Report: CIA not consulted on '45 minute' Iraq claim

The White House did not seek CIA approval before claiming Saddam Hussein could launch a chemical or biological attack within 45 minutes, it was reported today.

President Bush made the allegation twice in September, attributing it to the British government, The Washington Post said. It also appeared on the White House website without attribution.

Leading Democrats in Washington have suggested the Bush administration exaggerated the risk to America from Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction.

The White House embraced the 45 minute claim, from a British dossier on Iraq, at the same time it began to promote the dossier’s disputed claim that Iraq sought to buy uranium in Africa.

Bush administration officials said the CIA was not consulted about the claim.

Virtually all the focus on whether Bush exaggerated intelligence about Iraq’s weapons ambitions has been on the credibility of a claim he made in his January 28 State of the Union address about efforts to buy uranium in Africa.

But an examination of other presidential remarks, which received little if any scrutiny by intelligence agencies, indicates Bush made more broad accusations on other intelligence matters related to Iraq, the newspaper said.

Bush made the blunt assertion that “there are al-Qaida terrorists inside Iraq“.

This claim was highly disputed among intelligence experts; a group called Ansar al-Islam in Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq and Jordanian Abu Musab Zarqawi, who could have been in Iraq, were both believed to have al-Qaida contacts but were not themselves part of al-Qaida.

Bush was more qualified in a speech in October, mentioning al-Qaida members who got training and medical treatment from Iraq.

The State of the Union address was also more vague about whether al-Qaida members were in Iraq, saying “Saddam Hussein aids and protects terrorists, including members of al-Qaida.”

Democratic Senator Carl Levin suggested the dispute over the uranium claim in the State of the Union “is about whether administration officials made a conscious and very troubling decision to create a false impression about the gravity and imminence of the threat that Iraq posed to America”.

He said there is evidence the uranium claim “was just one of many questionable statements and exaggerations by the intelligence community and administration officials in the build-up to the war”.