Truthout: Clarke, O'Neill Accounts Support Tenet's Claims

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http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/050707J.shtml

Clarke, O'Neill Accounts Support Tenet's Claims
By Jason Leopold
t r u t h o u t | Report

Monday 07 May 2007

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Tenet got a $4 million advance for his memoirs. Since his book's revelation became public last week, he has been the subject of a widespread backlash by former intelligence colleagues, who said he should have spoken out sooner. Still, his information on flawed prewar intelligence related to Iraq has once again sparked serious debate within Congress on whether the White House knowingly misled the public. The Iraq war has claimed the lives of more than 3,300 US soldiers and tens of thousands of Iraqi civilians.

With Democrats controlling both houses of Congress, hearings and investigations have been launched in an effort to determine how the bogus intelligence made its way into the hands of the White House executive staff, and why it was cited as fact despite prior warnings about its veracity by Tenet and other intelligence analysts at the CIA.

This issue comes up time and again, whenever a new book by Washington insiders is published. And every time a revelation turns up in a book about the White House's interest in toppling Saddam Hussein prior to 9/11, administration officials dismiss the allegations as conspiratorial, saying publicly they don't recall having such discussions with former White House officials-turned- authors.

That was the case over the weekend. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice appeared on three Sunday news shows to deny Tenet's claims that the administration did not seriously discuss whether Iraq was a threat. Rice made identical statements when Clarke published his book, "Against All Enemies," and when O'Neill's claims were quoted in Suskind's book, "The Price of Loyalty."

Veracity of Prewar Iraq Intelligence Hotly Debated

The question of whether the Bush administration targeted Iraq prior to 9/11 has long been the subject of heated debate between Democrats and Republicans. The Bush administration says Iraq was not in its crosshairs before 9/11. Rice, who was national security adviser during Bush's first term as president, has for years denied the existence priot to 9/11 of any plan to attack Iraq. She has long maintained that the White House had been focused on rooting out Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda network, testifying before the 9/11 Commission that Bush was "tired of swatting at flies."

Rice's comment regarding the president not wanting to swat at flies as it pertained to the 9/11 commission's inquiry could raise broader questions about how the White House handled pre-9/11 warnings by Tenet and others. If in fact it was Bush's policy that responding to Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda's plans constituted swatting at flies, that would cast a more critical light on the administration's non-response to Tenet's now-famous August 6, 2001 briefing to Bush at the White House titled, "Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US".

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