By Paul
Sperry
© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com
WASHINGTON – The source of the mysterious amnesia that struck so many
Clinton officials when scandals broke last decade may finally be known.
It's apparently something in the White House water, for convenient bouts
of forgetfulness have now spread to Bush officials.
It seems everyone's drawing a blank in the State of the Uranium
scandal.
We now know from an old memo surfaced by the CIA that National Security
Adviser Condi Rice was explicitly warned to drop from any presidential
speeches the dubious charge that Iraq was shopping for uranium in Africa.
Rice's deputy, Steve Hadley, and Bush's chief speech-writer, Mike
Gerson, got the same Oct. 6 memo from Langley.
The day before, Hadley got another CIA memo advising the White House
against taking stock in the British version of the uranium tale, because
it, too, was unfounded.
Yet three months later, President Bush spread the canard in his
nationally televised State of the Union speech.
Hadley, who was supposed to vet the key speech for bad intelligence,
claims he just plum forgot the CIA's earlier written warnings, which were
followed up by several calls from the CIA director. It was a highly
unusual move for the head of the nation's spy agency, but apparently not
the least bit memorable for the heretofore no-name aide on the other end
of the phone.
"I should have recalled at the time of the State of the Union speech
that there was controversy associated with the uranium issue," Hadley only
now confesses, after the memos surfaced and long after the nation was
fooled into believing Iraq posed an exigent threat to America.
Well, what about his boss Rice? She got at least one of the memos he
did. Why didn't she recall the warnings? Surely they discussed the CIA's
concerns.
"Not that I can recall," said Hadley, taking another big gulp from
Lethe.
OK, then how about the president? He
edited drafts of the speech, and ultimately broadcast the discredited
uranium reference to the world. Surely he knew there were reservations.
"He has no memory of that," his spokesman Dan Bartlett claimed, adding
that he didn't even remember that the same line was deleted from the final
draft of his Cincinnati speech on Iraq.
Just before the State of the Union, Rice aide Bob Joseph, a neocon nuke
expert keen on keeping the uranium charge in the speech, got an earful of
objections from top CIA analyst Alan Foley. Surely he remembers
concerns were raised.
"He has no memory of it," Bartlett said.
Yoinks! That
just leaves speech-writer Gerson, the guy who actually penned the
radioactive line in the speech. He looks like a walking encyclopedia.
But the nerd doesn't remember a damn thing.
"He had no recollection of the memo," Bartlett maintained. "He did not
recall the memo during the State of the Union process."
Can't recall? No recollection? That brings back memories, doesn't it?
How many times did we hear Clinton officials feign amnesia during
scandals?
Congress needs to hold televised hearings to jog these Bush officials'
rusty memories. Let's see if Hadley, Rice, Gerson, Joseph and others stick
to their story of communicable amnesia under oath and under the glare of
the klieg lights.
And while they're at it, lawmakers should subpoena the CIA for the
memos (the White House would merely claim executive privilege). They are
several pages long, and no doubt reveal a lot more than the White House is
telling.
Or perhaps Congress wants to roll over for this White House again, like
it did before the war when it granted an over-reaching commander in chief
blank-check authority to drag the nation into a bloody foreign quagmire
under false pretenses – heaping more shame on the Constitution's framers.
Is it also now willing to abdicate its oversight role over that same rogue
branch of government?
The ball is in the Republican leadership's court. It controls the game
on the Hill. Will it continue to punt away the truth?
Paul Sperry is Washington
bureau chief for WorldNetDaily.
