|
Tenet denied influence from osp { February 6 2004 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1142334,00.htmlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,1142334,00.html
Tenet denies CIA exaggerated warnings on Iraq arms
US spies Agency distances itself from White House on size of threat
Julian Borger in Washington
Friday February 6, 2004
The Guardian
George Tenet, the CIA director, distanced himself from the White House and the Pentagon yesterday, pointing out that his analysts had never described the threat from Iraq as imminent.
Defending his record in a blunt speech at Georgetown University in Washington, Mr Tenet became the latest administration official to admit pre-war claims about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction were flawed, but he defended the administration against allegations that it had tried to manipulate intelligence reports to make them more alarmist.
However, in the blame game under way in Washington at the start of an election year, Mr Tenet's insistence that the CIA "never said there was an "imminent" threat in its 2002 national intelligence estimate, represented an indirect but unmistakeable signal that he would not take responsibility for the political spin put on its analysis.
In 2002, President George Bush variously described Iraq as a "unique and urgent threat", "a threat of unique urgency", and "a grave threat". Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and Donald Rumsfeld, the defence secretary, made a string of similar remarks.
Asked in May last year, more than a month after the fall of Baghdad, whether Iraq had posed an imminent threat, the White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, replied: "Absolutely".
President Bush yesterday described Saddam Hussein's Iraq as "a gathering threat" in a speech on homeland security in South Carolina, and he insisted: "Knowing what I knew then and knowing what I know today, America did the right thing in Iraq."
While being generally deferential towards President Bush, Mr Tenet made a derisive reference to a rival intelligence-gathering operation set up in the Pentagon after the September 11 attacks, known as the Office of Special Plans (OSP), but he denied it had influenced the president's decisions.
Asked about the OSP's activities, Mr Tenet said: "Everybody has different views of what the intelligence means or doesn't mean. I can tell you with certainty that the president of the United States gets his intelligence from one person and one community: me. And he has told me firmly and directly that he's wanted it straight and he's wanted it honest and he's never wanted the facts shaded."
Denying a string of reports in the press quoting unnamed intelligence officials, Mr Tenet denied CIA analysts were persuaded to make their assessments of Iraqi weapons programmes more alarmist by the White House.
He made his speech at his former university at a time when the knives are out in Washington in the wake of the Iraq intelligence debacle. Mr Tenet has come under fire from from senior Democrats - who accuse him of failing to resist political pressure and have called for his resignation - and Republicans, eager to insulate the president from blame.
|
|
