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CIA Director George Tenet had told members of Congress that a White House official insisted on including a dubious claim about Iraq's nuclear intentions in a key presidential speech, a Democratic Senator charged Thursday.
Senate Intelligence Committee member Dick Durbin told the ABC television that Tenet named the official Wednesday at a five-hour session behind closed doors with his committee, but he refused to disclose the identity of the official, citing the classified nature of the hearing.
"Being a member of the Intelligence Committee I can't disclose that but I trust that it will come out," Durbin said. "But it should come out from the president. The president should be outraged that he was misled and that he then misled the American people."
At issue was Bush's claim in the Jan. 28 State of the Union address that the British government had learned that Saddam Hussein "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The claim was subsequently determined to be based largely on forged documents, sparking a new furor over the uses of intelligence leading up to the Iraq war.
Tenet, who took blame for the inclusion of the false claim in Bush's speech, reiterated at the senate panel session that he takes responsibility for the now-famous 16-word sentence in the speech because an agency official had approved it after negotiations with the White House, local media reports said.
But he was repeatedly asked why the CIA permitted the allegation in Bush's address, especially since he had personally interceded with the White House to remove a more detailed reference to the claim from a Bush speech on Oct. 7, the reports said.
Democratic senators on the committee said the real question is "why someone was so insistent that they wanted this information in," according to the Washington Post.
"We've been asking the wrong question. We've been asking why George Tenet did not stop the White House from misleading the American people. The more important question is, who is it in the White House who was hellbent on misleading the American people and why are they still there?" said Durbin.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan quickly denounced Durbin's charges, saying: "It's nonsense, it's ridiculous." McClellan pointed out that Durbin opposed the Iraq war.
"It's not surprising coming from someone who was in a rather small minority in Congress that did not support the action that we took," he said.
(Xinhua News Agency July 18, 2003)
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