Another Apology In Iraq-Nukes Flap

President Bush's deputy national security adviser on Tuesday became the second U.S. official to apologize for allowing a tainted intelligence report on Iraq's nuclear ambitions to find its way into a major speech by Bush before Congress in January.

Stephen Hadley, in a rare on-the-record session with reporters, said that he had received two memos from the CIA and a phone call from CIA Director George Tenet last October raising objections to an allegation that Iraq was seeking to buy uranium ore from Africa to use in building nuclear weapons.

As a result, Hadley said the offending passage was excised from a speech on Iraq the president gave in Cincinnati last Oct. 7. But Hadley suggested that details from the memos and phone call had slipped from his attention as top administration officials were putting together Mr. Bush's State of the Union address, given before a joint session of Congress in January

"The high standards the president set were not met," Hadley said. He said he apologized to the president on Monday.

Tenet previously issued a statement saying that he should have raised objections to the Iraq-Africa-uranium sentence when the CIA reviewed an advance copy of the president's speech.

Hadley is the top aide to National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

The controversial passage citing a British intelligence report "should have been taken out of the State of the Union," Hadley said. He said he was taking responsibility on behalf of the presidential staff just as Tenet had done for the CIA.

"There were a number of people who could have raised a hand" to have the passage removed from the draft of Mr. Bush's Jan. 28 address, Hadley said. "And no one raised a hand."

"The process failed," said White House Communications Director Dan Bartlett.

Still, Bartlett said that Mr. Bush, while perturbed by the developments, "has full confidence in his national security adviser, his deputy national security adviser and the director of central intelligence."

The disclosure came as the Bush administration went into full damage-control mode, releasing a variety of information and reaching out to its Republican allies in Congress in an effort to counter criticism of Mr. Bush's Iraq policy and his use of discredited intelligence to advance the case for toppling Saddam Hussein.

With the president's job approval ratings among Americans slipping and U.S. casualties in Iraq continuing to climb, Bush administration officials have sought to move the debate over the Iraq war away from the flap over Mr. Bush's 16-word assertion that Iraq was trying to buy uranium in Africa.

The Bush administration presented Hadley's apology on a day when public attention on Iraq was focused on the killing of Saddam's sons Odai and Qusai.

Bartlett said he did not know if Hadley had offered to resign in his private conversation with Mr. Bush but that no resignation was expected.

According to Hadley's account, an unsigned CIA memo was sent to him and to presidential speechwriter Michael Gerson in an Oct. 5 memorandum advising that "the CIA had reservations about the British reporting" on Iraq's alleged attempts to buy uranium from the west African country of Niger.

"These reservations were confirmed by the CIA" in a second memo on Oct. 6, a day before Bush's Cincinnati speech, Hadley said.

He said that Tenet delivered similar reservations in a phone call around the same time and asked him to delete the phrase from the speech — which was done.

Hadley said the memos were lengthy and included other recommendations, and he noted that he has frequent phone conversations with Tenet. "As I sit here, I do not remember" details of the CIA reservations, Hadley said.

Still, he said, "I should have recalled (the issue) at the time of the State of the Union address. ... If I had done so, it would have avoided the entire current controversy."

The first CIA memo was discovered over the weekend by Gerson, the White House speechwriter.

Gerson did not attend the session with reporters. But, Bartlett said, "he had no recollection" of the controversy.

The administration wants its Republican allies in Congress to do more to emphasize some of the upside to deposing Saddam, including humanitarian gestures and the freeing of the Iraqi people.

Other aggressive efforts are expected by the administration in the days ahead to try to regain control of the message, including a possible speech on the issue by Vice President Dick Cheney, administration and congressional aides said.