CIA Chief Admits Error in Approving Bush Speech

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, July 12, 2003

CIA Chief Admits Error in Approving Bush Speech

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US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) Director George Tenet on Friday admitted mistake in approving President George W. Bush's state of the Union address, saying the accusation that Iraq tried to buy uranium in Africa should never have been included in the speech.

In a statement, Tenet said the CIA approved the speech before it was delivered. "I am responsible for the approval process in my agency," he said.

"These 16 words should never have been included in the text written for the president," Tenet said. "This was a mistake."

"The president had every reason to believe that the text presented to him was sound," Tenet said.

Bush's speech, citing British intelligence, said Iraq had been trying to buy uranium from Africa and suggested that Iraqi president Saddam Hussein's regime was trying to restart a nuclear weapons program in violation of UN resolutions.

"The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa," Bush said in his January State of the Union speech.

Critics have accused Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair of exaggerating the threat posed by Saddam Hussein in justifying a war with Iraq in March.

Tenet issued his statement hours after Bush, currently visiting Africa, said his accusation that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Africa was approved by his "intelligence services".

Traveling Friday with Bush, US national security adviser Condoleezza Rice also told reporters that the CIA had seen the speech in advance and cleared the speech.

"If the CIA -- the director of central intelligence -- had said, 'take this out of the speech,' it would have been gone," Rice said.

Members of Congress called on the CIA to be held accountable. Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Pat Roberts, a Republican from Kansas, said Tenet was ultimately responsible for the mistake.

"The director of central intelligence is the principal adviser to the president on intelligence matters," Roberts said. "He should have told the president. He failed to do so," he said.

US Democratic presidential contenders demanded a thorough investigation Friday into false intelligence used by Bush over Iraq's nuclear weapons to justify an invasion into Iraq.

Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, Florida Senator Bob Graham,Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut, former Vermont Governor Howard Dean and other White House rivals are becoming more critical of Bush's handling of the prewar intelligence as casualties of US troops in Iraq increased.

"We need a full and honest investigation into intelligence failures," Kerry, who voted in favor of going to war with Iraq last year, said in a statement.

Graham called for a broad, independent and public probe into the matter. "Day after day, the Bush administration fails to confess the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the use of intelligence leading us to war with Iraq," he said in a statement.

"We need a full-scale ... bipartisan investigation outside of Congress," Dean said in an interview with ABC. "We need to find out what the president knew and when he knew it."

Lieberman also said in a statement that the controversy "breaks the basic bond of trust we must have with our leaders in times of war and terrorism."

Earlier this week, the White House acknowledged that Bush's accusation in his State of the Union address that Iraq had sought to acquire uranium from Africa was incorrect.

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