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American Morning

CIA Director George Tenet Accepts Blame

Aired July 14, 2003 - 08:05   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: All right, turning now to questions about how incorrect intelligence got into the State of the Union address still occupying the White House this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Top aides to the president admit the information should not have been in the speech, but say way too much is being made about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: It is 16 words and it has become an enormously overblown issue. The president of the United States did not go to war because of a question of whether or not Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: CIA Director George Tenet has accepted the blame for allowing the president to make the erroneous claims.

Joining us this morning is retired U.S. Army Colonel Patrick Lang. He's a former analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Good morning to you, Colonel.

Nice to see you.

PATRICK LANG, FORMER DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY ANALYST: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: Bad intelligence makes it into the State of the Union address when CIA officials clearly were suspect of it in the first place. We hear from former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who says it's beginning to sound like Watergate. We hear from Condoleezza Rice that it's all over blown.

Where do you stand?

LANG: Well, I think a lot is being made of these 16 words because it's a serious matter. And really it's indicative of a larger phenomenon which took place in the whole preparation for the war against Iraq, which is that in many instances the sincere, I think, beliefs of the consumers of intelligence, that is, the policy people, started to drive the process of analysis and to cause a selective acceptance of facts as they tended to support their theories.

And once you do that, then people start telling each other this is all right and that's all right, and it's not too hard to have something end up where it shouldn't be, as in the State of the Union message.

O'BRIEN: So you're saying that there was pressure from the White House to support an agenda even if the facts didn't necessarily support it?

LANG: I think the facts about this incident really matter. And what needs to be determined is who made these decisions and who pushed this bogus information, which was clearly understood to be bogus. You have to find out who it was in particular. It wasn't necessarily everybody. It wasn't necessarily the White House as an institution. But there are certainly some people in the administration who caused this to happen and they should be held to account for this, really. This is a serious matter.

O'BRIEN: Well, George Tenet says I'm the one who made the decision.

One, do you think he's going to keep this job? And, two, who do you think then, back at the White House is responsible or should be responsible?

LANG: Well, with regard to George Tenet's statement of the other day, if you look at it closely, you'll see that what he says basically is is that this was not an intelligence document, the State of the Union thing. So we were not ultimately responsible for it. So we were asked our opinion about the information in it and we tried to tell them several times that this was not correct and in the end they were going to do it anyway, so what we did is we settled for negotiated language which made it possible for us to stop objecting.

To me, that indicates that probably Tenet is not going to lose his job because in the White House they know very well that if they do throw him over the side of the boat, that, in fact, there may be a lot more said from the CIA about how hard they tried to resist this.

O'BRIEN: Certainly Democrats over the weekend were making the rounds on all the Sunday talk shows trying to place the blame squarely back onto the White House.

Do you think there's been any success from their perspective there?

LANG: I don't think this has a lot of traction with regard to the president as yet. But I think a tremendous case can be made here for the fact that some people's beliefs about Iraq were the governing factors in what, how the evidence was arranged as to Iraq's culpability on various issues. And if the Democrats are really interested in chasing this down, they'll find some interesting gold at the end of this rainbow.

O'BRIEN: From your experience, give me a sense -- and I think this is sort of the $64,000 question -- how information that the fall before the State of the Union address could at least twice be considered suspect, to the point where it was removed from previous speeches, make it into what could arguably be considered one of the most important speeches that the president would give?

LANG: Well, you shouldn't think of government in Washington or any other capital as some sort of idealized form, you know, something to be taught necessarily in civics class. In fact, this is a contact sport here. And what matters as to whether or not these things get into speeches or policy papers is whether or not you have sufficient cleverness or clout to get them inserted.

So the fact that CIA and DIA and these people resisted to some extent, or this was just considered obviously by someone, whoever it was, as an obstacle to be overcome and this is the game, and you play it as hard as you can to get what you believe in. And somebody did that and it's resulted in a disaster for the president.

O'BRIEN: Colonel Patrick Lang, nice to see you.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

LANG: My pleasure.

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 - 08:05   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SOLEDAD O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: All right, turning now to questions about how incorrect intelligence got into the State of the Union address still occupying the White House this morning.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: Top aides to the president admit the information should not have been in the speech, but say way too much is being made about it.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

CONDOLEEZZA RICE, NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER: It is 16 words and it has become an enormously overblown issue. The president of the United States did not go to war because of a question of whether or not Saddam Hussein sought uranium in Africa.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

O'BRIEN: CIA Director George Tenet has accepted the blame for allowing the president to make the erroneous claims.

Joining us this morning is retired U.S. Army Colonel Patrick Lang. He's a former analyst for the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Good morning to you, Colonel.

Nice to see you.

PATRICK LANG, FORMER DEFENSE INTELLIGENCE AGENCY ANALYST: Good morning.

O'BRIEN: Bad intelligence makes it into the State of the Union address when CIA officials clearly were suspect of it in the first place. We hear from former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, who says it's beginning to sound like Watergate. We hear from Condoleezza Rice that it's all over blown.

Where do you stand?

LANG: Well, I think a lot is being made of these 16 words because it's a serious matter. And really it's indicative of a larger phenomenon which took place in the whole preparation for the war against Iraq, which is that in many instances the sincere, I think, beliefs of the consumers of intelligence, that is, the policy people, started to drive the process of analysis and to cause a selective acceptance of facts as they tended to support their theories.

And once you do that, then people start telling each other this is all right and that's all right, and it's not too hard to have something end up where it shouldn't be, as in the State of the Union message.

O'BRIEN: So you're saying that there was pressure from the White House to support an agenda even if the facts didn't necessarily support it?

LANG: I think the facts about this incident really matter. And what needs to be determined is who made these decisions and who pushed this bogus information, which was clearly understood to be bogus. You have to find out who it was in particular. It wasn't necessarily everybody. It wasn't necessarily the White House as an institution. But there are certainly some people in the administration who caused this to happen and they should be held to account for this, really. This is a serious matter.

O'BRIEN: Well, George Tenet says I'm the one who made the decision.

One, do you think he's going to keep this job? And, two, who do you think then, back at the White House is responsible or should be responsible?

LANG: Well, with regard to George Tenet's statement of the other day, if you look at it closely, you'll see that what he says basically is is that this was not an intelligence document, the State of the Union thing. So we were not ultimately responsible for it. So we were asked our opinion about the information in it and we tried to tell them several times that this was not correct and in the end they were going to do it anyway, so what we did is we settled for negotiated language which made it possible for us to stop objecting.

To me, that indicates that probably Tenet is not going to lose his job because in the White House they know very well that if they do throw him over the side of the boat, that, in fact, there may be a lot more said from the CIA about how hard they tried to resist this.

O'BRIEN: Certainly Democrats over the weekend were making the rounds on all the Sunday talk shows trying to place the blame squarely back onto the White House.

Do you think there's been any success from their perspective there?

LANG: I don't think this has a lot of traction with regard to the president as yet. But I think a tremendous case can be made here for the fact that some people's beliefs about Iraq were the governing factors in what, how the evidence was arranged as to Iraq's culpability on various issues. And if the Democrats are really interested in chasing this down, they'll find some interesting gold at the end of this rainbow.

O'BRIEN: From your experience, give me a sense -- and I think this is sort of the $64,000 question -- how information that the fall before the State of the Union address could at least twice be considered suspect, to the point where it was removed from previous speeches, make it into what could arguably be considered one of the most important speeches that the president would give?

LANG: Well, you shouldn't think of government in Washington or any other capital as some sort of idealized form, you know, something to be taught necessarily in civics class. In fact, this is a contact sport here. And what matters as to whether or not these things get into speeches or policy papers is whether or not you have sufficient cleverness or clout to get them inserted.

So the fact that CIA and DIA and these people resisted to some extent, or this was just considered obviously by someone, whoever it was, as an obstacle to be overcome and this is the game, and you play it as hard as you can to get what you believe in. And somebody did that and it's resulted in a disaster for the president.

O'BRIEN: Colonel Patrick Lang, nice to see you.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

LANG: My pleasure.

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