CIA's Tenet shaping up as fallguy

By ANDREW BUNCOMBE in Washington

George Tenet, the director of the CIA, is known as a man with a laid-back demeanour and a habit of idly bouncing a basketball as he wanders the corridors of the agency's headquarters at Langley, Virginia.

But with the row about false intelligence over Iraq's alleged efforts to buy uranium from Niger raging around him, the 50-year-old is unlikely to feel so relaxed. Indeed, having been publicly chastised by President George W. Bush, he must be wondering how much longer he will hold the title of Director of Central Intelligence.

Tenet found himself at the centre of the growing row after Bush and his senior officials claimed the CIA had approved the President's State of the Union address last January, 16 words of which repeated the claim that Iraq had "recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa".

Bush said his speech "was cleared by the intelligence services". His national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, said the CIA had "cleared the speech in its entirety".

Tenet issued an extraordinary statement on Saturday in which he said he was "responsible for the approval process in [his] agency". It seems clear that Tenet, who is said to have a close relationship with Bush, briefing him on intelligence matters every morning, is being lined up as a scapegoat.

There were many who felt he was lucky to keep his job after critics rounded on the CIA for not having prevented the terror attacks of September 11. Now the knives are out for him again. Pat Roberts, the Republican chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said: "I am very disturbed by what appears to be extremely sloppy handling of the issue from the outset by the CIA."

The son of Greek immigrants, who grew up in a blue-collar neighbourhood in New York, Tenet is not going without a fight. In his statement he said that "for perspective, a little history is in order" and went on to outline how the agency had repeatedly warned that intelligence for the Niger claim was "fragmentary". As a result, the claim was not included in an unclassified CIA White Paper published last October.

He added: "For the same reason the subject was not included in many public speeches, Congressional testimony and [US Secretary of State Colin Powell's] UN presentation. The background above makes it even more troubling that the 16 words made it into the State of the Union speech."

Quite how the claim entered the speech remains unclear. Weekend reports suggested the decision was taken after a conversation between Robert Joseph, a nuclear proliferation expert at the national security council, and Alan Foley, a CIA official.

Some unnamed Administration officials said Joseph had pressured the CIA man to authorise the claim, while others said he had done no such thing.

Washington is gripped by the claims and counter-claims, by the Administration's attempt to shift the blame and by the whispers from anonymous sources making their way into the newspapers.

Whether the public is well-served by this is another matter. The lacklustre Democrats have finally woken from their political slumber and are demanding a full, open inquiry into the claims made to the American people in the preparation for war.

Perhaps only then will it become clear just who wrote those 16 all-important words and who placed them in the mouth of the President.

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Herald Feature: Iraq