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WMD: Burden of Proof

Aired July 14, 2003 - 11:14   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Those 16 words in President Bush's State of the Union Speech still generating a lot of talk. CIA Director George Tenet now says the statement should have never been included in the speech. But Democrats say there are still unanswered questions about the dubious claim. The questionable intelligence is also the subject of a "Time" magazine cover story, "Untruth & Consequences."
Joining us now from Washington is "Time's" senior political correspondent Michael Weiss to talk about that.

Good morning, Mike. Good to see you again.

MICHAEL WEISS, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Hi, Leon.

HARRIS: All right, let's talk about this. George Tenet comes out and says he was responsible for putting the intelligence out there and allowing those 16 words to stay in the speech. What happened last week? Was he forced to come out and take the bullet on this one?

WEISS: I would say he was pressured, at least indirectly, once the White House put the blame on the CIA and he is the captain of that ship, he had no really choice but to come forward, either that or resign.

HARRIS: As I've seen it, reading it through your report, it seems like I've heard administration figures say that it's just a single sentence in one report, it's no big deal, but it seems there was a lot of back and forth going on over this single sentence.

WEISS: Let's not forget the State of the Union speech is kind of a compact between the president and the American public. It is about the most sacred communication every year. And so, generally, every word in there is vetted and overvetted until it can stand up to scrutiny. And because it was also an important speech in terms of justifying the American presence militarily in Iraq, there's been more focus on it, especially because of the failures of the other evidence to stand up, and that is the weapons of mass destruction.

HARRIS: Well, it's clear that the CIA was saying early on they had doubts about this information, even suggesting to the British that they should remove that nugget of information from their papers as well. If there was this skepticism about it, who was it that kept putting the item back on the table?

WEISS: That's still a bit of a mystery. Clearly, the White House officials, particularly at the National Security Council, kept putting it back in. And the kind of questions you just expressed were all internal. Publicly, the administration continued to cite this as an allegation justifying American military role.

And even at the most crucial moments, when George Tenet, the CIA director himself, personally intervened to have a sentence removed from an October speech of the president, publicly, the State Department was reciting it again as a response to Iraq's statements about weapons in Iraq.

HARRIS: Have you heard or picked up on more concerns coming from I guess people who are more willing to talk about this, that perhaps this administration -- this may be evidence that the administration truly did go into the thing with their own conclusion first, and then were trying to gather information to support it along the way, as opposed to going the other way around?

WEISS: Well, there certainly is that allegation. The White House would say, quite to the contrary, that everything was well vetted, that this was put in inadvertently, and because it had the imprimatur of the intelligence agency, and that's something of course the CIA director affirmed last week.

HARRIS: All right, finally, one last one, got to ask you this. One name that has popped up in the last couple of days or so to talk about this is Dick Cheney. What have you found out about how much he knew about this? Because there seems like there's some work going on there at that White House to say he didn't know about any of this stuff.

WEISS: We are reporting that he was there really at the ground floor. When the Brits first found out about this and passed it on to the administration, it reached his office, and questions he raised about the implications in a meeting, and implications of this report, ended up launching CIA inquiries, and to the contrary, however, the CIA has come up with evidence that kind of doubts the original British concerns.

HARRIS: Michael Weisskopf "Time" magazine, thanks for coming in. Good to see you again. A cover story on this week's "Time" magazine. Take care, Michael.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired July 14, 2003 - 11:14   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Those 16 words in President Bush's State of the Union Speech still generating a lot of talk. CIA Director George Tenet now says the statement should have never been included in the speech. But Democrats say there are still unanswered questions about the dubious claim. The questionable intelligence is also the subject of a "Time" magazine cover story, "Untruth & Consequences."
Joining us now from Washington is "Time's" senior political correspondent Michael Weiss to talk about that.

Good morning, Mike. Good to see you again.

MICHAEL WEISS, "TIME" MAGAZINE: Hi, Leon.

HARRIS: All right, let's talk about this. George Tenet comes out and says he was responsible for putting the intelligence out there and allowing those 16 words to stay in the speech. What happened last week? Was he forced to come out and take the bullet on this one?

WEISS: I would say he was pressured, at least indirectly, once the White House put the blame on the CIA and he is the captain of that ship, he had no really choice but to come forward, either that or resign.

HARRIS: As I've seen it, reading it through your report, it seems like I've heard administration figures say that it's just a single sentence in one report, it's no big deal, but it seems there was a lot of back and forth going on over this single sentence.

WEISS: Let's not forget the State of the Union speech is kind of a compact between the president and the American public. It is about the most sacred communication every year. And so, generally, every word in there is vetted and overvetted until it can stand up to scrutiny. And because it was also an important speech in terms of justifying the American presence militarily in Iraq, there's been more focus on it, especially because of the failures of the other evidence to stand up, and that is the weapons of mass destruction.

HARRIS: Well, it's clear that the CIA was saying early on they had doubts about this information, even suggesting to the British that they should remove that nugget of information from their papers as well. If there was this skepticism about it, who was it that kept putting the item back on the table?

WEISS: That's still a bit of a mystery. Clearly, the White House officials, particularly at the National Security Council, kept putting it back in. And the kind of questions you just expressed were all internal. Publicly, the administration continued to cite this as an allegation justifying American military role.

And even at the most crucial moments, when George Tenet, the CIA director himself, personally intervened to have a sentence removed from an October speech of the president, publicly, the State Department was reciting it again as a response to Iraq's statements about weapons in Iraq.

HARRIS: Have you heard or picked up on more concerns coming from I guess people who are more willing to talk about this, that perhaps this administration -- this may be evidence that the administration truly did go into the thing with their own conclusion first, and then were trying to gather information to support it along the way, as opposed to going the other way around?

WEISS: Well, there certainly is that allegation. The White House would say, quite to the contrary, that everything was well vetted, that this was put in inadvertently, and because it had the imprimatur of the intelligence agency, and that's something of course the CIA director affirmed last week.

HARRIS: All right, finally, one last one, got to ask you this. One name that has popped up in the last couple of days or so to talk about this is Dick Cheney. What have you found out about how much he knew about this? Because there seems like there's some work going on there at that White House to say he didn't know about any of this stuff.

WEISS: We are reporting that he was there really at the ground floor. When the Brits first found out about this and passed it on to the administration, it reached his office, and questions he raised about the implications in a meeting, and implications of this report, ended up launching CIA inquiries, and to the contrary, however, the CIA has come up with evidence that kind of doubts the original British concerns.

HARRIS: Michael Weisskopf "Time" magazine, thanks for coming in. Good to see you again. A cover story on this week's "Time" magazine. Take care, Michael.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com