How Former VP Dick Cheney Led the Charge on the War on Terror (full documentary) | FRONTLINE (PBS)

NARRATOR: After 9/11, the White House went to war. Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: We've got  to spend time in the shadows. We   have to work toward the dark side, if you will. NARRATOR: And the vice  president would lead the charge­ OBSERVER: He's the most powerful vice  president in history of our country. NARRATOR: ­and define the war on terror. OBSERVER: Things are going to happen that  the public's not going to know about.   OBSERVER: We weren't going to  play by the old set of rules.   Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: It's going to  be vital for us to use any means at our   disposal to achieve our objective. NARRATOR: Tonight on FRONTLINE,   the inside story from The Dark Side. 911 OPERATOR: Police operator. Where is the   emergency? WOMAN: Help! Help!   FIRE DEPT. DISPATCHER: Fire  Department 408. Where's the fire?   911 OPERATOR: I received another call  in regards the World Trade Center.   ["Meet the Press," September 16, 2001] Vice Pres. RICHARD CHENEY: My secretary had called   in just before 9:00 and said an airplane  had hit the World Trade Center.   WOMAN: I'm going to die, aren't I! 911 OPERATOR: No, no, no, no!   WOMAN: I'm going to die! 911 OPERATOR: Ma'am, say your prayers!   Vice Pres. RICHARD CHENEY: So we turned on the  television and actually saw the second plane hit.  POLICE DEPT. DISPATCHER: Police department 305.   Where is the emergency? MAN: [unintelligible] but   it's getting bad! Oh God! Oh! Vice Pres. RICHARD CHENEY:   My Secret Service agents came in and said,  "Sir, we have to leave immediately," and   grabbed me and hoisted me up and moved me very  rapidly to an underground facility under the   White House. The Secret Service had received  a report that an airplane was headed for the  

White House. NEWSCASTER:   Oh, my goodness! There is smoke  pouring out of the Pentagon!   Vice Pres. RICHARD CHENEY: Within short order, we  had word the Pentagon's been hit. We had a reports   that there were six airplanes that might  have been hijacked, and that's what we   started working off of, was that list of six. NARRATOR: They scrambled the Air Force. The   vice president said he was authorized  to order them to shoot down commercial   airliners. Richard Clarke was in the bunkers. RICHARD CLARKE Director NSC Counterterrorism,   1998-01: He had recommended that we use force to  shoot down passenger aircraft, if those passenger   aircraft were hijacked and if it looked like  they were about to take out a significant target,   like the White House or the Capitol. NARRATOR: On the phone to the Pentagon,   Cheney talked about the shootdown  order with his oldest political ally,   Secretary of Defense Don Rumsfeld. [9/11 commission report]   "Has that directive been  transmitted to the aircraft?"   The vice president answered, "Yes, it has." By 10:39 in the morning, Cheney mistakenly   believed the military had taken down at least  two aircraft. ŒIt is my understanding they've   already taken a couple of aircraft out,"  he said. "We can't confirm that," Rumsfeld   replied. "We're told that one aircraft is down,  but we do not have a pilot report that did it."   The aircraft, United Airlines flight 93, had just  crashed in Pennsylvania. Cheney believed he had  

been responsible for shooting it down. RICHARD CLARKE: He was very firm,   calm, cool, making decisions clearly. JAMES MANN, Author, Rise of the Vulcans: He   immediately begins to take charge of  what's going to happen in Washington.   Vice Pres. RICHARD CHENEY: ["Meet the  Press," September 16, 2001] It's going to be   vital for us to use any means at our  disposal to achieve our objective.   RICHARD CLARKE: I think the vice president  felt he kind of looked death in the eye on   9/11. Three thousand Americans died. The building  that the vice president used to work in blew up,   and people died there. This was a cold slap  in the face. This is a different world you're   living in now. And the enemy's still out  there, and the enemy could come after you.   That does cause you to think things differently. NARRATOR: The vice president would become the   chief architect of the war on terror. There  would be new laws enhancing executive power,   robust action at home and  abroad, and above all, secrecy.   ["Meet the Press," September 16, 2001] Vice Pres. RICHARD CHENEY: We have to   work toward dark side, if you will. We've  got to spend time in the shadows in the   intelligence world. A lot of what needs to  be done here will have to be done quietly,   without any discussion, using sources and methods  that are available to our intelligence agencies.  

GARY SCHROEN, CIA 1970-2002: There were about 30  of us standing around, and as soon as the second   aircraft smashed into the second tower, everyone  said, "Bin Laden. It was bin Laden. This is   the attack that bin Laden's been promising." NARRATOR: The CIA had been warning the White   House about bin Laden, but they had  missed how and when it would happen.   JOHN McLAUGHLIN, Dpty. Director, CIA  2000-04: We were fighting these guys,   and they won a huge victory on that  day and it was a huge defeat for us.   NARRATOR: George Tenet, the director of Central  Intelligence, a seasoned political operator,   wanted official Washington to know the  CIA already knew who was responsible.   He sent deputies out for briefings. Sen. BOB GRAHAM (D-FL), Select Comm. on Intel.,   01-03: We were given the CIA's initial assessment  of what had happened, and they listed al Qaeda   as the most likely source of this attack. JAMES BAMFORD, Author, The Puzzle Palace: On   the afternoon of September 11th, the Pentagon  is still smoking, Donald Rumsfeld dictates to   one of his aides, "We've got to see, somehow,  how we could bring Saddam Hussein into this."   [Dept. of Defense notes, 9/11/01, 2:40 PM]  "Judge whether hit S.H. [Saddam Hussein] at   the same time, not only UBL [Usama bin Laden]." MICHAEL SCHEUER, CIA 1982-2004: Mr. Wolfowitz,   Mr. Rumsfeld and Mr Cheney all  cut their teeth in the cold war,   in the contest between nation-states. They're  not comfortable with thinking that the world's   greatest power can be threatened by a couple of  Arabs with long beards, squatting around a desert  

campfire in Afghanistan. It doesn't register. NARRATOR: All that day, Rumsfeld and Vice   President Cheney were in close contact with  the president. They argued there would have   to be retaliation, not just against bin  Laden but also against nations that may   have helped al Qaeda, nations like Iraq. Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: We will make no   distinction between the terrorists who committed   these acts and those who harbor them. NARRATOR: And later that evening,   Don Rumsfeld took the opportunity to raise Iraq. BOB WOODWARD, The Washington Post: The night of   9/11, at a small group meeting of the principals,  Rumsfeld actually puts Iraq on the table and says,   "Part of our response maybe should be  attacking Iraq. It's an opportunity."   NARRATOR: The president was now the focus of  a longstanding ambition of the vice president   and his allies to deal with Saddam Hussein. RON SUSKIND, Author, The One Percent Doctrine: I   mean, when you really think about all these chess  pieces moving, with significant players, seasoned   infighters, almost in every chair. Now, take  these two characters, Cheney and Rumsfeld, and   move them into the two key slots around a young  and generally inexperienced president, certainly   in foreign affairs. It's something of a mismatch.

they were assembling the Bush administration,  Cheney had tried hard to keep George Tenet out.   CHARLES BATTAGLIA, Bush-Cheney 2000  Transition: The word I was getting   here from Vice President-Designate  Cheney's staff is that there was no   way that George Tenet was going to stay around. NARRATOR: Not much about Tenet appealed to Cheney.   He was a holdover from the Clinton administration,  a Democrat. But he'd worked in the Senate,   at the National Security Council, and knew  something about the personal side of politics.   Tenet, after all, renamed the CIA  headquarters after George W. Bush's father,   after George Herbert Walker Bush. And  it was a signal of his deft touch as a   political manager that he did this. NARRATOR: Bush 41 recommended Tenet   to his son, and they immediately hit it off. DAVID KAY, Iraq Weapons Inspector: He's a very   gregarious, enjoyable friend to have. He wraps  his hand around you, chewing on an unlit cigar.   He loves to talk sports. He's a man's man. NARRATOR: They met nearly every morning,   Tenet personally delivering   the Presidential Daily Brief, the PDB. STEVE COLL: It's very easy to see how Tenet   and George W. Bush would have gotten along well.  They're both men who aren't going to spend a lot   of time pulling apart nuances of international  relations. They're interested in short,   sharp facts, a clear sense of direction. And  Tenet, like the president, is casual in his  

demeanor. It's easy to imagine at these briefings  that two men who didn't know each other at all   discovered that they were similar personalities. NARRATOR: Some at the CIA worried that Tenet might   become just a little too close the president. RICHARD KERR, Fmr. Dpty. Director CIA: I do   believe that you can get to close and become,  if you will, partisan to the policy. You can be   captured by being close to the seat of power.  And I think you have to be very careful.   NARRATOR: But on the night of 9/11, out at CIA  headquarters, George Tenet was all business,   pushing hard to prepare a counterattack. J. COFER BLACK, CIA 1974-2002: We had   been working on this for years. When everybody  else is looking for their maps on Afghanistan,   we're ready to rock, we're ready to roll. And it  really took momentum. And George Tenet said, "OK,   take the plan and have it ready by tomorrow." RON SUSKIND: They come blazing forward with a   fully architected plan. "We are going to spread  this over 80 countries. We are going to go at it   with this eight-pronged attack." NARRATOR: Tenet and Cofer Black   vividly delivered the message. MIKE SCHEUER: Cofer Black, who was   the Chief of CTC, said, you know, "We're going  to put their heads on pikes, and we want flies   crossing­ you know, crawling across their dead  eyes," and that kind of headquarters hero talk.   RON SUSKIND: The president loves operational  guys. Black does a great presentation. You know,  

Black has been waiting his whole life for  this, basically. He's very theatrical.   COFER BLACK: This is serious business. We've  been attacked. This is war. People are going   to die. And my guys are going to die. RON SUSKIND: He can talk the talk of   blood lust. You know, he's very  vivid. The president loves this.   NARRATOR: Tenet wanted the CIA to take the lead,  but Dick Cheney favored the Pentagon and Rumsfeld,   and deeply distrusted the CIA. They all knew  that after Tenet left the morning briefing,   Dick Cheney would still be there. RICHARD CLARKE, Dir., NSC Counterterrorism   1998-01: I think the personal relationship  with the president that George Tenet had   is still that of an employee. It  doesn't begin to touch the decades   of working together that Cheney and Rumsfeld had. MELVIN GOODMAN, Fmr. CIA Officer: You haven't had   that kind of strong relationship between a vice  president and a secretary of defense. We've never   had a vice president as powerful as Dick Cheney,  and we've never had a secretary of defense who   probably is feared as much as Donald Rumsfeld.

for Rumsfeld. It began in  the Nixon administration,   when Rumsfeld was looking for a staff aide. day, Don called me in and said, "There's a  young intern on the Hill named Dick Cheney,   Frank. I'm thinking of hiring him. I'd  like you to interview him and see what   you think." So I interviewed Dick and called  Don and said, "I think this guy's pretty good.   You ought to hire him." NARRATOR: They would be   closely linked for more than three decades. JAMES MANN, Author, Rise of the Vulcans: The   difference between these two people, Rumsfeld  and Cheney ­ Rumsfeld, he'll come right at you.   There's nothing indirect about him. Cheney tends  to be very low-keyed. It's just a difference in   style between the two guys. Politically, they're  really­ the guys­ their views of the world and   their views of government are very similar. NARRATOR: Then, as Gerald Ford took office,   they took over running the White House. BOB WOODWARD: I happened to be talking   to former president Ford, and I asked, "How  did this happen?" And he said, "Don Rumsfeld,   when I picked him as White House chief of staff,  he said, ŒI'll accept, but there's one thing I   have to have, and that is I want to bring in a guy  named Dick Cheney.' " And Ford said, "I haven't   even met him," but he agreed. And so Rumsfeld gave  political life to Dick Cheney, to say the least.  NARRATOR: They were formidable bureaucratic  infighters, and one day they proved it, literally   remaking the Ford administration in a legendary  maneuver performed entirely behind the scenes.  

RON SUSKIND, Author, The One Percent Doctrine: In  really a couple of days, the so-called "Halloween   massacre," they manage to cut Henry Kissinger's  job in half, and the vice president, Rockefeller,   is swiftly marginalized. William Colby, then  running the CIA, is replaced with George H. W.   Bush. Rumsfeld moves to be secretary of defense.  Cheney moves up to Rumsfeld's job as chief of   staff. It's an extraordinary tactical flourish. Rumsfeld made his fortune in private  industry. Cheney spent 10 years in Congress,   where he was immersed in intelligence matters, and  then he became secretary of defense for the first   President Bush. In the shadow of Colin Powell, he  had quietly managed the military in the Gulf war.   Now he and Rumsfeld wanted the military to come up  with a plan for attacking al Qaeda in Afghanistan,   but the Pentagon was caught flat-footed.

unprepared in the wake of 9/11  for anything that needed to be   done in Afghanistan. They had no plans on the   shelf. They had no idea what was required. NARRATOR: The secretary of defense called   his generals at Central Command. Tommy Franks was  the four star. Mike DeLong was his number two.   Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG, Dpty. Cmdr. CENTCOM  2000-03: We had no plan. I mean, to be honest,   you have operational plans for different parts  of the world. There was none for Afghanistan.   NARRATOR: Rumsfeld was angry. He wanted  quick action with a small force, and he   didn't mince words with Tommy Franks about it. Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG: The tensions were   really high, and Franks was not getting  any more sleep than I was. And by the way,   he drinks maybe 15 cups of coffee a day, smokes  two packs of cigarettes, cigars, and chews.   So he's running on adrenalin and caffeine  and nicotine. And so it doesn't take much to   scratch that line, and he and Rumsfeld went at it. NARRATOR: Rumsfeld would scramble, but Tenet and   his counterterror teams were way ahead of him.

for the Pentagon­ this great historical moment.  They're public servants, after all. In some ways,   they wait their whole life to be called to  duty at a moment like this. And the Pentagon   is largely on the sidelines, watching,  and watching, of all people, the CIA. Oh!  NARRATOR: At Camp David, four days after 9/11,  George Bush would hear the formal arguments   for and against including Iraq in the war plan. to describe the feeling in the  room. I mean, they were focused.  NARRATOR: They began with Afghanistan,  but Cheney's former Pentagon deputy,   Paul Wolfowitz, brought up Iraq. JOHN McLAUGHLIN: There was discussion   of Iraq and whether Iraq was behind this and  whether Iraq should be included in any targeting.   KENNETH POLLACK, National Security Council  1999-01: They made Saddam Hussein out to be   the greatest threat to the United States and  the source of all evil, if not in the world,   then certainly in the Middle East. JOHN McLAUGHLIN: That discussion went   back and forth, back and forth, back and forth.  The Agency argued that that was not appropriate,   not the right conclusion to draw at this point. NARRATOR: secretary of State Powell weighed in on   Tenet's side, but Cheney had no faith in the CIA.

there's one thing that influences  him, at least in my conversations.   He remembered as clearly as I remembered  how wrong intelligence had been in 1991.  [www.pbs.org: More on the CIA's history] collapse of the Soviet Union, the Iranian  revolution, Saddam's invasion of Kuwait, and more.  RICHARD CLARKE: There was a massive nuclear  program in Iraq, nuclear weapons development   program, that was probably 9 to 18 months away  from having its first nuclear weapon detonation,   and that CIA had totally missed it. We  had bombed everything we could bomb in   Iraq but missed an enormous nuclear weapons  development facility­ didn't know it was there,   never dropped one bomb on it at least in my conversations with him about Iraq.  You know, they were wrong before. They didn't get   the evidence. How do we know what they know now?

comes back into office eight years later,  nine years later, has that as one of the   things burnt into his memory, that Iraq wants a  nuclear weapon, Iraq was that close to getting   a nuclear weapon, and CIA hadn't a clue. deliberation, the president says, "Thank you all  very much. This has been a very good discussion.   I'm going to think about all of this  on Sunday, and I'll call you together   Monday and tell you what I've concluded." were high. If the CIA prevailed, they  could lose control of how and where the   war on terror would be fought. we all assembled in the Cabinet Room, and  the president lays down about 12 decisions,   just like that, machine-gun fashion. JOHN McLAUGHLIN: Well, of course, the  thing that stands out in my memory,   because it hit me vividly, was he  said, "I want CIA in there first."

NARRATOR: It was a body blow to  Cheney and Rumsfeld. Rumsfeld's   military machine would be taking a  back seat to the CIA and George Tenet. GARY SCHROEN, CIA 1970-2002:   My team, seven officers, including  myself and three air crew, flew in   on the 26th of September. When I began to  distribute money ­ $200,000 dollars here,   $250,000 for this ­ I think that the  Afghans were convinced that we were sincere. NARRATOR: It was a new kind of  war against an invisible enemy. CARL W. FORD, Jr., Dir. State Dept.  Intel. 2001-03: You read the stories   about what these people did on the  ground in Afghanistan, and it's like   you could make movies out  of it, it's so fantastic. NARRATOR: The plan was all about size and  speed and using just the right CIA officers. GARY BERNTSEN, CIA 1982-2005: And  they had to be guys that we knew   that we could trust. Cofer Black told  me, "One third of your men will die. Be   prepared for that. I accept it. You need  to accept it and proceed aggressively.   I want you killing the enemy in 48  hours. Find them and destroy them."

NARRATOR: They would spend millions  to buy the Northern Alliance,   ragtag fighters led by brutal warlords. J. COFER BLACK, CIA 1974-2002: It's going  to be a multi-prong threat attack, where   we work with locals. We compromised enemies.  We used cash. We provided humanitarian aid. NARRATOR: But once the covert side of the CIA  plan was finished, they needed the U.S. military,   Don Rumsfeld's military. They would  wait and wait, for almost a month. GARY SCHROEN: We were there for  just about a month by ourselves   in the valley. We were the only  Americans in country for almost a month. NARRATOR: By late October at CIA  headquarters, they were worried. TYLER DRUMHELLER, Chief, CIA European Div.  2001-05: We were already making plans for a   winter siege. And we had meetings on the budget,  like, how we would budget for this, and you know,   the military and our people and the Northern  Alliance people would be there through the winter. NARRATOR: Then there was a fiery NSC meeting. The  CIA had been complaining Rumsfeld was dragging his   feet in Afghanistan. It was said Rumsfeld  didn't like taking orders from the CIA.

JAMES BAMFORD, Author, The Puzzle Palace: There  was a lot of jealousy that Tenet had a leg up,   and Rumsfeld was about three yards back. Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG: Rumsfeld went  to the president and said, "The CIA   has to work for me, or this isn't going to work." DAVID KAY: I've got a lot of respect for  Rumsfeld as a bureaucratic infighter. He   never loses a battle because if he loses a  battle, he'll re-fight it the next morning. NARRATOR: The president finally agreed.  Rumsfeld would now be in charge. Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG: That's what  happened. CIA works for Rumsfeld. NARRATOR: Army special ops teams  were airlifted to Afghanistan,   and the military side of Operation  Jawbreaker could begin in earnest. GARY SCHROEN: It wasn't until  the night of the 19th of October   or the morning of the 20th that the  first special forces A-team came in. NARRATOR: The Northern Alliance on horseback,   the special ops teams with global position  devices calling in air strikes, made short   work of the Taliban forces. Finally, in  mid-November, the capital, Kabul, fell.

[www.pbs.org: Debates on the Afghan war] GARY SCHROEN: And I was absolutely convinced  that that would happen and that the Taliban   would break quickly. That could have  happened in October, early October. NARRATOR: It was mission accomplished. COFER BLACK: We'd like the survivors of 9/11  to know that those of us in the business   consider it the CIA's finest hour. We  went in to kick ass, and we did that. MELVIN GOODMAN, Fmr. CIA Officer:  It was a CIA success story. NARRATOR: George Tenet and the  CIA were riding high. Now they   wanted to take on al Qaeda all over the globe. STEVE COLL, Author, Ghost Wars:  Now he had the place at the table,   the role in American national security  that hearkened back to the glory days   of the CIA in the Œ50s and the Œ60s  and even during the Second World War. NARRATOR: But Tenet's man-of-the-hour status was  already being undercut behind closed doors. Dick   Cheney had quietly placed loyalists throughout the  administration, and they were already in motion.

JAMES MANN: Many of the people who worked for   Cheney when he was defense secretary end  up in senior jobs in the administration. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, Chief of Staff,  State Dept. 2002-05: And his network   is positioned almost everywhere in  the government that's important. JAMES BAMFORD: That's how they were  able to galvanize so much power. NARRATOR: He aggregated the power at key  national security centers. At the Pentagon,   Rumsfeld was joined by Wolfowitz  and Feith, Cambone, Richard Perle. DANIEL BENJAMIN, National Security Council  1994-99: The important thing that unites   them is their belief in the primacy of the  military tool, that it's been an underused tool. NARRATOR: Over at Colin Powell's State  Department, Cheney brought in John Bolton. LARRY WILKERSON: Bolton's not President  Bush's man, he's Dick Cheney's man. NARRATOR: At the White house,   Cheney's national security staff was larger  than that of any vice president in history. JAMES MANN: He went out and had  his chief of staff, Scooter Libby,   appoint what amounts to a whole second  National Security Council. It became a   new source of power within the whole foreign  policy community. It's an agency all its own.

NARRATOR: And he relied on Rumsfeld and the   insiders at the Pentagon to create  their own intelligence capability. DANA PRIEST, The Washington Post: He  starts to put in place a new capability   that's not yet fully developed. But the  outlines are, "We need to figure out how   to gather more intelligence ourself, the  military, not rely so much on the CIA." JOHN BRENNAN, Dpty. Exec. Director, CIA  2001-03: There were a lot of seniors in   the Department of Defense that were  dismayed that they weren't able to   respond as quickly as CIA. And I think it has  been shown over the past several years that   the Defense Department has tried to increase  its role in the intelligence community and to   chew away at CIA's traditional  authorities and responsibilities. NARRATOR: The internal struggle was revealed in   those morning briefings between  Tenet, the president and Cheney. JAMES BAMFORD: Every morning, the  Presidential Daily Brief, the PDB,   will be given. It'll be given both to  the president and the vice president.   And Cheney complained numerous times that the  information coming from the CIA was not very good.

NARRATOR: Cheney wanted information that  linked Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein JAMES BAMFORD: But they weren't getting that  information from the CIA. And so he put pressure,   I think, on Rumsfeld and on the Pentagon  to come up with their own estimates. NARRATOR: Inside the Pentagon bureaucracy,   Rumsfeld could easily and quietly  grow a nearly invisible operation. MELVIN GOODMAN: They needed an office that  would produce the intelligence that the CIA   wouldn't produce. Rumsfeld said, "I can solve your  problem," and he put Douglas Feith on that issue. DANIEL BENJAMIN: So they're going to do their  own analysis. They're going to show what the   CIA's been missing all along about the true  relationship between Saddam and al Qaeda. NARRATOR: They needed people with  experience in the world of intelligence,   but they hired politically  connected policy analysts. F. MICHAEL MALOOF, DoD 1982-2004: I got  a phone call. The next thing I know,   I'm being detailed on over to Doug Feith's office,   and that I would be joined by Dave Wurmser, who  today works in the office of the vice president.

NARRATOR: They worked in a vault  deep inside the Pentagon. They had   what is known as "all source clearances"­  total access to intelligence information. MICHAEL F. MALOOF: I went into  the system, our classified system,   to see whether we know about terrorist groups  and the relationships, as well as their   connection, associations with not only  al Qaeda, but also with state sponsors. NARRATOR: The information  was rarely vetted. Instead,   it moved up the chain of command to  the office of the vice president. MELVIN GOODMAN: And this became material that was  then used, sort of in white paper-like fashion,   to be leaked to journalists or to create  links between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda. NARRATOR: One story involved  the leader of the 9/11 attacks,   Mohammed Atta, who allegedly had met with  an Iraqi intelligence agent in Prague. MICHAEL F. MALOOF: We were  looking for connections,   and that was one of them. And  then subsequently­-and then I   did some additional research in talking to  people who were in touch with the Czechs.

NARRATOR: They sent it up to  the vice president's office. Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: ["Meet the Press,"  December 9, 2001] It's been pretty well confirmed   that he did go to Prague and he did meet with a  senior official of the Iraqi intelligence service. JOHN McLAUGHLIN: We came to a different  conclusion. We went over that every which   way from Sunday. I mean, we looked  at it from every conceivable angle.   We peeled open the source and examined  the chain of acquisition. We looked at   photographs. We looked at timetables.  We looked at who was where, when. MICHAEL F. MALOOF: I believe something  did occur, for two reasons. Number one,   I think it's the prime minister has always  refuted the allegation that it was made up. VINCENT CANNISTRARO, Fmr.  CIA Officer: Very early on,   both CIA and FBI knew it wasn't true because  the FBI had Atta in Florida at the time. MICHAEL F. MALOOF: And number two, I'm  told there was a photograph of the meeting. NARRATOR: The 9/11 commission report would later   find that there was no photograph and  Atta was not in Prague at that time.

MICHAEL F. MALOOF: And I sought to get­ for our  people to get that photograph. They never did,   to my knowledge. Or at least, they  never got it so that I could see it. ["Meet the Press," September 8, 2002] Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: I want to be  very careful about how I say this­ NARRATOR: And despite the CIA's  conclusion that the story wasn't true­ Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: ­Mohammed  Atta, who was the lead hijacker­ NARRATOR: ­the vice president  continued to tell it. Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: ­did  apparently travel to Prague and­ NARRATOR: He would repeat it  regularly for the next two years. ["Meet the Press," September 14, 2003] Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: The Czechs alleged  that Mohammed Atta, the lead attacker,   met in Prague with a senior Iraqi intelligence  official five months before the attack,   but we've never been able to  develop any more of that yet. RICHARD CLARKE, Dir. NSC Counterterrorism 1998-01:  I remember vividly, in the driveway outside of the   West Wing, Scooter Libby grabbing me­ from the  vice president's office­ and saying, "I hear you   don't believe this report that Mohammed Atta was  talking to Iraqi people in Prague." And I said,   "I don't believe it because it's not true." And  he said, "You're wrong. You know you're wrong. Go   back and find out. Look at the rest of the reports  and find out that you're wrong." And I understood   what he was saying, which was, "This is a report  that we want to believe, and stop saying it's not   true. It's a real problem for the vice president's  office that you, the counterterrorism coordinator,   are walking around saying that this isn't a true  report. Shut up." That's what I was being told.

NARRATOR: That winter, the CIA was still at war.   The Taliban had fallen. Now  it was Osama bin Laden's turn. GARY BERNTSEN, CIA 1982-2005: I'm  looking for bin Laden right away.   I want to start killing him  and his people immediately. GARY SCHROEN: We had intelligence that  continued to develop that bin Laden and   Zawahiri were in Afghanistan, probably  in the eastern areas, hiding out there. NARRATOR: The CIA tried to put together a  team to chase bin Laden. It wasn't easy. GARY BERNTSEN: I asked Army special forces  if they'll send people in. They say,   "No, we're not going down there. It's  unstable. You don't have a reliable ally." STEVE COLL, Author, Ghost Wars: The conditions  for al Qaeda's retreat were quite favorable,   and the United States did not do the one thing  that the Pentagon had within its power to do,   which was to move regular U.S. troops into  a blocking position behind these mountains.

GARY SCHROEN: We could come from the north,  west and south, but we couldn't block   the east. It's rugged, rugged terrain.  And we didn't have enough U.S. troops. Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG, Dpty. Cmdr,  CENTCOM, 2000-03: How do you block this   entire mountain line? It's like blocking the  border of New Mexico from Mexico and hoping   you can keep people from going both ways,  with tunnels underneath, hundreds of them. RICHARD CLARKE: We could all feel it slipping  away, as week after week after week went by,   and the U.S. had no military units on  the ground, except a few special forces. [www.pbs.org: Read Clarke's extended interview] NARRATOR: So on his own and without the  permission of the Defense Department,   CIA officer Berntsen sent a  small group to Nangahar province. GARY BERNTSEN: Based on intelligence  that we have that bin Laden has fallen   back with about a thousand people. And  then we come upon his camp at Melowah. NARRATOR: The CIA urgently called the  Pentagon. They were given air support,   but not the Army Rangers.

GARY BERNTSEN: And then four guys, two CIA  officers and two JSOC, with about 10 Afghan   guards, call in the first 56 hours of air  strikes against the motherlode of al Qaeda   down below them. It was a nice beginning  to what would be about a 16-day battle. GARY SCHROEN: We actually, I'm convinced,  wounded him. He was there at Tora Bora. I don't   think there's any question now that bin Laden  was at Tora Bora and was wounded in some way. NARRATOR: The CIA officers in the field told  headquarters the border had not been closed   and bin Laden had escaped. That winter, a  story circulated that military resources   were already being aimed at Iraq. One  United States senator, the chairman of   the Senate Intelligence Committee, remembers  a private conversation with General Franks.

Sen. BOB GRAHAM (D-FL), Select Comte. on  Intel. 2001-03: The general said, "Senator,   I would like to speak with you privately." We went  into his room, and he proceeded to tell me that   they weren't fighting a war in Afghanistan,  that they were, in fact, beginning to redeploy   assets. And he particularly mentioned Special  Operations personnel and the Predator unmanned   aircraft as examples of assets that were being  redeployed from Afghanistan to get ready for Iraq. NARRATOR: General Franks has denied  Senator Graham's version of the story.   But on the ground in Afghanistan, CIA  officers say they noticed a shift toward Iraq. GARY SCHROEN: Well, you could see changes  being made in the U.S. military staffing   in Afghanistan, that the Green Beret  units, the 5th Special Forces group,   for the most of it, were being pulled out  to refit and get ready for Iraq. And it   was clear that the kind of guys that I think  a lot of us believed were essential ­ U.S.   military personnel with special operations  capabilities ­ were being pulled away.

NARRATOR: Three months after 9/11,  the Vice President went on Fox News. Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: [December 11,  2001] I never say anything is inevitable,   but if I were Saddam Hussein, I'd  be thinking very carefully about   the future and I'd be looking very closely to  see what happened to the Taliban in Afghanistan. NARRATOR: The vice president continued to  assert a connection between al Qaeda and Iraq,   but the CIA kept saying it wasn't true. JOHN McLAUGHLIN, Dpty. Director, CIA  2000-04: We said in that timeframe   that we had no evidence linking Iraq  to al Qaeda and to those attacks. NARRATOR: Tenet had even ordered a  massive agency search for any connection. MICHAEL SCHEUER, CIA 1982-2004: Tenet,  to his credit, had us go back 10 years   in the Agency's records and look and see  what we knew about Iraq and al Qaeda. And   I was available at the time and I led  the effort. And we went back 10 years.   We examined about 20,000 documents,  probably something along the line   of 75,000 pages of information. And there  was no connection between Iraq and Saddam.

Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG: He saw it as  his job, and he told the president,   "Here's what I think." And the president didn't  like it, fine. But I never saw him hold back on   what I knew. He told him­ everything  that I knew, he told the president. INTERVIEWER: Like what? Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG:You know, things that  were going on. Here's­ it's the al Qaeda in   Afghanistan. It's not the Iraqis. It's not the  Iranians. If they do have something to do with it,   it'll be a side issue, but that's not  the main issue now. Boom, just like that. INTERVIEWER: So from the very  beginning, he was saying it's al Qaeda. Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG:  It's al Qaeda in Afghanistan. INTERVIEWER: And Bush is hearing that. Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG: Yeah. INTERVIEWER: He was hearing that? Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG: Colonel Mustard in the   library with the candlestick.  I mean, that­ here it is. Yeah. NARRATOR:   The CIA meanwhile began using what  would later become a controversial   tactic in the war on terror. Of the thousands  of prisoners being taken off the battlefield,   the Agency was in charge of a handful,  "high-value terrorists," HVTs. And   they had a special way of dealing  with them known as "rendition."

Lt. Gen. MICHAEL DeLONG:One rendition  story involves the HVT Ibn Sheikh al Libi VINCENT CANNISTRARO, Fmr. CIA Officer: Bin  Laden made his escape, left Sheikh al Libi   in command of the al Qaeda forces there, and  he's captured. So we capture Sheikh al Libi. MICHAEL SCHEUER: What you want from that  individual is to try to get information   that will lead you to another success either  on the battlefield or in some other way. VINCENT CANNISTRARO: He's carried off to Egypt,  who torture him. And we know that he's going to   be tortured. Anyone who's worked on Egypt, has  worked on other countries in the Middle East,   knows that. Egyptians torture him,  and he provides a lot of information. NARRATOR: The information from al Libi  found its way into the intelligence system. VINCENT CANNISTRARO: And it says that Saddam   Hussein provided training in  chemical weapons to al Qaeda. NARRATOR: And that secret intelligence unit  at the Pentagon turned the information about   Saddam and al Qaeda and chemical  weapons into an official report.

MICHAEL SCHEUER: The test of an Intelligence  officer is not so much the ability to accumulate   information, it's to judge between different  pieces of information. There is what you   could call intelligence information available to  prove almost any case that you wanted to prove,   if you were a non-discerning intelligence amateur. MICHAEL F. MALOOF: Well, that information  turned out to be correct. I heard it not only   from al Libi, but we heard it from some  people from the INC, the Iraqi National   Congress. And then we take their information  and put it back into the intelligence system. NARRATOR: The intelligence provided by the  torture of al Libi moved through the system. VINCENT CANNISTRARO, Fmr. CIA Officer:  A lot of that information is funneled   in the form of intelligence  reports to the vice president,   to the secretary of defense, in  fact, to the entire administration. NARRATOR: It is the kind of information the  office of the vice president, the OVP, began to   stockpile. In fact, all roads in the war on terror  run through the OVP. It has a political arm and a   policy side. And then there's legal. They believed  in expanding the president's executive powers.

RON SUSKIND: In terms of the  executive power issue, you know,   clearly, I think 9/11 is a moment  of preparation meeting opportunity. NARRATOR: Cheney was convinced  the power of the president had   been whittled away by Congress and the courts. WATERGATE COMMITTEE STAFFER:  [July 1973] Could you tell us   how and when did you first meet President Nixon? RON SUSKIND: He viewed the searing  moments of the Nixon administration,   which he was there in the front seats for, as  a diminution of what the president ought to be. [www.pbs.org: Cheney's views on power] NEWSCASTER: [August 9, 1974] They  are now boarding the helicopter,   walking through the honor guard.  The president now at the door­ RON SUSKIND: And he saw the years since as a time  where, essentially, that damage was not repaired. NARRATOR: Within days of 9/11,   Cheney's legal insiders saw a chance  to rebuild the president's power. JOHN YOO, Legal Counsel, DoJ 2001-03: The laws  as they were written and the Constitution that   we have gives the president a lot of power in  wartime. The president is the commander-in-chief. NARRATOR: The vice president's legal counsel,  David Addington, headed a group of lawyers who   argued the president could authorize whatever  means were necessary to fight the war on terror.

DANA PRIEST, The Washington Post:  And it is amazing, what it says.   It basically says that the commander-in-chief  can disregard any other law during time of war. RON SUSKIND: They're looking to expand executive  power, and 9/11 comes and it is a state of   emergency. And a state of emergency gives a host  of people in the administration, at the top,   a chance to try some things that they've  been thinking about trying for a long time. NARRATOR: By the spring of 2002  the U.S. government was chasing   down suspected terrorists all over the  world. But the signals were clear. The   push for what Cheney considered the  real war on terror was about to begin. Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: [CNN "Late  Edition," 3/24/2002] This is a man of   great evil. He knows we're deadly serious.  Our friends and allies in the region know   we're deadly serious and that we do need  to find a way to address this problem.

MIKE SCHEUER: Clearly, by 2002 in the springtime,  it was almost taken for granted that we were going   to go to war with Iraq, in addition to having  missed Osama bin Laden. It was a nightmare,   and I know Tenet was briefed repeatedly  by the head of the bin Laden department   that any invasion of Iraq would break the  back of our counterterrorism program.. RON SUSKIND: Cheney's view,  supported by the president,   I think everybody knows from meetings with the  door shut that this is kind of the way we have   to do this thing. I don't think there's any  doubt, at this point, as to what will be done. NARRATOR: At Central Intelligence  headquarters, they were wondering   where that left George Tenet. He could fight  them, he could join them or he could retire. JOHN BRENNAN, Dpty. Exec. Director, CIA  2001-03: I think it was a very personal   and pensive time for George. I think he  asked himself whether or not he wanted to   continue on that road and to be part of it.  So I think he had some sort of long nights.

STEVE COLL, Author, Ghost Wars: Tenet had  an opportunity after the Afghan war to   declare victory and go home. He didn't take that  opportunity. I would imagine that he regrets it. NARRATOR: Since the time of Harry  Truman, the director of Central   Intelligence has come to the White  House to tell the unvarnished truth   to the president. But George Tenet also  carried the burden of his new friendship. JAMES BAMFORD, Author, The Puzzle Palace: You  get this friendship factor that enters into it,   so it eliminates the objectivity of a lot of it. DAVID KAY, Iraq Weapons Inspector: It's a Faustian  bargain because, ultimately, anyone who heads an   intelligence agency has got to speak, if  he's serving the interest, truth to power. LARRY WILKERSON: You're committed. You're   committed. And every day that  you go, you're committed more. RICHARD KERR, Fmr. Dpty. Director, CIA: I think  you have to be independent enough and distant   enough that you can say, "Mr. President, that's  not the way we see it," or, "Mr. Vice President   or Mr. Secretary, that's not our view of it,"  and then follow up with why that's not our view.

NARRATOR: Tenet believed he'd proved al Qaeda and  Iraq were not connected. He hoped the war fever   would pass. But then to strengthen their case, the  imminent danger of weapons of mass destruction. Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: ["Meet the  Press," March 24, 2002] The evidence   is overwhelming. And one of the things  that we need to do is to make the case,   lay it out there. This is the evidence.  This is what he's done. This is what   he's doing. This is the threat to the United  States and to our friends around the world. NARRATOR: Even inside the CIA,  it was conventional wisdom that   Saddam probably had the weapons. But  a lot of the information going to the   vice president's office was coming from that  secret intelligence office at the Pentagon and   their ready source of intelligence, Ahmed  Chalabi of the Iraqi National Congress. MARK GARLASCO, Def. Intel.  Agency, 1997-03: At that time,   we had INC constantly shoving crap at us.  You know, they were providing information   that they thought that we wanted to  hear. They were feeding the beast.

VINCENT CANNISTRARO: This was part of a  broad campaign to pollute the U.S. policy   process by feeding it false information,  but information that would basically   confirm fears already held, conceptions  already held by the administration that   Saddam Hussein was an imminent  danger and had to be dealt with. NARRATOR: A secret decision to  go to war with Iraq was imminent,   but the inner circle was fighting  its own war about the war. BOB WOODWARD, The Washington Post: I think the   discord within the foreign policy inner  circle around Bush is very, very high. NARRATOR: By now, Tenet's only ally in  the administration, the secretary of stat,   was openly facing off against Cheney and Rumsfeld. BOB WOODWARD: It became personal between Powell  and Cheney. It also became personal between   Powell and Rumsfeld. So you have this collision  of world views. You have personal animosity.

NARRATOR: The vice president took the  WMD arguments out into the country. Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: [August 26,  2002, VFW address] Simply stated,   there is no doubt that Saddam  Hussein now has weapons of mass   destruction. There is no doubt that he is  amassing them to use against our friends,   against our allies and against us. And there is  no doubt that his aggressive regional ambitions­ NARRATOR: Congress would  soon have to vote on the war. Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: ­that Saddam has  resumed his efforts to acquire nuclear weapons­ NARRATOR: But much of what  they knew came from Cheney   on television. They brought in George Tenet. Sen. BOB GRAHAM (D-FL), Select Cmte. on  Intel. 2000-03: We had a meeting of the   Senate Intelligence Committee, a closed meeting,  with Director Tenet. And several of us ask him,   "What did the National Intelligence  Estimate say about this issue?" NARRATOR: The National Intelligence Estimate,   the NIE, is the highest-level document  generated by the intelligence agencies. W. PATRICK LANG, Fmr. Def. Intel. Agency  Officer: A National Intelligence Estimate   becomes the truth accepted by the United States  government. They hold this thing up, the NIE,   and they say, "On page 6, it says so and  so," and that is an irrefutable truth.

Sen. BOB GRAHAM: The answer that  we got from Director Tenet is,   "We've never done a National  Intelligence estimate on Iraq,   including its weapons of mass destruction."  Stunning. We do these on almost every   significant activity, much less significant than  getting ready to go to war. We were flying blind. MELVIN GOODMAN, Fmr. CIA Officer:  The fact of the matter is,   the CIA didn't want to produce one. The  White House didn't want one because they   didn't want to allow any venting  of whatever opposition there was to   what they wanted to be the conventional  wisdom on weapons of mass destruction. NARRATOR: And Tenet said the CIA  was primarily focused on al Qaeda,   not really paying attention to WMD and Iraq. JOHN BRENNAN, Dpty. Exec. Director, CIA  2001-03: It was an intense period. We   still were heavily engaged on trying to  counter al Qaeda, the war on terrorism,   and so there were a lot of things on  George's plate. And he was working,   you know, from sun-up to sun-down,  and past that, seven days a week.

Sen. BOB GRAHAM: We said, "We don't care.  This is the most important decision that we,   as members of Congress, and that the people of  America are likely to make in the foreseeable   future. We want to have the best understanding  of what it is we're about to get involved with." NARRATOR: Congress demanded that the White  House prepare an NIE. Tenet was supposed to   provide a tough-minded analysis of the  WMD allegations in a hurry. A process   that ordinarily takes months or years  would be reduced to just over two weeks. DANIEL BENJAMIN, National Security Council  1994-99: I know some of the people who did that,   and it's, you know, a mind-boggling task to have  to put together an NIE in that amount of time,   and particularly in those kinds  of very charged circumstances. NARRATOR: Many members of the CIA believed  the vice president himself was determined   to control the content of the NIE. The vice  president and his chief of staff, Scooter Libby,   had made about 10 trips to CIA headquarters,  where they personally questioned analysts.

MELVIN GOODMAN: I was at the CIA for 24  years. The only time a vice president came   to the CIA building was for a ceremony,  to cut a ribbon, to stand on the stage,   but not to harangue analysts  about finished intelligence. PATRICK W. LANG: Many, many of them have told me   they were pressured. And there are a lot  of ways­ pressure takes a lot of forms. PAUL PILLAR, National Intel. Officer 2000-05:  The questions every morning, the tasks, the   requests to look into this angle one more time,  turn over that rock again. If you didn't find   anything last week, look again to see if there's  something there for that­ about that connection. VINCENT CANNISTRARO: So you start looking  very hard for anything at all that will   support the answer that the vice president  wants, that the Defense Department wants. NEWSCASTER: From NBC News in  Washington, this is Meet the Press. NEWSCASTER: Today on Face the Nation,  Condoleezza Rice on Iraq and Iran and­ NEWSCASTER: From Washington,  This Week, with ABC News chief­ PAUL PILLAR: Intelligence analysts listen  to speeches and read newspapers, too,   and they can see what senior policy makers  are saying publicly. And they can make their   own judgments about, "Well, does this  really conform or does it not conform   with what our analytic judgments are."  And there was­ there was a clear tension.

[www.pbs.org: Read Pillar's extended interview] NARRATOR: One particular Sunday  morning, September 8, 2002,   serves as an example. It began  with a New York Times story.  "Iraq has sought to buy thousands of  specially designed aluminum tubes,   which American officials believe were intended  as components of centrifuges to enrich uranium." JAMES BAMFORD: There were a number of other  headlines based on faulty information that Judy   Miller would write. She would go and interview  a senior Bush administration official on,   say, a Saturday, and it would be off  the record. And then Condi Rice is   on a show on Sunday morning, and  she points to the paper and says­ CONDOLEEZA RICE, National Security Adviser: We  do know that there have been shipments going   into Iraq, for instance, of aluminum tubes  that really are only suited to­ high-quality   aluminum tools that are only really suited for  nuclear weapons programs, centrifuge programs. NARRATOR: It is just before the  delivery of the NIE to Congress.

Vice Pres. DICK CHENEY: ["Meet the Press,"  September 8, 2002] ­is that he now is trying   through his illicit procurement network to acquire  the equipment he needs to be able to enrich   uranium­ ­specifically, aluminum tubes. There's  a story in The New York Times this morning­ CONDOLEEZZA RICE: [September 8,  2002] ­acquire nuclear weapons,   but we don't want the smoking  gun to be a mushroom cloud. DONALD RUMSFELD: [September 8, 2002] "Smoking  gun" is an interesting phrase. It implies­ NARRATOR: The media blitz, the visits  by the vice president and his chief of   staff­ some in the CIA say it was all a  kind of subtle arm-twisting, but later,   in a controversial report, the Senate Select  Committee on Intelligence found no pressure.  "The committee did not find any evidence that  administration officials attempted to coerce,   influence or pressure analysts  to change their judgments." PAUL PILLAR: Politicization, real politicization,  rarely works that way. That is to say, you know,   blatant, crude, arm-twisting.  It's always far more subtle. NARRATOR: In early October, Tenet  delivered the hastily produced NIE.   This was the top secret NIE. Much of the evidence  was outdated, from the 1990s. There were four or   five new allegations. The aluminum tubes, mobile  biological, chemical and nuclear programs were   alleged. And there were some footnotes  where technical disagreements were aired.

VINCENT CANNISTRARO: The CIA's assessment  was sheep-herded by a national intelligence   officer who works very closely  with the vice president's office.   It's a flawed­ fatally flawed document, and  it should never had seen the light of day. DAVID KAY: When I read the NIE, I  thought they were protecting sources   and methods and trying to paint just  an adequate job to get past the vote,   that there must be more there. When I read  it in 2003, after I took this responsibility­   there's an old Peggy Lee song that I like  that came to mind, "If That's All There Is." NARRATOR: The NIE was kept in a locked room  where Congress could read it, but few did. In   mid-October, they voted overwhelmingly in favor of  the Iraqi war resolution. A declassified version   of the NIE, known as the "white paper," was  prepared by the CIA and released three days later.

Sen. BOB GRAHAM: And one of the surprising  things about it was it was of a very high   production level­ graphs, photographs  in color. It was an advocacy piece. INTERVIEWER: What does it say to you? Sen. BOB GRAHAM: Oh, it says to me that the  decision had been made that we're going to go to   war with Iraq, all of this other was just window  dressing, and that the intelligence community was   being used as almost a public relations operation  to validate the war against Saddam Hussein. NARRATOR: Paul Pillar, a veteran  high-ranking CIA analyst,   was one of the primary authors of the white paper. PAUL PILLAR: It was clearly requested and  published for policy advocacy purposes.   This was not informing a decision. What was the  purpose of it? The purpose was to strengthen the   case for going to war with the American public.  Is it proper for the intelligence community to   publish papers with that purpose? I don't think  so. And I regret having had a role in that.

MICHAEL SCHEUER, CIA 1982-04: Paul Pillar  is a man that I have tremendous respect   for and who I think is an ideal  intelligence officer. If there was   pressures that resulted in Mr. Pillar not  being happy with what he finally authored,   I can only imagine those pressures must have been  extraordinary because he is a man that I would   want my son to model himself after. So that­  to me, that says the pressure from the White   House through Mr. Tenet on professional  CIA officers was nearly overwhelming. NARRATOR: George Tenet had relied on  his connections in Congress as a source   of protection and power. To some of them, now  he was as flawed as the NIE he had delivered. Sen. BOB GRAHAM: Well, I thought that this  wasn't a man who was strong enough to stand up   to the president of the United States and say,  "Mr. President, you are about to make a very   serious mistake, and here are the reasons. Here's  what we know. Here's what we don't know about   the situation in Iraq. And it does not warrant us  leaving a victory which is imminent in Afghanistan   and attainable in Afghanistan to start a war in  an environment in which we are largely ignorant."

GARY SCHROEN: The problem rested not with his  relationship with George Bush but probably with   Rumsfeld and Cheney, who, you know, for­  apparently, simply were so overwhelming   at the bureaucratic infighting that they  were able to isolate him, and in a sense,   perhaps, allowed him to­ kind of forced him into  becoming more of a cheerleader for what was going­   what the direction the administration  was taking than he should have been. NARRATOR: George Tenet's conversion  moment occurred in the Oval Office when   the president was given a presentation  of the WMD case against Saddam Hussein. CARL W. FORD, Jr., Dir. State Dept. Intel.  2001-2003: The president had said, "Is this   all we got?" And the answer should have been,  "Yes, sir. Unfortunately, that's all we got." His   instincts were right. He saw that there wasn't a  lot there. But I guarantee you, that's everything   we had. We gave him our best shot, and the  president said, "I don't­ is that all you got?"

INTERVIEWER: And what did Tenet say? CARL W. FORD, Jr.: "Slam dunk."  That was the slam dunk conversation. DAVID KAY: He certainly knew it wasn't a slam  dunk. He knew and would have had to know that   the data was not of a character that one could  describe, even in a loose manner, and certainly   not in the Oval Office of the president, who has  expressed doubt about the presentation he's just   heard, "Don't worry, Mr. President, that's  a slam dunk." The data was not that solid. CARL W. FORD, Jr.: Then they said,  "Well, if that's true, George,   if this is right, and this is­ we're  going to have to say it differently.   You're going to have to come up  with different ways of saying this   because a normal person is going to look  at this and say, ŒIs that all you got?' " DAVID KAY: Quite frankly, the thing  that I find hardest to understand   in this entire story­ where was  the national security adviser,   Condi Rice? She should immediately have  said to the­ any DCI, not just George Tenet,   anyone who did that in the Oval Office, "No, you  go back and you come back with a better case.   Here are the doubts the president's expressed.  Let's see what's there." But it was allowed to   slide. Here again, I think it was allowed to  slide because "We all knew he's got weapons."

NARRATOR: The State of the Union  speech, a public recitation of the NIE. Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: [January 28, 2003]  Saddam Hussein has gone to elaborate lengths,   spent enormous sums, taken great risks to  build and keep weapons of mass destruction. NARRATOR: It was all there: the aluminum tubes­ Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: Our intelligence  sources tell us that he has attempted   to purchase high-strength aluminum tubes  suitable for nuclear weapons production. NARRATOR: A controversial assertion that Saddam   was buying nuclear material would  become known as "the 16 words." Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: The British  government has learned that Saddam   Hussein recently sought significant  quantities of uranium from Africa. NARRATOR: The controversy would be called  "yellowcake." The CIA had examined the story. VINCENT CANNISTRARO: No one  is endorsing it. Everyone   is saying it really does sound implausible. TYLER DRUMHELLER, Chief, CIA European Div.  2001-05: We never took it seriously. I mean,   we looked at it, but there was  never any real substance to it. NARRATOR: The vice president had heard  of a defense intelligence report that   the African nation of Niger had sold 500 tons  of uranium, known as "yellowcake," to Iraq.

CARL W. FORD, Jr.: He said, "This is important.  This is interesting to me. Tell me about it." Amb. JOSEPH WILSON, State Department 1976-98:  I was briefed that an allegation had reached   the office of the vice president, and the  Office of the vice president had asked the   CIA to look into it. I knew a lot about  uranium mining. I knew a lot about Niger. NARRATOR: The CIA sent Wilson to  Niger. He found no evidence of a   yellowcake sale. Yet it was put in the NIE. "A foreign government service reported that as   of early 2001, Niger planned to send several tons  of pure uranium, probably yellowcake, to Iraq." PAUL PILLAR: There were serious questions  raised about yellowcake, and that's why the   people in the intelligence community advised the  White House not to use it publicly. And that's   why it was not used in the intelligence  community's own unclassified product,   because there were doubts about the credibility  of the report, that's turned out to be fabricated. NARRATOR: Tenet in the past had worked hard to get  yellowcake off the agenda, and he thought he had,   but it had found its way into the NIE  and been put in the State of the Union.

RON SUSKIND, Author, The One Percent  Doctrine: I know, personally, when I   listened to that State of the Union speech  and I heard about uranium and yellowcake,   I turned to the people I was with, my family,  and said, "We are going to war in Iraq." Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: May God continue  to bless the United States of America. NARRATOR: The vice president had been the driving  force to this moment. Now, on the brink of war,   one last stop, the secretary of  state. He was about to deliver the   case against Saddam Hussein at the United Nations. RICHARD CLARKE: Powell gets a speech,  written by Scooter Libby, sent to him.   And he's told, "This is the kind of speech  we would like you to give at the U.N."   It's very strange for the vice president's  senior adviser to be writing the speech   and saying to the secretary Of State,  "This is what you should be saying." NARRATOR: Powell was skeptical of Libby's  speech. He turned to tenet for help.

CARL W. FORD, Jr.: He took the  initiative to tell his staff,   INR and CIA, "We're going to have to got  through this. I don't like this." So his   mind was already attuned to the fact that  he wanted to make it better than he saw it. LAWRENCE WILKERSON, Chief of Staff,  State Dept. 2002-05: Secretary Powell   was not reluctant at all to throw  things out completely. We threw the   meeting between Mohammad Atta and Iraqi  intelligence operatives in Prague out. NARRATOR: Powell and his senior staff  spent the weekend at CIA headquarters. LARRY WILKERSON: I sat in the room,  looking into George Tenet's eyes,   as did the secretary of state, and heard  with the firmness that only George could   give it­ and I don't mean terminology like "slam  dunk," although he was a basketball aficionado   and used that kind of terminology a lot­ but  I mean eyeball-to-eyeball contact between two   of the most powerful men in the administration,  Colin Powell and George Tenet, and George Tenet   assuring Colin Powell that the information  he was presenting to the U.N. was ironclad.

NARRATOR: But even at that time, inside  the CIA, there were serious doubts about   the accuracy of a central part of Powell's  speech. It, too, had come from the NIE.  "Baghdad has mobile facilities  for producing bacterial and toxin   BW agents. These facilities can evade  detection and are highly survivable."  The source for this information  was code-named "Curveball." VINCENT CANNISTRARO: Curveball was a  relative of a senior official of the INC,   the Iraqi National Congress,  headed by Ahmed Chalabi. DAVID KAY: Curveball claimed that he  was an engineer, young engineer out of   the University of Baghdad. And among the  things he had designed, helped design,   were this trailer, which was to be a  mobile biological production facility. NARRATOR: His story had been given to the  American intelligence network by the Germans,   but they could not verify  the accuracy of his claims. TYLER DRUMHELLER, Chief, CIA European  Div. 2001-05: For a service to say,   "We have this source, and here's what  he reports but we can't vouch for it   one way or another"­ that's a little­ you  know, that should be a flag right there.

NARRATOR: But as Curveball's allegations became  a crucial part of the NIE, what few knew,   including Secretary Powell, was that Curveball  was the sole source for most of the information. DAVID KAY: He was not told the truth when he was  at the Agency. When he was going over the data,   he was told this was based on not one  source but multiple sources. One of   the sources he was told it was based on  was already known to be a fabricator.   He was not told that the Germans had  denied the U.S. access to it. He was   not told that there had been warnings from the  Germans that this guy was, to say the least,   undependable, alcoholic. So all the­ all the  fine-grained stuff that might have caused   him even then not to use it, he wasn't  given an opportunity to hear firsthand. NARRATOR: In February of 2003, Secretary Powell   arrived at the united nations to put  his personal prestige on the line.

ROBIN WRIGHT, The Washington Post: Colin  Powell was the most powerful voice within   the administration cautioning against the dangers  of going to war and the costs­ human, political,   diplomatic. At the end of the day, however,  Colin Powell is a team player. He wasn't   going to walk away from the administration  on the eve of going to war, which was not   only abandoning his commander-in-chief, but  also the troops, many of which he still knew. COLIN POWELL, Secretary of State: [U.N., February  5, 2003] Let me turn now to nuclear weapons­ NARRATOR: Powell insisted George  Tenet sit in camera range right   behind him. The usual allegations were made. COLIN POWELL: Saddam Hussein is so determined  to get his hands on a nuclear bomb­ NARRATOR: Aluminum tubes. COLIN POWELL: ­that he has  made repeated covert attempts   to acquire high-specification aluminum tubes. DAVID KAY: I think the­ on the aluminum  tubes, that test data was cooked,   and it was portrayed upward  in a very dishonest fashion.

NARRATOR: Curveball. COLIN POWELL: We have firsthand descriptions of   biological weapons factories on wheels and  on rails. The source was an eyewitness,   an Iraqi chemical engineer who supervised one of  these facilities. He actually was present during­ DAVID KAY: George Tenet knew we had no agents  inside Iraq. George Tenet knew that on the case   of Curveball, no American had ever talked to  Curveball directly. No American had been given   his name by the Germans. And you go down  the line, he knew the holes in the data. NARRATOR: And Powell used that  information from Sheik al Libi,   who was rendered and tortured in Egypt. COLIN POWELL: I can trace the story of  a senior terrorist operative telling   how Iraq provided training in these  weapons to al Qaeda. Fortunately,   this operative is now detained,  and he has told his story. NARRATOR: But this information had been  coerced out of al Libi. Eventually,   he would recant and admit he made it up. COLIN POWELL: Leaving Saddam Hussein in  possession of weapons of mass destruction   for a few more months or years is not an  option, not in a post-September 11th world.

NEWSCASTER: A nighttime artillery barrage­ NEWSCASTER: Marines shoot  it out with Iraqi soldiers­ NEWSCASTER: The push has been relentless. NARRATOR: In three weeks, it was over. DONALD RUMSFELD: The scenes of free Iraqis  celebrating in the streets, riding American tanks,   tearing down the statues of Saddam Hussein  in the center of Baghdad are breathtaking. BOB WOODWARD: Cheney has a dinner at  the residence and has his chief aide,   Scooter Libby, Wolfowitz, Ken Edelman  and Cheney's wife. And it's a kind of   celebration that they'd done it. "We got it  right." And they talked at that dinner about,   "We're going to find weapons of mass destruction.  Don't worry," you know? And it was a celebration. RICHARD KERR, Fmr. Deputy Director, CIA: Early on  in the war, it seemed quite clear that they were   not going to find major stockpiles of weapons,  that we were looking at a kind of empty shelf.

NARRATOR: Finding the weapons was left to the CIA.   They hired former U.N. weapons inspector  David Kay. Before long, he called Tenet. DAVID KAY: From very early on I said, "Things  are not panning out the way you thought they   existed here." And it was specific cases, whether  we were talking about the aluminum tubes or we're   talking about the nuclear program, in general, or  the biological program or the chemical program. NARRATOR: Powell received the  bad news directly from Tenet. LAWRENCE WILKERSON: I remember these scenes where  he would come through my door and say, "Well,   George just called and he took another pillar out.  Another substantial aspect of my presentation is   gone." He took it like a soldier, but it was a  blow. It was a blow to me. I mean, I wrote out   my resignation. I put it in my center drawer,  typed it myself. I wouldn't even make my staff   assistant type it. "Dear President Bush, I've come  to the point in my service where I no longer can   serve, given the nature of your foreign policy,"  and so forth. "And therefore, I respectfully   submit my resignation." And once a week or so,  I would take it out and look at it and fold it   back up carefully and put it back in my center  drawer, never having the intestinal fortitude   to submit it. You know, I won't speak for Colin  Powell, but I'll tell you it really affected me.

NARRATOR: Then one day, the vice president  received a news clipping from The New York Times.  "I have little choice but to conclude  that some of the intelligence related   to Iraq's nuclear weapons program was  twisted to exaggerate the Iraqi threat." Amb. JOSEPH WILSON: I sat  down and wrote this article,   1,500 words, for The New York Times entitled,   "What I did not find in Africa," and basically  laid out the trip, laid out my conclusions. NARRATOR: The vice president  wrote a note to his staff.  "Have they done this sort of thing before,  sent an ambassador to answer a question? Do   we ordinarily send people out pro bono to work  for us, or did his wife send him on a junket?  Wilson's wife, Valerie Plame,  was a CIA officer. Cheney and   his staff already had reason  to be suspicious of the CIA. JAMES BAMFORD, Author, The Puzzle Palace:  I interviewed a number of people that were   active-duty CIA people still working there at the  time, who were telling me a lot of things about   what was happening and how intelligence  was being abused and how they were being   pressured. And these aren't the kinds of things  that you can normally get CIA people to talk to,   especially people you haven't developed a long  relationship with. These were people who were   sort of almost pounding at the  doors to get this information out.

NEWSCASTER: The president's team is  facing another stinging critique over­ NARRATOR: Reporters were  being told about Curveball,   the aluminum tubes, the vice president's visits. NEWSCASTER: ­because many in  the intelligence community feel   they're taking the heat for the failure to find­ RICHARD KERR, Fmr. Deputy Director,  CIA: There have been more leaks and   discussions kind of outside what I would  consider to be the appropriate level than   I've ever seen before. One of the effects  is it really irritates the White House,   and that is not a useful situation to be in. STEVE COLL, The New Yorker: There was a  substantial group of people in the White House who   believed that elements of the Central intelligence  Agency were opposed to the president's reelection   and might even be running a quasi-covert  action to prevent the president's reelection. NARRATOR: It would be two-and-a-half  years later. Armed with subpoena powers,   after hundreds of hours of grand jury testimony,   a special prosecutor began to  shine a light into the dark side.

PATRICK FITZGERALD, Special Counsel: [October 28,  2005] I'm Pat Fitzgerald. I'm the United States   Attorney and appearing before you today as special  counsel in the CIA leak investigation. A few hours   ago, a federal grand jury sitting in the District  of Columbia returned a five-count indictment   against I. Lewis Libby, also known as Scooter  Libby, the vice president's chief of staff. NARRATOR: The investigation  has uncovered what appears to   be a covert campaign waged against  the Central Intelligence Agency. PATRICK FITZGERALD: The grand jury's indictment  charges that Mr. Libby committed five crimes.   The indictment charges one count of obstruction of   justice of the federal grand  jury, two counts of perjury­ NARRATOR: Libby has pled not guilty to these  charges, but the indictment suggests the OVP   tried to discredit Joseph Wilson, that Libby told  at least two reporters Wilson's wife worked for   the CIA, and that others in the administration  did the same. Her name did appear in this column. Amb. JOSEPH WILSON: I've always speculated that  the reason Mr. Libby and Mr. Rove and maybe others   were speaking about my wife and impugning  my integrity was not so much to get revenge   against me, although I think that was part of  it. But the rational reason for doing so was   to send a shot across the bow to others  who might be willing to come forward and   challenge the administration on its use of  information to justify the invasion of Iraq.

NARRATOR: Then as the 16  word controversy continued,   according to Libby's grand jury  testimony, the vice president   told him he was now authorized to reveal top  secret information from the NIE to a reporter.  "Defendant's participation in a critical  conversation with Judith Miller occurred   only after the vice president advised  defendant that the president specifically   had authorized defendant to disclose  certain information in the NIE."  Libby testified that he met with New York  Times reporter Judith Miller in this Washington   restaurant. And he says in their off-the-record  conversation about the yellowcake story that   he told her that the CIA was responsible for it. "Defendant understood that he was to tell Miller,   among other things, some of the key judgments  of the NIE and that the NIE stated that Iraq was   Œvigorously trying to procure' uranium. Three days later, the president was in   Uganda. As the reporters were invited in,  he would take a question that allowed the   administration to publicly blame the CIA  and George Tenet for the yellowcake story.

REPORTER: Take a question, sir? Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: Sure. REPORTER: Why­ can you explain how an  erroneous piece of intelligence on the   Iraq-Niger connection got into  your State of the Union speech?   Are you upset about it? And should  somebody be held accountable, sir? Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: I gave a speech  to the nation that was cleared by   the intelligence services, and it  was a speech that detailed to the   American people the dangers imposed  by the Saddam Hussein regime and­ NARRATOR: George Tenet has admitted  he never read the advance copy of   State of the Union speech. Now  the president had weighed in. STEVE COLL, The New Yorker: I don't know  what George Tenet felt as he saw that unfold,   but I can imagine that he  was dismayed and increasingly   resentful that he was being singled out  for blame. At the same time, he's such   an operator and such a student of Washington  that surely, he understood what was happening,   that he was being asked, in effect, to fall on his  shield so that the president could be reelected.

DAVID KAY, Iraq Weapons Inspector 1991-92:  I think it is true that George Tenet   wanted to be a player and he understood  that if you didn't give the policy makers   what they wanted, he believed ­ I think  wrongly ­ that you weren't a player,   and therefore, your views wouldn't be taken and  you wouldn't be invited into the closed meetings,   et cetera. He traded integrity for access,  and that's a bad bargain any time in life.   It's particularly a bad bargain if  you're running an intelligence agency. Pres. GEORGE W. BUSH: [June 3, 2004] Today  George Tenet, the director of the CIA,   submitted a letter of resignation. I met  with George last night in the White House. I   had a good visit with him. He told me  he was resigning for personal reasons.

NARRATOR: The CIA would have a new director,   and there would be a bloodbath. Dozens  of high-ranking officials would leave. RICHARD KERR, Fmr. Deputy Director, CIA: I  didn't mind thinking that CIA was a dangerous,   difficult organization. I didn't mind  them thinking that we were even evil   sometimes. But I didn't like them  thinking that we were incompetent.   If that is the view of your intelligence  organization, you have a real problem. NARRATOR: In the farthest reaches at headquarters,  one could find the weapons inspector David Kay. DAVID KAY: It's almost comical to me. And in  fact, I'd laughed at the time because it was   so much like a poor spy novel. I was given an  office that didn't have a working telephone,   that was surrounded by packing cases, you  know, at the­ at the depths of Langley,   with a secretary that usually wasn't there. And  I mean, you know, you'd have to have been pretty   dumb not to have caught the signals. What it said  to me is these guys really don't want the message.   The message wasn't, "There are no weapons there,"  the message was our system completely broke down   and failed. It gave not only the wrong answer, it  mishandled every piece of evidence that we have.

NARRATOR: At Christmastime in 2004, they gave  out the highest honor the president can bestow,   the Medal of Freedom. The insiders from  the war on terror were there. Don Rumsfeld,   whose Pentagon had by now inherited  most of the intelligence function.   Scooter Libby was there. Colin  Powell­ he would resign soon. NARRATOR: [December 14, 2004] Ladies  and Gentlemen the recipients of the   Presidential Medal of Freedom: L. Paul Bremer  III, General Tommy R. Franks, George J. Tenet. STEVE COLL: I presume that for President Bush,  it was a signal that he wasn't making Tenet a   scapegoat. It would be the natural thing to do,  right? You've seen this episode of "I, Claudius."   You know, you put the knife in one side and the  medal on the other side, and that's politics.

NARRATOR: Watching it all was the man who had been  at war since that first day, on September 11th. JAMES BAMFORD, Author, The Puzzle Palace:  Cheney pretty much got everything he wanted   for in terms of the CIA. Tenet left, and kept  his mouth shut about all the things that went on,   about what kind of influence Cheney  might have had. They still have a CIA,   but all the power is now with his  team over at the Pentagon. They're   gathering more power every day in terms  of intelligence. So largely, Cheney won. NARRATOR: The vice president  and George Tenet declined   FRONTLINE's requests for on-camera interviews.