Waxman sides with CIA on Iraq intelligence dispute

For several years, disgraced former US Attorney-General, Alberto Gonzales, and Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, have maintained that the CIA approved the routine use in Presidential speeches of dubious intelligence on Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction (WMD). Recently, George W. Bush upheld to these claims by blaming the US intelligence community for the false information on Iraqi WMD. Now the chair of the US House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Rep. Henry Waxman (D-CA), has written a memo [pdf] containing the results of his investigation on the matter. In it, Rep. Waxman explains that “the CIA had warned at least four National Security Council officials not to allow Bush, in three speeches in 2002, to cite questionable intelligence that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium”. The questionable claims were taken out of these speeches, but mysteriously appeared in President Bush’s State of the Union address in the following year. Waxman’s findings are based largely on revelations by Jami Miscik, former Director of Intelligence at the CIA, who now advises President Elect Barack Obama’s transition team. Miscik’s claims corroborate those of former CIA Director George Tenet, who has publicly stated that the CIA contacted the White House in writing on at least three occasions, expressing severe skepticism at the President’s use of questionable intelligence on Iraq. Republican members of Rep. Waxman’s Committee have refused to support Waxman’s findings. [IA]