July 9, 2003: Tenet Unhappy with Possible White House Leaks Blaming CIA for Intelligence Failures

According to later testimony by Vice President Dick Cheney’s communications director, Cathie Martin, Deputy National Security Adviser Stephen Hadley brings up a July 8 appearance by NBC reporter Andrea Mitchell on CNBC (see July 8, 2003) during a meeting. In the meeting, Hadley complains that someone in the White House is trying to pin an inordinate amount of blame for prewar intelligence failures on the CIA, and CIA Director George Tenet is unhappy about it. Martin feels as if Hadley thinks she might be leaking information to the press about blaming the CIA. After the meeting, White House officials decide, according to Martin’s later testimony, to “keep communicators uninvolved” with information emanating from Tenet. Martin tells Cheney and Cheney’s chief of staff Lewis Libby that she did not give information to Mitchell. [Marcy Wheeler, 1/25/2007] Within days, President Bush will directly blame Tenet and the CIA for not catching the Iraq-Niger forgeries (see July 11, 2003). Tenet will take the blame for using the forgeries as the basis for Bush’s claim that Iraq tried to buy uranium from Niger (see 3:09 p.m. July 11, 2003).