WASHINGTON — Former White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales misled Congress when he claimed the CIA in 2002 approved information that ended up in the 2003 State of the Union speech about Iraq’s alleged effort to buy uranium for its nuclear-weapons program, a House Democrat said Thursday.
In a memo to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, which he chairs, Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., also expressed skepticism about assertions by then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice that she was unaware of the CIA’s doubts about the claim before President George W. Bush’s speech.
The committee’s Republicans do not endorse Waxman’s report, said Frederick Hill, press secretary for Rep. Darrell Issa of California, the committee’s top Republican.
Iraq’s alleged attempt to buy uranium was one of the justifications for the Bush administration’s decision to go to war. The claim has since been repudiated.
Waxman said his investigation showed the CIA had warned at least four National Security Council officials not to allow Bush, in three speeches in 2002, to cite questionable intelligence that Iraq had attempted to obtain uranium. The sentences were stripped out of those speeches but made it into the State of the Union address.
In a 2004 letter to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Gonzales said the CIA had orally approved the inclusion of the claim in two 2002 speeches, although it did not appear in the final drafts.
Gonzales later become attorney general.
