The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Sunday, July 13, 2003, Chandigarh, India

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CIA gives Bush clean chit
Says it made mistake on Iraq info
T.V. Parasuram

CIA Director George Tenet took responsibility on Friday for President George W. Bush’s false accusation that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Africa

CIA Director George Tenet (left) took responsibility on Friday for President George W. Bush’s false accusation that Iraq was trying to obtain uranium from Africa, saying his agency should have cut it from the State of the Union address. Tenet issued his statement hours after Bush, travelling in Africa, said the charge that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was approved by his “intelligence services.” Tenet is shown with Bush at an event at FBI headquarters in this file photo. — Reuters photo

Washington, July 12
In the eye of a storm over US President George W. Bush’s allegation that the Saddam Hussein regime had tried to acquire nuclear material from Africa, CIA Director George Tenet has taken the blame for wrongly allowing Bush to make the statement even though agency officials doubted the intelligence.

“This was a mistake ... these 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the President,” Tenet said in a statement released yesterday.

The extraordinary statement came hours after Bush, who is on a visit to Africa, said intelligence agencies had cleared his January 28 State of the Union address. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice also said the CIA had vetted the speech in its “entirety”.

Media reports on Thursday said some CIA officials had conveyed to the White House, prior to the speech, their misgivings about the allegation that Iraq was trying to procure uranium from Niger. But Rice said if Tenet had any such misgivings, “he did not make them known.” — PTI