Tenet says U.N. speech was his fault
Former CIA Director George J. Tenet accepted blame Sunday for inaccurate statements made by then-Secretary of State Colin L. Powell in a 2003 address to the United Nations about Iraq’s weapons capability.
Tenet spent three days vetting Powell’s Feb. 5, 2003, speech to the U.N. Security Council and thought it was “good and solid,” the former CIA chief said.
At the time, Powell, with Tenet seated behind him at the U.N., said Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was hiding illegal chemical and biological weapons. The claim was eventually found to be wrong.
“We let the secretary down and we undermined the credibility” of the U.S., Tenet told NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Nobody regrets this more than I do.”
In the U.N. speech, Powell also said evidence showed that Iraq had “sanitized” chemical weapons bunkers to thwart detection by U.N. inspectors.
“The notion that we would walk the secretary of State out on the world stage and knowingly let him” misstate the facts is untrue, Tenet said.
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