The Hindu : U.S. official apologises for intelligence debacle

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Jul 24, 2003

International

International

U.S. official apologises for intelligence debacle

By Sridhar Krishnaswami

Washington July 23. After three weeks of desperately looking elsewhere to pin the blame for a dubious intelligence report making it to the President's State of the Union Address this January, the White House has finally acknowledged that the Central Intelligence Agency did indeed warn on two occasions about that tainted intelligence. And the memos from the CIA was only found over the weekend

And the person taking the hit for the President's now infamous sixteen words — "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" — is the Deputy National Security Advisor, Stephen Hadley. The President is not quite happy with this failure on the part of Mr. Hadley but has supposedly turned down an offer of resignation. According to the White House Communications Director, the President has "full confidence" in his national security team.

According to Mr. Hadley the CIA had sent two memos as well as a direct call from the Head of the Agency George Tenet urging those in the White House to take out references to Iraq and uranium from Africa. Mr. Tenet successfully had the White House remove references in a speech delivered by the U.S. President, George W Bush, in Cincinatti, Ohio in October, but failed when it came time for the State of the Union message this January. "Had I done so, this would have avoided the whole current controversy" Mr. Hadley remarked.

"It is now clear to me that I failed in that responsibility", he said. he fact that Mr. Bush used a tainted intelligence report in his January 28 address to the Congress and the American people was bad enough; but senior White House officials made the matter worse by saying that officials of the CIA had cleared the final text of the President and that the agency had no objection in the particular language.

This is the first time a senior White House official has come forward to take the blame for a controversy that is simply not going away. Mr. Hadley works directly under the National Security Advisor, Condoleezza Rice, who has been in the forefront of defending the administration on Iraq and the Africa-Niger link as far as uranium is concerned. But in the last few days, the White House has been working overtime in the damage control exercises, on Capitol Hill especially.

The administration's efforts in trying to come away "clean" on this part of Iraq controversy is not paying the desired results it would seem. The Democrats who are taking on Iraq in a high profile fashion are arguing that the White House is looking for wrong answers.

"This is a familiar story from the Bush White House. It's more bureaucratic finger pointing, more failures of leadership, more passing the buck and more politics as usual", remarked one of the Democratic front runners for November 2004,Senator John Kerry of Massachussetts. Another front runner, the former Governor of Vermont, Howard Dean, has called on all those who "misled" the President "to resign immediately".

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

International