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American Morning
Intelligence Issue
Aired July 18, 2003 - 07:07 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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Only 16 words, but a senate committee is promising to find out exactly how they got into the State of the Union address.
Senator Dick Durbin out of Illinois is blaming unnamed people at the White House for that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: The president has within his ranks, on his staff, some person who was willing to spend and hype and exaggerate and cut corners on the most important speech the president delivers at any given year. That, to me, is inexcusable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says mistakes were made all the way up the chain, and they'll go wherever that investigation may lead them.
That leads us now to the White House, the Front Lawn and CNN's Dana Bash this morning.
Dana -- good morning.
DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.
Well, the White House is calling Senator Durbin's claims outrageous and nonsense. They say that nobody here at the White House pressured anybody at the CIA to get that dubious claim into the president's State of the Union address.
Now, we know that CIA Director George Tenet, while he admitted behind closed doors he didn't actually read the speech, he has claimed responsibility. But when President Bush was asked yesterday whether or not he bears any responsibility for what was said during that address, he didn't directly answer, but here is what he said:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I take responsibility for putting our troops into action, and I made that decision because Saddam Hussein was a threat to our security and a threat to security of other nations. I take responsibility for making the decision, the tough decision to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: But questions are still being asked about exactly how this got into the speech. And government sources say in testimony behind closed doors in the Senate on Wednesday CIA official Alan Foley revealed that he was the point of contact on the speech between himself and Robert Joseph, who is an official here at the NSC. According to officials, sources who were in the room, Foley said that he mentioned to Joseph that there were some possible problems with this information, and the two discussed back and forth just how the information could be used, settling in the end on the reference to British reports.
Now, sources also said that Foley did not give the impression during his testimony that he was necessarily pressured by Joseph to get this information in no matter what, as Senator Durbin has suggested. But, in any event, he did make it clear that there were discussions back and forth, according to testimony, about exactly how to get this in.
And this has, Bill, as you said, raised a whole number of different questions about just what the negotiations were, just what the White House knew, why they wanted this in there, and Senator Roberts said he will ask members of the White House to come testify to give that information over -- Bill.
HEMMER: Well, we warned our viewers at the outset they're going to hear some new names today, and already we are. Dana, thanks -- Dana Bash from the White House.
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 18, 2003 - 07:07 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Only 16 words, but a senate committee is promising to find out exactly how they got into the State of the Union address.
Senator Dick Durbin out of Illinois is blaming unnamed people at the White House for that.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SEN. DICK DURBIN (D), ILLINOIS: The president has within his ranks, on his staff, some person who was willing to spend and hype and exaggerate and cut corners on the most important speech the president delivers at any given year. That, to me, is inexcusable.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
HEMMER: The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee says mistakes were made all the way up the chain, and they'll go wherever that investigation may lead them.
That leads us now to the White House, the Front Lawn and CNN's Dana Bash this morning.
Dana -- good morning.
DANA BASH, CNN WHITE HOUSE CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Bill.
Well, the White House is calling Senator Durbin's claims outrageous and nonsense. They say that nobody here at the White House pressured anybody at the CIA to get that dubious claim into the president's State of the Union address.
Now, we know that CIA Director George Tenet, while he admitted behind closed doors he didn't actually read the speech, he has claimed responsibility. But when President Bush was asked yesterday whether or not he bears any responsibility for what was said during that address, he didn't directly answer, but here is what he said:
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I take responsibility for putting our troops into action, and I made that decision because Saddam Hussein was a threat to our security and a threat to security of other nations. I take responsibility for making the decision, the tough decision to put together a coalition to remove Saddam Hussein.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BASH: But questions are still being asked about exactly how this got into the speech. And government sources say in testimony behind closed doors in the Senate on Wednesday CIA official Alan Foley revealed that he was the point of contact on the speech between himself and Robert Joseph, who is an official here at the NSC. According to officials, sources who were in the room, Foley said that he mentioned to Joseph that there were some possible problems with this information, and the two discussed back and forth just how the information could be used, settling in the end on the reference to British reports.
Now, sources also said that Foley did not give the impression during his testimony that he was necessarily pressured by Joseph to get this information in no matter what, as Senator Durbin has suggested. But, in any event, he did make it clear that there were discussions back and forth, according to testimony, about exactly how to get this in.
And this has, Bill, as you said, raised a whole number of different questions about just what the negotiations were, just what the White House knew, why they wanted this in there, and Senator Roberts said he will ask members of the White House to come testify to give that information over -- Bill.
HEMMER: Well, we warned our viewers at the outset they're going to hear some new names today, and already we are. Dana, thanks -- Dana Bash from the White House.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com.
