RE: Waxman Invites Tenet to Testify

----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: The Man Common
Date: Apr 28, 2007 9:06 AM


    Waxman Invites Tenet to Testify

    By Patrick O'Connor
    The Politico

    Go to Original

    House Oversight and Government Reform Chairman Henry A. Waxman (D-Calif.) has invited former CIA Director George Tenet to testify before his committee next month about claims that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.

    Waxman sent a letter to Tenet, in the care of his lawyer, Robert B. Barnett, on Friday asking the former CIA director to appear before his committee to discuss the intelligence data that President Bush cited in his 2003 State of the Union speech to justify the invasion of Iraq.

    "The purpose of the hearing is to learn your views about one of the claims used to justify the war in Iraq - the assertion that Iraq sought to import uranium from Niger - and related issues," Waxman wrote in the letter.

    Earlier this week, the committee voted to authorize a subpoena for Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to compel her to answer questions about these claims, a move that committee Republicans decried as an "overreach."

    Tenet famously claimed that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in his now infamous "slam dunk" comment that now seems more like a cover-your-butt background leak from some other White House official who was worried the president might be culpable for the pre-war intelligence.

    Tenet now slams the White House back in his new book, "At the Center of the Storm," saying they twisted his quote about the weapons of mass destruction and claiming there was never a "serious debate" leading up to the invasion. According to an Associated Press preview of the book, the former CIA chief has nice things to say about Bush himself, reserving his fire for Cheney.