Condi Rice, National Security Advisor and later Secretary of State to President George W. Bush, joins Colin Powell in challenging Dick Cheney’s account of events. From the UK’s Daily Mail:
All smiles then…
The former Secretary of State said she resented what she viewed as an attack on her integrity, and rejected Mr Cheney’s contention that she misled President George W. Bush about nuclear diplomacy with North Korea.
She said: ‘I kept the President fully and completely informed about every in and out of the negotiations with the North Koreans.’
‘You can talk about policy differences without suggesting that your colleague somehow misled the president. You know, I don’t appreciate the attack on my integrity that that implies.’
Ms Rice also disputed a passage in Mr Cheney’s memoir, In My Time, in which he said she ‘tearfully admitted’ that the Bush administration should not have apologised for a claim in Mr Bush’s 2003 State of the Union address on Iraq’s supposed search for uranium for nuclear arms.
Mr Cheney, who opposed a public apology for the unfounded claim, wrote that Ms Rice ‘came into my office, sat down in the chair next to my desk, and tearfully admitted I had been right’.
She said: ‘It certainly doesn’t sound like me, now, does it? I would never – I don’t remember coming to the vice president tearfully about anything in the entire eight years that I knew him.’
Ms Rice admitted that she did say Mr Cheney had been right about the press reaction to the administration’s acknowledgment that the remarks about Iraq seeking uranium in Africa should not have been in Mr Bush’s speech.
She added: ‘And so I did say to the Vice President, “You know, you were right about the press reaction”. But I am quite certain that I didn’t do it tearfully.’
The full story is here.
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