White House tries variety of responses to uranium claims

WASHINGTON -- The White House defense of President Bush's now-disavowed claim that Iraq was seeking uranium in Africa has evolved over the last two weeks: blame others, stonewall, bury questions in irrelevant information and, above all, hope it will go away.

So far, none has worked.

In question: Sixteen words in Bush's Jan. 28 State of the Union speech: "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa."

At issue: The credibility of the president's allegation that Saddam was rebuilding a nuclear weapons program. The assertion that Iraq was trying to buy uranium was a key component of that claim -- and a key piece of Bush's justification for war.

The flap started on July 6, when an envoy sent by the CIA to Africa last year to investigate the uranium claim contended that the Bush administration ignored -- and possibly manipulated -- his findings. In a New York Times op-ed article, Joseph Wilson, former U.S. ambassador to Gabon, said it was highly doubtful that any transaction took place.

The next day, the White House acknowledged that Bush should not have made the claim because of concerns about the intelligence behind it. The documents allegedly showing an Iraq-Niger uranium connection turned out to be forgeries.

Then-White House press secretary Ari Fleischer tried to shut down the story in its tracks, insisting it was old news.

In a way, it was.

National security adviser Condoleezza Rice had said almost a month earlier that Bush was wrong to include the uranium claim in his speech, but that the White House had not known about intelligence doubts until afterward. Her acknowledgment received little attention.

That changed with Wilson's statements. Democrats in Congress and on the presidential campaign trail demanded an investigation into whether Bush purposedly exaggerated intelligence.

With its press staff unable to quell the controversy, the White House brought in bigger guns -- Secretary of State Colin Powell, Rice, the president himself and even, later, British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

But, after two weeks, a White House usually adept at controlling stories merely by dismissing questions and waiting them out has had no luck.

The central questions -- asked over and over -- were not changing:

--Who knew what when -- especially the president?

--Why was it so important to include the statement in the speech?

--Who was responsible for putting it in?

--Why has the president refused to take responsibility for uttering it?

Only the White House's explanations shifted -- often contradicting themselves in the process.

There was the "no big deal" approach. Four days into the controversy, as Bush was dogged with questions while visiting Africa, Powell said there was no intention to deceive and called the outcry "overwrought and overblown and overdrawn." His defense was a bit backhanded -- the president's statement, he said, had been determined to be "not totally outrageous."

With that tack unsuccessful, the next day was blame the CIA day.

First Rice, then Bush pointed fingers at the CIA for not removing the claim while vetting the speech. CIA Director George Tenet, back in Washington, completed the well-scripted mea culpa by accepting full responsibility and absolving Bush.

But Democrats still weren't letting it go.

Rice appeared on three Sunday talk shows to offer a new explanation: Bush's remark was technically accurate because he correctly described what the British government had reported.

And who knows, Fleischer emphasized the next day, the British could be right. "We don't know if it's true," he said, "but nobody -- but nobody -- can say it is wrong."

Scott McClellan, who succeeded Fleischer as chief spokesman, also tried to dismiss questions. Over four days, he told reporters 20 times that the particular question they were asking had already been "addressed."

On July 16, he said claims of White House exaggeration were "nonsense" and accused skeptics of trying to "politicize this issue by rewriting history." He read five-year-old statements by Democratic Sens. John Kerry -- now running for president -- and Carl Levin urging action to confront Saddam's possession of weapons of mass destruction.

At the same time, the White House tried to redirect the debate onto the overall danger posed by Saddam's chemical and biological weapons -- uranium or not -- and onto Bush's resolve in acting to confront that threat.

With that came the Bush and Blair show, first with Blair's speech to a joint meeting of Congress last Thursday and then at a news conference with the president.

The two leaders defended their decision to go to war and said their prewar claims about Iraq's weapons would ultimately be proven right.

On Friday came the document dump.

The White House took the rare step of declassifying and releasing eight pages of the 90-page top-secret National Intelligence Estimate that was used to write the questioned portions of the State of the Union address.

But instead of putting a lid on the controversy, the documents were likely to raise more questions -- as they also showed prewar divisions within the U.S. intelligence community. The State Department, for instance, termed the reports that Saddam was shopping for uranium in Africa "highly dubious."

As for Bush, he has addressed the matter only in broad terms, saying he is confident in his decision to go to war. Once, he praised the intelligence he relied on as "darn good."

"We will find the truth," Bush said beside Blair. "And that'll end all this speculation."

Only time will tell.