Posted on 02/21/2004 3:17:19 PM PST by optimistically_conservative
WASHINGTON -- The Central Intelligence Agency has acknowledged that it did not provide the United Nations with information about 21 of the 105 sites in Iraq singled out by U.S. intelligence before the war as the most highly suspected of housing illicit weapons.
The acknowledgment, in a Jan. 20 letter to Sen. Carl Levin (D-Mich.), contradicts public statements before the war by top Bush administration officials. Both CIA Director George Tenet and National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice said the United States had briefed U.N. inspectors on all of the sites identified as "high value and moderate value" in the weapons hunt.
The contradiction is significant because congressional opponents of the war were arguing a year ago that the U.N. inspectors should be given more time to complete their search before an invasion. The White House insisted that it was fully cooperating with the inspectors and providing the best information possible.
In a telephone interview on Friday, Levin said he now believed that Tenet had misled Congress, which he described as "totally unacceptable."
Hmm. I can't tell from this article who the letter came from, who wrote it. Could this leak be from Valerie Plame?
There also may have been sites that the CIA could not have volunteered to the UN because to do so would have compromised the intelligence that provided those site's locations.
Could this be a leak by Plame?
Why should they. The CIA already knew that the UN was leaking like a seive to Saddam.
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