Ex-Bush ally facing secrets-leak probe

A former senior White House official who claimed that President George Bush planned the Iraq war days after taking office could find himself at the centre of an investigation into the revealing of a secret government document.

Former Treasury Secretary Paul O’Neill claimed at the weekend that the Bush administration set its sights on Saddam Hussein’s Iraq in its earliest days, and not after September 11, as has been claimed.

But a US Treasury spokesman told reporters yesterday that a document, which was possibly classified and marked “secret”, was shown during a CBS 60 Minutes interview with Mr O’Neill on Sunday.

The spokesman said: “Based on the 60 minutes interview aired on Sunday night there was a document shown that appeared to be classified”.

He said senior Treasury Department staff met earlier yesterday and decided to refer the matter to the department’s inspector general, who would decide whether further investigation was needed.

Mr O’Neill sparked controversy when he made the claims about the planning for the Iraq war on the CBS programme.

He fuelled the controversy by writing in Time magazine that he never saw any evidence that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction, the main justification given by the coalition for going to war.

The claims come as a book is being published about Mr O’Neill’s time in office.

In the book, The Price of Loyalty, written by former Wall Street Journal reporter Ron Suskind, Mr O’Neill describes Mr Bush and his Cabinet as being “like a blind man in a roomful of deaf people”.

Mr O’Neill clashed with Mr Bush on deficit spending and tax cuts, ultimately leading to his departure.

Asked about Mr O’Neill’s claim about advance plans for war on Saddam, President Bush said last night: “Like the previous administration, we were for regime change. And in the initial stage of the administration, as you might remember, we were dealing with Desert Badger or flyovers and fly-betweens and looks. And so we were fashioning policy along those lines. And then, all of a sudden, September the 11th hit.”

At the State Department, deputy spokesman Adam Ereli defended the Bush administration’s record. He said Bush did not began his White House tenure determined to go to war with Saddam Hussein, but “gave Saddam Hussein an honest opportunity to turn things around and he just didn’t do it.”

A senior administration official told the Washington Post that Mr O’Neill’s “suggestion that the administration was planning an invasion of Iraq days after taking office is laughable”.

“Nobody listened to him when he was in office. Why should anybody now?” he said.

In the article in the latest Time magazine Mr O’Neill said he saw only “allegations and assertions” about Iraq’s weapons programmes during his tenure, which included a seat on the National Security Council.

“In the 23 months I was there, I never saw anything that I would characterise as evidence of weapons of mass destruction,” Mr O’Neill said.

“There were allegations and assertions by people. But I’ve been around a hell of a long time, and I know the difference between evidence and assertions and illusions or allusions and conclusions.

“To me there is a difference between real evidence and everything else. And I never saw anything in the intelligence that I would characterise as real evidence.”

In the 60 Minutes interview, Mr O’Neill said: “From the very beginning (of the Bush presidency), there was a conviction that Saddam Hussein was a bad person and that he needed to go.” He also raised concerns about the pre-emptive nature of the war planning.

“For me, the notion of pre-emption, that the US has the unilateral right to do whatever we decide to do, is a really huge leap,” he said.

Presidential spokesman Scott McClellan would not confirm or deny that the White House began Iraq war planning early in Bush’s term.

But, he said, Saddam “was a threat to peace and stability before September 11, and even more of a threat after September 11”.

He said: “It appears that the world according to Mr O’Neill is more about trying to justify his own opinions than looking at the reality of the results we are achieving on behalf of the American people.”