In his January 2003 State of the Union address,
as part of his effort to make the case for invading Iraq,
President Bush infamously declared that “the British
government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought
significant quantities of uranium from Africa.” The
White House was later forced to repudiate the statement after
former Ambassador Joseph Wilson blew the whistle on the claim.
As part of an investigation into pre-war intelligence claims,
the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence asked the White
House to provide examples of times that the CIA had cleared
such uranium references for use in speeches. On January 6,
2004, then-White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales sent a letter
to Sen. John Rockefeller (D-WV) on behalf of Condoleezza Rice
that claimed the CIA had “orally cleared” the
uranium claim for two of Bush’s speeches.
But in a new memo, House Oversight Chairman Henry Waxman
(D-CA) says that he has found evidence contradicting Gonzales’
assertions:
The information the Oversight
Committee has received casts serious doubt on the veracity
of the representations that Mr. Gonzales made on behalf of
Dr. Rice. Contrary to Mr. Gonzales’s assertions, the
Committee has received evidence that the CIA objected to the
uranium claim in both speeches, resulting in its deletion
from the President’s remarks.
(ARTICLE CONTINUES BELOW)
When White House speechwriters tried to put the uranium claim
into Bush’s Sept. 12, 2002 speech to UN, the CIA rejected
it because it was “not sufficiently reliable to include
it in the speech”:
During an interview with the
Committee, John Gibson, who served as Director of Speechwriting
for Foreign Policy at the National Security Council (NSC),
stated that he tried to insert the uranium claim into this
speech at the request of Michael Gerson, chief White House
speechwriter, and Robert Joseph, the Senior Director for Proliferation
Strategy, Counterproliferation, and Homeland Defense at the
NSC. According to Mr. Gibson, the CIA rejected the uranium
claim because it was “not sufficiently reliable to include
it in the speech.” Mr. Gibson stated that the CIA “didn’t
give that blessing,” the “CIA was not willing
to clear that language,” and “[a]t the end of
the day, they did not clear it.”
When National Security Council staff refused to take the
uranium claim out of Bush’s Sept. 26, 2002 speech, Jami
Miscik, the Deputy Director of Intelligence at the CIA, called
Rice personally to request it be removed:
According to Ms. Miscik, the
CIA’s reasons for rejecting the uranium claim “had
been conveyed to the NSC counterparts” before the call,
and Dr. Rice was “getting on the phone call with that
information.” Ms. Miscik told Dr. Rice personally that
the CIA was “recommending that it be taken out.”
She also said “[i]t turned out to be a relatively short
phone call” because “we both knew what the issues
were and therefore were able to get to a very easy resolution
of it.”
According to Waxman, Rice refused to testify to the Committee
about the pre-war claims, so he is unable to say “how
she would explain the seeming contradictions between her statements
and those of Mr. Gonzales on her behalf and the statements
made to the Committee bv senior CIA and NSC officials.”
