DawgTalkers.net Forums DawgTalk Tailgate Forum Libby becomes inmate No. 28301-016

LOL, you and Pit should make up your minds. The whole beginning of this "debate" was that I stated that Bush didn't go after Clinton with a criminal proceeding. You and Pit then countered, incorrectly, that he did. Now you both are saying that he didn't. This has nothing to do with partisanship in what I was saying. Good to see that you are saying you would commit perjury, too, though. One quick correction, Clinton was being sued and lied under oath. Let's not forget that by saying he was just being investigated for whitewater.....ironically, Clinton pardoned one of the main "fall guys" in that investigation....hmmmmm.

Yeah, Pit, you don't change your stance and flip flop and go away from the arguement when you are found to be wrong.

Sorry you don't comprehend what is typed here Coach. I'm fairly certain others do. So I'll let them read the thread and leave it at that. No DA decided to bring the case forward. And Bush is not a DA nor part of the Judicial Branch of government. Nobody here claimed Bush "attacked Clinton", Bush didn't and couldn't even run against Clinton. You'll do anything to rationalize this administration. And you do it even after they're convicted.

And your family is in law enforcement huh?

So, in SOME instances, you claim that the Bush Administration is meddling in the AG's office and knows everything that is going on. Yet NOW, when it suits you to ATTEMPT to throw personal attacks (to use your tactics I'll play the martyr for your attack on me), you claim that Bush has nothing to do with prosecuting attorneys. Yeah, Pit, you don't flip flop whenever it suits your twisted arguements. Thanks for YET AGAIN proving it with this post.

I'm saying "nobody knows" because they hide information in a veil of secrecy. So who knows.

But according to previous statements from you,according to your line of thinking................................

"If they have nothing to hide,what are they worried about"?

If they have nothing to hide,why all the secrecy? If they have nothing to hide,why ignore subpeonas?

LOL, once again, deflect from the debate so you can still try to be right even when caught in your flip flopping. Classic, Pit...won't answer the question when he's caught in his sad tactics and tries to deflect and change the subject so he can still try to be right. Keep em coming, Pit. You continue to prove what all the posters keep saying about your tactics.

Libby pays $250,000 fine

Sentence commutation leaves status of probation period in question

By Joel Seidman
Producer
NBC News
Updated: 2 hours, 59 minutes ago
WASHINGTON - Convicted former top White House aide I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby has paid his fine of $250,400.

The U.S. District Court posted the canceled check on the docket this afternoon.

A source close to Libby tells NBC the "Scooter Libby Defense Trust," which has raised more than $5 million dollars in donations, is still paying out legal fees. The source emphasized that the fine imposed by U.S. District Judge Reggie Walton was paid entirely from Libby's personal funds.

In commuting Libby's sentence, President Bush said that the former vice presidential aide had suffered enough and that the 30-month prison term ordered up by a federal judge was "excessive."

The president said he respects the jury verdict convicting Libby of four felony charges of perjury and obstruction of the CIA leak investigation.

And the White House still wanted Libby to pay a fine of $250,000 and a $400 special assessment. But now there is a question on whether he will have to serve two years of supervised probation imposed by the trial judge.

The federal judge who presided over the Libby trial said that with the commutation of the prison sentence, the probation period may be called into question.

Judge Walton, who was appointed by President Bush, said Tuesday that federal law "does not appear to contemplate a situation in which a defendant may be placed under supervised release without first completing a term of incarceration."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19617734/

Oh what a tangled web we weave.

I gotta say I'm getting tired of your debates with Coach. You two can go back and forth for pages on end without saying a thing.

The only thing I have to say on this subject is your logic is way outta wack. When it came to impeachment Clinton would have been found guilty and removed in a heartbeat if the polls weren't so much in his favor. No DA would have taken on Clinton after the stink that was made around his wrongdoings. He was guilty as hell but that doesn't mean he would have been convicted.

The fact that the justice department went after Libby the way they did does mean something. The fact that we are in a republican administration and the these charges weren't quashed should say something to you. Coach may blindly follow those he supports but I think you blindly go after those you don't.

LOL...my final comments until Pit once again attacks. He tells another slew of lies about how he is the victim and I attacked poor old Pit. When Pit calls someone on their tactics, he claims to be asking for clarification. When someone else does, it's out of "hatred" and calls it personal insults. Then he lies and says he resorts to "their" tactics, when in fact, as others have PMd me because they noticed, I was using HIS tactics agaisnt him. His hypocrisy is laughable. He wasnt accountability from everyone but himself for their actions. Notice he's put me on ignore, but just like last time, will reply to debates I have with others with his snide insults and trying to get into the debate.

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It could all be settled very simply and easily if only the White House would open itself up to accountability on these issues. But they simply refuse to do so. I feel it makes most Americans simply wonder "Why won't they"?

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If they did, I think they would probably be the first time in history. Whether or not we like it is one thing but our system is so out of wack I don't think it is likely to happen now or in the future. Not everything is done for sinister reasons. The fact is IMO precidents come into play. No administration wants to open themselves up to that.

I have not followed this case much at all so any opinion of mine would be without merit. I do think more may have covered up.

I also think this all got started because of the CIA and their back stabbing of the administration. It is no coincedence that the sent Wilson over there purposely to discredit the administration. The fact that his wife was no longer in the field and took part in all of this is no reason to out her but I can understand why it happened.

Give it a rest already. Pit has so many posts on here that it is easy for us to come to a conclusion without your help.

Well, maybe you enjoy when someone lies about you, but I don't, so I said what I had to say.

Sad thing is pit, the last time you claimed to put coach on ignore, you still replied to every post he made. How's that work, anyway? I've never used the "ignore" feature, but my assumption is you don't see what they post. So, if that is the case (and if I'm wrong forgive me cause I've never used it), but if that is the case, why were you replying to his every post AFTER you put him on ignore?

Methinks that perhaps you wanted others to believe you put him on ignore, but you couldn't resist replying to him.

You call him out for twisting, yet you do much worse - not only do you twist what others say, you change your stance/view depending on who you are replying to.

You are so much more concerned with being "right, politically neutral (that's a laugh), and "open minded"..............it gets boorish after a while. But, pay me no nevermind - you go right ahead and make your self look worse and worse. I don't really care, and most on here don't either.

You can see that the person posted, but the content of every post is

*You are ignoring this user*

..or something quite similar.

Presidential commutations and pardons are built into the Constitution and have been abused since the Whiskey Rebellion. We find ourselves outraged by politicians rewarding bad guys when it is politically expedient.

Big R or Big D by their name...no damn difference.

DC, getting back to your thoughts on this and the Dems using it politically. I doubt very seriously that they will say a whole lot on the issue since their last sitting president pardoned Susan McDougal who was directly involved in a scandal he was being investigated for. If they did, they open themselves up to a counter attack on the same issue, ESPECIALLY if Bilary gets the nomination.

Gee, I'm suprised you missed this...

Plame's Input Is Cited on Niger Mission
Report Disputes Wilson's Claims on Trip, Wife's Role
By Susan Schmidt
Washington Post Staff Writer
Saturday, July 10, 2004; Page A09


Former ambassador Joseph C. Wilson IV, dispatched by the CIA in February 2002 to investigate reports that Iraq sought to reconstitute its nuclear weapons program with uranium from Africa, was specifically recommended for the mission by his wife, a CIA employee, contrary to what he has said publicly.



Wilson last year launched a public firestorm with his accusations that the administration had manipulated intelligence to build a case for war. He has said that his trip to Niger should have laid to rest any notion that Iraq sought uranium there and has said his findings were ignored by the White House.

Wilson's assertions -- both about what he found in Niger and what the Bush administration did with the information -- were undermined yesterday in a bipartisan Senate intelligence committee report.

The panel found that Wilson's report, rather than debunking intelligence about purported uranium sales to Iraq, as he has said, bolstered the case for most intelligence analysts. And contrary to Wilson's assertions and even the government's previous statements, the CIA did not tell the White House it had qualms about the reliability of the Africa intelligence that made its way into 16 fateful words in President Bush's January 2003 State of the Union address.

Yesterday's report said that whether Iraq sought to buy lightly enriched "yellowcake" uranium from Niger is one of the few bits of prewar intelligence that remains an open question. Much of the rest of the intelligence suggesting a buildup of weapons of mass destruction was unfounded, the report said.

The report turns a harsh spotlight on what Wilson has said about his role in gathering prewar intelligence, most pointedly by asserting that his wife, CIA employee Valerie Plame, recommended him.

Plame's role could be significant in an ongoing investigation into whether a crime was committed when her name and employment were disclosed to reporters last summer.

Administration officials told columnist Robert D. Novak then that Wilson, a partisan critic of Bush's foreign policy, was sent to Niger at the suggestion of Plame, who worked in the nonproliferation unit at CIA. The disclosure of Plame's identity, which was classified, led to an investigation into who leaked her name.

The report may bolster the rationale that administration officials provided the information not to intentionally expose an undercover CIA employee, but to call into question Wilson's bona fides as an investigator into trafficking of weapons of mass destruction. To charge anyone with a crime, prosecutors need evidence that exposure of a covert officer was intentional.

The report states that a CIA official told the Senate committee that Plame "offered up" Wilson's name for the Niger trip, then on Feb. 12, 2002, sent a memo to a deputy chief in the CIA's Directorate of Operations saying her husband "has good relations with both the PM [prime minister] and the former Minister of Mines (not to mention lots of French contacts), both of whom could possibly shed light on this sort of activity." The next day, the operations official cabled an overseas officer seeking concurrence with the idea of sending Wilson, the report said.

Wilson has asserted that his wife was not involved in the decision to send him to Niger.

"Valerie had nothing to do with the matter," Wilson wrote in a memoir published this year. "She definitely had not proposed that I make the trip."

Wilson stood by his assertion in an interview yesterday, saying Plame was not the person who made the decision to send him. Of her memo, he said: "I don't see it as a recommendation to send me."

The report said Plame told committee staffers that she relayed the CIA's request to her husband, saying, "there's this crazy report" about a purported deal for Niger to sell uranium to Iraq. The committee found Wilson had made an earlier trip to Niger in 1999 for the CIA, also at his wife's suggestion.

The report also said Wilson provided misleading information to The Washington Post last June. He said then that he concluded the Niger intelligence was based on documents that had clearly been forged because "the dates were wrong and the names were wrong."

"Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the 'dates were wrong and the names were wrong' when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports," the Senate panel said. Wilson told the panel he may have been confused and may have "misspoken" to reporters. The documents -- purported sales agreements between Niger and Iraq -- were not in U.S. hands until eight months after Wilson made his trip to Niger.

Wilson's reports to the CIA added to the evidence that Iraq may have tried to buy uranium in Niger, although officials at the State Department remained highly skeptical, the report said.

Wilson said that a former prime minister of Niger, Ibrahim Assane Mayaki, was unaware of any sales contract with Iraq, but said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him, insisting that he meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss "expanding commercial relations" between Niger and Iraq -- which Mayaki interpreted to mean they wanted to discuss yellowcake sales. A report CIA officials drafted after debriefing Wilson said that "although the meeting took place, Mayaki let the matter drop due to UN sanctions on Iraq."

According to the former Niger mining minister, Wilson told his CIA contacts, Iraq tried to buy 400 tons of uranium in 1998.

Still, it was the CIA that bore the brunt of the criticism of the Niger intelligence. The panel found that the CIA has not fully investigated possible efforts by Iraq to buy uranium in Niger to this day, citing reports from a foreign service and the U.S. Navy about uranium from Niger destined for Iraq and stored in a warehouse in Benin.

The agency did not examine forged documents that have been widely cited as a reason to dismiss the purported effort by Iraq until months after it obtained them. The panel said it still has "not published an assessment to clarify or correct its position on whether or not Iraq was trying to purchase uranium from Africa."


© 2004 The Washington Post Company

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A39834-2004Jul9.html

Libby's plight began with Joe Wilson's lies

The Mobile Resistar Oct 29th 2005

THERE CAN be no doubt that the criminal charges leveled against former vice presidential chief of staff I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby Jr. are serious. Whether or not Mr. Libby is found guilty, the shame of it all is that the alleged crimes grew from such a petty political dispute.

One fact relevant to the dispute was that Valerie Plame, the wife of a former ambassador named Joseph Wilson, worked at the CIA. Mr. Libby and others in the administration apparently considered Mr. Wilson to be a two-bit political hack. Mr. Libby was correct about that. But, apparently in a bid to score a political point against Mr. Wilson, Mr. Libby discussed with some reporters the fact of Ms. Plame's employment by the CIA.

The fact of her CIA employment was classified. The Justice Department began an investigation to see if Mr. Libby or others had violated any law governing such classified information. The laws at issue are complicated and confusing.

Mr. Libby may have been trying to protect himself against those potential criminal charges. Or he may not have wanted the public to know the vice president's office played such hardball political games. For whatever reason he might have done it, however, the grand jury alleges that Mr. Libby lied about the timing and nature of his discussions with the reporters.

But the grand jury did not charge him or anybody else with a crime for the disclosures themselves. As has been the case with so many other political scandals, the cover-up itself seems to be the crime -- even if what was covered up was not itself illegal.

Perjury is a serious crime. If he is found guilty of the charges, Mr. Libby deserves to face the legal punishments that will ensue.

We shall see.

What we likely also will see, but what prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald himself said is not at issue in this case, is a tale spun by Bush administration opponents to the effect that Mr. Libby's alleged crime is part and parcel of the supposed dishonesty of the whole administration policy toward Iraq.

Whatever one thinks about administration policy in Iraq, the biggest dishonesties in the original episode involving Mr. Wilson and Ms. Plame came not from the White House, but from Mr. Wilson.

Mr. Wilson's mission, arranged by his wife, was to investigate stories that Iraq had tried to buy "yellowcake" uranium from Niger. Mr. Wilson is a liberal activist, and Ms. Plame was a CIA employee whose division scoffed at the stories. Naturally, Mr. Wilson concluded that the stories weren't true.

But his conclusions weren't necessarily those of the CIA officials who debriefed him. They found that some of the facts he reported -- ones he apparently thought unimportant -- actually bolstered the likelihood that Iraq had indeed tried to buy uranium.

More than a year later, a big brouhaha erupted about the yellowcake stories. Mr. Wilson began talking to reporters, making speeches and writing a New York Times column, all saying the administration had known the story about Niger was a "flat-out lie."

The problem was that the administration's story was that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." (Note: The British said it was from Africa in general, not necessarily Nigeria. To this very day, the British government stands by those stories.)

The administration's 16-word statement was true. And other CIA analysts, using the information from Mr. Wilson himself and from other sources, considered the British intelligence reliable. That's why the CIA again and again approved those 16 words.

Mr. Wilson did not stop there, though. He had learned that eight months after his trip, some documents about the alleged yellowcake transactions had shown up -- but that they had proved to be forgeries. He told three different reporters that he personally had checked out the documents and found them to be forgeries. He said these forged documents were part of the basis of his conclusion, upon returning from his mission, that the yellowcake story was false. He said the administration deliberately ignored his report.

Mr. Wilson lied. The documents did not even appear until eight months after his mission ended. (He later admitted as much.) They formed no basis for his own report. And the documents had nothing to do with the claim made by the British government and repeated by President Bush.

Later, after Ms. Plame's identity was disclosed by columnist Robert Novak, Mr. Wilson told reporters that his wife had nothing to do with getting him assigned to the trip -- that he was sent at the instigation of the vice president. This was also false: Ms. Plame personally suggested her husband's name and pushed it within the CIA.

Mr. Libby was incensed. He began telling reporters that Mr. Wilson had lied about the forgeries, lied about the vice president's supposed involvement, and (later) lied about Ms. Plame's involvement.

In the course of those discussions, Mr. Libby discussed Ms. Plame's identity. Now he is accused of lying under oath about whether he discussed it.

Mr. Wilson was clever. He lied only to the press and public, not under oath. If Mr. Libby lied under oath, he will pay the price. What is often true in sports is also true in politics: In a brawl, the only infraction penalized is the last punch thrown, because it's the only one seen by the official.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1511459/posts

Here's one of the things I don't understand. The Justice Department gathered intel from not only the CIA,but from British Intelligance as well and advised Bush NOT to include that in his State of the Union address months before he did. So it wasn't based "solely" on Wilsons findings,but a combination of things including the findings of The International Atomic Energy Agency But from everything I can gather,Bush knew before he said it,that there was great doubt in what he presented as fact to our nation about Iraq having yellowcake in its posession or the validity of those documents Wison claimed to be forged. Wilson was hardly alone in his findings and assertions. And we have been there for over four years with no evidence to substantiate the assertion that there is or ever was yellowcake in Iraq or sold to Iraq.

So while I can't and won't say that Wilsons report and or beliefs weren't politicly motivated,I can say that after over four years,his assertions appear correct. But do I think Wilson is "squeeky clean". Nah.


CIA Asked Britain To Drop Iraq Claim
Advice on Alleged Uranium Buy Was Refused
By Walter Pincus
The Washington Post

Friday 11 July 2003

The CIA tried unsuccessfully in early September 2002 to persuade the British government to drop from an official intelligence paper a reference to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa that President Bush included in his State of the Union address four months later, senior Bush administration officials said yesterday.

"We consulted about the paper and recommended against using that material," a senior administration official familiar with the intelligence program said. The British government rejected the U.S. suggestion, saying it had separate intelligence unavailable to the United States.

At that time, the CIA was completing its own classified national intelligence estimate on Iraq's chemical, biological and nuclear weapons programs. Although the CIA paper mentioned alleged Iraqi attempts to buy uranium from three African countries, it warned that State Department analysts were questioning its accuracy when it came to Niger and that CIA personnel considered reports on other African countries to be "sketchy," the official said. The CIA paper's summary conclusions about whether Iraq was restarting its nuclear weapons program did not include references to Iraqi attempts to buy uranium in Africa.

The latest disclosures further illustrate the lack of confidence expressed by the U.S. intelligence community in the months leading up to Bush's speech about allegations of Iraqi efforts to buy uranium in Africa. Even so, Bush used the charge -- citing British intelligence -- in the Jan. 28 address as part of his effort to convince Congress and the American people that Iraq had a program to build weapons of mass destruction and posed a serious threat.

The White House on Monday acknowledged that Bush's uranium claim was based on faulty intelligence and should not have been included in the speech, further stoking a controversy over the administration's handling of prewar intelligence. Democratic lawmakers yesterday called for public hearings, while the Democratic National Committee opened an advertising campaign to encourage people to sign petitions calling for an independent commission.

At a news conference in Botswana, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell defended the president's use of the intelligence. "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," Powell said. "There was sufficient evidence floating around at that time that such a statement was not totally outrageous or not to be believed or not to be appropriately used."

Only eight days after the State of the Union speech, however, Powell himself did not repeat the uranium allegation when he presented the administration's case against Iraq to the U.N. Security Council. "After further analysis, looking at other estimates we had and other information that was coming in, it turned out that the basis upon which that statement was made didn't hold up, and we said so, and we've acknowledged it, and we've moved on," Powell told reporters in explaining his decision. Under the British formulation of events, Powell would not necessarily know all of the basis underlying their statement.

The U.S. and British governments, whose intelligence agencies have a long history of close relations, have sought to maintain a united front despite suggestions in Congress and Parliament this week that both governments may have exaggerated the evidence against Iraq to support the case for war. But as the controversy escalates, the interests of the two allies have begun to diverge.

The Bush administration effectively has discarded the uranium allegation. The government of British Prime Minister Tony Blair, however, has stood behind its September conclusion that Iraq "sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa" for a possible nuclear weapons program despite the release of a report by a British parliamentary commission this week that challenged the allegation and, in effect, Bush's decision to include it in his address.

British officials have insisted that the Bush administration has never been provided with the intelligence that was the basis for the charge included in London's September intelligence dossier.

National Security Council guidance distributed within the U.S. government yesterday acknowledged that "no intelligence has been provided to the United States [by Britain] on this subject," sources said. The British intelligence was provided by an unidentified "third country," a diplomatic source said.

Meanwhile, administration officials shed some new light yesterday on the process that led to the inclusion of the uranium-purchase allegation in the president's State of the Union speech in which Bush said that "the British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

The early drafts of the speech did not include Britain as the source of the information, according to administration officials. A senior official denied that Britain was inserted in the final draft because the CIA and others in the U.S. intelligence community were concerned that the charge could not be supported. The British addition was made only "because they were the first to say it publicly in their September paper," the official said.

Powell noted yesterday that the British government continues to believe in the information it produced. "I would not dispute them or disagree with them or say they're wrong and we're right, because intelligence is of that nature," Powell said. "Some people have more sources . . . on a particular issue. Some people have greater confidence in their analysis."

Administration officials preparing drafts of the speech also wanted to name Niger as the focus of Iraqi attempts to buy uranium, according to a senior administration official who has looked into the process. But when CIA officials said there were problems with the Niger information, the more vague reference to Africa was substituted for Niger. The State Department, in its talking points on Iraq, had made a similar change the month before the speech.

The International Atomic Energy Agency told the U.N. Security Council in March that the Niger claim had been based on forged documents, a conclusion the Bush administration did not dispute at the time.

http://www.truthout.org/docs_03/071203B.shtml

BTW- P

It's hard to call the CIA and Wilson as bias when you use a source like this...........................

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http://www.freerepublic.com/home.htm

I mean it's not like this site is exactly "free of bias" in their reporting. Or do you suggest otherwise?

I never claimed they were. The article is from a newspaper not affiliated with them.

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The Mobile Resistar Oct 29th 2005

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I would have posted the source to the paper but you had to sign up to view it. Your artilce isn't much more credible is it?

LMFAO!!!! You question the credibility and bias of Pdawgs' link when in the post just after his you linked truthout.org? That's nothing but a Bush bashing site. The winner of their annual award was Cindy Sheehan.

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Here's one of the things I don't understand. The Justice Department gathered intel from not only the CIA,but from British Intelligance as well and advised Bush NOT to include that in his State of the Union address months before he did. So it wasn't based "solely" on Wilsons findings,but a combination of things including the findings of The International Atomic Energy Agency But from everything I can gather,Bush knew before he said it,that there was great doubt in what he presented as fact to our nation about Iraq having yellowcake in its posession or the validity of those documents Wison claimed to be forged. Wilson was hardly alone in his findings and assertions. And we have been there for over four years with no evidence to substantiate the assertion that there is or ever was yellowcake in Iraq or sold to Iraq.

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George Tenet's statement..

STATEMENT OF

GEORGE J. TENET
Director of Central Intelligence

U.S. CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY

July 11, 2003



Legitimate questions have arisen about how remarks on alleged Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa made it into the President’s State of the Union speech. Let me be clear about several things right up front. First, CIA approved the President’s State of the Union address before it was delivered. Second, I am responsible for the approval process in my Agency. And third, the President had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound. These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President.

For perspective, a little history is in order.

There was fragmentary intelligence gathered in late 2001 and early 2002 on the allegations of Saddam’s efforts to obtain additional raw uranium from Africa, beyond the 550 metric tons already in Iraq. In an effort to inquire about certain reports involving Niger, CIA’s counter-proliferation experts, on their own initiative, asked an individual with ties to the region to make a visit to see what he could learn. He reported back to us that one of the former Nigerien officials he met stated that he was unaware of any contract being signed between Niger and rogue states for the sale of uranium during his tenure in office. The same former official also said that in June 1999 a businessman approached him and insisted that the former official meet with an Iraqi delegation to discuss “expanding commercial relations” between Iraq and Niger. The former official interpreted the overture as an attempt to discuss uranium sales. The former officials also offered details regarding Niger’s processes for monitoring and transporting uranium that suggested it would be very unlikely that material could be illicitly diverted. There was no mention in the report of forged documents -- or any suggestion of the existence of documents at all.

Because this report, in our view, did not resolve whether Iraq was or was not seeking uranium from abroad, it was given a normal and wide distribution, but we did not brief it to the President, Vice-President or other senior Administration officials. We also had to consider that the former Nigerien officials knew that what they were saying would reach the U.S. government and that this might have influenced what they said.

In the fall of 2002, my Deputy and I briefed hundreds of members of Congress on Iraq. We did not brief the uranium acquisition story.

Also in the fall of 2002, our British colleagues told us they were planning to publish an unclassified dossier that mentioned reports of Iraqi attempts to obtain uranium in Africa. Because we viewed the reporting on such acquisition attempts to be inconclusive, we expressed reservations about its inclusion but our colleagues said they were confident in their reports and left it in their document.

In September and October 2002 before Senate Committees, senior intelligence officials in response to questions told members of Congress that we differed with the British dossier on the reliability of the uranium reporting.

In October, the Intelligence Community (IC) produced a classified, 90 page National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iraq’s WMD programs. There is a lengthy section in which most agencies of the Intelligence Community judged that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program. Let me emphasize, the NIE’s Key Judgments cited six reasons for this assessment; the African uranium issue was not one of them.

But in the interest of completeness, the report contained three paragraphs that discuss Iraq’s significant 550-metric ton uranium stockpile and how it could be diverted while under IAEA safeguard. These paragraphs also cited reports that Iraq began “vigorously trying to procure” more uranium from Niger and two other African countries, which would shorten the time Baghdad needed to produce nuclear weapons. The NIE states: “A foreign government service reported that as of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons of pure “uranium” (probably yellowcake) to Iraq. As of early 2001, Niger and Iraq reportedly were still working out the arrangements for this deal, which could be for up to 500 tons of yellowcake.” The Estimate also states: “We do not know the status of this arrangement.” With regard to reports that Iraq had sought uranium from two other countries, the Estimate says: “We cannot confirm whether Iraq succeeded in acquiring uranium ore and/or yellowcake from these sources.” Much later in the NIE text, in presenting an alternate view on another matter, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research included a sentence that states: “Finally, the claims of Iraqi pursuit of natural uranium in Africa are, in INR’s assessment, highly dubious.”

An unclassified CIA White Paper in October made no mention of the issue, again because it was not fundamental to the judgment that Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear weapons program, and because we had questions about some of the reporting. For the same reasons, the subject was not included in many public speeches, Congressional testimony and the Secretary of State’s United Nations presentation in early 2003.

The background above makes it even more troubling that the 16 words eventually made it into the State of the Union speech. This was a mistake.

Portions of the State of the Union speech draft came to the CIA for comment shortly before the speech was given. Various parts were shared with cognizant elements of the Agency for review. Although the documents related to the alleged Niger-Iraqi uranium deal had not yet been determined to be forgeries, officials who were reviewing the draft remarks on uranium raised several concerns about the fragmentary nature of the intelligence with National Security Council colleagues. Some of the language was changed. From what we know now, Agency officials in the end concurred that the text in the speech was factually correct - i.e. that the British government report said that Iraq sought uranium from Africa. This should not have been the test for clearing a Presidential address. This did not rise to the level of certainty which should be required for Presidential speeches, and CIA should have ensured that it was removed.

http://www.iraqwatch.org/government/US/CIA/us-cia-tenet-071103.htm

From the Intelligence Committee

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When the former ambassador spoke to Committee staff, his description of his findings differed from the DO intelligence report and his account of information provided to him by the CIA differed from the CIA officials' accounts in some respects. First, the former ambassador described his findings to Committee staff as more directly related to Iraq and, specifically, as refuting both the possibility that Niger could have sold uranium to Iraq and that Iraq approached Niger to purchase uranium. The intelligence report described how the structure of Niger's uranium mines would make it difficult, if not impossible, for Niger to sell uranium to rouge nations, and noted that Nigerien officials denied knowledge of any deals to sell uranium to any rogue states, but did not refute the possibility that Iraq had approached Niger to purchase uranium. Second, the former ambassador said that he discussed with his CIA contacts which names and signatures should have appeared on any documentation of a legitimate uranium transaction. In fact, the intelligence report made no mention of the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal or signatures that should have appeared on any documentation of such a deal. The only mention of Iraq in the report pertained to the meeting between the Iraqi delegation and former Prime Minister Mayaki. Third, the former ambassador noted that his CIA contacts told him there were documents pertaining to the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium transaction and that the source of the information was the intelligence service. The DO reports officer told Committee staff that he did not provide the former ambassador with any information about the source or details of the original reporting as it would have required sharing classified information and, noted that there were no "documents" circulating in the IC at the time of the former ambassador's trip, only intelligence reports from intelligence regarding an alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. Meeting notes and other correspondence show that details of the reporting were discussed at the February 19, 2002 meeting, but none of the meeting participants recall telling the former ambassador the source of the report

(U) The former ambassador also told Committee staff that he was the source of a Washington Post article ("CIA Did Not Share Doubt on Iraq Data; Bush Used Report of Uranium Bid," June 12, 2003) which said, "among the Envoy's conclusions was that the documents may have been forged because `the dates were wrong and the names were wrong." Committee staff asked how the former ambassador could have come to the conclusion that the "dates were wrong and the names were wrong" when he had never seen the CIA reports and had no knowledge of what names and dates were in the reports. The former ambassador said that he may have "misspoken" to the reporter when he said he concluded the documents were "forged." He also said he may have become confused about his own recollection after the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) reported in March 2003 that the names and dates on the documents were not correct and may have thought he had seen the names himself. The former ambassador reiterated that he had been able to collect the names of the government officials which should have been on the documents.

(U) The former ambassador told Committee staff that he had no direct knowledge of how the information he provided was handled by the CIA, but, based on his previous government experience, he believed that the report would have been distributed to the White House and that the Vice President received a direct response to his question about the possible uranium deal. He said,


"Whether or not there was a specific response to the specific question the Vice President asked I don't know for a fact, other than to know, having checked with my own memory when I was in the White House at the National Security Council . . . any time an official who is senior enough to ask that question, that official was, senior enough to have a very specific response. The question then becomes whether the response came back as a telephone call, a non-paper - in other words, talking points - or orally briefed, or a specific cable in addition to the more general report that is circulated."
( ) The CIA's DO gave the former ambassador's information a grade of "good," which means that it added to the IC's body of understanding on the issue, ( ). The possible grades are unsatisfactory, satisfactory, good, excellent, and outstanding, which, according to the Deputy Chief of CPD, are very subjective. SENTENCE DELETED The reports officer said that a "good" grade was merited because the information responded to at least some of the outstanding questions in the Intelligence Community, but did not provide substantial new information. He said he judged that the most important fact in the report was that the Nigerien officials admitted that the Iraqi delegation had traveled there in 1999, and that the Nigerien Prime Minister believed the Iraqis were interested in purchasing uranium, because this provided some confirmation of foreign government service reporting.

(U) IC analysts had a fairly consistent response to the intelligence report based on the former ambassador's trip in that no one believed it added a great deal of new information to the Iraq-Niger uranium story. An INR analyst said when he saw the report he believed that it corroborated the INR's position, but said that the "report could be read in different ways." He said the report was credible, but did not give it a lot of attention because he was busy with other things.

(U) DIA and CIA analysts said that when they saw the intelligence report they did not believe that it supplied much new information and did not think that it clarified the story on the alleged Iraq-Niger uranium deal. They did not find Nigerien denials that they had discussed uranium sales with Iraq as very surprising because they had no expectation that Niger would admit to such an agreement if it did exist. The analysts did, however, find it interesting that the former Nigerien Prime Minister said an Iraqi delegation had visited Niger for what he believed was to discuss uranium sales.

(U) Because CIA analysts did not believe that the report added any new information to clarify the issue, they did not use the report to produce any further analytical products or highlight the report for policymakers. For the same reason, CIA's briefer did not brief the Vice President on the report, despite the Vice President's previous questions about the issue.

( ) On March 25, 2002, the DO issued a third and final intelligence report from the same "[foreign] government service." The report said that the 2000 agreement by Niger to provide uranium to Iraq specified that 500 tons of uranium per year would be delivered in .

( )As in the two previous reports, the government service was not identified as the foreign government service. The foreign government service did not provide the DO with information about its source and the DO, to date, remains uncertain as to how the foreign government service collected the information in the three intelligence reports. There were no obvious inconsistencies in the names of officials mentioned or the dates of the transactions in any of the three reports. Of the seven names mentioned in the reporting, two were former high ranking officials who were the individuals in the positions described in the reports at the time described and five were lower ranking officials. Of the five lower ranking, two were not the individuals in the positions described in the reports, however, these do not appear to be names or positions with which intelligence analysts would have been familiar. For example, an INR analyst who had recently returned from a position as Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Niger told Committee staff that he did not notice any inconsistencies with the names of the officials mentioned. The only mistake in any of the reports regarding dates, is that one date, July 7, 2000, is said to be a Wednesday in the report, but was actually a Friday.

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Whole section

http://www.globalsecurity.org/intell/library/congress/2004_rpt/iraq-wmd-intell_chapter2-b.htm

Coach, I will post this for you and for Pit... and, of course, everybody else involved in the discussion (I even think Phil will enjoy this one )... It's by far the best opinion piece I've read on the commutation of Libby's sentence, I do believe that both you and Pit will find it interesting..... I find it largely unbiased.... and that's saying a lot since it came from CNN.com.... and just for the record, my last two articles that I've posted were from TIME.com and CNN.com, so nobody can accuse me of using only right wing news sources....

Analysis: Hypocrisy abounds on all sides of Libby case
President's decision to commute sentence brings out worst in both parties
By RON FOURNIER


WASHINGTON (AP) -- The hypocrisy is unpardonable. President Bush's decision to commute the sentence of a convicted liar brought out the worst in both parties.

In keeping I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby out of jail, Bush defied his promise to hold wrongdoers accountable and undercut his 2000 campaign pledge to "restore honor and dignity" to the White House. And it might be a cynical first step toward issuing a full pardon at the conclusion of his term.

Democrats responded as if they don't live in glass houses, decrying corruption, favoritism and a lack of justice.

"This commutation sends the clear signal that in this administration, cronyism and ideology trump competence and justice," said Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York, a leading candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination.

It was a brazen statement from a woman entangled in many Clinton White House scandals, including the final one: On his last day in office, President Clinton granted 140 pardons and 36 commutations, many of them controversial.

One of those pardoned was Marc Rich, who had fled the country after being indicted for tax evasion and whose wife had donated more than $1 million to Democratic causes.

Clinton's half brother, Roger, who was convicted of distributing cocaine and lobbied the White House on behalf of others, also received a pardon.

Hillary Clinton's brother, Hugh Rodham, was paid tens of thousands of dollars in his successful bid to win pardons for a businessman under investigation for money laundering and a commutation for a convicted drug trafficker. Her other brother, Tony, lobbied successfully for clemency on behalf of a couple convicted of bank fraud.

It's hard to fathom that those pardons had absolutely nothing to do with cronyism or ideology, but Hillary Clinton defended them. She drew a distinction between her husband's pardons and Bush's commutation.

In an interview with The Associated Press, the senator said Bill Clinton's pardons were simply a routine exercise in the use of the pardon power, and none was aimed at protecting the Clinton presidency or legacy. "This," she said of the Libby commutation, "was clearly an effort to protect the White House."

Indeed, there is ample evidence that Libby's actions were fueled by animosity throughout the White House toward opponents of the president's push to war against Iraq.

But Hillary Clinton will have a hard time convincing most voters that her brother-in-law would have gotten a pardon in 2001 had his name been Smith. Or that Rich's pardon plea would have reached the president's desk had he not been a rich Mr. Rich.

The hypocrisy doesn't stop there.

Bush vowed at the start of the investigation to fire anybody involved in the leak of a CIA agent's identity, but one of the leakers, adviser Karl Rove, still works at the White House. Libby was allowed to keep his job until he was indicted for lying about his role.

The president said Libby's sentence was excessive. But the 2 1/2 years handed Libby was much like the sentences given others convicted in obstruction cases. Three of every four people convicted for obstruction of justice in federal court were sent to prison, for an average term of more than five years.

Want more hypocrisy? Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney praised the commutation for Libby, quite a departure for a guy who brags that he was the first Massachusetts governor to deny every request for a pardon or commutation. Romney even refused a pardon for an Iraq war veteran who, at age 13, was convicted of assault for shooting another boy in the arm with a BB gun.

What about all the Republican politicians who defied public sentiment and insisted that President Clinton be impeached for lying under oath about his affair with Monica Lewinsky? Many of them now minimize Libby's perjury.

What about all those Democrats who thought public shame was punishment enough for Clinton lying under oath, basically the position adopted today by Libby's supporters? Many of those Democrats now think Libby should go to jail for his perjury.

"There appears to be rank hypocrisy at work here on both sides of the political spectrum," said Joe , a GOP consultant who worked for House Speaker Newt Gingrich during impeachment. "It causes Americans to shake their heads in disgust at the political system."

The Libby case followed the same pattern of hype and hypocrisy established during Clinton's impeachment scandal. It's as if we're all sentenced to relive the same sad scene:

A powerful man lies or otherwise does wrong.

He gets caught.

His enemies overreach in the name of justice.

His friends minimize the crime in pursuit of self-interest.


And the powerful man hires a lawyer.

Marc Rich had a high-priced attorney for his battles with the justice system. His name was Scooter Libby.


____________________________________________

CNN.com

George Tenet: At The Center Of The Storm

Former CIA Director Breaks His Silence

(CBS) (Editor's Note: In his book, "At the Center of the Storm," and on Sunday's broadcast of 60 Minutes, George Tenet said he encountered Pentagon advisor Richard Perle outside the White House on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks. Perle disputes Tenet's account, saying the encounter never happened because he was stranded in France that day, and was not able to return to the country until September 15. George Tenet told Tom Brokaw Monday, April 30, 2007, "I may have been off by a couple of days," but says the conversation did happen.)

As director of the CIA, George Tenet has kept America's most important secrets. And until now, his lips were sealed.

Tenet's CIA has been blamed for failing to stop 9/11, praised for the fall of the Taliban, and vilified for predicting that Iraq held chemical and biological weapons.

Now, three years after leaving the CIA, Tenet has written a book, aptly named, "At the Center of the Storm." This month, correspondent Scott Pelley sat down with Tenet. 60 Minutes wanted to know how he got "weapons of mass destruction" wrong. Are we using torture in the war on terror? And who was it at the White House who finally put the knife in his back?

60 Minutes found him passionate, combative, apologetic, defiant, and fiercely loyal to the people of the CIA and their fight against terrorism.

_______________________________________

"People don't understand us, you know, they think we're a bunch of faceless bureaucrats with no feelings, no families, no sense of what it’s like to be passionate about running these bastards down. There was nobody else in this government that felt what we felt before or after 9/11. Of course, after 9/11, everybody had that feeling. Nobody felt like we felt on that day. This was personal," Tenet tells Pelley.

His story erupts after a silence of three years. 60 Minutes spoke with Tenet at Georgetown University.

In a sense, his career began and ended there. He's a professor now, but he first came as a student from Queens, New York. After college, he worked on Capitol Hill and in the Clinton White House, rising to lead the CIA at the age of 44. Tenet served seven years, all that time hunting Osama bin Laden.

"I still lie awake at night thinking about everything that could have been, that wasn’t done to stop 9/11. To the 9/11 families, I said, you deserve better from your entire government. All of us," Tenet says.

If he lies awake, men like Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Midhar, two of the 9/11 hijackers, are among the reasons. Before 9/11, Tenet’s CIA headquarters knew that they were al Qaeda and in America. But the information was filed, not passed to the FBI.

"Two of the 19 hijackers, in your files, in Langley, Virginia, a year and a half before 9/11 … they don't get on a watch list. They don't get on a no-fly list. You know these are bad guys," Pelley remarks.

"Scott, they don't. And honest people doing honest work, for whatever you know, all of these people who are doing the best that they can, and understand this in great granularity, understand all of this and feel this pain, we all know this. I can't dress this up for you," Tenet replies.

What happened?

"People were inundated with data and operations. And they missed it," Tenet acknowledges. "We're not trying to intentionally withhold—human beings made mistakes."

But the 9/11 Commission accused Tenet’s CIA of being bureaucratic and failing to recognize al Qaeda for the threat that it was.

"All these commissions, and all these reports never got underneath the feeling of my people. You know, to see us written about as if we're idiots. Or if we didn't understand this threat. As if we didn't understand what happened on that day. To impugn our integrity, our operational savvy. You know, the American people need to know that's just not so," Tenet says. "We're the ones that stand up and tell you the truth about when we're wrong. It's a great thing about this government. The only people that ever stand up and tell the truth are who? Intelligence officers. Because our culture is, never break faith with the truth. We'll tell you, you don't have to drag it out of us. You didn't have to serve me a subpoena to tell me I didn't watch list Hazmi and Midhar. We knew right away; and we told everybody. Truth matters to us."

(CBS) The truth of the CIA and al Qaeda starts before 9/11. Two years before the attacks, the CIA had officers on the ground in Afghanistan laying plans to overthrow the Taliban and take out bin Laden. But Tenet says neither Clinton nor President Bush would give him the go ahead. Then, by the summer of 2001, Tenet says he was so alarmed by intelligence that an attack was coming, he asked for an immediate meeting to brief then-National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice.

"Essentially, the briefing says, there are gonna be multiple spectacular attacks against the United States. We believe these attacks are imminent. Mass casualties are a likelihood," Tenet remembers.

"You're telling Condoleezza Rice in that meeting in the White House in July that we should take offensive action, in Afghanistan, now. Before 9/11," Pelley remarks.

"We need to consider immediate action inside Afghanistan now. We need to move to the offensive," Tenet says.

In his book, Tenet says that even though he told Rice an attack on Americans was imminent, she took his request to launch pre-emptive action in Afghanistan and delegated it to third-tier officials.

"You’re meeting with the president every morning. Why aren't you telling the president, 'Mr. President, this is terrifying. We have to do this now. Forget about the bureaucracy. I need this authority this afternoon,'?" Pelley asks.

"Right. Because the United States government doesn't work that way. The president is not the action officer. You bring the action to the national security advisor and people who set the table for the president to decide on policies they're gonna implement," Tenet says.

"You thought you had some time," Pelley remarks.

"Well, you didn't know. Yeah, you thought you might have time," Tenet says. "You can second guess me until the cows come home. That's the way I did my job."

On Sept. 11, Tenet was at breakfast near the White House when the first plane hit. He thought instantly of his old nemesis.

"I knew immediately this was bin Laden. I excused myself from breakfast. I jumped in the car," he remembers.

"What do you mean you knew immediately? I mean, most people in the country thought there had been a terrible accident," Pelley asks.

"Listen, when you’ve been following this as long as I've been following this, when you’ve been thinking about multiple spectacular attacks. There was no doubt what had happened in my mind immediately," Tenet explains.

At the CIA headquarters, as the towers burned and the Pentagon was hit, Tenet got the aircraft passenger manifest; Hazmi and Mihdhar were listed.

"After all these years of planning and plotting and wanting to capture or kill Osama bin Laden, you must have thought, 'The SOB got me first,'" Pelley remarks.

"Um, yeah. But I had another thought. 'I'm gonna run you and all your bastards down. And here we come. Because the rules are about to change. Here we come; our turn now. Unleashed, authorities, money, direction, leadership; here we come, pal.' That's what I thought," Tenet says.

Immediately, Tenet got the authority he had been asking for in Afghanistan. And for the first time, the CIA led an American war. Tenet calls it the agency’s finest hour, except, perhaps, for just one thing.

"Was Osama bin Laden at Tora Bora?" Pelley asks.

"We believe that he was," Tenet says.

"And, the question is, 'How did he get away?' If this plan of yours is so great … and Afghanistan went so well…. How does Osama bin Laden get away, when we've got him cornered at Tora Bora?" Pelley asks.

"Well, have you ever seen the geography in Tora Bora?" Tenet asks.

"I have," Pelley replies.

"You don't have anybody cornered in Tora Bora," Tenet says.

Tenet says our forces were too light to stop bin Laden’s escape. "We played with what we had. 'Cause you didn't have a big force presence on the ground. We caught a lot of people, we didn't catch the one we wanted," he says.

But they did catch others, including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the man who planned 9/11. He was captured in Pakistan.

"When Khalid Sheikh Mohammed ended up in the hands of CIA interrogators, what did he say?" Pelley says.

"I'll talk to you guys when you take me to New York and I can see my lawyer," Tenet replies.

CBS) But the CIA had something else in mind. Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and others were swept up in the "high value detainee" program. Secret prisons were set up, and several suspects were questioned under new, so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques," said to include sleep deprivation, extreme cold and water boarding, which causes a severe gag reflex, as water is continuously poured over the face.

"The image that's been portrayed is, we sat around the campfire and said, 'Oh, boy, now we go get to torture people.' Well, we don't torture people. Let me say that again to you. We don't torture people. Okay?" Tenet says.

"Come on, George," Pelley says.

"We don't torture people," Tenet maintains.

"Khalid Sheikh Mohammad?" Pelley asks.

"We don't torture people," Tenet says.

"Water boarding?" Pelley asks.

"We do not – I don't talk about techniques," Tenet replies.

"It's torture," Pelley says.

"And we don't torture people. Now, listen to me. Now, listen to me. I want you to listen to me," Tenet says. "The context is it's post-9/11. I've got reports of nuclear weapons in New York City, apartment buildings that are gonna be blown up, planes that are gonna fly into airports all over again. Plot lines that I don't know – I don't know what's going on inside the United States. And I'm struggling to find out where the next disaster is going to occur. Everybody forgets one central context of what we lived through. The palpable fear that we felt on the basis of the fact that there was so much we did not know."

"I know that this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots," Tenet says.

"But what you're essentially saying is some people need to be tortured," Pelley remarks.

"No, I did not say that. I did not say that," Tenet says.

"You're telling me that… the enhanced interrogation…" Pelley says.

"I did not say that. I did not say that. We do not tor…. Listen to me. You’re, you're making…," Tenet says.

"You call it in the book, 'enhanced interrogation,'" Pelley remarks.

"…an assumption. Well, that's what we call it," Tenet says.

"And that's a euphemism," Pelley says.

"I'm not having a semantic debate with you. I'm telling you what I believe," Tenet says.

Asked if anyone ever died in the interrogation program, Tenet says, "No."

Asked if he's sure of that, the former director tells Pelley, "Yeah. In this program that you and I are talking about? No."

"Have you ever seen any of these interrogations done?" Pelley asks.

"No," Tenet replies.

"Didn’t you feel like it was your responsibility to know what's going on?" Pelley asks.

"I understood. I'm not a voyeur. I understand what I was signing off on," Tenet says.

Asked if he lost any sleep over it, Tenet tells Pelley, "Yeah, of course you do! Of course you lose sleep over it. You're on new territory. But that's not the point! What’s this tension? The tension is, 'I've just lived through 3,000 people dying. This is not a clinical exercise.' Maybe for you guys it's a clinical exercise. Not for me! 3,000 people died. Friends died. Now I'm gonna sit back, and then everybody says, 'You idiots don’t know how to connect the dots. You don’t have imagination. You were unwilling to take risk to protect this country,'" Tenet says.

"Let me ask the question this way: why were enhanced interrogation techniques necessary?" Pelley asks.

"'Cause these are people that will never, ever, ever tell you a thing. These are people who know who’s responsible for the next terrorist attack. These are hardened people that would kill you and me 30 seconds after they got out of wherever they were being held and wouldn’t blink an eyelash," Tenet says. "You can sit there after, you can sit there five years later, and have this debate with me, all I'm asking you to do, walk a mile in my shoes when I'm dealing with these realities."

Tenet says the interrogations uncovered networks and broke up plots in the U.S.

(CBS) Asked if al Qaeda is in the United States right now, Tenet tells Pelley, "My operational presumption is that they infiltrated a second wave or a third wave into the United States at the time of 9/11. Now can I prove that to you? No. It’s my operational intuition."

He told 60 Minutes in 2003 terrorists were in the U.S. prepared to attack the New York City subways, when bin Laden’s number two called them back.

"By 2003, the intelligence tells you that Zawahiri has called off an attack against the New York City subway system, in favor of something larger. What is that larger thing?" Tenet says.

One clue, Tenet says, is that bin Laden has been trying to get his hands on nuclear material, since 1993. "Are these people gonna have a nuclear capability? This confers superpower status on a networked organization that is not a state. Is it gonna happen?" Tenet wonders. "Look, I don't know. But I worry about it. Because I've seen enough to tell me that there's intent. And when there's intent, the question is, when does the capability show up? If al Qaeda were to acquire nuclear capability, the thousands of weapons we have would be irrelevant."

In the midst of the al Qaeda threat, Tenet says he was astonished and mystified when the White House turned its aim to Iraq.

Tenet told 60 Minutes the war in Iraq is "a national tragedy." He says he realized it was the end of his career when he picked up The Washington Post and saw that he was being blamed for the decision to go to war. In classic Washington fashion, someone had leaked a story suggesting that the president decided to attack after Tenet said the evidence against Iraq was a "slam dunk."

In our interview, Tenet admits the CIA's mistakes and his own. But what makes him angry now is how the White House ignored CIA warnings, cooked the books on intelligence, and then used "slam dunk" to brand him with the failure.

"The hardest part of all of this has just been listening to this for almost three years. Listening to the vice president go on 'Meet The Press' on the fifth year of 9/11, and say, 'Well, George Tenet said, slam dunk.' As if he needed me to say slam dunk to go to war with Iraq," Tenet tells Pelley. "And they never let it go. I mean, I became campaign talk. I was a talking point. You know, 'Look at what the idiot told us, and we decided to go to war.' Well, let's not be so disingenuous. Let's stand up. This is why we did it. This is why, this is how we did it. And let's tell, let's everybody tell the truth."

(Editor's Note: In his book, "At the Center of the Storm," and on Sunday's broadcast of 60 Minutes, George Tenet said he encountered Pentagon advisor Richard Perle outside the White House on Sept. 12, 2001, the day after the 9/11 attacks. Perle disputes Tenet's account, saying the encounter never happened because he was stranded in France that day, and was not able to return to the country until September 15. George Tenet told Tom Brokaw Monday, April 30, 2007, "I may have been off by a couple of days," but says the conversation did happen.)

The truth of Iraq begins, according to Tenet, the day after the attack of Sept. 11, when he ran into Pentagon advisor Richard Perle at the White House.

"He said to me, 'Iraq has to pay a price for what happened yesterday, they bear responsibility.' It’s September the 12th. I’ve got the manifest with me that tell me al Qaeda did this. Nothing in my head that says there is any Iraqi involvement in this in any way shape or form and I remember thinking to myself, as I'm about to go brief the president, 'What the hell is he talking about?'" Tenet remembers.

"You said Iraq made no sense to you in that moment. Does it make any sense to you today?" Pelley asks.

"In terms of complicity with 9/11, absolutely none," Tenet says. "It never made any sense. We could never verify that there was any Iraqi authority, direction and control, complicity with al Qaeda for 9/11 or any operational act against America. Period."

"The president, in October of 2002, quote: 'We need to think about Saddam Hussein using al Qaeda to do his dirty work.' Is that what you're telling the president?" Pelley asks.

"Well, we didn't believe al Qaeda was gonna do Saddam Hussein's dirty work," Tenet says.

"January '03, the president again, [said] quote: 'Imagine those 19 hijackers this time armed by Saddam Hussein.' Is that what you're telling the president?" Pelley asks.

"No," Tenet says.

The vice president upped the ante, claiming Saddam had nuclear weapons, when the CIA was saying he didn’t.

"What's happening here?" Pelley asks.

"Well, I don't know what's happening here," Tenet says. "The intelligence community's judgment is 'He will not have a nuclear weapon until the year 2007, 2009.'"

"That's not what the vice president's saying," Pelley remarks.

"Well, I can't explain it," Tenet says.

Tenet says he sometimes warned the White House its statements were false, but he admits that he missed a big one in the 2003 State of the Union address, when the president said, "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

(CBS) The CIA had knocked down that uranium claim months before. The agency even demanded it be taken out of two previous presidential speeches. How did it get through the third time?

"I didn't read the speech. I was involved in a bunch of other things," Tenet says.

"Wait a minute, the president’s State of the Union," Pelley remarks. "You didn't read that?"

"Right, I didn’t, farmed it out, got it at a principal's meeting, brought it down the hall, handed it to my executive assistant. I said, 'You guys go review this, and come back to me if I need to do anything,'" Tenet remembers.

"Nobody comes back to you?" Pelley asks.

"And therein lies why I ultimately have to take my share of responsibility," Tenet says.

"Did anyone at the White House, did anyone in the defense department ever ask you whether we should go to war in Iraq?" Pelley asks.

"The discussions that are on-going in 2002 in the spring and summer of 2002 are 'How you might do this?' Not whether you should do this," Tenet says.

"Nobody asks?" Pelley asks.

"Well, I don't remember sitting down in a principles committee meeting and everybody saying, 'Okay, there's a deep concern about Iraq. Is this the right thing to do? What are the implications?' I don’t ever remember that galvanizing moment when people sit around and honestly say 'Is this the right thing to do?'"

Still, at CIA headquarters, Tenet's team was about to make a historic blunder of its own. The CIA produced its evaluation of Iraqi weapons of mass destruction in a secret report called a "National Intelligence Estimate."

"The first key judgment in the national intelligence estimate says, quote, 'Baghdad has chemical and biological weapons.' Period," Pelley says.

"High confidence judgment," Tenet replies.

How could he make such a bold statement? Says Tenet, "We believed he had chemical and biological weapons."

"But there was no hard evidence," Pelley remarks.

"No, no. There was lots of data. There's lots of technical data," Tenet says. "So you put all of this together, it's not evidence in the court of law. Remember, when you write an estimate, when you estimate, you’re writing what you don't know. You might win a civil case. Huh? You're not gonna win a criminal case, in terms of evidence."

"We are going to war. Tens of thousands of people are going to be killed. And you're telling me you had evidence to prove a civil case, not a criminal case?" Pelley asks,

"Well, as you know, hindsight is perfect. The public face on this what we wrote on weapons of mass destruction and for professionals, who pride themselves on being right, this is a very painful experience for us," Tenet acknowledges.

Perhaps the most painful experience for Tenet was the presentation of Secretary of State Colin Powell to the United Nations. Powell asked Tenet to sit behind him.

"Our conservative estimate is that Iraq today has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tons of chemical weapons agent," Powell said at the U.N.

"Conservative estimate of 100 to 500 tons? I mean, how can you be so wrong?" Pelley asks.

"Scott, we've gone through this. It's what we believed, it's what we wrote," Tenet says.

"Where did these numbers come from?" Pelley asks.

"From our national intelligence estimate," Tenet says. "You don't make this kind of stuff up."

"Wait a minute, you did make this kind of stuff up," Pelley remarks.

"No, we didn't make it up, Scott, we just…," Tenet says.

"It's not true," Pelley remarks.

"Scott, you're doing it again, you're impugning the integrity of people who make analytical judgments and make their best judgments about what they believe of the Iraqis possessed. Intelligence, you know, my business is not always about the truth. It's about people's best judgments about what the truth may be. We believed it. We wrote it. We let the secretary down," Tenet says.

"These are not assertions, what we’re giving you are facts and conclusions based on solid intelligence," Secretary of State Powell said.

"He didn’t tell the United Nations, 'Look, we think this might be true.' This was laid out to the world as a iron-clad case," Pelley remarks. "Conservative estimate. Between 100 and 500…."

"I wish I could reel the tape back," Tenet says. "Do you think that the American intelligence community's gonna roll out the secretary of state in front of the entire world and consciously let him say things that are wrong? No."

Asked if he apologized to Colin Powell, Tenet says, "Well, Colin and I have talked about it. I'm not going to talk about what he and I have said to each other, but we've talked about it."

(CBS) When it became clear there were no weapons of mass destruction, a rift split the White House and CIA. A former ambassador named Joe Wilson wrote an article debunking the uranium claim that had slipped into the State of the Union address. The White House retaliated, leaking a story that exposed the identity of Joe Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, as an undercover CIA officer.

"She's one of my officers. That's wrong. Big time wrong, you don't get to do that," Tenet says. "And the chilling effect that you have inside my work force is, 'Whoa, now officers names are being thrown out the door. Hold it. Not right.'"

Asked how much damage that did, Tenet says, "That's not the point. Just because there's a Washington bloodletting game going on here and just because her husband's out there saying what he's saying. The country's intelligence officers are not fair game. Period. That's all you need to know."

"They didn't seem to know that in the White House," Pelley remarks.

"I'm done with it. I've just told you what I think," Tenet says.

What Tenet didn’t know was that the next bloodletting would be his. It came in another White House leak, this time to reporter Bob Woodward. An unnamed source described to Woodward a pre-war meeting in the Oval Office. The CIA was showing the president how to present to the public the case for weapons of mass destruction. Woodward wrote “Tenet rose up, threw his arms in the air. 'It’s a slam dunk case!'"

"I never got off the couch, I never jumped up, there was no pantomime. I didn’t do my Michael Jordan, Air Jordan routine for the president that morning," Tenet tells Pelley.

"What did you mean by slam dunk?" Pelley asks.

"I guess I meant that we could do better," Tenet says.

"Do better?" Pelley asks.

"We can put a better case together for a public case, that’s what I meant. That’s what this was about," Tenet explains.

Tenet says the president wasn’t happy with the presentation. So he was telling Mr. Bush that improving the presentation would be a slam dunk. But Tenet says the leak to Woodward made the remark look like the decisive moment in the decision to go to war.

"I'll never believe that what happened that day, informed the president's view or belief of the legitimacy or the timing of this war. Never," Tenet insists.

In addition to five from the CIA, the only people in the room were the president, vice president, Condoleezza Rice, and Chief of Staff Andrew Card.

"Somebody who was in the Oval Office that day decided to throw you off the train. Was it the president?" Pelley asks.

"I don't know," Tenet says.

"Was it the vice president?" Pelley asks.

"I don't know," Tenet says.

"Who was out to get you, George?" Pelley asks.

"Scott, you know, I'm Greek, and we're conspiratorial by nature. But, you know, who knows?" Tenet says. "I haven't let myself go there, but as a human being it didn’t feel very good."

Tenet says, when he saw "slam dunk" in The Washington Post he knew the breach with the White House was total. He called his principal contact in the president’s office.

(CBS) "And I remember picking up the phone and calling Andy Card, who is a terrific human being and somebody I’ve always trusted … I call Andy and I said 'You know I believe he had weapons of mass destruction. And now what’s happened here is you’ve gone out and made me look stupid. It’s the most despicable thing I've ever heard in my life. Men of honor don't do this,'" Tenet recalls.

"Men of honor don't do this?" Pelley asks.

"You don't do this. You don't throw people overboard. You don’t do this you don’t call somebody in, you work your heart out, you show up everyday. You're gonna throw somebody overboard just because it's a deflection? Is that honorable? It's not honorable to me. You know, at the end of the day, the only thing you have is trust and honor in this world. It's all you have. All you have is your reputation built on trust and your personal honor. And when you don't have that anymore, well, there you go. Trust was broken," Tenet says.

"Between you and the White House?" Pelley asks,

"You bet. You bet," Tenet says.

Still, the president awarded Tenet the nation’s highest honor for a civilian, the Medal of Freedom.

Asked if he was conflicted about accepting the medal, Tenet says, "Well, there was conflict."

At Georgetown, he told 60 Minutes he accepted the medal because the citation was for the CIA's work in Afghanistan, not for Iraq. Some have asked whether the medal is why Tenet has withheld criticism of President Bush.

"Some people have wondered whether the Medal of Freedom is the reason you tend to give the president a pass," Pelley remarks.

"Well, that’s the most outrageous thing I have ever heard in my life," Tenet replies. "The notion that I would trade in my integrity to pull punches with anybody is just ridiculous."

He had the second longest tenure at the agency, but on July 11, 2004, Tenet took a cigar, and walked the grounds of the CIA one last time.

"You know that there are people watching this interview, they're gonna say to themselves, 'That's the guy that missed 9/11. That's the guy who got it wrong on Iraq.' To them, you say what?" Pelley asks.

"You know, history'll judge who this guy is. All I would say to them is I'm also the guy that was privileged to lead men and women that saved thousands of lives. I'm also the guy that was privileged to lead men and women who get up every day to try and keep them safe. I'm also the guy that knows that my report card is a heck of a lot better than the bad things, and there a lot of good things, and I would hope that the American people believe that here's a guy who tried to serve his country as best as he knew how, is an honest man, and led his people as well as he possibly could," Tenet says. "And, the rest is for other people to judge."

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/25/60minutes/main2728375.shtml

DC that was a very good read. And I too consider it fairly unbiased. The only thing that does seem puzzling and unorthidox is this commutation is that it is "before the 08 elections." The timeing,to the best of my memory,in unprecidented in my lifetime.

Most presidents wait untill after the elections so as not to cause a political firestorm this way. And I do believe that it will hurt his own party simply as a "piece of a much bigger puzzle".

But there is no doubt that every president in recent history has pardonned or commuted the sentences of "their constituants and friends". Politics isn't about "us",it's about "them". And that goes for both partys. Everyone has their views. ie.....I think you and I share many conservative viewpoints,yet on social issues,I lean more to the liberal side. Which in the end makes me a "staunch moderate"!


So my objective is to give neither party a monoploly. I think it "helps" cut down on scandals and creates an environment that will lend itself to compromise on the part of both partys resulting in moderate legislation coming forth. JMHO

And P,

I think we can both come up with articles,quotes and assertions from everywhere and anywhere that will contradict each other till the cows come home. I mean,your first article originted from The Washington Post. One of the articles I posted showing quite a different perspective also originated from The Washington Post.

IMO- It adds up to no more than dogs running in circles chasing their own tails to a great extent. And I think a lot of it boils down to the fact that we're all being fed propeganda from both sides of the aisle.

I simply know what the assertions made for war were,and the net results of that. Something went terribly wrong. And as human nature dictates,fingers are being pointed not only from outside this administration,but from inside of it as well.

I don't think any of us "know the truth of the matter". We are simply each,in their own "honest perception of it" trying to promote the view we see as being most logical and believeable. And both of us have enough fodder from each direction to support our "opinions".

Wouldn't it be nice if EITHER party was simply open and honest enough to tell this nations citizens "the truth". But sadly,they're not.

JMHO

DC, that was a pretty fair article with only a few points of contention. Karl Rove was never found to actually be a "part of" the leak. He wasn't the one actually found to have been the source, so claiming he should have been let go is pretty good stretch as he never spoke to the reporters and leaked the information and he was never found to have instructed such an action to occur. Other than that, it's pretty good.

I did notice in Pdawg's articles just how politically motivated Wilson was in his accusations. All of this wasn't because of concern for a leak of a CIA operative, but rather politics as usual.

All of this reminds me of a line from "Sweet Home Alabama"


"Now Watergate does not bother me. Does your conscience bother you....ya'll be true!"

You're assuming politicians have a conscience.

I love that song.. I like lots of Leonard Skinnards stuff.

Quote:

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Yeah and I think he was HOT too!

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Hey, I don't swing that way... but now Alice Cooper.. she was SWEET!!!...

oh hell yeah... she's only 18, and I like it

Not as hot as Molly Hatchet. That Jethro Tull was a talented dude, also.