Last night, CBS' 60 Minutes aired a segment on Iraq pre-war intelligence -- focusing on the Niger-Uranium controversy -- that was so slanted I half suspect that Democratic Senator Carl Levin produced it. Here are just a few examples:
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) When he returned, Wilson told the CIA what he'd learned. Despite that, some intelligence analysts stood by the Italian report that Saddam Hussein had purchased uranium from Niger. But the director of the CIA and the deputy director didn't buy it. In October, when the president's speech writers tried to put the Niger uranium story in a speech that President Bush was scheduled to deliver in Cincinnati, they intervened. In a phone call and two faxes to the White House, they warned "The Africa story is overblown" and "The evidence is weak." The speech writers took the uranium reference out of the speech. Meanwhile, the CIA had made a major intelligence breakthrough on Iraq's nuclear program. Naji Sabri, Iraq's foreign minister, had made a deal to reveal Iraq's military secrets to the CIA. Tyler Drumheller [former CIA head in Europe] was in charge of the operation.
Mr. DRUMHELLER: This was a very high, inner circle of Saddam Hussein, someone who would know what he was talking about.
BRADLEY: You knew you could trust this guy?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: We continued to validate the whole way through.
BRADLEY: (Voiceover) According to Drumheller, CIA Director George Tenet delivered the news about the Iraqi foreign minister at a high level meeting at the White House.
Mr. DRUMHELLER: The president, the vice president, Dr. Rice.
BRADLEY: And at that meeting...
Mr. DRUMHELLER: They were enthusiastic because they said we--they were excited that we had a high-level penetration of the Iraqis.
BRADLEY: And what did this high-level source tell you?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: He told us that they had no active weapons of mass destruction program.
BRADLEY: So in the fall of 2002, before going to war, we had it on good authority from a source within Saddam's inner circle that he didn't have an active program for weapons of mass destruction?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: Yes.
BRADLEY: There's no doubt in your mind about it?
Mr. DRUMHELLER: No doubt in my mind at all, no.
Where to begin? Regarding the Niger reference, Bradley failed to inform millions of viewers what the Senate's 2004 Report on the U.S. Intelligence Community's Prewar Intelligence Assessments on Iraq concluded on the issue:
Conclusion 13 (page 73)
The report on the former ambassador's trip to Niger, disseminated in March 2002, did not change any analysts' assessments of the Iraq-Niger uranium deal. For most analysts, the information in the report lent more credibility to the original Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reports on the uranium deal, but State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analysts believed that the report supported their assessment that Niger was unlikely to be wiling or able to sell uranium to Iraq.
Conclusion 12 (page 72)
Until October 2002 when the Intelligence Community obtained the forged foreign language documents on the Iraq-Niger uranium deal, it was reasonable for analysts to assess that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa based on Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) reporting and other available intelligence.
Conclusion 19 (page 77)
Even after obtaining the forged documents and being alerted by a State Department Bureau of Intelligence and Research (INR) analyst about problems with them, analysts at both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) did not examine them carefully enough to see the obvious problems with the documents. Both agencies continued to publish assessments that Iraq may have been seeking uranium from Africa. In addition, CIA continued to approve the use of similar language in Administration publications and speeches, including the State of the Union.
And on Sabri, I guess it wasn't newsworthy to inform viewers of what else Sabri had to say. After all, are we supposed to believe Sabri on the nuclear program but discount his comments on biological and chemical weapons? According to the Washington Post, Sabri also told the CIA that Saddam was lying, that biological weapons research was underway, and that Saddam had dispersed chemical weapons to loyal tribes.
