In My Time - Dick Cheney [212]
On April 9 Lynne and I were visiting the D-Day Museum in New Orleans. Watching television in our hotel before I went onstage to speak, we saw the statue of Saddam in central Baghdad pulled down by Iraqis and American marines. We knew we were watching the end of Saddam’s regime.
Just before the statue came down, a young marine draped an American flag over Saddam’s face. Watching the scene on television, I completely understood. We all wanted to see an Iraqi flag up there soon, but our troops had just accomplished a stunning military victory. They had earned the right to plant the stars and stripes anyplace they wanted.
At the end of the day, back in the White House, my guest was Kanan Makiya, an Iraqi dissident who had stood against Saddam for decades. A gentle, soft-spoken man, he had documented the atrocities of Saddam’s regime. It was an emotional meeting, and I’ll never forget Kanan’s words that evening: “Thank you,” he said, “for our liberation.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Intelligence and Politics
During the spring of 2003, stories began to appear in the press that a former U.S. ambassador had been sent to Africa in 2002 after I had asked questions about a report that Iraq had tried to acquire uranium from Niger. According to the articles the unnamed ambassador told the CIA upon his return that the report was wrong. His assessment was of interest to the media because it seemed to contradict a sixteen-word statement that President Bush had made in his 2003 State of the Union speech. “The British government,” he had said, “has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa.”
I was surprised by the stories about the ambassador. Well over a year before, when I had read a Defense Intelligence Agency report about Iraq possibly trying to acquire uranium from Niger, I had done what I often did and asked for further information. What was the CIA’s opinion of the report? What did the CIA think were the implications for Iraq’s nuclear program? A few days later, around Valentine’s Day 2002, I received a CIA memo saying that Iraq had existing stockpiles of yellowcake, or unenriched uranium ore, two hundred tons of which had previously been acquired from Niger, but that these stockpiles were in sealed containers that the International Atomic Energy Agency inspected annually. This was interesting information, since it indicated that if Saddam intended to restart his nuclear program, he was going to have to acquire uranium clandestinely—and he had a history with Niger. The mid-February memo said the agency was seeking to clarify and confirm the reporting on recent efforts by Iraq to acquire Niger uranium.
Fifteen months had passed and I hadn’t gotten an answer from the CIA, yet now I was reading in the newspapers that the agency had sent someone on a mission to Niger, an unnamed ambassador, who was intent on providing the results of his trip, which had never been provided to me, to members of the press, and he was doing so in order to call our truthfulness into question. In all my years working with the intelligence community—as White House chief of staff, as a member of the House Intelligence Committee, as secretary of defense supervising such intelligence organizations as the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, and the National Security Agency—I had never seen anything like this, and after I had read a couple of the stories, I picked up the secure phone on my desk and punched the button that gave me a direct line to CIA Director George Tenet out at CIA headquarters in Langley. “What the hell is going on, George?” I asked when he picked up the phone.
Tenet sounded embarrassed and seemed not to know much more than I did. He said neither he nor his deputy, John McLaughlin, had been aware of an envoy being sent to Niger. He did add one fact, though. He said they had learned that the wife of the fellow