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American Morning
Intelligence Questions Continue in Britain
Aired July 14, 2003 - 07:11 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.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Britain is experiencing its own political firestorm over the intelligence flap, but government officials there are standing firmly behind the report cited by the president in his State of the Union address.
CNN's senior European political correspondent, Robin Oakley, joins us live from London in front of 10 Downing Street this morning.
Good morning to you -- Robin.
ROBIN OAKLEY, CNN SENIOR EUROPEAN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.
And certainly Tony Blair is in considerable trouble still over the failure to find those weapons of mass destruction in post-conflict Iraq. If a week ago the waters were lapping around his ankles, he now is almost wading thigh deep through this problem.
Fifty four percent of the British public in one opinion poll said they wouldn't trust the British prime minister now further than they could throw him. And a new opinion poll out this morning says that two-thirds of the British public believe that, wittingly or unwittingly, Tony Blair has misled them in the way he used intelligence to make the case for war.
And with Mr. Blair on his way to Washington later this week, there are clear tensions building up between Downing Street and the White House, particularly over that question of whether or not Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in the African state of Niger for a nuclear weapons program.
The CIA has now taken the rap for the president, including that in his State of the Union message. The CIA now says that intelligence isn't good enough to use. The British government is still standing by it, but there's clearly a breakdown in relations between the two intelligence services. The CIA didn't tell Britain about Ambassador Joe Wilson's report, saying that the uranium supplies weren't happening. Britain doesn't seem to have supplied the CIA with the further intelligence which it claims to have, saying those uranium supplies were being made.
That's causing enough tension, but also when Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush get together, the British prime minister is under huge pressure at home now to have British suspects held in Guantanamo Bay brought back to Britain rather than face trial by military commissions. And it's a very difficult problem for George Bush to be able to do that, because the British government won't be able to guarantee that anybody sent home to Britain would face trial here because that is decided not by the government, but by an independent crown prosecution service -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: All right, CNN's Robin Oakley joining us from London this morning. Robin, thanks for that.
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 - 07:11 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Britain is experiencing its own political firestorm over the intelligence flap, but government officials there are standing firmly behind the report cited by the president in his State of the Union address.
CNN's senior European political correspondent, Robin Oakley, joins us live from London in front of 10 Downing Street this morning.
Good morning to you -- Robin.
ROBIN OAKLEY, CNN SENIOR EUROPEAN POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Soledad.
And certainly Tony Blair is in considerable trouble still over the failure to find those weapons of mass destruction in post-conflict Iraq. If a week ago the waters were lapping around his ankles, he now is almost wading thigh deep through this problem.
Fifty four percent of the British public in one opinion poll said they wouldn't trust the British prime minister now further than they could throw him. And a new opinion poll out this morning says that two-thirds of the British public believe that, wittingly or unwittingly, Tony Blair has misled them in the way he used intelligence to make the case for war.
And with Mr. Blair on his way to Washington later this week, there are clear tensions building up between Downing Street and the White House, particularly over that question of whether or not Saddam Hussein was seeking uranium in the African state of Niger for a nuclear weapons program.
The CIA has now taken the rap for the president, including that in his State of the Union message. The CIA now says that intelligence isn't good enough to use. The British government is still standing by it, but there's clearly a breakdown in relations between the two intelligence services. The CIA didn't tell Britain about Ambassador Joe Wilson's report, saying that the uranium supplies weren't happening. Britain doesn't seem to have supplied the CIA with the further intelligence which it claims to have, saying those uranium supplies were being made.
That's causing enough tension, but also when Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush get together, the British prime minister is under huge pressure at home now to have British suspects held in Guantanamo Bay brought back to Britain rather than face trial by military commissions. And it's a very difficult problem for George Bush to be able to do that, because the British government won't be able to guarantee that anybody sent home to Britain would face trial here because that is decided not by the government, but by an independent crown prosecution service -- Soledad.
O'BRIEN: All right, CNN's Robin Oakley joining us from London this morning. Robin, thanks for that.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
