‘Meet the Press’ transcript for May 6, 2007

MR. RUSSERT:  But if you thought it was naive and you thought it was a mistake, do you wish now you had come forward?

MR. TENET:  Tim, I, I wrestled with this.  That was one conversation.  I wrestled with this very, very hard back and forth over the, over the course of the time.  It's not the ultimate conclusion I came to, notwithstanding conversations with, you know, it's sort of a, a Jesuit tradition where you throw things out, try and think through things, talk about things with people. And, and I tried to bounce ideas through people.  I didn't do it, Tim.  I, I did not, I did not oppose this, and to, to, to dress me up as a hero at this--I wasn't a hero here, and, and that's the record.

MR. RUSSERT:  Do you now believe that the war was a mistake?

MR. TENET:  Tim, what I believe is is that obviously the consequences of where we are today, our interests have been jeopardized, the region is much--the region is really at risk, not only Iraq.  I, I didn't tell the president at the front end not to do this.  History will make that judgment. The story continues to unfold.  Nobody can look at what we have on the ground and the difficulties that we have today and, and not understand all of these negative consequences.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me go back to August of 2002.  The vice president gave a speech to the Veterans of Foreign War.  Let's watch it and come back and talk about it.

(Videotape, August 26, 2002)

VICE PRES. CHENEY:  Many of us are convinced that Saddam Hussein will acquire nuclear weapons fairly soon.

Simply stated, there is no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.  There is no doubt that he is amassing them to use against our friends, against our allies and against us.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  Was that an accurate representation of the intelligence?

MR. TENET:  Well, Tim, the, the--he will have nuclear weapons fairly soon, I don't believe that that would be our position.  The national intelligence estimate said five to seven years to develop a nuclear capability unless somebody gave him fissile material.  And, as I say in the book--as I say in the book, I had an obligation to step up and say something--the speech was not provided to us for clearance.  I should not have allowed my silence to imply acquiescence at that moment.  That's my fault.

MR. RUSSERT:  But it wasn't just the vice president.  You testified before the Senate in March '04, the following.  Let's listen.

(Videotape, March 9, 2004)

MR. TENET:  You have to have the confidence to know that when I believed that somebody was misconstruing intelligence, I said something about it.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  You didn't always say something about it.

MR. TENET:  No, Tim, I did my best.  And, and, and I will tell you that I, I, I did not succeed in every moment.  I did my level best to, to ensure that the intelligence--I cannot tell you I was perfect, I certainly was not, and I did not absolve myself from that responsibility.

I'll make another point.  Once you, once you write the intelligence and, and once you take a stand on issues, you always have to rely on people to stick with it as well.  I mean, there's no automatic safety net.  I didn't, I didn't correct every statement that everybody ever made.  Certainly, when the president gave his statements, we cleared them.  We understand we had that obligation.  I cannot say that I did it as well as I could have; but, nevertheless, we made an effort to ensure that when words came out of people's mouth it comported with what we believed.

MR. RUSSERT:  But when the president on October 7 said, "Saddam has chemical and biologic weapons and is moving ever closer to developing a nuclear weapon..."

MR. TENET:  We...

MR. RUSSERT:  And then--and then he concluded with this.

MR. TENET:  All right.

MR. RUSSERT:  He concluded with this.

(Videotape, October 7, 2002)

PRES. BUSH:  Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  You had no problem with that.

MR. TENET:  Well, that's a judgment the president is going to make.  I mean, the--it's his--or why does the president say--you know, when you look at this carefully, what, what--what's in the back of the mind of policymakers at the time?  This is their judgment.  They take the intelligence, they make a judgment in the risk, so what's in their head?  Their head, of course, and I can't speak for them, I'm just surmising at the moment.  1991, we believed he was seven or eight years away from a nuclear weapon, and he was six years away.  So the president may have had a concern that the absence of evidence and what we didn't know may have led them to get someplace a lot sooner.  We cleared that speech, Tim.

MR. RUSSERT:  You did.

MR. TENET:  Yes, we did.

MR. RUSSERT:  Well, when you hear the president say that, or the vice president's talk about the nuclear weapons fairly soon, you know what it's doing to the consciousness of the American public.  Are you an enabler at that time by not objecting?

MR. TENET:  Tim, we, we--we're not enablers.  We, we, we write an estimate, we declassified our estimate.  We told you exactly what we believed about weapons of mass destruction.  We believed he had chemical and biological weapons.  We believed he, he was reconstituting a nuclear program but he was five to seven years away.  That's what we believed.  That's what we said.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me take you back to September 8, 2002, and you write about this in the book.  The front page of The New York Times.

MR. TENET:  Yes.

MR. RUSSERT:  An article by Judy Miller and Michael Gordon.  It says, "US says Hussein intensifies quest for A-bomb parts.  More than a decade after Saddam Hussein agreed to give up weapons of mass destruction, Iraq has stepped up its quest for nuclear weapons and has embarked on a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb.

"In the last 14 months, Iraq has sought to buy thousands of specially designed aluminum tubes, which American officials believe were intended as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium.

"The diameter, thickness and other technical specifications of the aluminum tubes had persuaded American intelligence experts that they were meant for Iraq's nuclear program."

The vice president was on this program that same Sunday; Condoleezza Rice was on CNN pointing to that story, pushing that story.  And then when the National Intelligence Estimate was released to the press, something that Congress had been given, tucked in there was that the Department of Energy assesses that the tubes probably are not part of the program

MR. TENET:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  So when you see that front page article and the vice president and secretary of state pushing the story, do you have an obligation to say "Time out..."

MR. TENET:  At the time...

MR. RUSSERT:  "Time out.  There is dissent on this."

MR. TENET:  Right.  At, at, at the time, what was the date of that statement?

MR. RUSSERT:  September.

MR. TENET:  OK, the estimate had not yet been produced.  CIA believed at the time that these tubes were intended to be used for that nuclear program.  When we get to the estimate, DOE believed that, in fact, reconstitution was occurring even though they didn't buy into the tubes.  All agencies agreed at the time that the tubes could be reconfigured for use for, for, for their nuclear program.  So, at the time, it was a CIA view.  We got to the estimate, the dissent was clearly spelled out.  DOE had a different point of view.  And we laid all that dissent out very, very clearly in the estimate.

MR. RUSSERT:  Was there always a spin put on the intelligence which would be most favorable to the administration's position?

MR. TENET:  Well, Tim, I can't say there was always a spin.  Look, we worked very, very hard.  Does every statement absolutely comport with the intelligence?  Probably not.  But  policymakers also, the tension that you run into is we have intelligence, they assess risk, they think what it means.  And is every word perfectly fitted to what an estimate says?  Probably not.

MR. RUSSERT:  In your book, you write this.  Your counterpart in great Britain, "Sir Richard Dearlove, "believed that the crowd around the vice president was playing fast and loose with the evidence." Do you agree with him?

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