddam Hussein had tried to buy “significant quantities” of uranium from Africa.
Mr Bush says the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) “cleared” the address. But sources in the CIA had told the media that the CIA had raised their objections to the evidence.
Since that time the International Atomic Energy Agency has discredited the evidence on which the claim was based.
Backing up the US president, national security adviser Condoleezza Rice claimed Mr Bush “did not knowingly say anything that we knew to be false” and the CIA had cleared the speech “in its entirety.”
George Tenet in is statement, said: “I am responsible for the approval process in my agency,” he said in a statement.
“Legitimate” Questions linger on whether the CIA advised the White House to remove the claims before the speech was given.
But the PM’s spokesman said on Friday the British intelligence services stood by the allegations and the intelligence came from a different source from the American information.
Clearly, this is embarrassing for both governments. Mr Blair and Mr Bush are not off the hook following the CIA’s admission.
Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction have yet to be found. WMDs were the basis on which Mr Bush launched the US-led campaign to oust Saddam Hussein from power.
