‘Meet the Press’ transcript for May 6, 2007

MR. TENET:  Tim, any statements that say that there's operational command and control or a
relationship to 9/11 after that point does not comport with the intelligence, does not comport with our final judgments in any way, shape or form.

MR. RUSSERT:  Let me take you back to, now, the famous State of the Union address of January of '03, the famous 16 words.

MR. TENET:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  Here's what the president said:

(Videotape, January 28, 2003)

PRES. BUSH:  The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.

(End videotape)

MR. RUSSERT:  You said six months after that, that those words should not have been included in the president's speech.

MR. TENET:  Correct.

MR. RUSSERT:  Why did it take six months?

MR. TENET:  Well, well, Tim, first of all, it's interesting.  Let's, let's do the history here.  Identical words were intended to be put in the Cincinnati speech, and we took them out.  I took them out directly in a conversation with Mr.  Hadley and follow-up memos that we sent to the White House as to why you can't use this data.  We document that in the book.  That speech was provided to me just before it was given.  Unfortunately, I didn't read it.  We passed it out for comment.  Nobody came back to me to say "Let's take it out." So what happens, of course, is, is by the, by the--by June or July, major, you know, press, press starts to write about the fact that these were included.

MR. RUSSERT:  But one of your advisers says he warned you to take them out.

MR. TENET:  Well, that's not true.  That's really--that's absolutely not true.  But we took it out--we took it out in the Cincinnati speech.  We left it in in this speech.  I believe we had a responsibility in clearing the speech to, to accept the responsibility of the fact that we didn't get our job done and allowed the president of the United States to say that.  I believed there was going to be shared responsibility.  We took it out of Cincinnati. We were very forceful about that.  As the book notes, it was taken out of a previous speech that was to be given in September.  So our record on this, I testified--you know, when we testified to the Congress in October of 2002, we were asked about this question.  We said, "We don't believe it.  Saddam already has 550 metric tons of yellowcake under seal.  If he wants, yellowcake he has it.  We disputed the British belief."

MR. RUSSERT:  But if your president's giving a State of the Union address, and even if you hadn't vetted it, but then it appears in his speech...

MR. TENET:  Right.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...why wouldn't the next day or the day after...

MR. TENET:  Well...

MR. RUSSERT:  ...you say, "Please, that's not accurate, you can't say that." Why did you wait six months?

MR. TENET:  Well, well, Tim, you know, no one came into me to say it.  I didn't watch the speech that night.  I didn't go back and read the speech carefully.  My fault in not doing that, our fault for not taking it out of the speech.  But our position on this was very, very clear from September and October going forward about what we thought about it.  This was not--nitro and yellowcake had nothing to do with our judgment that Saddam is reconstituting nuclear weapons.  Nothing to do with it.

MR. RUSSERT:  In the National Intelligence Estimate that you put out, it does say, "A foreign government service reported as of early 2001, Niger planned to" spend several tons--"send several tons of `pure uranium,'" possible "probably yellowcake to Iraq.  We do not know the status of this arrangement."

MR. TENET:  Tim, it's not in our key judgments and findings.  We declassified that portion of it so everybody can understand what we said.  I believe we declassified the dissent that the State Department took.  We tried to put that whole piece in context.  But as to the nuclear judgment, that issue had nothing to do with our nuclear judgment.

MR. RUSSERT:  But if you had it in this estimate, is that where the president got the idea to put it in his speech?

MR. TENET:  Well, Tim, I don't know where they got the idea to--I don't know how they got the idea to put it in the speech.  All I can tell you...

MR. RUSSERT:  Where, where else would it come from?

MR. TENET:  Well, of course, but all I can tell you is--just--this is a very important point.

MR. RUSSERT:  Yes.

MR. TENET:  We outlined very carefully the critical elements of reconstitution of a nuclear weapon. This was not one of the them.  We took it out of the Cincinnati speech, followed up with two memos and said, "We do not believe this.  We've told the Congress that we do not believe that this is--this--we disagree with the British on this." We concluded this in the estimate because we wanted to be complete about what the records show.  But our position in our--we testified to nobody about this.  The secretary of state, when he went to the United Nations, he did not include this in his speech because we didn't believe it.  So, yes, it may have been in the estimate, but I think the record is clear about what the nuclear reconstitution judgment was based on, and this had nothing to do with it.

MR. RUSSERT:  A couple of areas I want to clear up.  The--when the CIA had an assessment that said it was low in their calculation that Saddam would initiate an attack and that if we started or commenced the war...

MR. TENET:  Low confidence.

MR. RUSSERT:  Low confidence.

MR. TENET:  Low--they didn't--we didn't know.

MR. RUSSERT:  But it start--if you started a war, it could be higher.

MR. TENET:  But, but we didn't know.

MR. RUSSERT:  But we didn't know.

MR. TENET:  We had no idea.

MR. RUSSERT:  But, nonetheless, that was seized upon as a difference between the president's view as to what the threat potential was.  And Condi Rice called you and said, "Would you please call a reporter at The New York Times and say there really is no difference--no inconsistency from what the president's saying and what Democrats are saying."

MR. TENET:  Right.  Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT:  You say you now regret that, because you were involving yourself...

MR. TENET:  Yeah.

MR. RUSSERT:  ...in a political decision.

MR. TENET:  I shouldn't have made that call, Tim, I understand that.

MR. RUSSERT:  But isn't that another example that people point to of George Tenet...

MR. TENET:  Well, it is, it is, it is, Tim, and all you can do after the fact is look at people and say, "I wish I hadn't done that.  It was a mistake to do that." I can't take it--you know, I can't do it any other way but to be honest with you about the fact I made a mistake.

MR. RUSSERT:  Senator, Senator Levin says it's your duty not to act as a shill for the administration.

MR. TENET:  He's exactly right, and I never believed I was a shill for the administration, Tim.

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