March 25, 2004 5:08 AM

Facts? We don't need no sinkin' facts! Iraq did it....

The president dragged me into a room with a couple of other people, shut the door, and said, 'I want you to find whether Iraq did this.' Now he never said, 'Make it up.' But the entire conversation left me in absolutely no doubt that George Bush wanted me to come back with a report that said Iraq did this.

I said, 'Mr. President. We've done this before. We have been looking at this. We looked at it with an open mind. There's no connection.'

He came back at me and said, 'Iraq! Saddam! Find out if there's a connection.' And in a very intimidating way. I mean that we should come back with that answer. We wrote a report....

It was a serious look. We got together all the FBI experts, all the CIA experts. We wrote the report. We sent the report out to CIA and found FBI and said, 'Will you sign this report?' They all cleared the report. And we sent it up to the president and it got bounced by the National Security Advisor or Deputy. It got bounced and sent back saying, 'Wrong answer. ... Do it again.'

I have no idea, to this day, if the president saw it, because after we did it again, it came to the same conclusion. And frankly, I don't think the people around the president show him memos like that. I don't think he sees memos that he doesn't-- wouldn't like the answer.

- Richard Clarke

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This page contains a single entry by Jack Cluth published on March 25, 2004 5:08 AM.

Well, this would explain the whole gay marriage thing, eh?? was the previous entry in this blog.

Yeah, but they sure talk a good ball game, eh? is the next entry in this blog.

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