A sad commentary, on so many levels.
From last night’s Larry King with Bob Woodward …
KING: The comments about — that he has made concerning Iraq, where he sort of like — well, Powell let’s go to work — Powell said first. Powell said it was a minor issue, this thing about uranium and Africa. Do you think it’s a minor issue?
WOODWARD: It’s got to be explained. But one of the things that’s most difficult to understand is what is the basis of an intelligence report? And the CIA and the intelligence community do these things called National Intelligence Estimates. And they are big documents where they take all source intelligence, they put it together, they sit in a room, actually, and debate, do we believe this? Is this credible? Is this supported here?
They do them on things when we’re not sure. You don’t need a National Intelligence Estimate, for instance, on whether the Soviet Union is collapsed. We know it collapsed. But they would do National Intelligence Estimates on things like, well, what is the threat that Iraq poses? Weapons of mass destruction? And so it clearly says it’s an estimate. They make judgments. I’ve seen some of these things. And there will be a liaison intelligence service report, say from the Jordanians, saying we have a source who says the following. There will be a satellite picture. They’re little pieces, little fragments. And it’s inevitable one’s going to be wrong.
KING: But what makes the State of the Union? That’s got to go through — doesn’t that go through a lot of checkpoints?
WOODWARD: Yes, yes, it does. And that’s a serious mistake. They’ve backed off on it in the White House. But Bush needs to explain it. He needs to come forward and say hey, look, people accept in their human relations and in their presidents somebody who says, you know, I messed up on this, and this is how it happened. They need to do that.
KING: Were you surprised that Powell, kind of, dismissed it?
WOODWARD: Well, you know, I’m really on sound ground, here, when I say it’s one little piece of thousands of pieces that get sifted when they put something like this together. And you know, I’m sure on occasion, on your show you’ve said something that turned out to be wrong. You’ve had bad information. I know in my work, it’s happened. And you regret it and you step forward and say, I goofed.
KING: You don’t see anything deliberate.
WOODWARD: Not at this point. Not at all. And at the same time, as Richard Nixon said, the cover-up is always worse than the offense. And if they try to not explain it, if they try to say, Oh, you know, we don’t have to deal with this, or dismiss it, it’s not going to work. They’re going to have to come forward and say, Look, this came — this person — my understanding is there was some debate about it, and it may have been in one other speech earlier and got deleted and then got put in this one, so…
One little piece? De minimis deception?
