Tenet's been running the CIA for a while now. He knows where innumerable bodies are buried--and not just metaphorical ones. So he definitely has leverage that makes it hard to twist his arm.

So the fact that he caved suggests to me that he and the administration cut a deal: Tenet fell on his sword rather than continue hanging Bush and Rice out to dry, and in return got...what?

Unfortunately, this will probably end press curiosity for a while at least. It doesn't answer the truly relevant question: who put the original line in the speech, who put the modified line ("British Intelligence...") in the speech, and why?

Junkie,
Don't be so negative. They may slither out from under this particular charge, tho I think Tenet's got an ace up his sleeve, but now's the time to start getting all the info we can about aluminum tubes and mobile weapons labs. The objective is to shape public opinion, and for the first time, there's an opening. Now we have to keep hitting at it with little lies until the public associates Bush with unreliable, manipulative. We have the evidence, all we needed was the opening, I think.

My gosh, one has to wonder what they have over Tenet. According to that Judis&Ackerman article, Tenet's public statements were more and more supportive of the Administration's line.

One paragraph from the Tenet backs Bush article:
Although the CIA did not learn until well after the president's speech in January that some documents obtained by British intelligence that formed the basis of the Iraq-Niger uranium allegations were forged, CIA officials recognized at the beginning that the allegation was based on "fragmentary intelligence gathered in late 2001 and early 2002," the director said.

Does that mean they didn't see the British evidence or their own evidence (which if you remember, Wilson was sent by the CIA in response to questions by the VP's office)?

From TNR:
One way the administration convinced the public was by badgering CIA Director Tenet into endorsing key elements of its case for war even when it required ignoring the classified findings of his and other intelligence agencies.

As a result of its failure to anticipate the September 11 attacks, the CIA, and Tenet in particular, were under almost continual attack in the fall of 2001. Congressional leaders, including Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, wanted Tenet to resign. But Bush kept Tenet in his job, and, within the administration, Tenet and the CIA came under an entirely different kind of pressure: Iraq hawks in the Pentagon and in the vice president's office, reinforced by members of the Pentagon's semi-official Defense Policy Board, mounted a year-long attempt to pressure the CIA to take a harder line against Iraq--whether on its ties with Al Qaeda or on the status of its nuclear program.

By the fall of 2002, when public debate over the war really began, the administration had created consternation in the intelligence agencies. The press was filled for the next two months with quotes from CIA officials and analysts complaining of pressure from the administration to toe the line on Iraq. Says one former staff member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, "People [kept] telling you first that things weren't right, weird things going on, different people saying, 'There's so much pressure, you know, they keep telling us, go back and find the right answer,' things like that." For the most part, this pressure was not reflected in the CIA's classified reports, but it would become increasingly evident in the agency's declassified statements and in public statements by Tenet. The administration hadn't won an outright endorsement of its analysis of the Iraqi threat, but it had undermined and intimidated its potential critics in the intelligence community.

It is pretty obvious that Tenet is well and truly dominated by the administration. It will take some others to expose the lies.

Laura, I guess the last 2 and a half years have made me very cynical! At this point, we need another leak telling the press something about how the speech was written. Perhaps the prominent bloggers like Josh Marshall etc. will pursue this, but my expectation is for a quick fade. The 9/11 report will be coming out in a week, though, and that might be very interesting.

Josh has several posts up about this now.

CA Pol Junkie, I think it will depend on who else comes forward. Afterall, for each of these drips, they have to find a fallguy to sacrifice. They can't blame him for everything. We'll just have to keep chipping away.

And if Blair falls, this comes back even stronger than before.

I would send you to Oliver Willis's site. He has got Condi Rice dead to rights in a lie. The Niger Uranium "issue" could be a misdirect that does indeed mislead the press away from the lie by Condi.

I'm wondering if Tenet didn't, in fact, do something nastily clever.

He's not the "Fall on your sword" type, but note the pratical upshot of his admission:

1) It becomes part of the official record that the CIA had no credibile information on the Nigerian claim. That is, to the best of the CIA's knowledge, the claim was false.

2) It pins Bush to a single excuse: We believed the British. No more chaning subjects, no more changing excuses. Because of Tenet's public admission, Bush is stuck with one possible excuse.

Now, bear those in mind: What happens if, for instance, senior intelligence officials leak word that Rice, or Cheney, or Bush [i]were told[/i] that the British intel wasn't good?

It means that Bush would rather have the public believe that Bush cannot rely on the CIA to tell Bush the truth than to have the public believe Bush lied to the public.

In other words, Bush is comfortable with the charge that he is incompetent. He cannot accept the charge that he is a liar.

I think that Josh has made a devastating point this evening by pointing out that the real question here isn't just whether Tenet and the CIA signed off on the Niger-uranium claim, it's who was pushing the CIA so hard "from the other side" to keep the bogus intel in the SOTU.

This story has legs.

Pat is right, this story is not over. The CIA should have done more to keep the Niger story out of the SOTU in the same sense that I should do more to prevent petty street crime. On the other hand, it is not my job to prevent petty street crime. Similarly, it is not the job of the CIA to fight the White House over the language of the SOTU. It is the job of the CIA to present cogent analysis of intelligence data to the White House. It is the job of the White House to use that information responsibly. In this instance, there is no doubt that the public information reflects that the CIA made its data known to the White House, and that the White House chose to use a semantic quibble to obscure the truth.

This was a non-admission admission of responsibility. To the casual observer it looks like he's falling on his sword. He's not. He's lobbing the ball back into the administration's court. if the press has really awakened from their long, long, long slumber, they will take it from there and start asking questions. They might want to start with Josh Marshall's question: who was putting the pressure on Tenet to okay the bogus intelligence and why?

Cheer up folks. The creaky, rusty wheels of democracy have been oiled for the first time in many moons. They will be turning soon enough

And it helps that Dean is not letting the white house off the hook either. I LOVE his latest statement about throwing Tenent overboard not being enough to stop the questions.

If Tenant has fallen on his sword, he did so in a way that would not draw too much blood -- from him.

A process is now in motion. If it runs its course, the truth will come out. The truth seems to be that the ultimate source of all the distorted information driving the rush to war was the Office of Special Plans set up in the Pentagon by Rumsfeld. Even the "British intelligence" referred to by the president in his State of the Union speech probably derives ultimately from the Office of Special Plans.

The protagonists in this story are Rumsfeld and Cheney. Rice's job is to deflect attention away from the information loop going back to them.

There are two important articles to consult. One is by Robert Dreyfuss, the other by Jonathan S. Landay. Both date from the middle of June when the Iraq situation did not seem as dire to the opinion makers as is does today. I will cite material from Landay in a separate post. Here is a key paragraph from Dreyfuss.

More Missing Intelligence
Robert Dreyfuss
June 19, 2003

It [the Office of Special Plans] was set up in fall 2001 as a two-man shop, but it burgeoned into an eighteen-member nerve center of the Pentagon's effort to distort intelligence about Iraq's WMDs and terrorist connections. A great deal of the bad information produced by Shulsky's office, which found its way into speeches by Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and George W. Bush, came from Chalabi's INC. Since the INC itself was sustained by its neocon allies in Washington, including the shadow 'Central Command' at the American Enterprise Institute, it stands as perhaps the ultimate example of circular reasoning.

This whole article is now more essential than ever.

Note all the anonymous sources for this article. A lot depends on whether they can be tracked down and whether they will continue to talk. Tenet's sword-falling routine does nothing to silence the questions that lead back to sources like these and what they know. Indeed, probably deliberately, Tenet has, raised more questions than he has answered.

White House was warned of dubious intelligence, official says
By JONATHAN S. LANDAY
Fri, Jun. 13, 2003
Knight Ridder Newspapers

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/6076139.htm

A senior CIA official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the intelligence agency informed the White House on March 9, 2002 - 10 months before Bush's nationally televised speech - that an agency source [as we now know, this would be Wilson] who had traveled to Niger couldn't confirm European intelligence reports that Iraq was attempting to buy uranium from the West African country....

Three senior administration officials said Vice President Dick Cheney and some officials on the National Security Council staff and at the Pentagon ignored the CIA's reservations and argued that the president and others should include the allegation in their case against Saddam....

One senior administration official, also speaking on the condition of anonymity because the intelligence reports remain classified, said the CIA's doubts were well known and widely shared throughout the government before Bush's speech....

Among the most vocal proponents of publicizing the alleged Niger connection, two senior officials said, were Cheney and officials in the office of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld. The effort was led by Robert G. Joseph, the top National Security Council staff official on nuclear proliferation, the officials said....

If questions continue to be asked, and people continue to talk, it does not look good for Cheney and Rumsfeld.

and once cheney's gone, who's gonna make the chimp's mouth move?

Contrary to most of the above, I think Tenet did indeed fall on his sword. He was always on shaky ground since 9/11. I think the administration will wait a bit and see what newsy tidbits are in the 9/11 Congressional report coming out next week or so. Then Tenet will fall on his sword for those and resign in order to end the press furor over the issue. In a few weeks or months, Tenet will turn up on the board of directors for the Carlyle Group, Halliburton, or some other sinecure for Bush loyalists, and that will answer the question about what he got out of all of this.

Even if Tenet resigns (and I don't know that he will, and we don't know what will come out of the 9-11 report) this should NOT stop the questions. Any reporter with brains and fortitude (okay all three of them) MUST ask the most logical follow up questions that I think, many American People are wondering: Why is it Tenet's job to force the white house to remove bogus info, info that Rice, Powell Rumsfeld and others had blatently used for months and KNEW was false???? And, why should we let the commander in chief pass the buck on a matter of utmost importance?

People, watch the reports carefully over the weekend, as well as Meet the Press. If it looks like the press wants this to die, don't let it happen. Write/call/email everyone: your local papers, TV stations, congressmen, senators. Don't let them be lapdogs of this lying cabal anymore. Do not get discouraged. Democracy is in our hands.

Today’s NYT Editorial: An Important Bellwether
The Uranium Fiction
July 12, 2003

We're glad that someone in Washington has finally taken responsibility for letting President Bush make a false accusation about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program in the State of the Union address last January, but the matter will not end there. ...

So far, the administration's handling of this important — and politically explosive — issue has mostly involved a great deal of finger-pointing instead of an exacting reconstruction of events and an acceptance of blame by all those responsible. ...

A good deal of information already points to a willful effort by the war camp in the administration to pump up an accusation that seemed shaky from the outset and that was pretty well discredited long before Mr. Bush stepped into the well of the House of Representatives last January. ...

The uranium charge should never have found its way into Mr. Bush's speech. Determining how it got there is essential to understanding whether the administration engaged in a deliberate effort to mislead the nation about the Iraqi threat.

A real test for Timmie on MTP on Sun. A few weeks ago he had numerous quotes from 1992 trying to imply hypocrisy by Dean on capital punishment, not to mention stats straight from the White House on taxes.

What will he do with Rusmfeld tomorrow on the intelligence evidence from 2003?

"In other words, Bush is comfortable with the charge that he is incompetent. He cannot accept the charge that he is a liar."
Exactly -- people voted for him because he "is an honest straight shooter" and accepted that he wasn't competent, that was Cheney's role.

Tenet accepted responsibilty well enough for that to become the news headline and allow GWB to say that he still has faith in Tenet. That's taking a bullet. I don't know why he did (and am not inclined at this point to believe that he was any more culpable for 9/11 than anyone else in the maladministration), but it has been clear for a long time that he is as much a part of BushCo as Powell. Maybe Tenet could one day explain why his analysts were unable to determine that the Niger documents were crude forgeries.

My guess is that the media now moves on. 24 hours of something important like a POTUS lying to take us to war is about all they can take of this. They just have to get back to Laci/Conner/Scott that they still haven't figured out after six months of daily coverage.

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DATE: 12/11/2003 12:31:20 AM
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